Tales from the Steppes

2006-01-20

11:40 a.m.
Friday, January 20

Ancient bones from Olduvai,
Echoes of the very first cry,
Who made me here and why
Beneath the copper sky
- Juluka

For the next week I am doing the single mom gig while the SU goes to Korea. The Mongols have yet another day off - this time for report card prep, but I think I have that covered. The male Mogols are going to a program for the day and the EM is coming to work with me for the morning and then to Baltimore for the afternoon. I have to sign up for thesis continuance and she has her first appointment at Hopkins. Don't even get me started on exactly what it is I am paying for at school - I can't even get my phone calls returned so I can get a new thesis advisor.

Probably the biggest change to my week is that I will now have to get the kids off to school instead of going in to work early. I am not sure if I am going to make up the time by bringing work home each night or by hiring a babysitter for the afternoons. Perhaps a combination of both.

And two beast walks a day, of course. The beast is going in for grooming tomorrow, which will probably mean a shaving. It always makes Beorn extra-specially perky when his hair is super short. As well as extra-specially obnoxious. Yesterday he flattened the YM while he was romping around and this was not appreciated. And then when our backs were turned, he ate all of the YM's green beans off his plate, as well as a few stray meatballs. We will see how much worse it gets after his haircut. At least we will not have to worry about him walking into stationary objects anymore.

We had a Lord of the Flies moment yesterday afternoon. Maybe you don't have these in your house but we do. I think this comes from not having a clear pecking order among the Mongols - no one of them can successfully dominate the other two. And so a wild rumpus will occasionally ensue, the details of which are beyond me to both understand and relate to others. All I know is that I was out in a field full of horseshit, attempting to understand how the site works environmentally, when the EM called me on the phone to say that all of the Mongols were home from school, as well as a friend of the MM. I tell her that the friend cannot stay, as I am not there, and that all Mongols are to leave the house and go play at the park or go ride their bikes or do something else outside - it was a nice day. Apparently, my directions were unclear or disputed and I received several more phone calls so I could relate my instructions individually to each child. And then some friction occurred between the EM, who was trying to tell others to do what she herself was not doing and the MM, who was apparently trying to do the same. Somehow the phone got not just disconnected but actually unplugged. So then the EM was trying to communicate with me by IMing my cell phone. But since I was driving, I was not replying but merely be annoyed by the alert constantly going off. Got home, fixed the phone. No idea what really occurred. The whole thing left me shaking my head in confusion. But no blood, no foul. Everyone was ok except for the YM getting run over by the dog.

Did you follow that? I didn't.