Apt. 11D

Excessive, Over-the-top, Too Much

Winter took a long time to leave New Jersey. It began early with the two week depression of Hurricane Sandy and then lingered with grey skies and dirty snow for far too long. March behaved like February. A warm, sunny spring is our reward for surviving the melancholy winter. People emerged from their bunker-like homes with smiles and warm greetings for neighbors not seen for many months. Suddenly, we have too many parties and social events. The flowering trees have too many impossibly bright blossoms. The grass is too green. It's excessive and over-the-top, like the Jersey ladies leaving Nordstroms with too many designer shoes. But it's also so very lovely.  

On Saturday, Steve mowed the lawn, which he babies with chemicals and carefully placed water sprinklers. I poured bags of top soil and mulch around the gardens. I planted dahlias and peonies - big showy flowers in magenta and hot pink. I'll plant more useful and more subtle plants later this month, but right now I'm in a hot pink, over-the-top mood. 

The boys both had sports activities on Sunday. Since the times overlapped, we split up. I took Ian to his special ed baseball, while Steve took Jonah to church and then to a soccer match. 

At 10, Ian and I went to the main sports field in town right in front of the library and the town hall with the river rock foundation. He was given a maroon t-shirt and ball cap with the logo from the homemade ice-cream shop in town. Like everything in this town, the special ed baseball team was perfectly organized. 

Baseball is the toughest sport for kids with special needs, because it involves a lot of waiting around time. Kids with the attention span of five seconds cannot stand still waiting for a ball to fly their way in left field. Also, the mitt is hard for them to manage. So, a typical game isn't possible. They broke the kids into small groups and had them rotate every ten minutes to a different station. They moved from the base running station to the batting station to the throwing and catching station. Someone put the soundtrack to "The Little Mermaid" on the sound system. 

Ian was assigned two round-faced, cheerful high school girl volunteers. Their hair was pulled back in ponytails and secured with headbands. I told him to listen to them and then retreated to the bandshell with my book. Ian does better without me micromanaging the volunteers. I looked up a couple of times to make sure that he wasn't taking a nap on the field, but he was doing great, so I got lost in Gone Girl for an hour and a half. 

Towards the end of the session, the organizers had the kids play a five minute game. Each kid had two volunteers behind them on the field. When the boy with cerebral palsy came to bat, someone held his arms and hit the ball for him. His heavy electronic wheelchair got stuck in the sand, so three high school kids pushed his chair around the bases. He waved his arms with clawed hands in the air and whooped with joy. 

Ian proudly told me that he got an inside the park homerun and that he really need ice-cream from the store on the back of his t-shirt. Ten minutes later, with chocolatey faces, we raced off to catch the end of Jonah's game. 

Jonah's game was about twenty minutes away in a town just over the New York state border. In a "Sex in the City" episode, Sarah Jessica Parker's character goes to her boyfriend's weekend house in the woods. The city girl complained to her friends that she was "sufferin' in Suffern." Suffern is like a lot of towns in Rockland County, a mix of Hasidic Jewish schools, old townie homes with furniture on the front lawn, and massive, newly constructed McManions set up for the corporate park-types. Using the crappy GPS on my cell phone, I finally found the field and cheered for my skinny legged son. 

I have a packed week planned here. I have too many blog posts in my head that need to be actually written. I need to research the new magazine article and finish off the current project. My life is really "too much," "over-the-top," and "excessive" right now, and I couldn't be happier. 

Six Years Ago...

I stumbled across an old video of Ian when he was four. He had just learned to say a few words, and I was testing him. Waaaaaaahhhhh!!!! My baby is eleven now!!!! 

 

The Mean Elephant, Part 2

I was planning on writing several blog posts about job loss today, but I think I'm going to tie this topic up quickly. One more blog post and then I'm done. 

The first week after we learned about Steve's downsizing was a blur. Steve had no time to process the news, because he had to go into job-finding mode immediately. Resume writing, creating a LinkedIn page, talking with headhunters. He had to buy a new tie. He started interviewing for new positions within the week. He was still in major shock, but he didn't had time to digest events, which was probably a good thing. 

In between all those tasks, I kept Steve busy. We went for long walks and tried out the lunch specials in town for the first time. 

I evaluated my own situation. Should I start looking for a job, also? Freelance writing is great, but it isn't paying the bills so far. Should I run out and get a minimum wage job right away or put in the time to get a proper job? We decided to wait until the situation got more desperate. Steve was speed-dating on the interview circuit and we would have run into major childcare problems, if I was doing the same. With my background, even a proper job might not cover our child care expenses.  

And, of course, I decided almost immediately to keep a record of events with the idea that I could turn the bad news into an article. How could I monitize this disaster? So I started a secret blog, called Downsizing Diaries, to keep notes. And then I googled "Downsizing Diaries." Do you know how many blogs are called "Downsizing Diaries?" A lot. And they all end with home foreclosures. Honestly, I felt like an ass for thinking we were special in some way. 

Still, home foreclosure was very much on our mind. As former graduate students, we're cheap as hell. I don't have a landscaper or housecleaner. We drive crappy cars. We have no credit card debt. But like everybody else here on the East coast, we're house poor. Almost all of our money goes to the mortgage and property tax. 

Our money is divided up in three ways: liquid, stock investments, and 401K money. We decided that we could burn through the liquid and stock money, but we would sell the house before we had to hit the 401K money and way before we were in serious hot water. We figured that we had six months. I like our house, but an apartment would be fine, too. 

And burn through the money we did. When you're unemployed, your expenses actually go up. We had to pay two months of COBRA up front, which was $4,000. Steve needed a car to get to some interviews, and so our rarely used second car had to get serviced. My parents helped out with that $2,000 bill. I started evaluating our grocery bill carefully. We stopped going to out for dinner. I didn't visit the mall. 

In week two of this insanity, Hurricane Sandy happened. New York City and the area was shut down for two weeks. Interviews were cancelled; positions mysteriously dried up. Nothing happened for two weeks. Thanksgiving and the winter holidays happened. Again, days when nobody is calling you for interviews. And Christmas is expensive. We cut waaaaay back, but it's still expensive. How about a panic attack while wrapping Santa's gifts on December 24th? 

The most asked question during this fiasco was "what did you tell the kids?" We didn't tell the kids. In fact, as an experiment, we waited to see how long it would take them to notice that daddy was there in the morning and in the afternoon. It took my Einstein children two days before they noticed. Then we told them that Steve's office was being painted, so he was working from home for a little while. They bought it. Well, I think Jonah figured things out eventually, when he overheard a conversation. We didn't want them to worry about matters. 

Steve started working the week after Christmas. It took a couple of months to recover emotionally and financially. Not that we're back to 100 percent in either way, but things are certainly better. I think we would both like to figure out a way to cut back on our expenses even more and stockpile a year's worth of savings. But we can't do that without selling the house and that can't happen until the kids are done with school. So, we're squirreling away money here and there and keeping things simple. 

Job Loss, Finally Explaining the Elephant in the Room

Last fall, I made a few references to the fact that our family was dealing with some bad news. The bad news was that my husband was downsized from his company, along with a lot of other people. I think I'll write a couple of blog posts about it today, in between preparing for a kiddie birthday party. I'll have a house full of waif-ish, random, adorable autistic kids at five today. 

First of all, let me just say that our story isn't that bad. My husband was only unemployed for six weeks. In this economy, our situation wasn't that horrible. Other people have it a lot, lot worse. It did give me a glimpse of the struggles that others are facing. 

Secondly, I can't talk specifics for obvious reasons. I'll only write about the impact on our family and how we dealt with money issues. 

Eleven

Accomodating Disabilities

When Ian was five, his food sensitivites were pretty bad. He only ate certain foods. His gag reflex was so sensitive that I had to mop up vomit off the kitchen table a couple times a week. Lunchtime was particularly difficult, because he would only eat peanut butter sandwiches. However, I wasn't allowed to pack any nut products, even Nutella, for school lunch. There were too many kids in the cafeteria with severe peanut allergies. 

I can't remember how we resolved this problem though I do remember lots of phone calls with the school. I think he ate his lunch by himself in the hallway for a few months, until I figured out another food that he could tolerate. 

This was my only issue with the Peanut Police. In fact, I am very sympathetic to their needs, because my BFF has a daughter with extreme celiac disease. I know what one stray gluten can do her. My BFF has to educate teachers and other parents, because people are constantly handing her kid questionable snacks and treats. She has to pack alternative foods, whenever her daughter goes to a birthday party. She had to track ingredients in everything from medicine to condiments. It's a lot of work, which is very similar to the work that I've had to do with Ian. 

So, I am very sympathetic to the article in Slate about a parent who pleads with other parents not to bring snacks to the playground and to clean their kids' hands with wipes. But the commenters on the peice were not so sympathetic. 

My Jo

Drugging the Boys

When Jonah was in preschool, he had trouble sitting still. He had a lot of energy and sitting quietly in a circle was not his strong suit. He was hard-wired to run. He started walking at nine months and then never stopped. I remember pushing his empty stroller behind him, as he ran the whole mile back home from pre-school. He had zero interest in passively observing life. 

He still is that way. During Saturday's trip into NYC, he leapt up on park benches. He tried to climb a wall into Central Park. He ran up the front stairs of the museum backwards. He moves. Constantly. 

If I wanted to drug him up, so he moved less and remembered to turn in his homework more consistently, I could get those drugs for him without breaking a sweat. But I won't, because he doesn't need them. He's a high-energy kid and that's how he is wired.

Nobody has ever urged us to medicate Jonah, because he does well in school and he never gets into trouble, but other parents have told me stories about teachers pushing them to medicate their boys. 

The number of boys who are diagnosed with ADHD has skyrocketed. According to the New York Times,

Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One in five boys? Maybe high-energy isn't a bug of boys. It's a feature. And maybe schools and the world isn't set up to deal with high-energy boys. And maybe we should stop pouring chemicals down the throats of our kids and learn how to deal with boys who need to walk up the stairs backwards and leap on park benches and climb walls. Maybe. 

Boys In The City

Finally, it's warming up here in the East. And our juices for adventure are warming up, too. On Saturday, we detached ourselves from our computers and chores and went into the city. 

Why go up stairs the normal way, when you can walk up backwards? 

The first room of a museum is always the best. 

Sometimes the view of the park is more interesting than the art. 

Why simply walk across the street, when you can pretend that you're a tight rope walker?

We particularly loved the Met's exhibit on fashion and Impressionism. We stumbled into the exhibit. I wouldn't have made plans to see it, because it sounds like a crass attempt to bring in the art-lite crowds. But it was surpringly awesome. 

Each room of the exhibit focused on a particular fashion of the time. For example, I guess that white linen dresses were very big at the turn of the century. In the center of the room, they had an actual white dress with a black sash from their fashion collection. Around the room, they showed various impressionistic paintings of women in white dresses in black sashes. Some of the paintings were well known, others weren't familiar. The focus on the dress forces the viewer to look at the paintings with a new eye. 

Loved it. Highly suggest it. 

And later this weekend, there were eggs. 

Ian Wants To Know

Ian wants to know if you were tiny enough to swim in a bowl of cereal, what kind of cereal would it be? We all agreed that a cylindrical cereal would be best, though there was some debate about the particular kind of cylindrical cereal. I think he settled on Cinnamon Cheerios.