The Noles

Well, it seems that Nolie may have a little bit of test anxiety.  Good thing to know.  Our county GT office retested her this week using a different test, one that works better for kids with test anxiety and which is a bit more oriented toward kinesthetic learning, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, she's in.  I'm glad, on a lot of levels.

Thanks for all the love and support and arguments and laughs as we figured this thing out.

Regarding my secret fear of moderately empty refrigerators, and also overly crowded, disorganized refrigerators.

You know how we've been trying to save money, mostly because we were not saving money there for a while and things got out of whack?  We're pretty much back in the black now, but took a hard look at how we'd been spending money.  As a result, we've gone through some major changes in the last month or so.  It paid off:  we paid off the residuals from the credit cards, made some lifestyle changes, and everything is looking up.

Here's what we did:

First, I stopped buying clothes.  Let's be honest:  I had a new-clothing addiction there for a while.  I spent plenty of our hard-earned money buying myself a whole new wardrobe this last year.  Yes, it was stuff that was on sale, and yes, I really enjoy the clothes.  But it was out of hand and needed to be nipped in the bud.

That addiction got replaced with my new meditation addiction, but that's for an upcoming post (promise).

Second, we agreed to cancel the cable.  This isn't going to save us a ton of money, but let me tell you, it has opened up veritable chasms of time in my schedule.  I read every night now, with a cup of tea.  I read in the morning.  I read in the interstices of my day.  It's not that I wasn't reading before, but boy, making the mental switch away from my tv addiction triggered a desire in me to read and do other stuff, like exercise.  This is pretty awesome.

But I should say goodbye to my friends:  goodbye, Kim, Kortney, Khloe.  Goodbye Snooki, the Situation. I'll miss you.

Nother good by-product:  watching tv can't trigger my desire to shop.  Good.

Third, we just got a whole lot more careful about incidental spending.  I tried to make most birthday gifts this month; we didn't eat out; we talked over every purchase.  This helped a lot, and is a habit I think we'll keep up with.

Fourth, we agreed that our grocery budget was out of whack.  I'm about to blow your freaking mind.  Are you ready?  We spent on average $1000 a month on groceries.  Sometimes more.

Okay, pick up the pieces of your brain and join me again when you've reassembled.

I know!  I know!  I can't believe it myself.  I'm ashamed and embarrassed and confused.  I mean, we make almost every meal at home rather than eat out, so that's part of it.  I try to buy organic produce when I can (especially with those rascals, apples).  We like good cheddar.  But I don't know where the hell else the rest of it goes, honestly.

In an effort to cut that budget dramatically this month (we were shooting for $600 but I think hit more like $700) we made two big shopping trips and then agreed to eat from the pantry.  We had a fair amount stocked up in terms of pastas and canned tomatoes and all that Costco-overflow-jazz, so it didn't seem that hard.  At first.

And for most of the time, it was fun.  It was fun figuring out how to be creative just with what we had.  It was nice to use up food we had bought rather than throw it away or watch it get all dusty.

But for the last ten days or so, our refrigerator has looked like this:

Now, maybe you look at this fridge and see plenty.  Maybe you think I'm having a "first world problem."  Maybe you want me to shut my freaking pie-hole.

But I look at this fridge, and I see three half-jars of salsa, a few stalks of kale that I ran out and bought on Tuesday in a frenzied pique as my body demanded fresh greens, a ginormous tub of fake butter (we've had it for three years.  I'm not kidding.  Totally disgusting), and a pitcher of watered-down juice.  And I'm thinking, "How in god's name am I going to feed a family of four on this shit?  Somebody tell me HOW I'M GOING TO FEED A FAMILY OF FOUR WITH MARGARINE AND WILTED KALE, MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!.

If you post a comment with a recipe for fried kale and apple sauce, I will punch you in the throat.

Good thing it's the end of the month and I have special dispensation to go to the market this weekend, even if it means we go a tiny bit into the red until our paychecks show up on Monday.

But let me tell you, it has been interesting to observe myself trying not to freak out about having an empty larder.  And it has been interesting to observe myself freaking out about not having fresh produce and lots of choices, cooking-wise.  And it has been interesting to reflect on my parents' huge walk-in pantry and costco-sized refrigerator, filled with more food than two people could ever eat even if peak oil hits and boatloads of hungry refugees buy out everything in the grocery store and my parents are stuck living off their pantry for a year.

Not saying this has anything to do with them. I take responsibility for my own refrigerator-induced neuroses.  That image of their giant, walk-in pantry and overflowing fridge has just crossed my mind a few times as I've been thinking about my relationship with scarcity and plenty and blessings and fear, that's all.

Here's the cool thing:  I will be very, very excited to go grocery shopping tomorrow, and I will feel very grateful for every recipe I get to cook this next week.  That's for sure.

Weekend Honors

On Thursday morning, we attended a breakfast honoring Addie as one of her school's "top" students for the month of February.  I was so proud, hearing the words the principal said about her (and that her teacher wrote):

I love that she is a "mathematical whiz" and a "super reader," but am especially proud that she is kind and peaceful.

Friday, I was honored to be included in a ladies-only weekend in the mountains.  A friend turned 40, and her husband secretly flew in all of her best friends, from every stage of her life, to celebrate it with her in a cabin in Winter Park.  How amazing to be included, and to meet seven instant new friends.

And how lucky I am to have a husband who entertained and loved on my girls all weekend, cleaned the house, did laundry, and cheerfully let me take a 3-hour nap when I got home yesterday.

Speaking of coming home, I arrived to this:

Which meant also that Nolie brought home her class's honored stuffed animal, Cayden.  She got to take care of him all weekend, do fun things with him, and write stories about him.

Not to mention the two glowing report cards that came home, too.

I'm a proud mama.

The MLK Song

1.  It was hard to video this without shooting any little girl boobies, but I wanted to avoid doing that because you're all such a bunch of pervs.

2.  I like how our bathroom tiles look in this shoot.

3.  This song neither rhymes, has a melody, nor is it maybe that historically or factually accurate in some ways.  It's pretty non-linear, really.  But I still really, really like it.

So, from Nolie to you, on this fine MLK Day:

The GT Dilemma

Once again, the gifted and talented program in our county has presented us with a dilemma.

Namely, that Nolie didn't get in.

She doesn't know this yet, so if you're someone who sees her, or has a kid who sees her, please don't say anything.

Her test scores weren't bad by any means, but they were pretty blah across the board.

I think I can speak for E. when I say our first reaction was, CRAP.  Not because we are so in love with GT or anything, or think our kid won't be successful without it, but because her very vocal older sister is in GT, and thinks the world of it, and CRAP will Nolie think that she's not the gifted or talented one in the family?  That she is something other that smart and lovely and a gift to everyone who meets her?

CRAP.

Also, it's confusing, seeing as Nolie is doing really well in school, and her teachers are having to work hard to challenge her in math and reading.  So did she just have a couple of off-days of testing?  Or does the testing not capture all kinds of giftedness (know the answers to that one)?  Is she just not ready for that kind of testing?

Biggest question of all:  what to do now?

Gather information about our options.  Get some resources on how to deal with this kind of situation.  Maybe advocate for a retest.  We don't quite know yet.

I'm not a fan of moments like this, where there is no clear path forward, and you have to be careful that your actions and attitudes aim for what's best for your kid and aren't just a reflection of your own fears and insecurities as a parent.

I think Nolie would do great in a GT classroom.  But I also know she's smart, funny, resilient, loving, and basically all-around awesome.  And I'll need to be all of those things, too, so I can always be her best parent, coach, advocate, and ally, reminding her that she is gifted and talented, no matter what any test says, or how her classroom is labeled.

Crap.

Addie Sees

Addie royally failed her vision screening at school a few weeks back.  E. had been suspecting for a while that her vision wasn't good and, in fact, it's worse than both of ours.  Her optometrist said that if she were an adult, she'd be forbidden from driving without glasses.

Kind of explains why she has insisted on being so close to the t.v. screen, and why she's had trouble seeing the smartboard at school.  Might also explain some of her ongoing clumsiness.  We'll see.

Anyway, her glasses were finally ready today.  Lord, how she's been waiting.  E. said she got them and put them on and the first thing she said was, "These make my life so much better."

That's pretty awesome.

Course, we had to stop by Claire's and get Nolie her very own pair for $2.99.

I'm worried about Addie's glasses getting lost or broken.  I'm hoping that her being able to see will be enough incentive for her to take care of them.  But if you have any suggestions for how to get your kid to take care of their glasses, please let me know.

Rolling Coins

We have this plastic jug that's about 12 inches tall.  It used to be part of a Hello Kitty water dispenser, but E.'s mom rightly pointed out a while back that it was probably full of BPA, so we converted into a loose change collector.  That was years ago, and the jug just recently got super-full.  I was going to take it to our grocery store and dump the thing into a CoinStar machine, but then I remembered reading a blog post one time about how this was basically throwing money away because CoinStar keeps a percentage of your coins just for counting them, and also you have no way of knowing if they count correctly.  I also remember rolling coins as a kid with my brother, and that we enjoyed doing that.  So when we were at the bank last week I asked for some coin rolls and they gave us a stack.

I proposed to the family that we roll the coins and that we use half of the total money on a gift for ourselves--maybe a new Play Station game, or a night out eating--and that we all agree on a charity to give the other half to.

Here's why I like the exercise from a parenting angle:

We give the kids allowance every week (when we can remember), but if the girls don't put the coins into their piggy banks immediately, they get strewn about the house like play money.  Appropriate for Nolie's age, probably, but not for Addie's.  Addie has really strong saving instincts already, so I want to nurture that.  Both girls have savings accounts for birthday money and saved allowance, and we also allow them to buy things on occasion.

But neither really understands that actual, physical money translates into purchasing power.  So my hope is that, over time, as they help me count and roll these coins, and then we both purchase something with it and give some away to others, they'll start to connect the fact of coins and its value as currency.  Maybe also they'll learn about spending and giving?  Then, maybe, they'll pick up a penny and deposit into the BPA jar instead of just throwing it around or leaving it on the ground.

Because you know what?  Those coins add up.  We're only 1/3 of the way through the jar and we've got $44.  That's a lot!  Ostensibly by the end we could have around $150, which translates into a couple of dinners at Noodles for all of us, and $75 to give to an organization we choose.

This may not mean a lot to them now, but my hope is it grows on them over time.  Maybe wishful thinking.  Especially seeing as "real" money doesn't seem to have tons of value now that everything's plasticized.  But I can hope.

An OCD side benefit:  your fingers get disgustingly dirty from rolling coins, so maybe they'll learn not to put that shit in their mouths.

Another OCD benefit:  all those similarly shaped round things neatly stacked.  Very nice.  So soothing.