Daily Diary

Good grief. Where has this month gone! This is the week of good intentions. Basically we are a bunch of slackers over here in kid-dom. Mmm. Now that I look at that and reflect, I think Kid-dumb would be more to the point. We are catching up on a lot of stuff housework and schoolwork, but are not yet caught up. And we leave next week for Florida! I think that perhaps we are going to have to do math flashcards and Greek & Latin classes on DVD in the car. Jon will be so pleased! His personal favorite is the phonics songs CD.

Tuesday night is company night. We had a rather large group. I set the table for ten and was 3 short. What we really need is a table that seats 16 comfortably. Marla, a friend from church, came over and happily fiddled with Jonathan and Caroline for awhile. Shucks, I didn't think to get a picture. She's quite a Jack of all Trades, and has built her own Teardrop, which she took to Alaska. I love Teardrops, and she generously offered to let us borrow hers. I think I'll be taking her up on that!

Wednesdays we have strings lessons and Greek class. Tonight I'm going to take dinner down to Jon's mom's house where some of the clan will be gathered. Then after dinner, I'll head to the sewing room to finish up this huge project.

Must go back to the realm of insanity. Have a good day!

Family Circus

This morning at breakfast Charles was elaborating on some topic to Oliver who listened for awhile and then finally said, "Charles, stop talking to me. You're putting too much brain into my head."

Daily Diary

This weekend was crazy! Friday I got some serious Costco shopping accomplished. The fill up the freezer kind of shopping where you buy meat in bulk, come home and package everything in Ziplocks and then fit it all into the freezer. It was a job that I'm glad to have done. Friday night after dinner, I worked on sewing shorts for several hours. Put in a lot of hems and waists. Grunt work. Saturday morning we were up very early trying to get stuff done. Left at 10:16am for Panola Mtn. State Park. It was a bit more of a drive than we had expected, which meant no time for hiking-somehow Jon was not disappointed about that. We hooked up with Jonathan's orchestra director and his family. Jon grilled brats and hotdogs, and I had made simple things to go with it. The kids played happily, and were sad to go. After that we hustled Jonathan and his orchestra friend Samantha to Myso practice in downtown Atlanta. The rest of Atlanta was there-Jon said something about basketball games-is there a final four?, and it took a long time to get back on the highway! Ugh.

While Jonathan had three hours of Myso practice, the rest of us headed to Jon's parents' house in Dunwoody so I could sew and the kids could play. The kids basically know we love them when we take them to Mormor's-playland and candyland rolled into one. All too soon we headed back to crowded Atlanta, picked up Jonathan, and then drove north to our church for supper. We were finally back home around 9:15- it was a beautiful night. We put the kids to bed and sat on the back patio with a glass of wine, admiring the stars, and just talking. Very nice.

Sunday was the day of Maya's departure. Unfortunately, Caroline, the shiba rescue lady, could only take Maya at 11am. It was incredible the load of dog accoutrements we had! Caroline immediately guessed the breeder where Maya was purchased-Free Rose Farm. Apparently, Shibas are notoriously bad with kids and are runners! If they get out the door, there's no getting them back until they are good and tired, even the well trained Shibas. I was annoyed that the breeder had not told us this, and felt better about our failure as Shiba parents. But we lasted almost 4 years, and the first two were very pleasant years. After we bid Maya adieu, Vivian and i joined up with the rest of the family at church.

Caroline's final orchestra performance was Sunday afternoon, and she was pleased that the entire family was in attendance. Generally, Jonathan seems to have Myso stuff on the same day and only one parent comes to Caroline's performances. After the performance in Buckhead, we hustled back to church. Unfortunately, once church and supper were finished, we didn't get home until 9pm. Ugh. These are frustrating weekends. Thankfully, Jonathan, Caroline and I did lots of laundry Friday afternoon-10 loads-folding it all on my bed, while listening to an Eliot Engel lecture on the Bronte sisters-(it was a rather fun way to do a boring job). So we may be tired, but at least we have clean underwear for the week!

Old Mother Hubbard

Meal planning and preparation can be a rather arduous process, not to mention the cost of groceries. Sometimes I wish we could take care of things Jetsons style and pop a pill that equals a meal, or maybe a three course dinner in a piece of gum Willie Wonka Style. Think of the time I would save not dealing with food.

I've experimented with every possible type of menu planning, and by far the most successful was the once a month cooking plan. By Thanksgiving, I was out of free weekends in which to purchase, prepare and freeze all those meals. If I was in the kitchen all weekend, the housecleaning and laundry were not taken care of, which caused problems during the course of the week. Perhaps the kids can get away with running around in a bathing suit for days were it July, but by December that sort of thing is generally frowned. So, meals become a last minute magic show. To the common observer the fridge is bare. After scrounging a bit, some tuna and macaroni surface in the pantry and it's a tuna casserole night. When desperation really hits I fall back on pancakes for dinner. When even the eggs and buttermilk are no more, there's always angel hair, olive oil and garlic.

If only groceries could be delivered to the door, like milk in the 50's, that would really improve the fare around here. Should we skip math and head to Publix. Sigh. We are already a lesson behind, and do I really want to drag six kids through the store. Oooh, look. I just found another package of Ramen Noodles.

Of course, making the list is a whole other saga. When it is finally prepared and put on the back counter, death to whomever moves it! There's nothing that matches the frustration of loading up the car and making a quick run to the back counter to grab the list and ---it's gone!

The sense of accomplishment felt when the menu is organized, the list made, the shopping complete, and the refrigerators and freezer are full is really quite something. Then I find myself on the prowl for whomever might be a menace to my meal preparation and eat up some important ingredient as a snack. Labels on food containers abound: Do Not Eat. Injest and be Shot. My brother gives me a reproachful look. "Gee, Jenn, I just wanted a glass of orange juice." I glare, " it is not breakfast time. If it were, you could have 6 ounces, but certainly not the 12 ounces you just poured yourself. Do you know how much trouble it is to run out for more orange juice mid-week with six kids in tow and three grades of homework to accomplish?" This is the kind of miser I've become.

My husband does regularly ask if he can stop at Publix and get something for me. My mind is not on food. "Nope, don't need anything," I say as I'm holding the phone to my ear and checking a spelling test. " Do we have milk?" He asks. " Ah, no, we don't," I respond. He sighs. " What about OJ." Let's see, are there two c's in occasion, I'm thinking to myself. "Oh, OJ? No, out of that," I finally respond. Back and forth we go, until Jon's got quite a list in spite of my initial, " I don't need anything." Think of it this way, if you'd been home all day long dealing with six kids, would you prefer your husband to come straight home for adult conversation or go grocery shopping?

Enough about the food, think of the dishes! By the afternoon, there's bowls, lunch plates, glasses, bottles and some pots and pans overloading the sinks and counter. Sometimes I feel like a shovel would be most useful in plowing through the carnage.
"What's for dinner, mommy?" How about I just clean the kitchen and we all have a nice hot cup of tea and go to bed. You guys are looking a little fat, let's all go on a diet. SlimFast anyone?

Political Pontifications

I love a sarcastic zinger. It could very well be my favorite genre. Sarcasm sums up the common vernacular of our generation. Let's face it- take a really boring topic, like the life of an average housewife, add some sarcasm, and suddenly people are interested. That's where Ann Coulter comes in. She takes the stiff, frozen chosen mentality of the conservative movement and shakes things up a bit with some facts and a few well laid hilarious comments. She gets the message out there in a memorable and entertaining way. Even Allen Colmes, my favorite liberal, can't help but laugh. So why the bad press from the Christian Right of all people?

The biggest complaint I hear is that Ann doesn't do things in a way Jesus would have. Wow, what a standard. Ann, if you could just act a little more like God, we would approve. Jesus apparently wouldn't use sarcasm to point out discrepancies or problems with the ideologies or politics of another person. What I love about modern day Jesus is that with 20 minutes and a Strongs Concordance, you can have Jesus saying and defending almost anything. If you don't think Jesus was sarcastic, you didn't read the first four books of the N.T. As for belittling people, Jesus turned the word Pharisee, a very well educated and respected member of Jewish society, into a dirty word that is still going strong 2,000 years later. Jesus also liked to point out lots of problems in society using a limited number of words and phrases followed with, " He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Ann Coulter likes to hand out zingers that point out particular problems and hypocrisies within the American culture. The America of today has a thick, leathery, callous for a conscience, and it's going to take something sharp to get through. So she made the following statement "It turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot', so I'm kind of at an impasse-I can't really talk about Edwards." Here come all the arm chair Christians, meaning similar to arm chair Generals, voicing lots of complaints, but they aren't exactly going to roll up their sleeves and plow into the fray.

Surely no one is so obtuse as to think that Ann was pointing out Edward's homosexual lifestyle. Ann was using a single stroke, a memorable one liner, to make many points about our society. Grey's Anatomy, the number one TV show in America and perhaps in the world, just recently had an episode where Isaiah Washington went voluntarily into rehab after calling a co-star "faggot." That of course, would be the most obvious reference Ann was making. As for the rest, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. I guess that won't be the deaf arm chair Christians.

Daily Diary

Would anyone like to come and do my laundry? I typically run one or two loads daily, and then on Saturday the washer and dryer run all day long non-stop. As long as I maintain this, and I don't have three kids wet the bed, we are doing all right. But the last three Saturdays I have not been able to do laundry- so we are drowning in mountains of clothes. Jonathan, Caroline and I worked on it for quite awhile last night, and we didn't seem to make a dent. Winter laundry is worse than summer laundry by far. In the summer you have a t-shirt, underwear and shorts for each kid. In the winter each kid: T-shirt, underwear, socks, sometimes long underwear, pants, shirt, sometimes sweater. So you can see that multiplied by 6 that is a lot more laundry. It's rather demoralizing. Maybe that is because I don't have an actual laundry room. The washer and dryer are simply in the hall that connects garage and kitchen.

For anyone who cares, we've decided not to take Maya to the pound. It would be tragic for her to be euthanized-though I feel fairly certain it wouldn't happen. I took an ad out in the AJC, and sent out an SOS to my girlfriends who've voiced an interest. Two families who were very interested in her changed their mind because...they want a really big dog! There's something I never would have seen coming. I would have thought Maya's small frame would make her more appealing.

Dog Ownership

Nearly seven years ago I made the fateful decision that we needed to buy a dog. Jonathan, our eldest, had developed an immense fear of animals that I was rather concerned about. I had enjoyed a Rhodesian Ridgeback that I owned as a teenager immensely, and rather liked the prospect of a dog ownership.

Not being one to jump into something without proper preparation, I began on a three year journey of dog research. Yes, I kid you not, I spent three years- at random times- digging through the doggie section at the local library. During this time, Charles came into the world followed 18 months later by number four, also known as Oliver. Deciding that 4 was the magic number for children in our household, and having put pregnancy behind me for good, we settled on a breed and called a breeder. Shiba Inu was the perfect dog for us. It had an average life span of 18 years, was impeccably clean, did not bark, was quite small, with the look of a plump little red fox was adorable, was very intelligent, and finally shed only once a year. After contacting a breeder and arranging a general time when we would secure our new puppy, we excitedly prepared for the event- we drove the 12 hours round trip to meet the breeder and inspect the facility, collected equipment and read dog training books. The big day arrived, and we drove the 12 hours again, to pick up our dear little Maya who was about the size of a kitten, fat, fluffy and quite brown. I specifically wanted a red shiba, and the breeder assured me that with time, Maya would be a beautiful and brilliant red.

And so began the descent from the peak of our fondest hopes, dreams and illusions, into the valley of reality where we now find ourselves.

Potty training was quickly and efficiently checked off the dog training list. This dog was super smart and it showed. We felt our dog training muscles flexed, stretched and ready to embark on greater things. On went the training collar and out went the first command "Come". Maya cocked her little head, ears moving like little independent radars, and gazed at me steadily. I tried again, "Come". I was firm. Then as par the instructions in the dog training manuals, I gave a little tug on the leash and thus the training collar. Out from this adorable puppy came the sound of a screaming toddler. She went from calm reflection, to the throws of agony. Jon threw open the back door and hurried out. "What did you do to her?" He asked checking her shivering body. " I didn't do anything, I have no idea what could have possibly happened." Jon touched her all over and then tried to get her to walk. She was limping, shivering, the perfect picture of death right around the corner. I quickly got her into the car and over to the vet.

The vet checked her out thoroughly, and questioned me with equal thoroughness. "Mmmm," he said with an amused twinkle in his eye. " I know what it is."

"What?" I was desperate to know. Had I abused her? Was there a DFax for dogs? " Your dog doesn't want to be trained," the vet said. He stood there silent. Clearly that was the end of the diagnosis.

"What do you mean the dog doesn't want to be trained?" I asked incredulous. This had not been covered in the dog training books. " I mean," he continued," that this dog is extremely smart and she refuses to be trained. There is nothing wrong with her." The vet felt the case to be closed end of story. I sighed, paid $45 with rueful glances at my perfectly healthy shiba who pranced out of the office like a Queen, and I was her humble servant.

I gave up on the dog training. I was insecure with book in one hand, leash in the other, and Maya knew it. Besides, shock of all shocks I was pregnant with number 5, which left me tired and irritable with no desire to spend time training an obstinate pup. Oliver, on the other hand, was completely enamored with Maya. They spent hours in the back yard together, digging up all vegetation and digging holes to their hearts content. Maya didn't put up with anything but calm petting from the other children, but Oliver could pull her ears, yank her tail, slobber all over her face, and she put up with it, and seemed to enjoy it, too.

In Maya's first year of life, I became in gradual stages aware that the Shiba I had researched all those years in the library, was in fact a fantasy shiba. We did not own the fantasy shiba, but rather the shiba of typical dogdom, who shed, stunk, barked, shed some more, was filthy, screamed, bit and barked when bathed, and shed even more. Did I mention the shedding? We had clumps of hair from the top of the house to the bottom. I was vacuuming the entire house daily. We finally had to engage the services of a dog groomer, where Maya faithfully got a grade of C and had to be muzzled for her bath and nail cutting. We made the mistake of initially using PetSmart where Maya picked up a $950 disease. We sighed as we paid the vet bill, reflecting on the fact that she was 2 and had at least another 16 years with us so maybe $950 wasn't a bad investment. We also switched to a nice private dog groomer, where we noticed Maya received a conduct grade of B. Jon decided that they were desperate for business and thus graded generously when he noticed big letters at the top of her chart stating Must Muzzle.

Maya was a hunter of all hunters. She hunted down birds, squirrels, baby possums-nothing was safe in our backyard. I had to give up on feeding the birds, because Maya would go crazy at the window trying to get out and attack. Some stupid thing would walk across the backyard at 2 am, and Maya would bark to go out at the back door. "Not my dog," Jon would mumble as he rolled over in bed pulling the comforter closer. I would mumble, sputter, and think all manner of violent thoughts as I pulled on my robe and went to go let Princess Maya out. Once the thing was dead- maybe 30 minutes later- she'd bark again, and I'd let her in. She then had the nerve to ask for a treat which I of course gave her. I no longer had illusions about who was in charge, and only wanted desperately to get back into bed before the baby woke up to be nursed. Jon was lucky enough not to have the equipment to deal with that, too.

By the time the sixth kid arrived, Gabriel thought her name was dumb dog. She began escaping out the front door, and would never, NEVER come to us. But she would happily go to any and all neighbors. Now this dog is a good dog- or at least I keep telling myself that. But she wants to be the center of attention all the time. And quite frankly, it is getting hugely embarrassing having the neighbors bring back our red furball. So I started handing out bottles of wine to assuage my guilt and their annoyance. This Sunday was the last, and I mean LAST straw. She raced out the front door and despite my efforts, elluded us. Of course the neighbors who caught her are the perfect dog owners. They spent hours every day of their German Shepherd's first year, training that dog, who now walks at their side leashless. Jon went over to their house to pick her up. They commented on her thick coat that needed brushing because it was shedding very badly and she was clearly overheating. I thought darkly that if she didn't want to overheat, maybe she should stay inside the temperature regulated house. As for her shedding, we do brush her, but not daily. The thing sheds enough hair to clothe a lhama. It's crazy. I guess I better have those people over for dinner so they can see that we really are nice people. It's the dog, not us. Really.

The end of this saga is that by Friday, Maya goes to the pound. There are several families reflecting on taking her, but I know that I'm not spending another weekend chasing a dog who's decided that I am not good enough for her. And that is final. Besides, she'd never get euthanized at the pound. I've read tale after tale of people who have tried to euthanize a Shiba and cannot do it, because of the reknown Shiba smile. Who can put a dog under who's smiling at them? And why does this dog smile? Because she knows when it's all said and done, she's the one in charge.