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The trip began with chanting “Chuck E Cheese! Chuck E Cheese!” but by the time we were 5 minutes on the road Kiki had arranged a chorus of sorts:
Link — “Chuck E Cheese! Chuck E Cheese!”
Gleek — “I love Chuck E Cheese! I love Chuck E Cheese!”
Kiki — “Chuck E Cheese is Fun Fun Fun! Chuck E Cheese is Fun Fun Fun!”
Fortunately the drive was a short one.

This outing to Chuck E Cheese was part of the package of delights for the summer that was promised in lieu of the expensive family camp that we could no longer afford. We kept putting off the Chuck E Cheese trip because the contemplation thereof made neither me, nor Howard, nor my budget very happy. Last week Link sat up and gasped “We forgot to do Chuck E Cheese this summer!” his eyes began to water and I knew this was a promise I really needed to make good on. Noon on Labor day is probably one of the most crowded days and times I could have picked, but Chuck E Cheese has free kiddie rides from 11 am to 1 pm and all the other days of this week the older kids are in school at that time.

On the way into the store Kiki spotted a “help wanted” sign and her eyes lit up. “Mom! You could get a job at Chuck E Cheese!” My rational explanation about already having a job and the costs of childcare did nothing to quell her enthusiasm. She could think of nothing cooler than having a mom who worked at Chuck E Cheese. Even contemplating that makes me shudder.

We got inside and got settled. Patches loved the kiddie rides. In fact he spent the entire hour running from kiddie car to kiddie plane to kiddie dinosaur punching buttons and making things go. That was nice for me because I could just sit in one place and keep an eye on him. Gleek loved the rides and the giant playset. She didn’t clue into the token games until after she ate some pizza, she then happily used tokens and brought me tickets. I pretty much let Kiki and Link have the run of the place. I insured that they would check back in regularly by only dispensing a few tokens at a time. Kiki has reached the age where she still loves Chuck E Cheese, but because she’s older she isn’t sure that she is supposed to anymore. She solved this dilemma by maximizing her ticket acquisition for each game she played. She got to play a lot of games because Patches didn’t use any of his share of the tokens. She really really wanted to bring home cotton candy which she assured me was because she wanted the other kids to have a chance to try it. She succeeded.

The total cost came to $7 per person, which is a little steep for an hour’s entertainment, lunch, a few trinkets, and a bag of cotton candy. It definitely isn’t something we can afford to do often, but as a once-a-year treat we’re okay.

Kiki is much like Anne from Anne of Green Gables. Everything is either horrible or wonderful, and she always uses extravagant language to describe exactly how wonderful or horrible things are. Her frequent (but thankfully short-lived) emotional crises rarely come at convenient times. I get frustrated because I know that this horrible situation that is unbearable to Kiki will completely evaporate into a non-problem very shortly. I just want to skip the emotional wrangle and get to the non-problem part. Because of this I’ve been looking at these emotional upsets as problems to be solved.

Not long ago Kiki was all worked up over some minor (to me) issue and wouldn’t let it go. She was so hyper-focused on the problem that it made anything else impossible. She stomped off to her room and slammed the door. I stayed in the kitchen fuming. Howard wandered in and I began to spill my frustration into his ears. I can’t remember the exact wording of what Howard said next, but he adroitly pointed out that I was as hyperfocused on Kiki’s emotional upset as she had been on the minor issue. My daughter was like me, or I am like her. I hadn’t even seen that before. We both hyperfocus and then manage to step back, see things differently, then solve the problem.

That insight sat in my brain for a week or so. Then last night Kiki had an emotional upheaval about her new school and the amount of homework she is getting and she doesn’t like having to raise her hand to be excused for lunch, and the new school’s playground has gotten boring and she is stupid in math and everyone in the whole school can type faster than she can and she wants to go back to her old school and why can’t she just go watch Daddy playing starcraft. As she presented each subject of her upset I was in full problem solving mode. I wanted to grab each concern and hang onto it until it was solved. But I just start to get a grip on a subject when she would shift. It felt a lot like being caught in a whirlwind. On the last point I consented just to have a little peace. She went to watch Daddy and I sat in the kitchen trying to regain my equilibrium. When I’d achieved calm inside my head, insight hit. When Kiki is upset she doesn’t need me to solve anything, she needs me to listen to everything. She finds her own solutions once she has calmed down, but she needs validation that she isn’t unbalanced or unnatural for having the feelings she does. My efforts to help were making the emotions worse.

I’ve been reading Anne of Green Gables aloud to Kiki at bedtime lately. I haven’t yet mentioned to Kiki how much like Anne she seems. I want to wait until we’ve reached the end and Anne has grown from a scatterbrained, imaginative child into a self confident, competant young adult. Kiki needs to be able to picture that future for herself. As for me I’m grateful to L. M. Montgomery for new insights into my daughter.

Like parents everywhere, Howard and I frequently provide “incentives” for our children to encourage behavior that we want. (We like the word “incentive” rather than the blunter “bribe” because it makes us feel less guilty for using the tactic.) The most common use of this tactic is at dinner time: “Kids who finish all of their dinner can have chocolate milk!” This is usually followed by the devouring of all food and demands for the promised treat, which we happily dole out, having gained our point. Sometimes however this tactic has uninintended results. Patches doesn’t much like hamburgers. There is something about the flavor or consistency of the meat that he simply doesn’t like. However her really really likes chocolate milk. So when Daddy told him he had to eat up all the hamburger in order to get chocolate milk, Patches put his brain to work and found a way to meet the requirments without actually ingesting any of the despised hamburger. He carefully bit, chewed, and spat back out every single bite of that hamburger. Howard and I only noticed this process when the hamburger was almostly completely rendered into a ground up pile on his plate. To Patches dismay we removed the mess and required him to eat a hot dog instead. We don’t give Patches hamburgers anymore.

I figure while I’m spouting uninformed opinions I’d weigh in on gas prices. Part of me is glad that gas prices are going up. Americans spend far to much money maintaining and running far too many cars. We spend municipal money on roads and overpasses that could be spent on mass transit, parks, or bike trails. Maybe the high gas prices will finally force americans to take a close look at our wasteful consumption of resources. In my neighborhood we live less than a mile from the school, but the vast majority of parents drive their kids to and from school. Maybe if Americans used their feet more and their cars less we could also solve the growing problem of American obesity. Just a thought.

On the other hand, ouch. My budget is pinched enough without having to spend any more. I think I’m done persuing garage sales for the year because it costs too much to drive to them. I’ve started walking Link home from school and I may start walking him to school as well. Kiki’s school is further and walking isn’t really an option. I’m increasingly tempted by the thought of buying a bike with a child trailer attached. Unfortunately I can’t tell whether this is an expensive whim, or whether it would be wise financial planning. Biking to school and back is certainly easier and faster than walking. It is even possible that Kiki’s school might be in bike range, although probably not. Gleek’s preschool rotates through houses in the neighborhood, so no gas expense there. And the only out-of-neighborhood after school activity is Link’s soccer, which just became more expensive because of gas. I think that I may ask my neighbor if I can borrow her bike and trailer for a spin around the neighborhood some afternoon. I’ll either come home wanting one even more or I’ll decide it isn’t worth the money and storage space.

I watched some footage of looting this morning. I have to say that I understand why it happens. It is very hard on the store owners, but the store owners and clerks aren’t there to take money and people NEED supplies. Most of the people I saw in one clip were adults carrying large packages of diapers or food. I have no arguement with those people. Anything they can do to keep their loved ones alive and healthy while waiting for evacuation is okay with me. That flavor of looting will voluntarily cease to exist if emergency teams can provide other sources for essential supplies. Unfortunately in this case some of those people won’t get help for days. If I were in their position, I would loot too. I would also try to provide restitution when survival was no longer at stake. Many of these people will do the same.

I DO have an arguement with the healthy young men who were filmed running off with bags of dry cleaning. I suppose it is possible that they needed the clothes for survival, but I doubt it. Their faces and body language were too gleeful.

Oh, and I’m also mad at the New Orleans mayor who thinks that choppers should have been pulled off of rescue efforts in order to plug the levee and prevent property damage. People first Mr. Mayor.

NOTE: I’ve edited this entry on Sept 2, 2005 as I refined my thinking about what was important. Some of the comments will no longer be pertinent.

Over the last day or so I’ve been watching the fears of hurricane Katrina’s landfall and the evacuation of New Orleans. New Orleans is a city that I’ve wanted to visit someday and now it may be too late for me to do so. I feel for those people and I find it strange to realize that on this same beautiful clear morning when I’m sending kids off to school there are other people huddled in shelters in fear for their lives. There isn’t much I can do for the people in New Orleans right now except send prayers, so I’m using the excess anxiety in a little mental exercise of imagining what I’d pack if I ever had to evacuate my home.

If I had to evacuate and had no time to plan or pack I’d grab the kids first. If there was time I’d make sure they had shoes and I’d grab our 72 hour emergency kits.

If I had 10-30 minutes to get out I’d also grab my file of Important Records (birth certificates, passports), scriptures, a toy or two per child, some extra bedding, Kiki’s hamster, the entire contents of the medecine cabinet, and some clothes.

If I have an hour to plan, then the limiting factor becomes “what will fit in the van?” In addition to everything already mentioned we’d put in additional food, photo albums/scrapbooks, Howard’s external hard drive (containing back-ups of his computer), additional books/toys, back ups of all my computer data, and the camera.

It is amazing to realize how much of what we’ve accumulated I’m willing to abandon in an emergency.

The tub in our master bathroom has one of those pop-up plugs. You push it, it pops open. Push it again, it pops closed. At least that is the theory. Ours actually requires hitting 5-7 times before it grudgingly pops partially open or partially closed. It needs fixed.

The tub in the kids bathroom worked great. We used it all the time. Then one day we discovered a small bulge in our downstairs ceiling. Popping it got us wet. Water does not belong dripping from sheetrock ceilings. That is bad. Some unintentional experimentation demonstrated that water run down the drain in the kid’s bathtub runs out of the ceiling in the family room. So, tub two needs to be fixed.

Since our house has two showers separate from the two tubs, we’ve still been able to stay clean. The tub problems have been gathering dust awaiting funds enough to pay a plumber. The funds finally arrived last week, but I’ve been busy so never made the call. (I also suspect that part of me was still trying to figure if I could solve the problems without spending money. Not logical, but oh well.)

This morning a toilet clogged. 10 minutes of plunger work, 1 soaked Sandra, and 1 liberally splashed bathroom later and I still had a completely clogged toilet. I decided that since I needed to call a plumber anyway, I’d let him deal with it. He shows up today sometime between noon and 2 pm. Hopefully by the time he leaves all my plumbing will work again.

My kids started school today. We all had to get up almost 2 hours earlier than we wanted to. Thats a big biorythmic shift to swallow all at once. Add to that the imposition of Schedule and today was rough. It is now 8 pm. I only have half of my kids in bed and none of them are asleep yet even though theoretically the younger two should be in order to get enough sleep. Homework time was exhausting for me. All of it was exhausting for me. The schedule seems overwhelming to manage. I know that I’ll adapt and in a couple of weeks it’ll be easy, but right now the thought that I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again makes me want to cry. They kids each had a great day, so that’s good at least. How is it that I can simultaneously feel like the schedule is a workable one and also feel like it is insane and no one could manage it?

The best part of today featured an unexpected package in the mail. It was a gift box full of small toys for my kids. Thank You SomebodyStrange and Davesanngel, that was incredibly thoughtful of you. It was a much needed morale boost in the middle of a very rough day. Rather than “sensibly” saving up the toys for a birthday or christmas, I’m going to hand them over to the kids right away because sometimes the unexpectedness of a gift is half the value. You picked well, the kids will have a blast.

And now back to parenting with me.

I unexpectedly ran into an old family friend today. This woman has been a friend to my family since before I was born. She was my primary teacher when I was 5. Every memory I have of her breathes warmth and love. She was the first person of Tongan decent I ever knew and I’ve had positive inclinations for all Tongan people ever since. She was that wonderful. Seeing her today was like going home. Even more like going home than actually visiting my hometown, because when I’m in my hometown I’m confronted with all the changes time has wrought. I had a wonderful, but short, visit with her and her husband (whom I didn’t know well as a child) and I’ve discovered that they’ve moved to a town only about 20 minutes from here. I may play adopt-a-grandparent because my kids are short of local grandparents and I’d love for them to know her.

I’ve spent a good portion of this afternoon sorting through random memories that were dredged up by this encounter. I’m suddenly thinking of wading and catching polywogs in The Arroyo. I’m remembering a chestnut tree that used to grow in the courtyard of our church building. (It had the most fascinating spiky balls that fell from it yearly. Do chestnuts do that? Maybe it was something else.) I’m remembering tagging along on my brother’s Cub Scout outings because my mom and this friend were the den mothers. I’m remembering playing with a dozen friends whose paths went different ways in junior high and high school, people I haven’t thought of for years.

All of these memories seem imbued with a sort of idylic glow. They were happier, less worrisome times. But not because the world was a safer place, I don’t believe it was all that much safer, the glow is because I was a child and it wasn’t my job to make the world better. I was free to just enjoy it. The times that my kids will remember as idylic are taking place right now. Years hence my kids will look back on today as some sort of golden age when life was simpler. I will too. When I am a grandmother, watching my children raising children of their own, I too will look back on today as a golden age.

This is why I need to keep this journal, so that years from now when I want to tour The Golden Age, I’ll have a guidebook.