A Long Line of Good People

I’ve recently realized that I come from a long line of good people. Rather than telling you about the awesomeness that is each individual relative of mine, I’d like to share a Charlie-ism. For those of you who don’t know, Charlie is my grandfather on my dad’s side, aka the one I got my red hair and flair from. If you’d bare with me, I’d like to tell a story of his: 

Thursday morning my dad and I sat around the small circular table in my grandfather Charlie’s nook of a dining room. 

“Hey, I got a story for ya,” Charlie called from the kitchen while preparing perfectly square multigrain waffles for our breakfast.

My dad and I sipped on our Irish coffees and awaited a famous Charlie-ism that was bound to take place. 

“Have you ever heard of the wee people?” Charlie continued. 

Considering Charlie’s an 87 year old man who still refers to people from Asia as Orientals, I figured he was incorrectly referring to little people, but I didn’t stop him.

“Well when I was a boy I went to Aunt Marge’s house. Now she’s your great, great, great, great aunt.” She’s not. She’s only my great great aunt, but once again I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the Charlie-ism. 

“Aunt Marge pulled me aside and warned me about these wee people,” Charlie began as he meticulously placed a single blueberry in each waffle square. “She said ‘Charlie, you better watch out for these wee people. They come out in the early morning and at night looking for pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and if you’re not careful they’ll snatch you up.’ Now I knew there was something fishy about this story of Aunt Marge’s, so when I got a bit older I mustered up the nerve to ask Aunt Marge if she really believed in wee people. She looked me square in the eye and said ‘Oh heavens Charlie, I don’t believe in wee people! But they do exist.’” Charlie concluded with a howl of a laugh before diving into his whipped cream covered waffle. 

I can only hope that one day I’ll be telling my grandchildren ludicrous stories sprinkled with out of date (and occasionally politically incorrect) terminology. Of course, by that time I’ll be telling stories in holograph form via my hovercraft. 

New Hobbies with Old Friends

Last Friday night, in the riveting town of Independence, three 22 year olds got rowdy. By three friends I mean two of my roommates and myself and by rowdy I mean we knitted. That’s right ladies and…more ladies (I’m fairly certain only females read my blog) I am proud to announce that I can knit. This was not a declaration I could have made at the beginning of that eventful Friday night.

My Pinterest-savvy roommates Alison & Wendy were busy crafting the day away and knitting their own headbands when I joined them in the living room. I sat staring at the TV twiddling my craft-inept fingers when future teacher Wendy asked if she could teach me how to knit. At first I thought, “Psh, yeah right, good luck with that!” but then I remembered it was only about 6pm on a Friday night and we had no other plans, so challenge accepted. My second challenge of the night came when my sister called and, after telling her my plans of learning how to knit, told me I should live-tweet my first knitting experience. The rest of the night went like this:

K8Arnold Kate Arnold

2 things I never do that shall occur tonight: knitting & frequent tweeting. Let the knitting live feed commence!

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This is what my intense knitting face looks like: 

K8Arnold Kate Arnold

Rows 1-3 down. Looks like a cat mangled some yarn. I hear it doesn't get better until row 4.

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K8Arnold Kate Arnold

So, I think I forgot how to knit between rows 3 and 4. Sucks.

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Somewhere around this point in the night I had to call on the knitting master herself. Celebrity knit from WB:

K8Arnold Kate Arnold

Oh dear, I began with 18 stitches in my knitting and now I'm at 25. I've managed to make an already difficult task 1.39 times harder.

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K8Arnold Kate Arnold

I've taken to beating myself with knitting needles.

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K8Arnold Kate Arnold

Holy knit this is hard! Realization: learning to knit may not be a one-night dealio.

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After all that tweeting and tangling of yarn I ended up with this beauty:

I decided to call that good and cast off (check me out using real knitting terms). I knit a canoe. Or a banana holder. Or a bracelet. It's a very versatile piece of handiwork. 

Despite my lack of knitting skills during that initial endeavor, I stuck with knitting and went on to buy more yarn in order start a trendy headband of my own the next night. That's right, not only did we stay in and knit on a Friday night, but we made it a double header and did it on Saturday night too. And the best part is our party multiplied (Shout out to Avery!):  

In case you were curious, I've gotten a lot better in the last five days: 

(Completed project one in purple and new project in progress in sage) 

Truthfully I should have just taken it from Pheobe and known knitting was "Too hard! Too hard!"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrWQO4SwGfw

Only in a Daycare

Here’s a little installment I like to call “Things That Would Only Happen at My Job”:

1.       Topless Tuesday and Naked Thursday (Ok this one might happen at other forms of employment, but only at my job can it happen and be purely innocent). Sometimes we eat really messy things for lunch, things like spaghetti with a red sauce, pudding, or any kind of juice. Since those items are a hazard to clothes and kids can’t seem to figure out utensils, the solution is to take their shirts off during lunchtime. But once the shirt is off and lunchtime is over the kids only manage to lose more clothing. So by the time their parents come to pick them up, they’re either down to their skivvies or running wild with their bare bums out. For a kid, everything’s just more fun in the nude.

2.       Public making out. The kids are at an age where they’re learning how to express love. The only thing they know on the matter is that their parents kiss them in order to show familial affection. So when they want to show their friends at daycare that they love them, how else would they do it besides kissing them? The only problem is that the kissing is unhindered. They all kiss each other: girls kiss boys, boys kiss girls, girls kiss girls, boys kiss boys. That’s not so bad, but they do it all the freakin’ time and for extended periods of time. They’ll just sit there with lips pressed to one another and eyes open and checking things out for the duration of Circle Time. My boss is like a broken record throughout the day teaching, “Please don’t kiss your friends. Kissing spreads germs. You can hug your friends or show them gentle pats, but please stop kissing each other.” 

3.        Poop Show & Tell. Typically in any other job people would go to extreme lengths to keep what goes on in the bathroom as private as possible. Not at my job. We routinely clap and cheer when a youngster makes wee wee or poops in the potty, which is weird enough at a place of employment, but the other day things got even weirder. A little girl called for assistance in the bathroom and I found her sitting on the regular-sized toilet. She exclaimed, “I pooped in the potty!” To which I responded with lots of encouragement and then handed her a piece of toilet paper and told her to wipe her bum. She took the TP, wiped her freshly poop-free bottom, and then handed the TP wad back to me and said, “here you go.” There’s no way I was touching that. I told her TP goes in the potty and she was big enough to do that herself.

Next time you’re in your place of employment, I encourage you to take a good look at your coworkers and supervisors and think about what it would be like if they partook in Naked Thursday, Public Making Out, or Poop Show & Tell.

“I just wanna bang my head”

Kids are funny. Truthfully they’re just unhindered tiny people. At my job, I get a kick out of watching two year olds solve problems.

For instance, the other day one little boy, let’s call him Jimmy, was playing with a three-piece train set. As he was playing, one of the parts of the train came unlatched and was left behind. Jimmy kept toting the other two parts around and didn’t seem to notice the missing link. That is, until Bobby came along. Bobby unsuspectingly took the lone train car and started playing with it. For a moment the boys played trains together, but once Jimmy realized Bobby’s toy was originally part of his own, he flipped. There was a hop and a scream and something indecipherable like “Waaah, that’s my, that’s my, it’s miiinnne, andIwantitbacknowwww!” uttered from Jimmy’s tiny, yet powerful, mouth. Bobby didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he was mad about it. The solution? A screaming match. The boys just started screaming at the top of their lungs at each other. No words were exchanged or hits or anything, just high-pitched screeches. I think they forgot what they were screaming about after some point because, let’s face it, playing who can scream the loudest is way better than playing trains. Eventually an adult stepped in and broke up the scream-off and later on the boys successfully played trains together.

I think the hardest part about being a two year old is figuring out what emotions are and sorting through them. Jimmy is a prime example of this. On a separate occasion from the train set incident, Jimmy was super into building a really high tower out of blocks when lunchtime rolled around. The daycare is on a tight feeding schedule that’s the same every day: 9:00am breakfast, 11:00am snack, 12:00pm lunch. The day revolves around eating. Anyway, when lunchtime was announced, Jimmy didn’t want to stop building his tower (I couldn’t blame him, he’d almost successfully used all the pieces available and it was looking pretty legit). The main woman who runs the daycare, Mrs. D, told him he had to stop playing or he’d be forced to forgo lunch. Jimmy was torn. Continue building the world’s greatest tower or eat the food he undoubtedly wanted in his tummy? Jimmy was so frustrated by the scenario that he started to panic. He wiggled and squirmed and started to huff and puff during his inability to process his emotions. The decision-making conversation went something like this:

Mrs. D: “Jimmy, just breathe. What do you want to do? Come join your friends for lunch or keep playing?”

Jimmy: “Uh, um, uh, ummmm. I just wanna bang my head.”

Then Jimmy proceeded to bang his head on the kitchen floor until deciding to eat lunch. Perhaps next time I’m up in arms about making a decision I’ll try the Jimmy method and just bang my head on something until the answer is clear.

Progress.

About 2 ½ months ago I was cooped up on the couch nursing my bloody knees and sulking in my unemployment. Now I’m partially employed and functionally healed.

(Don’t mind my gangsta check-ma-scars face. Also, yes those are Halloween boxers I’m wearing.) 

I had two interesting conversations recently. One was about the fact that unemployment is difficult. I know, I know, how can doing nothing all day every day be so difficult? But doing nothing was the hardest thing I ever had to do. It’s a perpetual feeling that you should be occupied. And everyone asks, “what do you do?” and as an honest individual you’re required to answer, “absolutely nothing,” or as a clever individual you get to answer with something like, “I contribute to society by shopping local,” or “I’m getting really into crocheting,” or “I convert oxygen to CO2 on a momentary basis.” Moral of the conversation, being unemployed is ridiculously obnoxious and extremely tolling in the do-it-yourself/constantly-better-yourself US culture.

The other interesting conversation was about having good health. I was talking to a 60 something woman who recently went through mystery health problems and experienced internal pain for about a week. After that week of pain was over, she said she had energy to do everything. She wasn’t in crazy better health or anything, it was simply that she’d experienced life with pain and then was uber appreciative of life in a healthy body. Occasionally, since healing from my longboarding accident, I’ll look down at my body and realize I’m completely healthy and I’ll just stand there and revel in it. One day my roommate Wendy caught me staring at my hands for a solid minute. She asked me what the heck I was doing and I proclaimed, “The human body is an incredible thing!” because it’s true. A couple months ago I had half a hole in my left hand, couldn’t use my wrist, and was unable to walk. Then my magical body healed itself. Go body!

So if you’re currently employed, even if it’s a tedious job, and you’re rockin’ a healthy body just look at yourself and cheer. Maybe high five your able body. Seriously. Because once you’ve been immobile and unemployed even being able to get up and go to a job of any sort feels like the greatest accomplishment. I may not be fully employed by a job that puts my education into practice, and I still have some gnarly scars on my knees, but I’d say it’s progress. 

New Characters in My Life

Due to the obtaining of my job, a lot of new characters have been added into my life. I see approximately eight children on a regular basis throughout the week. They’re all beginning to develop individual personalities in my eyes. And I gotta say, babies and toddlers are an odd bunch.

I’ll explain to you a few of my favorites, er, perhaps favorite isn’t the correct word:*

1. First, there’s The Baby Pusher. The Baby Pusher just turned two, and upon that birthday she promptly earned her sassy pants. She thinks she’s big news around the daycare and uses this attitude to push down babies. I really mean that. There are a few nearly one year olds that are barely learning how to stand and they stabilize themselves on tables and chairs and whatnot until The Baby Pusher comes around and knocks them right down to the ground. Those babies must be thinking, “I’m doing it! My legs are sustaining me! The next step is mobility!” and then BAM—The Baby Pusher strikes again.

2. Second, there’s The Potty Dancer, who’s a little boy close to three years old. I don’t remember this special phase in life, but apparently when you’re first learning what it feels like to need to pee your body does peculiar things. When The Potty Dancer gets the urge to go, he can’t quite seem to control his wiggly movements. He starts doing this little squirmy, twitchy, antsy potty dance and everyone in the room knows what he’s gotta do. The most humorous part of all this is that The Potty Dancer would much rather pop, lock & drop it in place than stop what he’s doing and give into his body’s urges by going to the restroom.

3. Lastly, there’s The Bully. The Bully isn’t too much of a bully to everyone else, but he certainly is one to me. He’ll be playing all fine and dandy and then suddenly he’ll stop, seek me out, point a tiny yet stern finger directly at me, and yell “NO!” for no apparent reason. Or, while on his way to do something else, he’ll make a special pit stop purely to b-line it for me and hit me. Granted, it’s a fairly powerless hit, but still, no one likes to be sought out for a sucker punch. Perhaps this all comes with me being the new kid. I gotta earn my in with this munchkin crowd.

*I didn’t use real names because I felt like that would break some unforeseen law of child exploitation. 

The Next Step of My Future: MIT Program

Good news everyone, I’ve begun something that will occupy much of time. It’s an MIT program. At this point you must be thinking, “Wow, Kate, how impressive that you got into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I didn’t know you were such a tech-savvy genius!”…but that’s not quite the same program. Rather I’ve begun what I like to call the Mother In Training program. Ok, ok, enough joking around the bush. Moral of the story, I got a job! I’m now employed as an assistant teacher at an in-home daycare in Corvallis, or more like a training course of how to mother seven children at once.

Here’s how the obtaining of the job went down:

Last Sunday I was teaching preschoolers in DoxKids (like Sunday School at my church), and one of my fellow teachers informed me that she runs a daycare out of her home. I asked her plenty of questions about it simply out of curiosity and without any alternative motives. She asked me what I do in life and the conversation went something like this…

Me: “Well I just graduated from Western Oregon University back in June and I’ve been searching for a job ever since to no avail…blah, blah, blah, useless English/writing degree, blah, blah, standard post grad sad life spiel…”

My now current employer: “You want a job? I’ll GIVE you a job!”

She offered the position to me in that kind of you-don’t-know-what-you’re-asking-for voice, but she was nice and I was desperate so the rest is history!

Except it’s not really history because now I’m living it. Plus I’m going to keep telling you about it. I started the job on Monday and then continued to work the rest of the week. It’s only a part-time position (my official hours are 9am to naptime) and I really only have work when there are a lot of kids, so it’s a need-basis kind of a deal. But basically I chase around 1-3 year olds and hold babies for half the day. It’s great and pretty much exactly what I’m looking for right now in life.

While I was sitting in all those literature and creative writing classes just a few short months ago, I never thought to myself man it’d be great if I could use this knowledge to eventually go into a job of diaper-changing. But it’s a job, it occupies my time, and the kids are really stinking cute. So I may not have earned my MRS in college, but I’ve moved on to the higher education of a Mother In Training program.