know it all

As we were sitting at the dining room table coloring yesterday afternoon my son, Fox looked at me and said "Mom, did you know that Jupiter has 63 moons and Earth has just one?"
"Doesn't Jupiter have 66 moons?" I asked.
"Nope. FALSE.", he replied, just as annoyingly poised as Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked, referring to his Dwight Schrute-esque usage of the word FALSE, as that of an impartial critic.
"From my placemat you silly!" he chirped, wearing the proud smirk of condescension. I glanced at the placemat and noticed the publication date; MCMXCVII. Ah. Therein lies the answer to that problem.

Certainly you know that I didn't sign in tonight to dispute the alleged discoveries of Jupiter's moons, but to call attention to the phenomenon that is know-it-all-ism among 4-6 year olds.

Not too long ago, my son thought I was the end all of greatness. Every word that escaped my mouth was like the sound of breaking glass to him. He carefully considered conversation and remained silent. Only later would he recall and repeat the dialogue; questions emerging from the fertile soil of his mind, recently tilled with the induction of new ideas and concepts. Nestled within his wide eyes was a wonder so immense; so incredibly hungry for all things new. So pristine that notions of cynicism and pride would have arrived as cloaked strangers; unrecognizable as the child comprehends.

His desires were innocent; Learning, experiencing, loving, pleasing and helping. His expectations were surpassed by reality. Nothing was as wonderful and amazing as the process.

That being said, I am now grappling with the next phase in Fox's process which is much less endearing and sweet. My child behaves like a know-it-all 99% of the time. He asks a question, and 7 seconds into my response, he rolls his eyes and attempts to change the subject by way of a restroom visit or an outburst of noise. Righteousness is a constant motivator for him, but the method is lazy and he comes across as a turd.

Life has become a contest, all of the sudden. It's as if Fox woke up late one day and has been sprinting from one thing to the next ever since. The process has little meaning to him; the conquest and the domination seem to be at the forefront of his mind.

This weekend I tried to accomplish a few tasks I had been putting off, and Fox was climbing the walls. He came to me every five minutes with another crucial problem or desperate question to be addressed, completely indifferent of my activities. The last 30 minutes of my vacuuming the stairs was peppered with interruptions. Fox stood on the step I was vacuuming mouthing, "I NEED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING for an eternity. My expectation of impermeability by means of vacuum were squelched.

His eyes dramatically widened, he waited until I shut off the machine and addressed him.

"What's the problem?" I asked as impatiently as a woman vacuuming stairs would.
"Could you make a collage with me now?" Fox asked, sweetly.

"As soon as I'm done cleaning up I would love to make a collage with you." I honestly replied. (It's true! I would always rather be making a collage)

He shifted around on the step, clearly dissatisfied and I turned the machine off again and looked at him.

"I mean now now, Mommy. I want you to make a collage now.

This time I did the eye rolling and switched the vacuum machine back on and finished the horrible job at hand. An hour later I was finished, and I joined Fox at the dining room table.

"So what are we going to collage today?" I asked.

"I'm going to make question blocks and fire flowers and thwamps on this side, and you are going to make kupas on that side", he explained. I began cutting and hole-punching and gluing and before I knew it I had started a really awesome blue fish swimming over an earwig/eel.

"Mommy?" Fox warbled, "You aren't supposed to be making snakes right now. And don't put those on that side; I said to put them here" he said, pointing to a blank spot on his side of the page.

"Well what are you working on anyway? You haven't made any pictures since we sat down" I asked, genuinely miffed. Fox set down the hole punch he was stress testing with seven sheets of construction paper and sighed.

In his most "frustrated" voice he groaned; "Oh I don't know what to say! I'm done!", grabbed the pinking shears, then overly-gesturally crossed his arms.

I tried to engage him with another pinching bug, and he seemed excited momentarily. He made a few snips with the shears, then took a thumb loop in each hand and started manically snipping the scissors and making a machine gun noise.

"Please stop" I said firmly. "You are either going to hurt yourself or the scissors".

Fox tossed the scissors across the table, crossed his arms again and acted like I had just asked him to respirate without breathing. Time elapsed. I continued crafting. He continued sulking and complaining.

"What's wrong Fox? You were practically dragging me in here to craft with you and now you say you're finished and you haven't even made anything. What's up with that?"

"Exasperated and evidently fatigued, he shrugged and asked if we could get out the play-dough.

Looking around at the shreds and dots of paper, I expressed to Fox that I would rather he continued collaging since I had to start supper. He groaned and complained with reddened eyes saying "But I don't want to collage anymore! I'm through doing this!"

I said, "OK. Well let's just clean this mess up so we can start on another mess..." Before I even finished with my bullshit quip, he was out of his chair, emoting his utter powerlessness, his inability to help me (help him) clean up. It was distressing for him, obviously, but for me to see him so overwhelmed; so powerless in the face of challenge, it was devastating.

I tried convincing him that the hardest part was starting, and after a few minutes of tears and whining, he began picking up the paper.

After we were finished and the floor was "clean"* Fox remarked "It's true. Starting was harder than just picking all that stuff up. Picking it up was just kinda blah, blah, blah."

"Yeah", I agreed, "Not too many people love cleaning, but it's something that every single person is able to do. And the sooner you start the sooner you're finished".

He was quiet for the first time in hours.

* The floor wasn't technically clean, and it never is.

Hello Kitty's house on fire

This afternoon as my daughter was waking from her nap, my son pondered aloud; "I wonder what Rainer dreams about?".

We considered the possibilities; dreaming of flying, running, playing ball, climbing on rocks... Then it occurred to him; "I think Rainer was dreaming about Hello Kitty and her friend and they were playing at Hello Kitty's house and it caught on fire."

"Uh-oh" I replied, surprised at the sinister twist, imagining bubbling pink plastic and noxious, green flames engulfing Hello Kitty. Billowing black smoke. Melting sugar...Faces dripping in flaming globs... "Hopefully no one was hurt in her dream" I said, wrapping up my own daydream.

"Well Rainer and Hello Kitty were ok but their friend got a little bit hurt. She was running away and fell on the carpet and got a little burned. Hello Kitty fell down the stairs, but Rainer was ok." Fox assured.

"So Hello Kitty fell, but was ok?" I asked.

Fox shook his head and looked downward. and walked out of the room. Maybe the friend, but Hello Kitty? Essentially that's what an unnamed friend is for. Raw!

Having a hilarious child is truly one of life's blessings. Despite having zero non-relative friends here, I manage to laugh and have a good time.

Yes, it rates good on a completely different scale of good times, but currently, everything is relative to that same scale.

If I were using another good time scale, say, for instance, that from my college days, my present good times would rate much lower. Probably a 1.5 or 2 out of 10. According to the scale from pregnancy, my current state would rate very high if either A. I lived in Asheville, or B. I had friends here in Illinois, but still would score a solid 5, maybe 6. If I were contrasting my experience with the scale I used between the years of 2002 and 2005, my rating would automatically sound alarms and sirens. Strobe lights hardwired to the infer structure would illuminate, and emergency party patrol officials would deploy.

Honestly I am trying not to whine and complain too much. Everyday is busy and I'm able to go outside, exercise, eat decent food and sit down if I feel like it. To continue my path towards contentment, I have been working on a few paintings and drawings. Some are landscapes, and some are general expressions of positivity. According to me, of course, so I'm not sure if they will come off particularly "happy", but the themes therein are uplifting or somehow inspiring to me. I wonder what other people without friends do? Especially people without children to eat up all their otherwise idle time. My guess is computers.

We moved far away

Things are changing. It's springtime, it costs a bajillion dollars to fill up my gas tank, and we have moved to central Illinois. From the casual reader's end I guess this sounds sudden; brash maybe, but it was planned, sorta. And we weighed our options, briefly. It was in our favor to move and get on with the damn show, we decided during the course of the six weeks prior to the move. Opportunities like this one have been in short supply the past few years, and when a reasonable one presented itself to my husband, he had no trouble seizing it, punching it in the face repeatedly, then dragging it back to his cave where he feasted upon it's meaty carcass.

Other than the obvious inconveniences, our move has been bucolic. We found a picturesque rental property that's dignified without being overly imposing; nothing beyond the realm of what we could repair, erase, or otherwise reverse. Our children behave as if they had always lived in Illinois; discussions of Abraham Lincoln's superior leadership and the disappearing prairie landscape are as natural as the rising sun. Our son arrived into his new school and immediately had new friends, new mentors, and a new bus number. There were virtually no glitches.

The home we own in Knoxville was successfully rented to a professional couple. A couple who had hosted a departmental party a number of years ago at their previous residence, which my family and I attended. The home was tidy and their furnishings were thoughtful. We were thrilled to have them in our home and hoped they would be comfortable there, comfortable even after they inevitably met their new neighbor, Lee. We weren't close friends with the pair; Jason was acquainted with them through the university, so we don't communicate with them outside of rental details and queries. We are both consumed with curiosity regarding their unavoidable relationship with Lee.

Life in the midwest is contrastive by function. Living in a town of 1200 people 15 miles from the metropolis dictates much of our daily activity. Our village has the absolute bottom line of commercial enterprise, including an insurance sales office, a local bank branch, a hair salon, a saloon which serves bar fare, a tanning salon, a furniture refinishing place that doesn't have store hours, a store that sells random items that doesn't have regular hours, a local post office, a small library*, a gas/ convenience station, and finally, during the months of April through September, a homemade ice cream stand. Each day I walk to the post office to check my mail, go to the park, then go on a long walk from one end of the town to the other. Generally I walk south and cross the railroad track, then turn left until I get to the next county road, then turn left again to Main street as it turns back in to a county road at the east end of town. This is where the corn fields begin to the east. My daughter in a stroller, I then walk west on Main a mile till the sidewalk ends at more cornfields. Sometimes we then walk north to a stream where there are trees and reeds, sometimes we walk south past the corn processing place and water processing plant. The water tower bearing the town's name overhead, we watch the trains fly by.

Having neither friends nor options to recreate in a social, non-church environment has created a strange and unfamiliar dynamic in my life. The acquaintances I have made have been through these few establishments; the postmistress, the librarian, the young woman who owns the tanning salon... We are all somehow busy in this trace of a town. Even if I actively took the opportunity to make friends out of these casual encounters, I'm not sure it would be possible to contrive. The librarian has three children ranging in age from 2 to 19. The postmistress is retired, then gone back to work. The neighbor immediately next to me has 9 children with another on the way AND she home schools, AND they are bible translators. Across the street is a lady who has a home day care and her house is crammed with children of all ages, and cars come in and out so much her lawn looks like a parking lot. Anyone can see that these people are busy, and none of them want any more kids around, I speculate. All of this makes me think of my old neighbor, Lee, and I remember how annoying he was. Annoying, but friendly, and almost always available to chat. When we left Knoxville and said goodbye to Lee, I cried like an exhausted baby. Here is his goodbye letter.

Anyway. I'm certain this place will eventually feel like home. Sometimes I'll see a fat man in overalls cruise by on a moped, or a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of garbage and I think I wonder if there is another "Lee" in this town?.

*Library Hours Monday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Thursday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Saturday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon