Conundrama--Puzzles and Problems

So I thought I did something that would be totally mom-amazing.  I scraped together enough cash to rent a beach house for a week near where my brother and best friend live.  On the beach.  Pool right by our building.  Two bathrooms. Did I mention that it's on the beach?  And near my brother who I see about once a year??

Yay me, right? 

Not so much.

Danae announced, "Well if it means that I'll miss PRIDE, I'm not going." 

PRIDE, for those of you who don't know, is a day long festival for the GLBT community.  There are booths, and food, and shows, and lots of gay people running amok and generally enjoying themselves.  And for those of you new to my world, Danae was bullied into coming out came out recently. 

I get that PRIDE is important.  Believe me, I do.  But I'm having a hard time reconciling that with the whole "I don't know these people, why are you making me spend time with them?" Which is what she said when she realized that I was serious about making her come with the family to visit my mom for two weeks. 

What's funny is that PRIDE isn't until the fall...  way past our beach trip.  And she's still arguing because she doesn't want to go. Unless we let her girlfriend come with us, which I told her a while back, before I set the date, that I was considering.

Am I wrong to try to force her into getting to know my family?  Am I wrong to just say "this is how we do it in our family" and expect her to shut up and cope with it?  Or do I just resign myself to being another stop on the tour? 

Condundrums and drama. It's what we're good at. 

Any ideas? Thoughts? Anything to make me feel better about this whole thing called older child adoption??

Weekly Wrap-up (sort of) July 11

I'm on vacation this week, and was able to leave a few days early, thanks to Hubby's successful juggling of the schedule, so here are some random tidbits from the week...

1.  Our caseworker was genuinely shocked that we wanted to take the babies with us on vacation.  Apparently, a great majority of foster families do not take their foster children on vacation with them when they go.  If you've read me for any length of time, you know what I think of THOSE people.

2.  We drove from 3 PM Wednesday to 6 PM Thursday.  We made it.  No one died.  Except the potato chips in the back seat.  From the crumbs left, I'm pretty sure it was a horrible death (that's where the teenagers were.)

3.  We're staying at my mom and step-dad's, near one of the Great Lakes. 

4.  That particular Great Lake is AMAZING to swim in.  Cold, but amazing.

5.  When you have a child (Danae) who will bait her own fishing hook, but will not take the fish off, what do you do?  And if you're the mom who refuses to do either, do you really have any moral ground to stand on?

6.  What do you call it when a fish whaps Leigh across the face as she's trying to remove it from the hook?  You got fish slapped!!

7.  Where we are, there just aren't many people other than the pale variety... a point that is driven home any time we go out in public.  My step-dad is oblivious to the stares, we're all used to them, but my mom was pretty shocked. She thought that poeple would look and then get on with life.  Eating out with us is an excercise in ignoring people gaping at our paleness and the dark cuteness that is our children. 

8.  Thank GodAllahBuddha for minivans, diet coke and laptop computers.

9.  Did you know a Bobble Head isn't just a cute, annoying little doll whose head moves back and forth?  It's now an insult of a type of person known for head bobbing behavior...  well hell. It's what you call people who give blow jobs.  Frequently. 

10.  Lesbian joke of the day:  My hubby and Danae were walking, and saw a boat for sale.  The boat's name is, I kid you not, the Hootchie Bobber.  Hubby told Danae she should buy it someday. She agreed, but that she'd have to change the name.  He said, "To what? The Cootchie Bobber?"  Oh yeah.  Gotta love my completely blunt kind of family.

11.  I'm supposed to meet up with an old HS buddy later this week.  I'm a little nervous--lots of reasons I guess, but the bottom line is that I'm not sure I want her kids to meet my teenagers.  It's that whole appropriateness thing--since I can't ever predict if they'll behave, I'm not sure I want them to go. At the same time, I want hubby to go, which means we take the babies, which doesn't bother me a bit.  They behave like they're supposed to.  The teens, not so much.

On my agenda this week...  more fishing. More swimming.  More hanging with Mom.  More attempting to convince MoMo that swimming is not evil.  More attempting to convince Danae that just because there are no black people here doesn't mean everyone around her doesn't like black people.  More attempting to convince Leigh to pull her $%^&* pants up because we DO NOT want to see her crack while she fishes. 

On the other hand, Hubby and I are on the same shift all week which is oh-so-wonderful.  I miss having him around. I hate second shift.

More later!

Potties I Have Seen, Potties I Might Have Used

People’s potty habits tend to be pretty private. Private and odd. And since I’m traveling right now, I’ve been privy to the habits of several different species of women for the last 28 hours. I’m on a two week vacation that involves what should be two 23 hour road trips with my two toddlers, and two of my other four daughters (ages 15 and 16). The extra five hours are compliments of the two babies, who took a few hours to get into the spirit of things. And by "spirit" I mean, "NO YOU ARE NOT GETTING UP, AND THE LOUDER YOU CRY, THE LOUDER I TURN THE RADIO UP!!!"


But I digress.

Here are some interesting things I have learned about my special family, and other people, as they relate to the use of public restrooms.

1. Danae has no problem with anyone knowing she has to change her tampon. I’m pretty sure I was 26 before I could utter that word in front of anyone else, let alone my dad or siblings. And she didn’t need to pee, just change her tampon. I tried to explain to her that it was definitely TMI, but she said, “Well I don’t have to use the restroom, I just have to change tampons.” At that point I gave up.

2. I close my eyes and hold my breath while flushing. Which only happens if I can use my foot to flush.

3. Lots of people don’t flush. Those are the stalls I don’t go in.

4. I tend to only use the handicapped accessible stalls.

5. If it’s full, I’ll wait.  I like elbow room.  And not hitting my head when I squat.

6. If I can’t use my foot to flush, I get more TP and then chuck it in the toilet while it’s flushing and hope it’s fast enough to make the drain.

7. Some women, (I think they were Muslim), at use cups of water to rinse themselves prior to wiping. They shared the cup by refilling it and passing it under the stall door.  Might have to research that practice.

8. One of those women had uglier feet than me, which made me feel better about my crusty Flintstone Feet. (I was waiting for my Immodium to kick in while observing this one. Apparently my tummy was not up for road food.)

9. Most people are embarrassed by gas in a restroom and will not talk if they are in the act of it.

10. Drunk people, it seems, are not embarrassed by anything in a public restroom. Including talking to someone actively engaged in expelling gas.

11. I go barefoot a lot of places, and will allow my children to do the same, but I draw the line at gas station restrooms.

12. There are a frightening number of people who do not follow the rule above.

13. I am going to start a boycott list of places that do not have changing tables.

14. Changing diapers in the front seat of my new van is an exercise in “Don’t get poo on the seats!”
15. My dog is very interested in pee, especially if it isn’t hers. But then, this is the same beast who eats dirty diapers.

16. Gas station restrooms run the gambit between “barely tolerable,” and, “Oh look!! They have a Pleasure Center on the wall instead of a tampon dispenser!”

17. I saw a girl today finish rinsing her hair after washing it in the sink and progress to drying it under the hand dryer at a rest area. That’s someone desperate for something. But for what I have no idea.

18. No one who has the dispensers for toilet seat covers ever actually has them.

19. And if they do, does anyone else have the problem of them sticking inappropriately?