Common Denominators

You probably remember this term from elementary mathematics. It came up around the time you studied fractions in detail.  When asked to add 3/8 and 1/4, you learned to adjust the fractions so they had a common denominator (in other words, the same one). Once you did that, you were able to discern the total. Ta da.

So this is why hunting for the common denominator has become synonymous with sorting out what issues have in common. This is a double-edged sword because all of my problems have one thing in common no matter which problems we're talking about. Me. I'm always the common denominator.

My life has a recurring theme. People come into my life. I come to love them. I come to count on them. Then, poof! they're gone. Usually that exodus leaves me in a lurch of some sort. Almost always that exodus leaves me a sobbing, sodden mess. It hurts so much that long ago I looked for a common denominator to these painful leavings. Always, the only thing I could find was me.

While sobbing over the latest friend to inexplicably leave my life, I told another friend that I was tired of doing things that scared off people I love and that I wished they'd just tell me what it is that I've done so I could fix it. I can't fix something if I don't know what it is. My friend asked why on earth I should think there is something wrong with me. I told her that I was the common denominator and it turned into some strange conversation where I couldn't quite explain the thinking that got me there.

Honestly, though, this is not crazy talk. There has been once in my life when someone who was giving me the silent treatment actually decided to speak up and tell me she hated that I was always correcting her. I was able to apologize and make an effort to change it. (Cyndi, how I miss you.) She is just one of the many, many people who grew silent and sullen, then disappeared, leaving a giant hole I couldn't quite fill. (Well, in all honesty, Cyndi didn't leave. She did come back around to tell me to shape up. She never quite treated me as warmly though. At least she gave me a reason why.) Sometimes the people involved were even more important than friends. Family members have "dissed" me in favor of friends who eventually betrayed them. In the most painful of those moments, I eventually reasoned out that the friend delivered an ultimatum because we conflicted over something. This is hard for me to understand because if someone delivers an ultimatum to me, I'm contrary enough to bend the other way. "Never speak to Jane again or else we're through" will almost always earn a "bye-bye" from me as I hurry to hang with Jane.

What do I know about myself? I am sometimes abrasive. I don't mean to be but it is there. I've been called a know-it-all enough in my life to understand that knowledgeable is not desirable, unless expertise is specifically requested or unless you are a teammate in Trivial Pursuit. Helping your friends squash other friends in "You Don't Know Jack" is good. Correcting your buddy on his misuse of the word "ironic" is not good.

In my worst moments, I have a terrible temper. I'm only mean if I'm actually scared. Oddly, I can't point to a moment of mean leading to a friend leaving. That would be to easy.

Otherwise, I think I'm generally a decent person. I'm loyal. I'm loving. I don't gossip. I'm creative. I'm reliable. I'm pretty generous. I'm honest to a fault. If I say I'll be somewhere, I will. If some unforeseen act of God bars me from showing up, you will get a call with as much notice as I can possibly provide.

I'm a pretty good listener and I have a fantastic memory, which means that if you tell me that your nephew Joey keeps bugging you for money when you're barely making the rent, I will still know who Joey is a month later when you refer to him as the family sponge. But I won't refer to him that way if I meet him. I'll just help you keep an eye on the silver while he's in the building.

All in all, I think that makes me a pretty good person. So why does this issue keep popping up in my life? Why am I the only common denominator? What is it about me that makes people leave me so easily? And am I inflicting my unknown social failing on my unsuspecting children? Couldn't someone just fill me in?

I'm Missing Something

We've hit that time of year again. For us, the real money drain always starts about now -- shortly before Pumpkin's birthday. We've stretched out the tax refund as far as we could (it would have gone farther if not for the plumbing troubles that still aren't fixed) and something abruptly changes at Hubby's work (just like last year). For the curious, he's going to days, which means a lower hourly rate and his location has changed back to Irvine, which is a long drive. We looked at our budget and the new income less the cost of Hubby's commute, then we gasped and realized that it's going to be a struggle. Last October, we had the additional stress of an accident that added a car payment to the load and a dental bill that's crazy huge and must be paid in installments. If the settlement from that accident ever comes through things might get better. I'm afraid to hope.

So here's the thing. We don't buy alcohol: no beer, no wine, no wine coolers, no zima or whatever is the current craze. Neither of us smoke. We don't go out: no date night, no movies, no beer after work with the buds. We rarely eat out. I don't get manicures, pedicures, or even have my hair cut -- I cut it myself with sewing scissors. I also trim Hubby's hair and the boys' hair. We haven't taken a vacation in a very long time. We don't have the dog shaved or fluffed. Our car is washed in our driveway. House maintenance is done by us or just gets put off out of desperation. I don't even spend money on make-up, and Hubby and I use the same shampoo, soap and toothpaste. We do have some challenging diets that can be expensive. And I'm sure the $250 electric bill I just paid did not help any.  But there are plenty of people around us who make less and do all these things. How?

I don't get it. We carefully budget. We do what we can to pay our bills. We do have some credit card debt, but it's not nearly as bad as the national average. Our house payment here is less than at our old house, though I admit it would still make my mom's mouth drop open.  The car payment is $156 a month. That's really not awful, particularly when so many of the people I'm thinking about have car payments in the three-hundred range. What are we doing wrong? How do these people do all these things: go places, have vacations in cool places or have weekend barbecues with all their friends over? How do they afford to have their hair cut at $20 a pop or more? How? What am I missing?

I Swear They're Not Always This Loud

What is it about that last hour before bedtime that brings out the little monster in my children? My husband is a day sleeper, and we manage to spend the whole day here, home-schooling, playing, doing chores (or not doing chores) with a minimum of reminders. But in that last hour, after dinner, but before bed time routine, you’d swear I have ten children rather than two. And the older one is definitely the trouble maker.  They haul out the noisy toys (or toys I never imagined could be noisy toys), they bang things, they laugh and clomp down the hallway. Don’t get me wrong, I want there to be laughter in my house. I want them to experience joy and think back on times together that were absolutely wonderful. I’d prefer if those memories weren’t punctuated by constant time-outs and reminders to “KEEP IT DOWN” which always gets shouted, totally doing the opposite of what I want them to do. Damn it, if I didn’t shout, there’s no way they’d hear me through all the noise.

It Won't Leap in Your Hand

For several years now, my hubby has been part of lecturing our son P on how he doesn't "look" for things when he looks for things. For most of that time and a little before, I had always called hubby "the finder" because, when he wants to, he's perfectly capable of finding nearly anything lost. Lately, though, he seems to think items should jump into his hand. He will stand in the kitchen, staring at the messy island (made messy by everybody shifting things around) and say, "I can't find [fill in the blank]." Today, P lectured his daddy on how things won't leap into his hand, and I nearly busted something trying not to laugh.

I admit that when we're hunting for D's sippy, I will go around the house saying, "Baba? Oh, baba?" I don't really expect it to answer -- that's my way of keeping the baby focused on the task of looking for it. If it did leap into my hand, I think I'd flee the house, screaming my head off.

Back Pain

I've spent the day in excruciating pain. I went to the chirpractor, got temporarily fixed, and put it out again fifteen minutes later by capturing the baby and wrangling him into his car seat.  My friend C has it much worse than I. She also had a car accident -- years ago. Her back was actually fractured and not fixed properly. She's spent seven years being fed pills instead of having any sort of actual treatment.  So me whining about my aching back proves that I am a wimp. Somehow knowing that doesn't make me feel any more like doing the rhumba or cleaning my house.  So now I'm a wimp with a messy house. Tsk, tsk.

Alas, No Pot of Gold

Yesterday, I saw something I'd never seen before -- the end of a rainbow. I was driving home from Target in the rain. This storm has been moving east, and that was the direction I was facing. Behind me the sunshine had emerged, and in front of me the rain was still falling, creating the perfect conditions for a rainbow. But the way it fell, the rainbow dropped right to the pavement and I could see the whole length.

Rainbows, while beautiful, have never looked solid. I found myself wondering, as I drove home, how anyone ever imagined you could slide on one, touch one or dig beneath one. Did they know the stories they created would inspire children's imaginations for centuries? Did they know the stories and the legends that sprung from them would be the bane of every little person with red hair?

Just When You Think You've had a Bad Day...

P had friends over today - I was babysitting for my friend C who so often watches P and D. I had all three of hers, which works fine when we're at her house. Here it was something like pandemonium. P wanted to play games that were way over the kids' heads, then tried to order them around with regard to legos. It was raining most of the morning, so they couldn't go outside. We made cookies, but only the girls were into that (H and S are 8 and 3, so that took a lot of supervision). Once the rain finally took a break, they dried off the slide and swings and set to playing outside, only P wanted to order things around again and abandoned the group. Staying outside with the kids, I got to witness as A took off after the dog with a baseball bat, and when I admonished him, he walked right in front of where H was swinging vigorously, and H kicked him in the head.

As I gathered him up, I was feeling like the world's worst babysitter. These kids are all so nice at C's house and they have a dog and what was that? C arrived not long after A got hurt (he was fine -- shook it off if you can believe that) and she was really freaked about him chasing the dog with a bat and nervous that she'd be heading to E.R. with A, then thankful that it wasn't necessary.

C is one of the best friends I've ever had. She gets me, she gets my kids, she doesn't judge at all. Honestly, she's just amazing. I really want to be a better babysitter than that. And it seemed to me that I'm so used to gifted household that I've no idea how to entertain relatively ordinary boredom. Also, how on earth do you feed five children and have them all like the meal? I got out pineapple for H because she said she loved it and knew I had it. I've sent it over for my kids at least once. Then I discovered that H is a minority. Neither her sister nor brother would eat it. And her sister wouldn't eat ANYTHING. This is a kid that normally eats any snack I have. I'm telling you, I was batting zero.

After C left, I felt like I'd really failed. I went on Gifted Homeschool Forum and posted about it and when that didn't help me feel better about the situation, I called just to make sure A was still okay. That's when I found out my day had nothing on C's.  She left my house and went to the pharmacy to get her meds where she had to wait AGAIN, this time with three kids in tow. When she got home she had no power. No heat, no lights, a gas stove with all electric ignition and digital controls so no oven. She has a fireplace at her new digs but all the wood they have (not much) was outside and not yet covered and it's been raining all day, snowing up there.  Poor thing. She was going to call Edison and see what was up at that point.

When I heard from C again, she was practically sobbing. Her house was a chilly 54 degrees and dropping. She couldn't get a fire going, couldn't get any heat from the oven, Edison had said they were not going to able to turn things back on again until tomorrow (yeah, turned off by mistake that she might have corrected earlier if only she'd been home). C's still living out of boxes so the most she could find for candles were tea lights. It took me another few minutes to think of making newspaper logs. She had told Edison that she had three kids in the house, so while I offered to let everyone camp out here, she was hoping they'd find someone to turn it back on again and so she was stuck there for an hour. I loaded up D in the car (P and his daddy were at scouts) with every newspaper I could find, some scrap wood from the garage, matches and candles and was halfway to Yucaipa when she called and said Edison had come through. She was feeling completely wrung out by then and seemed surprised that I had been on my way. After all the times she's come through for me, watching both kids for endless dentist appointments and rescuing the kids from the ER after my car accident, I guess she never expected me to put her so high on my priority list. I think I've done a bad job of showing her how important she is to my life.

My bad day was nothing. Her bad day was a doosey.