Parenting Books and Revenge

Our oldest daughter, D, got into trouble and was sent to her room.  Furious, D proclaimed the time had come for her to read parenting books because we must be doing something wrong.  C encouraged her to go ahead, directed her to the shelves of parenting books and informed her that a lot were about her.  D went to shelves and started crying — she thought that “How to Raise a Good Kid” was about how to raise her sister and not her.

After that, D and G talked about what they think about when they are sent to their rooms.  G said that she is really mad at first and then she starts playing with her toys and then she isn’t mad anymore.  “Its really not that bad D”.  D says she just gets madder and madder and, then, she plots her revenge.

Room Interaction: Money Exchange (RIME)

C called me.  Evidently Queen Glitter and D had sent G a letter.  G felt the letter was rude and didn’t want to participate in any discussions concerning it.  C is just tired from working all the time at her teaching position and wanted the girls to stop talking, talking, yelling about it.  C read the first line or so of the letter and agreed it was rude because it had the word threat in it.  D is incredibly upset and they all decided they should call me and I should talk (aka listen) to D about it all the way home.

Here’s the Letter in full:


Dear G.M.[Last Name Omitted],

It has come to my attention that you
have just taken back your second threat
in the past two weeks to leave the difference
dollar program.  Not very many rooms trust
you right now, because they are confused
as to why you almost left the difference
dollar system those past few times.  They
are reluctant to rely on you out of fear you
might become a criminal room.  I would like
to extend this invitation to a meeting with
D and I that would be shown to every room owner,
to help them better understand what's going on.  D
and I will ask you questions about the incidents,
and you can ask us question too, if it would help.
Please tell D if you can meet us on 11/4/09
after school for the meeting.  If you have something
planned but still want to go, tell D, and we'll arrange
another date. Hope this helps!

Sincerely,
Queen Glitter

Turns out that G and her room were considering pulling out of the “Room Interaction: Money Exchange” otherwise know as RIME. D spent 30 minutes explaining to me how after G and D created unlimited credit cards the Rooms’ economy crashed and they came up after a week or so with the RIME based on the difference dollar. It has interesting characteristics. First because G and D’s rooms are so close together money exchanges hands because of fees and services as both rooms have the same hard goods. Second, if a room refuses to pay, the value of the difference dollars rise. These difference dollars are smart and know their own value. If the room continues to refuse to pay, there are ghosts go into the rooms and collect the dollars. Etc., Etc. Etc.

For the entire 30 minute drive home, I was stepped through arcane imaginary economic law. Not a single repetition of a rule or point and D didn’t finish explaining it to me.

In the end, G and her room decided to remain in the RIME.

Dancing?

During Thanksgiving break, G, 9, asked C, >9, “doesn’t dancing make you feel young?”

G is taking ball room dancing this year. She is smart enough not to ask me to dance with her because I might break her feet.

Vacation

We rented a small house in Austin. It comes with WiFi internet access. The internet is everywhere – I can access work, my house system, make VoIP calls like I am home, see what’s going on at our home library, compile software, whatever.

G and D’s stuffed animals have been playing a card game. Sealy doesn’t play very well cause she spends most of the time thinking about how she is a cutie-poo.

We are staying right off of South Congress. One of the coolest-hipest places in Austin (just minutes South of the capital and UT). C has a friend who lives in this neighborhood — her friend was cool in high school too. They live in a house on the West side of Congres with a small yard. They have chickens who lay eggs. A hippy plumber neighbour who fixes their toilets.

Yesterday, we went to see the capitol. It was done up really nice for visitors but no one was there. It felt as if Disney had come in and spent a bunch of money but no one showed up.

Donut Saturday

We take G to get donuts once a month or so.  Last week, G looked at Cindy and said, “Saturdays should be donut day because getting donuts more than once a week is too much.”

My Google Gaggle

D and G bought a webkinz. Or more made me buy myself a webkinz. I bought a google. His name is Bert.

All the other googles follow Bert and Bert does exactly what I say and makes all the other googles in the gaggle worship me. (A gaggle is the name D came up with for a group of googles — its weird that other people use the word for the same thing).  I use my google followers to run the house sending them off to peck and nag children into cleaning up the house. Its really cool.

The googles stay in shape by exercising with Cindy. When she gets out her yoga mat, they run to the china cabinate and grab their mats (place mats). Here is a picture of Cin trying achieve some sort of zen state in our home environment.

Its hard for the googles to keep up sometimes.

Exponential Fairy Growth

A Few Fairies

G believes, really believes, that if she draws a fairy on a piece of paper its alive. Its hard to argue with her about it because, if you leave a blank piece of paper next to the fairy, it writes a note.

One time someone left a glass of water on the “art” table and Dot, our cat, tried to drink out of it. Dot knocked over the glass spilling water on several fairies — drowning them! G started to chase dot with a bat yelling “MURDERER.” We caught her before she finished Dot off.

Grieving, she put the soggy fairies in the hospital under a death watch. They recovered (dried) and are in occupational therapy now. However, I don’t think they will ever be the same.

Fairy Writing Contest

After seeing that her entire fairy population could be wiped out by one small disaster, G focused and made more and more fairies. The fairies started to fall behind in the note writing so she held a contest. The fairy that wrote the most words won a gold star and the privilege of accompany G to her guitar lesson last week.

Fairies Watching TV

Now when we watch a movie, G has to spend 30 minutes setting all the fairies up to watch.

Bad Guys

G looks at her sister D. D sits eating quietly. As always, D’s emotions are within 1 mg of critical mass. G looks down, she’s bored and her Mom hasn’t appreciated her in the past hour.

G turns back to D and says, “The good guys in my room are going to drink a potion that makes its so they never die.” This breaks the rules, disturbs the balance between good and evil in G’s room and adds 0.00000001 mg to D’s emotions.

It took 20 msec for D to fission. G broke a rule and changed the “good guy, bad guy” game. She can’t do this. D attacks G, screaming and crying.

Home Run

We left the South Padre Island house at 9 (check out was at 10). We ate breakfast at a greasy spoon called the Grapevine Cafe. G and D fought and played while the miles went by. Cindy drove until Austin.

At around 5 at sort of my insistence, we pulled off at 6th street. Cindy parallel parked the Element with the bike rack on back. Cindy, I and the girls started walking. We passed many cool restaurants and bars but Cindy just kept going. The restaurants/bars ran out but Cindy kept walking. G, D and I started whining but Cindy kept walking. OMG, our universal whining strategy failed! We changed tactics and asked her what she was looking for. Sighing, she said, “A kid friendly place.”

I pointed back to all the bars we had passed and said, “what about all those?”

She looked at me with the weirdest expression.

After several seconds of her looking at me and me not getting it, she announced to the girls that their father (that would be me) would be picking where we ate and she would not say one thing about it.

Suspecting that I was somehow standing in a hole that I had dug. I led everyone back down 6th street and skimmed the menu of the first place we came to for food that’s ok with D’s wheat allergies. It looked ok so in we went with my fingers crossed.

Boy, a lot of people drink on Austin’s 6th street at 5 in the afternoon.

Thinking quickly, I choose one of the high bar tables between the TV and the bar. I grabbed the seat facing the bar and set Cindy up to take the seat facing the TV. The bar tender delivered the menu saying that they had been voted the best fish-n-chips in Austin 3 years in a row. I told Cindy they must’ve forgotten to bring us the kids menu with the crayons — more strange staring from her.

It turned out they make a high-class grilled cheese sandwich (4 cheeses) on Texas Toast. G loves Texas Toast grilled cheese sandwiches. (She doesn’t get them very often because we love G and want her to eat well). D order chicken kabobs and Cindy and I ordered quesadillas.

I think I have figured out why they keep the music and noise at the bar so loud. It causes the people to lean in together and gives the group a feeling of privacy. We had a good talk and our waitress turned out to be from Princeton. She said that she normally takes the train from Dallas to Austin.

We order chocolate cake for G — it was really good. (I steal bites of their desserts to the betterment of my children’s nutrition). Ellie had a Guinness vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup — it was really good too. (No wonder they are so skinny and I am so, ah, comfortable plushy). Bestest Sealy called about G’s cake.

Cindy allowed that the corruption to our children by eating in a bar at 5 pm was probably correctable. We went back to the Element and headed towards Dallas.