Raw Drip

Amidst all the fluctuations, curve-balls, and general pandemonium that goes with raising kids, there’s almost some comfort to be found in the routine.  Almost…

As I see it, part of my job as a wife & mother is to be the manager of all the routines – the programmer, of sorts.  Being the family’s uber-programmer means that I run the same executables over and over again in an attempt to somehow, keep all the machines humming and maybe, along the way, install my legacy in my children’s memory.  

But being the ultimate systems programmer is an unglamorous role.  Everyone blames you when the programs fail.  They all look to you for answers when something goes awry, as if you have magical mom code up your shirt sleeves.  And despite my uber-programmer rep and a fair amount of effort on my part, there are some programs I’ve simply been unable to fix or delete.  For instance:

The “Throwing My Sib Under the Bus” Routine

Being “thrown under the bus” is an oft-used metaphor from reality TV and corporate America, but it seems sadly apropos in my household.  Since Dick and I began starving the children, they’ve been forced to take radical action to survive. Like little refugees hiding from the Nazis, my children have begun stealing food and then hiding the evidence under their beds.  In the early morning hours, they quietly sneak into the kitchen and use a precarious contraption of over-turned boxes and stacked chairs to climb up and retrieve snacks from the top shelf of the pantry.  Once they’ve retrieved the booty, they make off to their rooms and, presumably, cram the contraband into their hungry little pie holes – poorly concealing the evidence under their beds. Later, when I’m changing their sheets or looking for my missing stash of Baked Doritos, I’ll find the shredded wrappers and tell-tale crumbs.  In the ensuing confrontation, the accusations fly in an annoying sib-routine that endlessly loops as follows:

Me: What’s up with the snack wrappers under your bed, Adam?

Mini-robot Adam: What snack whappews?

Me: These… (holding up the evidence)

Mini-robot Adam: Tabitha put that undew my bed.

Mini-robot Tabitha: No I didn’t!

Me: Look, I don’t care who did what.  You guys both know better than to get snacks out of the kitchen without permission.

Mini-robot Tabitha:  But, I didn’t do that, Mama.  Adam get up on the chairs and he get the snacks.  I told him, “you’re not supposed to be in the kitchen, but he’s not a good listener.”

Mini-robot Adam: No! I didn’t do that!  Tabitha got the snacks and bwought them to my woom whiwe I was sweeping.

Me: Lemme guess what happened next – she woke you up and forced you to eat them with her, too?

Mini-robot Adam: Uh, yeah that’s what happened…

~Verdict: RESTART UNPRODUCTIVE CONVERSATION AT LINE  0~

The “Dick Can’t Find The Recycle Bin” Routine

In past posts I’ve written about my husband’s inability to observe, learn from his surroundings, and adjust accordingly to the aforementioned fluctuations of life. Like a robot who’s been programmed to perform a set of specific tasks, he’s fine as long as the routine stays roughly the same.  But the moment something’s changed in the routine, nothing short of a re-boot to the ass, is going to restart the operating system and run the new program.  Of course, there are times when it’s obvious to me that the robot is unable run the new program, regardless of how many times I “boot” the OS.

Case in point: the robot husband’s ongoing inability to find the recycle bins.  Why, oh why am I still surprised to wake up in the morning and find the following scene on my kitchen desk?  

Why in God’s name are there always recyclables piled on my workspace?  The recycle bins are located through the garage door to the left of my desk.  I moved them closer to the kitchen about 9 months ago in an effort to circumvent this type of laziness.  Nonetheless, the “new” location of the recycle bins has confused the robot husband leaving him back at the command prompt and leaving me annoyed, frustrated, and confused.

When confronted, the robot will default to one of three responses: A) claim complete ignorance of the fact that we own recycle bins, B) claim that he never intended to leave them on my desk or C) accuse me of “hiding” the recycle bins from him in an attempt to make him look bad.   I haven’t yet located the faulty decision tree that is responsible for these infuriating responses.  

Despite offering guided tours to the site of the recycle bins, providing pleasant reminders, and not so pleasant reminders – including a pathetically passive-aggressive attempt at making a point by relocating the robot’s misplaced recyclables to his desk chair – the robot husband, is unable to resolve the location of the recycle bins and I’m left schlepping the recyclables the additional 5 ft.  Damn environment…

Of course the icing on the cake is finding one of these nearby.

~Verdict:  OLD TECH. ROBOT REBOOT REQUIRED~

The “I have two full-time jobs with no time-off” Routine

About two weeks ago I woke up one morning with swollen glands in my neck and a general feeling of dread.  As the day wore on, body aches and fever confirmed all my worst suspicions – I was sick – again.  This time it was a case of strep throat that completely knocked me on my butt.  Normally, I would’ve taken the required time off to heal, but with nearly no vacation time left (I dared to use vacation days around the holidays for (gasp!) vacation), I was left to work out of my sick bed - popsicles, antibiotics, and ibuprofen my only companions as I tried to design a training program, attend meetings, and juggle deliverables with almost no time, no energy, and an infectious disease.  I know my story is not unique.

Of course, the only thing that can make this routine more fun is for my bacteria to be spread to my children, right?

Adam looked flush the other morning as I was getting him dressed for school.  I felt his forehead and then put my hand on the back of his neck – he was burning up.  After confirming he had a temperature, I quizzed him on how he felt.  He said he felt like, “Thewe’s someting stuck in my thwoat.”  Cue the phone call to my manager to explain my situation – again.

Now, I’m not a totally selfish individual (mostly selfish, maybe…), of course I’m sad for my poor kid who’s suffering  and miserable with a serious infection, but the fact remains that I’ve got to be the “special needs employee” again and ask for the papal dispensation to be a telecommuter for a few more days.  

Tabitha, naturally, hasn’t yet had strep throat but I’m sure week 3 of January 2009 will give her a chance at misery, and her mommy another chance to rack up more PITA points with the boss.  So much for keeping the machine running…

~Verdict: VIRUS DETECTED. REINSTALL NEW IMMUNE SYSTEM~

*****

For an uber-programmer/mom, I feel awfully clueless most of the time.  I wish I knew how to re-program all the variables to end up with a life that was a little less complicated; one filled with more certainty and fewer surprises. Instead chaos seems to be the only certainty in my life and I suspect it’s the programmer who needs to re-boot.  The sooner I abandon my belief that better commands are the key to controlling all the variables, the sooner I can get to work gathering requirements for the next version of  the family operating system.  Thankfully, our architectural framework is fundamentally sound and I have a plenty of fellow mom programmers who are more than ready to contribute code since being a wife and mother really does seem to be the ultimate open source community.