Day Eighty-Seven

So, this happened.

It's not actually done DONE just yet, but it's pretty close. There's a piece missing from the top of the roof because I can't find said piece anywhere. There's also a whole bunch of landscaping to do because I am me and I have to landscape around these sorts of things. The landscaping part of the festivities will likely be done in the next few weeks, except that I have created a rule that says I have to fix the pond first.

The pond has been torn up for a year. A YEAR. I can't run the big waterfall without flooding the entire yard, so that truly is a thing I should deal with. AND YET. And yet I managed to find time to build a whole damn playhouse, but can't find the time to seal a pond liner correctly. Funny thing, that.

ANYWAY.

Mila couldn't have a birthday party this year, so I poured that cost and effort into a playhouse instead. And it was worth it. Mila and Alexis both have been living out there. When they stop, I'm moving out there. Our wifi reaches to it, so I have full intentions of sitting through a few conference calls while sitting out there sipping an ice tea or something.

First, though, I have to find furniture. It turns out that everybody already threw away their old patio furniture because I've been watching curbs all over the place so I could rescue a couple of chairs from the landfill, but I've had no luck. I'm willing to do some painting and dying and all of that, so you'd think I would be able to score something. Hopefully this weekend I get lucky. If I don't, there is leftover wood sitting in our driveway, so I may do something wild and crazy.

BEWARE.

No, seriously, beware. I have been using power tools a lot lately, and that's a very scary thought. I probably shouldn't be trusted around a miter saw or a screwdriver, and yet I have a weird amount of confidence that I could build a suitable couch for the girls using wood scraps and cushions.

I just looked up plans for how to do it. TOTALLY DOING IT.

The koi fish are going to be so pissed when I don't fix the pond for yet another year.

Day Eighty-Six

There is no excuse for why it has taken us as long as it has to have these sorts of conversations, but I'm incredibly grateful to now be having hard conversations about race. My employer has, like many others, decided to address systematic racism head on through conversations, training, donations, and changes to how we work. One of those trainings included "Being a Better Ally" today.

As luck would have it, the training ended up scheduled for the exact time when I needed to drive Alexis to dance. She has returned to her happy place, albeit with lots of safety requirements in place. It's a giant pain in my butt since I can't even with being expected to drive a kid across town during work hours. But, this time it worked out. I can join meetings from my phone, which means I can play the meetings in my car.

Alexis and Mila both got to attend "Being a Better Ally" training today.

Mila ignored it because of course she did. She had her Nintendo Switch to keep her amused. Alexis, though. Alexis was a silent but clearly engaged observer.

There were two things that came up that I was very glad came up. They opened up opportunities for conversation with a kid who is exactly the right age for those types of conversations. The first was the issue of whether it's appropriate to say, "African American" or "Black."

The topic made for a very good conversation, both during the training and later when Alexis and I talked about it. The most impactful part of that particular conversation for me was the discussion around why that question is odd in the first place. "Do you walk up to someone who you perceive to be European and ask them to classify their skin color? Or do you ask them where they're from or their ethnic background? And why?" One of the responses to why we don't ask for ethnic background with Blacks was that, "the answer might be 'my grandma was a Nigerian who was forced to the US aboard a slave ship and my grandfather was some rich white guy who raped her.'"

We don't ask the question because the answer might force us to recognize our history.

The other good conversation was around the meaning behind "Defund the police." I've been doing a lot of research on my own on the topic, but one example that was given during a follow-up conversations will stick with me.

You pull into the parking lot at McDonald's and there's a naked guy pacing backing and forth. He looks agitated and is yelling random words - not sentences. Who do you call for help?

The answer, right now, is the police. The system we have in place is that we ask for help from people who are carrying guns, accompanied by attack dogs, and possibly carrying a taser, tear gas, a baton, and pepper spray. That person is trained to watch closely for threats and to respond to those threats with force. They are not trained mental health or substance abuse professionals, but they are who we have. So we throw someone armed to the max at someone who clearly needs help, and our only real course of action is to take that naked guy to jail.

Imagine a world where we call a person who is trained to talk to people in need of mental health care and people who have substance abuse problems. If there were such a person we could call, then naked guy doesn't go to jail at all - he ends up at a facility that can provide him with the services he needs to stop being that naked guy standing in front of a McDonalds. Why do we expect a police officer to do the job of mental health professional when we know that's a legitimate career field that requires extensive training and education?

I don't have the answers to what precisely we need to do to fix this giant mess we've created, but conversations. Conversations are good.

Day Eighty-Five

Summer is off to a great start. And by "great," I mean "Uuuuuuugh."

So far, the inmates are running the asylum, so to speak. I'm buried with work, so the girls are left to their own devices. Mostly that means they are free to swim and jump on the trampoline and play in the playhouse (it's built!) as much as they want. They also have free reign with the TV and whatever other small screens they can find. It's not entirely different than how I spent my summers when I was their ages, except without friends. We may be in the "green phase" in Pennsylvania, but that doesn't mean I'm quite ready to ship the girls off to other people's houses to do whatever while I work. We're still mostly locked down.

The biggest challenge, so far, is getting Alexis to stop reading and Mila to stop staring at a phone. Those are their most common activities, which is fine, except that they both know how to take it too far. Alexis will straight up forget to do basic things like eat lunch if you don't interrupt her read-a-thons. Mila is equally focused.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

Earlier this week, I had a call that I super needed to focus on. All kinds of people with more important titles than me were on it, so I was fully engaged.

And so was Alexis.

While Alexis was happily reading in some corner, Mila suddenly decided she knew how to put my old cell phone down. She interrupted her very busy gaming schedule to partake in one small activity - cutting her hair.

Oh, but she did.

She pulled all of her hair until a side ponytail and *wack*. She took a good six inches off.

Which, whatever. Most kids go through that rite of passage, but MILA. Mila's hair doesn't grow. Her attempt at being a beautician equated to her second ever haircut. In six years. So, that's fun. Also fun is the fact that the kid immediately figured out that actions have consequences and HOOBOY WAS SHE PISSED.

Mila straight-up sobbed for an hour because she was so angry that her hair was too short. Or at least some of it was because she only really cut one side. I let her wallow in that anger, too. She started out the whole thing blaming everyone except the person who picked up a pair of scissors and chopped, which is WAY high on my list of pet peeves. Take responsibility for your own stupid, please. It's not that hard to look around and go, "You know what? I made that choice. And here's where it got me."  The fact that Mila didn't sent me into the sort of rage where you just walk away and go back to work.

For hours Mila was angry. HOURS. She moped and she whined and all of it was met with, "You made a bad choice. I can't undo it." So that was fun. But then when Mila finally got tired of hearing that I wasn't going to let her blame me for her act of stupidity, she changed her story. By bedtime, the kid had her story revised. She started walking around saying, "It's okay! I cut my hair by accident, but it'll grown back! It's just hair!"

That's super not fair. I want the kid to have weeks of regret.

Which is why I will use a goldfish to yank the toenails out of any human who tells her that her now-fixed hair looks cute. NO COMPLIMENTS, Y'ALL. Not unless it's an officially sanctioned haircut.