The Art of Threats and Bribes

I've been trying to get Evan to clean his room for, I don't know, months and months. He says he won't do it, he says it's his room and he knows where everything is. It's disgusting, though. Wrappers strewn about, an old science project growing mold in a petri dish. The thing that really irks me is that, for some reason, he can't keep a fitted sheet on his bed. The boy can work a computer, he can do all kinds of complex tasks but he seems to not be able to stretch some elastic over the corner of a bed. I tried to speak his language. I pleaded, can you pretend that the bed is an enemy soldier, and the fitted sheet is your weapon, and if you encase your enemy in the sheet you will win the battle?

Today he wanted to go to Games Workshop and I told him not until he cleaned his room. It worked. He cleaned for a few hours and I saw some real results. Observe:

Before:


After:


Parenting, it is the art of threats and bribes.

Solstice Skeleton

The presents are wrapped. It's Christmas Eve and I'm finishing up the night drinking wine and listening to Uncle Tupelo. We spent the evening at my dad's house. Me, my kids, my dad, my sister Cara and her husband Dan, and their two teenage daughters Koty and Kiley. We had a nice dinner--my dad grilled salmon and asparagus. I brought a mushroom galette and Cara brought cheesy potatoes and chocolate chip cookies.

I had given Cara my stethoscope to bead, and she made it all fancy for me for Christmas. It's awesome. I hope my clinical skills will be as dazzling as my stethoscope. If not, then I hope my stethoscope will serve to distract my patients from my incompetence. This picture does not do it justice, I'm going to try to get a better one.



My dad gave us typically tasteful gifts, plus some cash which is always welcome. A nice little sweetgrass basket, a harmony hollow cranberry plant knicknack, which was the kind of cute little botanical thing my mom was into, a fancy candle. He gave my sister and I these Minnesota Ojibwe dictionaries, so if any of you start talking Ojibwe smack to me I'm going to be able to look up what you're saying.

I gave my sister and dad handmade leather purses that I bought at the Shadow Art Fair. With Cara's I included a wine bottle vacuum sealer. In usual eerie fashion, it turned out that she had bought one of those for my dad as part of his gift. I didn't buy him one because he finishes any bottle of wine that he opens and I didn't think he'd start drinking less so he could vacuum seal it. Now we figure he can keep drinking more, maybe one and a half bottles and vacuum seal the rest. Cara and I are always doing weird synchronous things like that. One time near Christmas she called and I was making cranberry white chocolate oatmeal cookies, and at the same time she was making the same cookies for me. It wasn't like those cookies were some tradition, either, it was out of the blue. Freaky!

When we got home I got the kids straight to bed so I could get down to serious Santa work. It used to be that I would wrap presents in the basement while Gerry managed the kid situation, but last year I remember being really tired and just doing it in the living room. Luka had been told about the realities of Santa because I'm not going to lie if he asks me about it, but still he acted startled when he was faced with a half-hidden pile of gifts in the living room. He had been coughing all night, and had gagged himself into throwing up all over the place. So we had gifts to wrap, vomit to clean, and a kid that would not stop coughing. He ended up coughing all night long and there was no reprieve until I called for some narcotic cough syrup the next morning. It was awful. Anyway, I thought last year that we had established that I was Santa.

So this evening he kept getting up and I had to usher him out of the room several times. He started bawling and saying something about Santa not existing!! I was like--please!! He said, why did you say Santa existed. I told him that I am Santa, and that I do exist. I feel like I'm living Groundhog Day but it's Christmas instead.

With classes finishing up so late, I didn't get a chance to get a tree until right before Christmas so I said forget it. I just didn't have the time to go running around looking for one, so I bought some cedar garland in which to wrap our skeleton and Evan decorated that on the solstice. The cedar makes it look more tropical than I really like, but the cedar can burned when I'm done. Burning cedar smells really good, a fact that I am including here for my pyro readers.

Luka wasn't into the skeleton idea, so he decorated my little fake tree. Amongst the traditional decorations he hung some fondue forks he found in the kitchen. He put up a sign that directed Santa to put Luka's presents there.

Christmas morning. I think they made out pretty well. Evan got some Warhammer 40K, a soft and sparkly severed unicorn head, again from the Shadow Art Fair (which he said he LOVED), a holy toast stamp where you can press the image of the Virgin Mary into a piece of bread and then toast it. Luka got a gel ant farm colony, some sour cream and onion crickets to snack on, and some Beatles stuff. They both got IPods, books, maps, the movie HELP, the Wii game Big Brain Academy. When Luka opened that he stood there going hmmm... with a doubtful look on his face. I ordered--"look excited for Santa!" and he gave me the reaction that I was looking for, a little overkill actually. The kid is so opinionated.

I Think I Molted

Thanks to those who have offered up help and suggestions for winter semester childcare. I think I have the afterschool situation covered, and backups, and now all I need is the two early morning shifts covered but I have some leads to follow up on.

This past week has been interesting. On the day that my divorce was final, a knot developed in my center that I carried around for five days. It was the weirdest thing, as generally I'm not a gastro-stressy person. Then it disappeared. It just went away, and I felt great. Really great, like I've been carrying around this sublevel anxiety that was suddenly released. I have just as much to do, but it doesn't feel ominous anymore. Instead of this nebulous feeling that the things I have to do are a gray sky above that I'm trying to clear by making wind with my hands, they just became a canopy of fruit that needs to be picked and I can just reach up and grab it.

I feel like I gained Deep Understandings of Life, without reading any Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I can focus on schoolwork, but then feel okay about setting it aside for awhile to play games with the kids or laugh with Evan over hilarious headlines from his book of compilations from The Onion. Six Flags Killer Still at Large, Says Souvenir-Bedecked Police Officer.

I think I molted. Perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood my crunchy shell is lying amongst this year's shed leaves, unseen for the cloak of early snow.

It's Crunch Time

Oh my goodness. It's the end of the semester, holiday obligations are making themeselves known, and I need to line up winter semester childcare. Help!

Starting in January, until the end of April, I have clinicals starting at 7 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday mornings at St. Joes and I need someone to help me with my kids. I would like someone to be here around 6:30, and the main thing would be to get my kids up, fed and off to school. My younger son (age 8) would need to be driven or walked by 8:30 a.m.

It also means that if there is a problem, if Luka is sick and I'm already gone, that the sitter would have to deal with it the best they can. They would have to make the calls to find someone to watch him, construct a velcro wall and stick him to it with some food and videos, or stay themselves...because attending clinicals is mandatory. They've assured us that if we miss a clinical, that those hours will have to be made up and they will find something even more evil than usual for us to do. And when you're talking human bodies...hoo boy, I don't even want to go there.

I will also need afterschool care on Mondays until 7 and Thursday and Fridays until 6:15. It wouldn't matter if it were my house or not.

So...are you interested or know anybody? Let me know and we'll talk money. Contact me at sfallis@sbcglobal.net

Or feel free to suggest places to go to recruit some help. EMU Childcare Institute is one place that's been mentioned, I have yet to do that.