Also just in time for Mother's Day

Mary lovingly and enthusiastically picked these dandelions for me today.  She put them in a vase, and then she took this picture.

Happy Mother's Day.


(By the way, in reference to my previous post, I want to say that dandelions are beautiful too.)

Just in time for Mother's Day

Just in time for Mother's Day, here is a post to make all you moms out there feel better about yourselves.  All you have to do is compare yourself to me.....


Cooking fail.  Friday evening Greg was taking a final exam.  I did not feel like cooking dinner.  I suggested to the kids that we eat cold cereal.  David was thrilled.  Mary threw a tantrum because she wanted french fries.  So I put the kids in the car to make a special trip to the McDonald's drive-thru.  Then we ate cold cereal and french fries for dinner.  This is why I do not have a cooking blog.


Crafting fail.  This weekend I attempted a very simple project, making bulletins boards for the kids' rooms.  It required a trip to the fabric store, a place where I am not especially comfortable.  Fortunately, I have many childhood memories of going to the fabric store to serve as a guide--otherwise I am sure I would have brought the whole bolt up to the front register without first stopping by the counter to have the appropriate yardage cut off for me.  Also, I did not at first know there is an entirely separate section for quilting fabrics.  Unfortunately, it was only after half an hour of wondering if I was going to have to complete my project using fleece that I finally found the quilting fabric.  But at least I found it.

Said simple project resulted in stapling it to the dining room table.  (A light duty staple gun is heavier duty than you'd think.)  So then I redid it using an office stapler.  That worked well, until I realized I'd made a mistake and had to pull everything out and start again.  At least office staples are easily removed.  The next time I used a glue gun, which I did not own until a month ago, and that worked fine.  Except that I got some of the fabric upside down.  But it's staying upside down because I'm not doing the project a fourth time.   This is why I don't do crafts.

At least Greg saved me from this craft about fifteen minutes in.  It's an exciting purchase made by David today with funds from his allowance.

Seriously, this would have taken me three or four hours.  I had much more important things to do--like putting staples in my dining room table.


Couponing fail.  Late last night, after spending way too much time in the fabric store, I did my grocery shopping.  I was proud of myself for remembering to bring my coupons and planning some of my menu around them.  Of course, as I was loading my groceries into the car, I realized that I hadn't used my coupons. (I wanted to cry.)  So, in an act completely out of my character, I went back to the store this morning hoping I could return the couponed items and then re-purchase them with my still unused coupons.  I could...except that, for health code reasons, they would have to throw away the food items and I would have to take new ones off the shelves.  The thought of throwing away perfectly good boxes of cereal just so I could save a few dollars seemed...well, let's just say it made me more uncomfortable than the fabric store.  Now I have a pantry shelf of cereal I'm not sure anyone actually likes--and I paid full price for it.  This is why I have not been invited to be on an episode of Extreme Couponing.

Parenting fail.  Mary almost got run over by a car today.  Seriously.  She couldn't have cared less, but it was close enough (and scary enough) that it sent David into hysterics.  He was bawling.  And snotty.  But he could not blow his nose afterwards.   I have not successfully taught my daughter not to run into the street.  I also have not taught my son to blow his nose.  There are so many, many things that I have not successfully taught my children.  This is why I want to crawl under a blanket and hide.  It's too hard.

Teaching fail.  Speaking of teaching, every time I tell David that I'm going to be his teacher this summer he bursts into tears.  This is why I do not homeschool--and why I am every day more and more in awe of the amazing women I know who do.

Fun fail.  Greg was studying all day today, emerging only to eat a sandwich and save me from building that Lego Hero Factory bad guy.  Since we were all sad and missing Daddy, I thought it would be fun to go see a movie.  We've only taken our kids to one movie in the theater.  We saw Tangled last November, and I thought we all had a fun time.  What a special treat to go see a movie with Mom while Daddy is studying, right?  When I shared my exciting idea with the kids, David shrugged his shoulders and said he's not good at watching movies, and Mary burst into tears.  They said they preferred to stay home and watch TV.  It is hard to be a fun mom when your kids are no fun.

Nurturing fail.  Here are some pictures from Friday evening.  We finally had nice weather on Friday, and the kids refused to go outside.  This was frustrating to no end.  Mary was scared of being cold.  (She's emotionally scarred by Wisconsin weather.)  And David, well, I'll tell you his deal in a minute.  Finally, after our super nutritious dinner, I literally forced them outside kicking and screaming.

They gravitated to the sandbox.

Oh, and, yes, he really was sick.  Want to see the proof?

There he is, licking his boogers as they drip into the sandbox.

Because he can't blow his nose.

Happy May

Yesterday was May Day.

Were I an undergraduate at Washington College, I would have gone to class naked.  Except that it was Sunday, so there were no classes.  Bummer.  Fortunately, I am not an undergraduate at Washington College, nor have I ever been.  I was once, however, a graduate student there.  Luck shined down on me those two years, and I never had class on May Day.

So now you what I think about on May Day each year.

This year I was also thinking about how here in Madison May looks like March.  Small buds, some daffodils, just green grass. Doesn't that seem like March to you?  I wonder when May will look like May.  (I am now understanding why, when we came house-hunting here at the beginning of June, everyone looked so...pasty.)  At least I understand spring in Wisconsin now--it tries your patience and breaks your heart.

May Day was cold, but the sun was shining.  And I felt so uplifted by the thoughts and testimonies that were shared at church yesterday.  I am still feeling the afterglow today.

In other May Day news...

A dead Bin Laden wasn't a bad way to end the day.  Greg wisely recommended that I talk to David about it before he went to school this morning.  So I did.  Wise Dad.  Not surprisingly, it was the talk of the school.  Mrs. Q even gathered her little kindergartners together to explain what all the excitement was.  (I asked David what she had said, and he responded, "She said the exact same thing you did, Mom."  Phew!  That means I did a good job explaining it my five-year-old.)  It is odd to me to remember talking to my little seventh graders about Osama Bin Laden...and then think when his death finally came I would have a son in school with his own teacher to talk to him about Bin Laden.

And now for an announcement.

May has brought the need for a blogging hiatus.  Summertime is around the corner, and I want to be prepared.  By prepared, I mean that I want to be available for my children.  I have a hard time focusing on my kids--being really present with them--when I feel a lengthy to-list nagging at me.  This summer my to-do list is going to be the bare minimum--just enough to keep them clothed and fed and out of complete squalor.  Leaving me, I hope, happily engaged in playing chauffeur for play dates and swim lessons, in playing police officer when it comes to enforcing screen time limits, and playing teacher as we prepare our kindergartner for FIRST GRADE!  I will blog this summer--how else will I maintain my sanity?  But I know in my bones that I need to walk away for a month, to tie up all those loose ends that are choking me.  So I can look forward to a happy summer.

What will you miss?

Some of this...

yard work...

and some of that...

bike rides...

But that pretty much sums up my hopes and dreams for May.

I do plan on taking a time out from my time out on Mother's Day.  Expect pictures of my kids with flowers for me, as well as a report on their adorable performance at church.  Maybe I'll throw in a few other pictures of my kids (for my mom--it will be Mother's Day, you know).  Speaking of Mother's Day, last year I enjoyed a Mother's Day Tea at David and Mary's preschool.  It was lovely.  But not as lovely as the one Cyndie went to this year.

I will be back here at the end of the month to report on the World's Largest Brat Fest.  (Gotta love Madison!)


Bye-bye.

Until Brat Fest!

Part 3 of 3

Really, guys, this is it.  And then I promise never to read another book ever again.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about...I'm talking about Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda.  I started talking here then here and I just keep going...

So, I told you I would tell you why I think T.E. Lawrence is a hero.  First off, I have to say that it's much trendier these days to say that he was a self-centered narcissist, a two-faced manipulator, a no body accidentally made famous, and/or a repressed homosexual.  (Has anyone noticed how everybody is supposedly a repressed homosexual these days?  Go ahead--pick up any biography written in the last twenty years and you'll see what I'm talking about.)  But I'm going old school like Korda.  This guy was a hero.

Remember what I said about how Britain promised the Arabs an independent nation after the war if they would rise up against the Ottoman Empire but then the British signed a secret treaty with France promising to split the Middle East between the two of them?  (It's actually much more complicated than that, but we'll go with the simplified version.)

Lawrence was instrumental in convincing the folks in charge that it was worth supporting the Arabs in a rebellion.  He was very good at persuading those in authority (and collected contacts in high places better than Mary collects toe nails.)  Lawrence wanted the Arabs to have their own united, independent nation. He had genuine respect and admiration for the Bedouin men with whom he served.  Lawrence and Feisal, the commander of the Arab forces, had an unspoken plan that the capital of this new Arab nation must be Damascus (in Syria).  As Lawrence made tactical and strategic decisions (he was brilliant with both tactical and strategic military planning and, yes, Greg I just used the words "tactical" and "strategic"), he never lost sight of his ultimate desire for the Arabs to take Damascus.  Damascus would be the key.

At some point Lawrence surely learned about the Sykes-Picot agreement with France.  Lawrence must have been racked with guilt, knowing that he was asking these men to die for nothing.  He knew that Britain's continual promises were hollow, and he was deeply (deeply!) ashamed.  So much so that at times he wondered how he could go on.  Fesial, too, was most definitely made aware of the meanie treaty through his contacts, though he and Lawrence never spoke of it.  But both Feisal and Lawrence understood, with new urgency, the importance of the Arabs taking Damascus--before the French got there, and even before the British got there.  If the Arabs, and the Arabs alone, were to take Damascus, then they could claim it as their own.  (Lawrence hoped this would give the British enough of a reason to back out of the Sykes-Picot agreement.)

So the race was on.  The French would arrive from the north, but not for some time.  It was British forces, coming from the south, who were on the path to take Damascus from the Turks.  The British General Allenby's regular forces and Lawrence's rag-tag Arab army were on different but parallel courses to Damascus.  General Allenby was not naive--he understood Lawrence's real intentions, but he did nothing to stop him.  Allenby respected what Lawrence was trying to do.  This is why I think Lawrence is a hero.  He knew the Arabs would be wronged, and he was doing everything in his power to right it.  There he was, pushing on through the harsh desert, racing to take Damascus first on behalf of the Arabs.

Now, it's a little unclear who "took" Damascus.  The Turkish troops were already retreating by the time anyone arrived, so there was no resistance.  Lawrence arrived on the same day as an Australian Light Brigade (whatever that is?).  Feisal and his men arrived two days later.  The Arab army had beat the bulk of Allenby's British troops.  Feisal was immediately named King of Syria.  Hooray!  They did it!

And everyone lived happily every after.

Yeah, right.  Soon the Picot-Sykes agreement came to light, the Allies won the war, Lawrence and Feisal attended the Paris Peace Conference to lobby for an independent Arab nation to no avail, Lawrence wrote a million letters to his friends in high places, the French showed up in Syria and killed bunch of people and took over, Lawrence got his pal Feisal a job as king of Iraq, Jordan was created so Feisal's brother would have a country to be king of too, and basically everything sucked and has ever since.

So Lawrence wrote a book, enlisted in the Air Force under an assumed name, and spent the rest of his life quietly building search and rescue boats and hanging out with D.H. Lawrence (like that's not confusing) and the Shaws until one day he wrecked his motorcycle and died.

The end.

It's hard to recommend a book that is so long and clearly intended for people with well-groomed white beards.  But I will say that any book about T.E. Lawrence is likely a fascinating look at the morality of war from the political perspective as well as the personal.  Korda does not shy away from the complexities and contradictions within Lawrence.  But he ultimately views him as a hero...which is refreshing (even if it's not as trendy as Justin Beaver).

Phew.  Topic closed. (Hey, doesn't every mommy blog need a little dysentery now and then?)


P.S.  Don't you want one more picture?

Also, did you know you ride a camel side saddle?

P.P.S.  If you should ever read this book, you don't need to read the whole thing.  The only reason I didn't put it down after Damascus was because Korda kept saying that Lawrence did a really weird thing later in life but he never said what it was so I had to keep reading because how could I not with that carrot dangling in front if me?  Yes, Lawrence did a really weird thing later in his life.  If you want to know, I'll tell you what it was--it is pretty weird--and then if you read the book you only have to read half of it, or even less.

Dusting off the cobwebs

Anyone know who this is?

I'm dusting off the cobwebs in my mind surrounding T.E. Lawrence.  It's been a busy month, but it will not end before I tell you a little more about Hero by Michael Korda.  I already posted something about the book, but I didn't get to talking about the man himself.  So, today:  T.E. Lawrence (via Michael Korda).

Warning:  It's been a while since I finished the book, and I'm working mostly from memory here.....so I don't suggest you use this as a source for that Lawrence of Arabia history report due on Monday.

I'm going to be boring and give it to you from the beginning.  Lawrence's father, Sir Thomas Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish baronet who abandoned his wife and ran off with his daughters' governess, Sarah Lawrence, to live in relative poverty.  They left Ireland behind, moving to Wales (where their second son, to be known one day as "Lawrence of Arabia," was born in 1888), eventually settling in Oxford.  The family, Sarah and Thomas and their four sons, took on the name Lawrence.  Sarah and Thomas hid their past from their sons.  The children did not know their parents were unmarried or that their father was Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th Baronet of Killua Castle in Ireland.

Korda believes that Lawrence was the first of the children to suspect that they were illegitimate.  He believes Lawrence knew the truth for years (during the volatile teenage years) before his parents' past eventually came to light.  Korda argues that Lawrence was greatly affected by his illegitimacy--that he was deeply ashamed, that it caused him to feel alienated from, well, everyone, and that he continually was driven to "prove" himself in order to compensate for the shame.  I suppose all biographers play the role of psychologist, but it did get a little tiresome how often Korda used the illigetimacy to account for Lawrence's actions.

But it was even more tiresome how much Korda blamed Lawrence's opinionated, strong-willed mother for seemingly everything.  I started to get the impression that Korda would attribute the entire Arab Revolt to T.E. Lawrence's attempt to escape his mother's apron strings.  It was a little too much cliched Freud for my taste.  Or maybe I'm just worried about the lengths my own children will go to in order to escape me.  (Hmmm.  Perhaps I shouldn't have forced them to pose for Easter pictures after all!  Oh no--and I forced David to have his shirt tucked in for five minutes!  Well, if he ever takes off across the desert alone, we'll all know why.)

From an early age, Lawrence was drawn to a life of adventure.  It is interesting to see how one experience led to another, how one adventure prepared him for the next.  Notice the progression.  It's like perfect stepping stones.

As a child, his father introduced him to bicycles, which led him to spend hours as a teenager exploring the countryside.  Then, as an undergraduate, he spent the summers bicycling across France photographing medieval castles.  He soon found himself in search of more medieval castles, and in the summer of 1909 he embarked alone on a three-month walking tour of Ottoman Syria to study crusader castles.  (Do you know how crazy this was??  He went alone in the summer to places seldom if ever seen by outsiders and covered over a thousand miles by foot. In case you're wondering, he did almost die.  More than once.)  A year and a half later, he was working as a field archaeologist at Carchemish in Northen Syria, where he was well-suited to the climate and culture.  (Hey, Incirik friends, anyone remember seeing the turn off for Carchemish on the way to Sanliurfa?)  He worked there for several seasons, perfecting his language skills and learning how to resolve the tribal disputes that erupted among his workers.  The site was also near to where the Germans were building an important railway for the Turks.  As such, he had regular contact with German technical advisers, as well as with members of the Ottoman bureaucracy.  A few months before the outbreak of World War I, the British military sent Lawrence and a colleague from Carchemish on an archaeological survey of the Negev Desert, which would be of strategic importance should war ever break out between Britain and the Ottoman Empire.  Of course, the archaeological work was merely a cover for their real mission of intelligence gathering and mapping the area, with special attention to anything of military importance.

After the war broke out, his previous experiences led him to be posted to Britain's Middle Eastern headquarters in Cairo on the Intelligence Staff. His first-hand knowledge of Syria and the surrounding areas, his earlier work at intelligence gathering, and his language skills, as well as his familiarity with the German-built Turkish railroads, were invaluable.  Throughout his life, Lawrence, who was something of an odd duck, had the ability to impress people in positions of power and authority (while simultaneously annoying his lowly immediate supervisors).   It is not surprising that Lawrence was soon chosen for several special missions.  And that is when his life gets really interesting.

It is this part of his life--the "Lawrence of Arabia" part--that makes picking up the book worthwhile.

The British decided to help the Arabs rise up against the Ottoman Empire.  It was Lawrence who saw in Emir Feisal, a son of the Sharif of Mecca, the face of the Arab Revolt.  And oh, what a face...

Feisal is the guy in front.  Does he not ooze leadership and honor?  (By the way, Lawrence is the one to his right.)

So it was Lawrence who criss crossed the dangerous desert with Feisal.  Nonstop adventure.  Nitty, gritty, dirty, bloody, smelly, sweaty adventure---

He and small groups of Arabs dynamited trains, the blood and limbs of Turkish military and civilian passengers raining down on them after the blast.  He returned alone (which is insane) into the desert wilderness to rescue a lost Arab fighter.  He resolved disputes among rivaling tribes.  He procured from the British modernized weapons for the Arabs, and he also distributed bags and bags and BAGS of gold to local tribesmen.  In fact, he sometimes traveled with so many bags of gold that finding enough camels to carry it all could be a problem.  (He was marvelous at working with--and bribing--the local tribes.  He respected their tribal culture. He understood, and so was comfortable with, their ever shifting loyalties.  It's too bad he's not around to help us in Afghanistan.)   He would ride on a camel for days at a time without stopping to sleep.  He disguised himself as a woman for reconnaissance missions, sneaking into towns behind enemy lines.  He and Feisal took their army across an uncrossable desert  in order to inflict a surprise attack on the port of Aqaba (proving that the Arab irregulars weren't a waste of those bags of gold). He lived off dates and the filthy but precious water of desert wells.  He suffered attacks of dysentery, malaria, boils, and countless other illnesses.

And he loved it.  Rather, he thrived in it.  To say he loved it would be wrong--because he felt conflicted, sometimes ashamed, about what war requires of human beings.  But it is fair to say that he thrived in the Arab desert and the chaos of the Arab Revolt.  He was the kind of man who did what had to be done.  Here is an example, from early on in his involvement with the Revolt.

Lawrence and a small ill-assorted traveling party set out on a march of more than a hundred miles through the desert so that Lawrence could relay important information to another Arab leader. Unfortunately, Lawrence was deathly ill with dysentery and in no position to travel.  He was exhausted and barely conscious, but onward he pushed, his companions lifting him onto his camel.  When they stopped for the night, Lawrence lay down and slipped into a feverish unconsciousness.  Soon he awakened to discover that one of his men had been shot--by another one of his men, named Hamed, from a different tribe.  The ethics of blood feuds required that the killer be killed--the victim's tribesmen demanded justice.  Lawrence, even in his fevered state, could see that Hamed would have to be killed to avenge the death.  But Lawrence could also see that this would be the beginning of a never-ending blood feud.  Once Hamed had been killed, Hamed's tribe would be compelled to avenge Hamed's death, and so on and forever.  The allegiance of both tribes to the Arab cause was important, and Lawrence knew the movement could not tolerate the blood feud that would inevitably ripple throughout the army.  Still in his near-delirium, Lawrence saw that the solution was for he himself, as a stranger and non-Muslim, to execute Hamed.  So Lawrence, who barely had the strength to stand, shot Hamed in the chest.  Still alive, Hamed dropped to the ground howling, blood spewing from his wound.  Lawrence, his hand shaking badly, shot him again, but this time he only got him in the wrist.  Lawrence tried to compose himself, moved closer, put the pistol under Hamed's jaw, and pulled the trigger.  Then Lawrence collapsed into bed for a fitful, sleepless night.

As Korda explains, "Hamed's death marks the point at which Lawrence gave up the moral comfort of . . . observing events from a distance."  A reader of Lawrence's life sees him grappling with the realities of war, struggling to maintain a sense of morality.  (Does morality even exist in war?  Where is the line?  Who decides where the line is...if there is one?)  It is remarkable to read about Lawrence because he not only had an understanding of the bigger pictures of the conflicts in the Middle East, but he was on the ground, aside the troops, at the front line (or hidden behind them with dynamite),experiencing the daily physical and moral challenges of war.  And he was an excellent, prolific writer, so we have access to his observations, thoughts, and feelings--about the big picture and the small.

This post is long enough.  Tomorrow I will tell you why I think he is a hero.  And then I will return to posting happy mommy-bloggy things.

Confessions

1. I cried during The Office last night.
2. The first thing I did this morning was get online to see what Kate's dress looks like.
3. The only reason I know that today is Charity's birthday is because of Facebook.  (Happy birthday, Charity!)

I will not confess to you when I last cleaned my bathrooms.

Bird problem

Mary:  Mommy, I have a bird problem.

Me:  A bird problem?

Mary:  Yes.  Every time I get close to a bird, it flies away.  That is my bird problem.

Two on Tuesday

I have two sweet stories for you, related to me by each of David's and Mary's teachers today.

First, Mary.  Yesterday she chose to practice the pickle cutting lesson.  (Which is very similar to the banana cutting lesson found here.)  Once she's finished, Mary doesn't like to eat the pickle.  But she knows that most of her classmates love pickles.  So yesterday she fluttered around the classroom leaving little slices of pickles at the different work places.  At one point Anna, her teacher, turned around to see little pickles strategically, lovingly placed around the room for Mary's friends to find and enjoy.

Second, David.  Last Thursday, four of the chicks in David's classroom hatched entirely out of their eggs.  At one point, as one of the chicks was trying to emerge, the whole class started chanting, "Go, Chickie!  Go, Chickie!  Go, Chickie!"  When he finally made it out, David spontaneously burst into singing "Happy Birthday!" and all of the children joined in.

I love these little stories. They offer a glimpse of what is so great about each of my children and capture their special personalities.

Love my kids.

Easter win?

Okay, so maybe I didn't completely fail at Easter this year.  It certainly wasn't all that I would hope.
(I mean, Easter is when we remember the most important event in the history of the universe!  If that's not worth celebrating, then what is?)   Thanks to this page in the Friend magazine, we talked about Jesus all week long.  Then on Easter Day we enjoyed a lovely church service.  (I think we Mormons are starting to repent of our Easter lameness.)  I dressed the kids in new clothes and even managed to take pictures of them (complete with David's conifer accessory).  We were blessed with a true spring day, warm and sunny--perfect for hunting Easter eggs.

(Some of the eggs held up better than others.)

Mary used the visual aids she made in Sunbeams (purple Jesus, purple tomb, purple rock) to tell the Easter story.  Then we got out the butcher paper and crayons and drew out the whole plan of happiness.  It seemed time to teach our kids the big picture, so they can see how important the Savior is, how God's plan centers on His Son.  It is a beautiful plan.  I pray that I can teach my children how loving and kind and merciful God is.  

I hope you had a joyful Sunday.

P.S.  I feel the need to provide links to previous Easter happenings.  Here and here and here and here and here.

P.P.S.  I also must provide a link to this.

Pretty please?

I begged my kids for a decent picture.  A nice, normal, boring, generic picture of them standing together in the their new Sunday clothes with fake smiles plastered across their faces.  And again, it was too much to ask.  But I still have cute kids, right?  Even if they're not capable of both being simultaneously obedient to the request to look at me and smile with their eyes open?

Oh, wait.  I did get what I asked for...

There you have it.  A nice, boring picture of my kids in their Easter clothes.

Now I can move on with life.