The Transition Monster

Because of an allergy treatment Sage got yesterday afternoon, my coffee, laptop, and I have been banished to Starbucks. For a moment I entertained the thought of just going in early and having my coffee on the way but I’m not allowed to have coffee at my desk (horrors!). It’s kind of interesting, actually, writing an entry at this time (before work and pre-coffee) and place. I seem to remember little to write except about coffee and work though I know full well I had a motivation yesterday sometime to write an entry.

Had an odd night last night. I took Sage to the acupuncturist for a treatment and Paul and I hung out in the waiting room reading to each other while we waited. He did great there but then we went out for Indian food. I think that was our first mistake. Even though I couldn’t think of much in the way of Indian food he liked, we selfishly took him anyway since we really wanted to go. His behavior was almost a parody of “bad restaurant behavior”. I mention this not looking for sympathy or to condemn him (after all we brought him there). Finally there was a very silly moment where he stood up and walked away from the table. I asked him where he was going and he said “I’m going home!” I think it would have been interesting to find out what he’d have done. You know, in a world without consequences and Bilbo’s invisibility ring to wear so you could stand right next to him the whole time without him knowing. Anyway, his behavior improved after he realized he really liked the bread. And fortunately I ordered a ton of different breads.

When we got home, though, things improved vastly. We had a bit of transition difficulty at first which reminded me that I’m about due to read Raising your Spirited Child. It’s always helpful to read it when I forget about personality types and lose my patience quickly. Anyway, after we got over the initial shock of being back home we all went outside to the pool. Paul paddled around on his innertube while Sage, Paul and I threw a beach ball around. After about an hour we were all exhausted and we got out of the pool for a quick break in the hot tub before going back to the apartment. We had such a good time. I think it was one of the first times we had a really physically active time together as a family, sad to say.

And of course a couple of other things have impacted his behavior as well. This weekend he had a cold and so watched way more television and movies than he ever did. Not that we don’t know what all that stimulation does to him. I guess we just have to remind ourselves every once in a while what being on the computer and watching television does to Paul so we can remember to cut down on it in our own lives. (Who says that it doesn’t happen to us too? It does for sure!)

Finally, I’m noticing that he really needs way more of my attention when I get home on weeknights. I know, not a big surprise there. After all, it was knowing that kids benefit from having attention from both parents that got me to quit my job in the first place. I think I have transition difficulties too. So I get home and have trouble focusing on him (or Sage or anything for that matter). And when I don’t focus on him his behavior goes south quickly. I hate to react to it by giving positive reinforcement but it is seeming like if by my own mistake I didn’t pay enough attention to him when I get home and he has a tantrum that the answer may well be to offer to do something fun with him (read a book, play a game…).

So my plan for tonight is to both thwart the transition monster and give him a bunch of attention by getting right in the pool first thing when I get home. It often seems like after we get through that initial difficulty we both are able to get along better and both of our behavior stays improved the whole night.

Take last night, for example. After we returned from the pool, we both changed and then he got interested in playing with his wooden dolls. I joined him on the floor and for the first time in months we just played. Not went out to a museum, not went hiking or geocaching but played together. And we both had fun. Yes, I am embarrassed and do feel bad.

The night ended very nicely after that. All three of us read Michael Palin’s Sahara book together. Well, we tried anyway. I got through about two paragraphs before he fell asleep.

Yikes – I have to get to work. And I still need to finish my coffee – seems once I got started I forgot it was here.

Dr. Fabulous strikes again

This time I get some dental work done… All my adult life my teeth have been crowded. Right behind my my two front teeth were the two teeth that were supposed to be right next to them. The crowding made eating difficult and cleaning next to impossible which played a big part in making me have to have a ton of periodontal work just a few weeks ago.

To avoid having that happen again, I had to make a choice – get braces or get the two extra teeth out. Since we’re travelling so much it wouldn’t be practical to get braces. I’d only just get started with one orthodontist before I’d have to go to another. So we decided to get my “extra” teeth removed.

It was role reversal hell as I spent much of the morning worrying about how it would go, and that it would hurt and Sage spending her time reassuring me.

I needn’t have worried, though. It went wonderfully. There was absolutely no pain, and even now as the novocaine wears off I’m having next to no pain. I am, however, having to re-learn how to say my s’s and t’s again which is amusing and frustrating at the same time.

It’s weird, though, not having those teeth – my mouth feels so big, and those “extra” teeth have become such a part of who I am that it seems strange to look in the mirror and not have the illusion of a second row of teeth on top. It’s almost guaranteed that anyone under 12 and many over 12 have to ask why I have extra teeth and while it never has bothered me it will be strange not to have to answer that question to anyone who has to view my mouth from below.

And so there’s yet another vote for Dr. Fabulous. He did a great job almost totally painlessly and at a 20% discount to boot. I just wish that the receptionist, who hardly talked to me on the way in, could have asked a few less questions as I was going out biting on a piece of gauze: “How’s Sage?” “Aren’t you moving soon?” and so forth…

What’s new with me…

Seems like it has been forever since I’ve written an entry and rather than catch everyone up on everything that has happened for the past several months, I’ll just tell about a few major things and jump right back to the present. First off the biggest change, if you hadn’t already noticed, is that I’m back to work. After several months of doing contract work I decided to go on full time for the company that I was contracting through. Why? Well, our at-home businesses pretty much dried up and there was no sign of a change any time soon. Add to that the fact that this lifestyle seems to be working pretty well for us now all things considered and I think we’ve made a fairly good move. In fact, in many ways the travelling lifestyle works better for us than our lifestyle would have had we just stayed in Pennsylvania in the first place. When we lived there, I was guaranteed a commute of at least an hour anywhere I went. Here, if we’re willing to travel, temporarily relocating to the next job site, the company puts us up near the jobsite. Right now, for instance, we’re living only about 10 minutes from work. There will be times, too, where I should be able to work from home as well so we’ll get the best of all worlds in that case. Sage says that this lifestyle is working for her as well. For the most part, Paul seems to be doing well with the change, too. It’s nice to be able to visit interesting places with him, too. So often, at the yurt, I wanted to be able to travel with him, and now we’re being able to do that and get paid for it.

Speaking of travel, living in the southwest has been really good for us in that sense. Paul and I, and occasionally Kite when she’s here, have managed to make it all over the place. Just a few weeks ago Paul and I left late one Saturday morning for the Four Corners area. Eight hours, a geocache, and a dust storm later we’d arrived in Mexican Hat, Utah. What a sweet little town. After driving three times back and forth across the town trying to choose between three or four motels we settled on what at the time looked to be the least scary of the options. As it turns out, we couldn’t have made a better choice. For slightly more than thirty dollars we got a clean and relatively new room with no television or phone and incredibly quiet. We had a quick late dinner at the Hat Rock Cafe since the only other choice we saw was a restaurant that billed itself as the “Home of the Swingin’ Steak” which didn’t sound particularly kid-friendly. Exhausted after a long day of travelling we went to bed early. Expecting a long trip back I woke up at dawn and woke Paul up so we could get an early start on the day. We woke up so early, in fact, that nothing in town was open. No coffee or food for us I suppose. We drove out to the Valley of the Gods, a breathtaking group of red rock mesas and buttes and parked the car about a mile down the road near where someone was camping and followed our GPS through a cow pasture to a geocache. I can’t tell you how glad I was that we woke up as early as we did. There was something about the way the early morning light lit up the reddish orange sand and a bloom of purple sage that would have made David Attenborough exclaim about the desert bloom.

After tracking down the cache, we drove back to the Hat Rock Cafe for breakfast before returning to the Valley for the full 17 mile tour, taking pictures like fools the whole way. Throughout the trip there were threatening clouds on the horizon that made it a bit nerve-wracking given the flash-flood warning signs at the beginning and end of the road but all that day there was no rain.

Having finished that we decided that it was still early enough to head for Monument Valley and within about 1/2 hour we saw it up ahead. I’m really glad we went to Valley of the Gods first since Monument Valley was even more amazing than the Valley of the Gods was. What we hadn’t counted on, though, was the temperature. It was in the low 50’s there with high winds. Just after getting there we signed up for a 2 hour jeep tour of the area and within about 20 minutes, Paul, I, and another traveller were on our way. Even Paul, who is getting a bit jaded I think when it comes to beautiful scenery, was amazed by the scenery there. It absolutely transcended dramatic. It was particularly nice to take the jeep tour since it took us further in to the park away from the lines of rented RVs and all to where we could hear (or not!) the absolute silence that surrounded the area.

After that we headed for home. Paul, having been awakened early fell asleep almost immediately and for the next hour or so I drove on through the desert. Before long, I was tired, hungry, and needed to go to the bathroom so when we got to a trading post in Mexican Water, Arizona, we stopped. Paul was having none of it, though. There was no way he was going to wake up. Finally I coaxed him awake (okay, I’m sorry to admit it, but I actually picked him up and started to bring him in) and had lunch. Paul was understandably grumpy throughout the meal and went to sleep again as soon as we got in the car and slept for another three or so hours.

Unfortunately, it looks like work will be picking up soon for the final push to finish this job so I don’t think there will likely be any trips after this. Tomorrow should be a fairly slow day at work and in fact I’ll be leaving early to have two teeth removed. They’re actually perfectly intact but need to come out since they’re crowding other teeth making it difficult to clean them. After four visits for periodontal treatments I’m pretty concerned that everything is easy to clean. If I’m up for it I’ll go to the story time on Friday night, but if not I’ll lie around a bit. Then Monday if all goes as promised by the client, then I’ll be pretty much working non-stop from now until well into June. The good news, though, is that if all goes well, we’ll be finished here by mid-july. The bad news is that if all goes well we’ll have to leave New Mexico. It’s kind of growing on me. After this? Who knows. The most likely choice is a big city about eight hours from our home in Missouri. That could be nice if only so that we could get home a bit more often. The other two possibilities that were mentioned with varying degrees of likelihood will be somewhere (a few possibilities) in California, and possibly another job on this site here where I’m working. And of course there are new jobs coming up all the time.

The only drawback to working again is that I miss the centering effect of being around my friends and similar people. Or even around people interested in being themselves. That happens so rarely at work that it is actually startling when someone genuinely tells how they feel about something in their own lives. Hopefully with a little practice and effort I can make more local connections wherever I may go, and maybe try to be a bit more active online to be in touch with people who understand me and think alike. It’s easy to forget what reality is when you’re surrounded by and immersed in work and commercialism.