Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 1 spent all of last week at home, sick with the flu which got aggravated by his asthma. We spent most of last week as we did for years as homeschoolers : working on different things, watching videos, reading, doing arts & crafts projects, and getting into each others nerves.

I loved every minute of it.

I love being a mom. This is an admission that does not come easy to me. When I was in my 20s I fantasized of becoming a mother after 40. I thought that only after becoming successful as a writer and scholar, only after finding myself and who I really was supposed to be, that I would be ready to be a mother.

Then the condom broke. Twice.

I suspected I was pregnant with Thing 1 on a New Year's Eve because all the champagne I drank tasted funky and I had a hankering for olives. The funky champagne taste was new to me but not the hankering for olives. That had first happened 10 years prior when I first got pregnant.

I lived as fast and furious as any nerd with wild tendencies could. Yeah, I did my work at college but I also partied hard. This was the 1980s after all and sex, drugs and more sex were everywhere --notwithstanding the dawning of the AIDS era.

I have mentioned it before, that when I travel for panels or conferences, it takes me a few days to get back into blogging.

Day trips actually get to me more than transatlantic or transcontinental trips. At least I can sleep if the trips are more than 4 hours long. On short trips, I rarely get to rest --even at the hotel. I guess I am a creature of habit that is sensitive to change.

Which explains my kids comment from the other day.

When I travel I get "penalized" for my absence. I don't think The Kids mind my absences so much as their father who then ... ahem ... disappears during the evenings for the next few days after one of my business trips.

This changes the dynamics of evening reading since, due to his work schedule, that's become his one job in the evenings. And it's one job he usually does as I prepare for my second shift of work in my usual 10-12 hour work days.

Just out of the blue Thing 1 said to me yesterday : "Mommy, did you hear the polar ice caps are melting?" Thing 2, who was nearby jumped into the conversation with a "Yeah, and supposedly the polar bears are dying because the world is getting warmer. Is it true mommy, is is true the polar bears are dying?" With misty eyes Thing 1 added, "And the penguins, mommy. Are they dying to?"

I wasn't surprised that my kids asked me these questions. I was surprised it took them so long.

All of my kids education, political or otherwise, is based on evidence. When we went to see the penguin movie, Happy Feet, I explained how the movie uses Mumble the penguin's oddyssey to talk about the UNification of Antartica (which happened in 1959) and the politics behind not recognizing global treaties.

Wikipedia, by the way, plays an astoundingly important part of these conversations.

Notwithstanding they know mommy does something with a thing called "politics" that keeps her tied to her computer and her blog, they rarely hear me haranguing them about the ills of the world. What they hear me talking about, at least during most of these conversations, is about facts. So George W. Bush is not a bad man : Categories of bad or good in people are problematic to me. Yet in his capacity as President (and leader and representative of the US) George W Bush has been astoundingly bad. And there's enough evidence to support the "GWB is a bad president" judgement.

Anyway ... Back to the kidlets.