Which brings us to the kids. Am I a bad role model for cleaning? I hate cleaning. No. Really. I hate cleaning. If I never had to sweep or mop or pretend that everything has a place ever again I’d be in heaven. If laundry could live in baskets (really, what is the point of putting it away? We’re going to take it out and wear it anyway, so why not leave it folded in a basket?) and clean dishes could live in the dishwasher (or in the dish rack) and spills never happened… Oh what a joy it would be!

Oops, off topic. Kids. Cleaning. My kids don’t do it. It turns into a screaming match, drags on all day long and at the end of the day it takes me half an hour to do what they fought doing all day long. I’ve tried bribing them. Once you’re done we can do this thing over here that’s tons of fun! I’ve tried doing fun stuff first. This never works. I’ve tried cleaning with them. I’ve tried directing them. I’ve tried micro-managing them (do this. Now do this. Now do this.) but this is as wearing on me as it is on them. I’ve tried splitting it up and assigning jobs. I’ve tried giving a vague “clean this up” and walking away (always a bad bad bad idea).

So it probably reflects on me and my very real abhorrence to cleaning. I just can’t get around it. I don’t mind the clutter. I know where everything is. I can see the floor. I’m not walking on things to get to other things.

So is it really a problem? I just want them to put their things away. And clean up their trash (there are always crafting scraps on the floor – that I can’t stand, it’s dirt not clutter). And stay on task! I put my things away. I put my dishes in the sink. I put my dirty clothes in the hamper. I hang up my wet towel to use again. At the end of the day, for the most part, my mess is picked up and ready to start anew. Not so much for them.

I let it go this week. The living room was trashed. We started this fight at 8 this morning. It’s 1 now. It’s still not entirely picked up. My only real cleaning rule is you aren’t done until I can mop. Not so hard. Or so I thought. I suspect I will be tossing things out again soon. I already did a bit earlier, but apparently that lesson was quickly forgotten.

I’ve been having this fight for at least six years now. Probably more. How do you get your kids to help pick up?

I just saw this in the July magazine and had to come speak up. I am a parent to five children ranging from 5 to 18, am heavily tattooed and married to a tattoo artist. I like to think I am a pretty responsible and trustworthy person, as is my husband.

I have five awesome, responsible, smart, funny, socially conscious children. One of the 18 y/o wants tattoos, one does not. The ten year old got his ears pierced at 8, when he could take care of them and not before (he had been asking for years before we allowed it). The two younger ones aren’t quite there yet. My youngest is a girl and absolutely will not have her ears pierced until she can take care of them (and yes, she has asked many times and can tell you now that she can’t have them until she can clean them).

Sometimes looks are indicative of everything, but often looks are indicative of nothing. Just because I have bright red hair and stretched ears and visible tattoos does not make me any better or worse than the person standing next to me and it makes me worry for our children, that we are teaching them to judge others at so early an age.

I hate seeing things like this. I thought we were over this. I thought we had so many more important things besides what people look like to worry about (um, hello, Gulf, giant oil spill anyone? Flooding? Earthquakes? Starving children in America?).

I understand that people judge. When I go on a job interview I want to put my best face forward. I wear my hair down over my ears. I wear long sleeves or a suit jacket. I don’t wear crocs and blue jeans and a wife beater; I wouldn’t do that if I weren’t tattooed either.

To judge a child’s “goodness” based on tattoos and/or piercings? How is that fair to the child? How is that fair to your child? Is your child a bad person for befriending someone with tattoos and/or piercings? I mean, let’s just go that extra step. If you are enough of a fuddy-duddy to think that it automatically makes for a bad kid, how good is your kid if they buddy up to the bad kid? Do you have that little faith in the parenting job you did that you feel your child is unable to judge for themselves because you didn’t teach them to well enough? And let’s touch on that for a minute. By the time your child would be bringing home a friend with body modifications I have to assume they are at least 15/16 years old, and likely at least 18 because that is the legal age to tattoo someone without parental consent. So by, let’s just call it 16, you have zero faith in your child’s ability to make an educated decision about who their friends are? I feel sorry you, if that’s the case. That is a huge parenting failure if you ask me. I may not like the friends the 18 year old brings home, but they aren’t knocking over convenience stores or doing drugs. I’m just old and don’t relate *laughs*

So getting back to me. Here I am. My ears are 3/4″ and I am visibly tattooed (pretty heavily at that) and my hair is three different shades of red. I’m not your typical 30-something, but I’m not so untypical either. I cloth diapered. I compost. I recycle. I breastfed. I babe-wore. I co-slept. I cook from scratch at least five nights a week. I schlep to ballet and tap and guitar and therapy and doctors and dentists and school. I’m not so different from you. My giant phoenix on my arm? Memorial to my sister who died a few years back. That bad ass bowling piece? A memorial for my mom who died a couple years after my sister. My ears? Started stretching them at 15. My  navel ring (the only piercing I have left, btw, that isn’t in my ears) I had done at 14. I begged for it. It’s still in. Yep, to you I am a fat, pushing middle-age, over-sized child who you probably think is clinging to her youth.

To me I am a beautiful goddess, transforming myself into who I am supposed to be right now.

I knew who I was fifteen years ago the same as I know who I am now, and will know who I am fifteen years from now; If you were afraid of who I was then you are probably still afraid of who I am now and who I will become. That makes me sad, because you are probably missing out on an amazing and loyal friend, all because you were afraid of something different. Do you really want your child to miss out on such an amazing person too, or make that person miss out on your child?

So it gets me thinking. How much of my identity is wrapped up in my tattoos? When I tell people I haven’t met before to meet me somewhere one of the first things I use is the phoenix on my arm and my big ears. Are they just descriptions of how I look, or descriptions of me? If I woke up and they were gone, would part of me be gone too? A big part of my life is tattoos, piercings, and I don’t just mean my income. I mean my interests, my views, my hobbies.

On the flip side, I have some work I want covered. Is that because those pieces no longer make me more beautifully me? In a sense.

I would still be me without them, same as I would still be me if I had to wear a yellow shirt and matching shorts for the rest of my life. The clothes would not define me in the same way my tattoos do not define me, but at it’s polar opposite, my tattoos tell all about me if you know what you are looking at and therefore do define me in a way that clothes never can. Maybe if I were a fashionista clothes would define me, but seeing as I am not, it’s not a good way to tell you who I am.

Yesterday was the first real day of summer vacay for us – all school classes are over, recitals are completed, graduations are finished. Yesterday brought us speech therapy (every Monday and Tuesday morning until the end of summer, when the schedule changes back to after school), yard work, the gas station, the bank, gifted testing, lunch, the library, visiting some friends, guitar class and dinner at 8!

Malachai was tested for gifted yesterday morning, and the school psychologist (who has observed him briefly but I guess never worked one on one with him) said she sees why he has/needs an aide in class. I am kind of relieved to tell the truth, because at his IEP we were having a hard time explaining that yes, he does great in class… because h has an aide! She also said that while he definitely passed the testing, he would have done much better if he could have stayed focused and on task. So, my all over the place son passed the gifted testing even without an aide to redirect him to stay on task. He continues to baffle me, but in a good way. Perhaps he will build that time machine when he grows up… right after he is done being a stuntman for the newest summer blockbuster action flick. Having a “special needs” child who doesn’t “show” or “present”  as being special needs is a challenge in and of itself. We had some friends over, one of who works with autistic kids every day and he said if we hadn’t told him, he never would have known about Mal. That makes me so happy on the one hand, but on the other hand, it does make it more difficult for us on his bad days when he absolutely presents with all of his symptoms, and usually all at once. So hearing how well he is doing, and how far he will go just makes me smile all over.

Dorian finished his first guitar book yesterday as well. Apparently he has quarter notes down (um, all he plays is “Turning Japanese” so duh he has his quarter notes down!) and played some new songs yesterday. Maybe we’ll get something besides Iron Man and Turning Japanese now. One can only hope. I think he said they did a Beach Boys song and a Beatles song.

Eshiva had her recital on Saturday. No pics, as they were supposed to be prohibited (which didn’t keep an ton of asshole parents from taking bright ass flash photos of their kids on stage, grrrr) but we’ll get a video sometime soon (it was rolled into the cost of the recital fee). E did a beautiful job. In fact, the entire recital was awesome. One of the groups did a shortened version of “Oh Industry” (I love this and have never seen a bad performance of it), and another did “Hard Knock Life”, really the entire thing was great. The babies were cute, the middle range of kids were trying their best and the older girls were all amazing. All but the littlest did the finale. They did “Thriller”! Very cute.

We all hit the library yesterday. Esh had a one hour book reading thing and made a couple of book marks. The boys picked out books to check out. Dor got WWII books and a couple of novels (Time Warp Trio and Lucy’s Ghost I Think), Mal got GooseBumps and one other, Esh got an awesome book about different phoenixes, a baby book about tickling a duck and one other. I’m pretty stoked about being at the library twice a week. The kids signed up for a summer reading program where they get prizes and I told them we’ll keep track of what books they read and we’ll get them a prize at the end of the summer too. The boys go today for a craft class. I think today is an aquarium.

Camp starts next week, Wed – Fri for them, so I’m hoping to pick up some work. I’ve got a logo in the works, and a site that I am waiting on some info for, but nothing else on the horizon right now. It might be the perfect time to start tattooing again. I have some ideas for my lower legs now, so it might work out well.

I was busy remembering stuff yesterday and I want to remember it here too, so bear with me please.

Oh, funny. My mom used to call me Jenniter. Don’t ask. So, the kids were playing janitor today (don’t ask) and I hear Eshiva in the background and I swear I heard Jenniter, not janitor, and it reminded me of mom. So I am telling Michael about this and I say she used to call me Jenniter in the drum, and I have no idea. …He says no! There was a liquid draino type product called janitor in a drum. So yah, my mom called me a cleaning product (which is funny in an ironic kind of way if you think about it) and I suspect I have a new (old) nickname lol Now that I think about it, when I call Gram she still calls me Jenniter too. Funny stuff.

One of moms friends sent me this:
When mom was in Israel she wrote profound poem that I often quote.
“be patient
Peace will come
And when it does
It will be like
A tidal wave upon humanity”

I want to do that One Step on my leg and I am thinking about incorporating this, but I see it as pictures not as words… like a traditional peace dove flying over a horizon with a big wave washing up on the shore, but the shore will be something to symbolize humanity, not an actual shore. I need to think about it for a while. I just see the two ideas tying together really well.

Big Batch Jambalaya

prep time is about half an hour, cook time is about an hour, yields about 13 servings that are about 1 cup each (does the word about look or sound weird to you yet?)

• 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed (single breasts, not the full double breast)
• 3 Tbsp olive oil, divided (I eyed this and used more than 3 Tbsp)
• 2 pounds kielbasa, sliced into medallions
• 3 small or 2 medium green peppers, coarsely chopped
• 2 medium or 1.5 large vidalia onions, coarsely chopped (I had half of one in the fridge, plus one more large)
• 6 – 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 32 oz beef broth (I like the stuff in the box)
• 2 cans diced tomatoes (the 15 oz cans)
• 1.5 cups water
• 3/4 Cup Dijon mustard
• 1/4 Cup mince fresh parsley
• 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
• 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1.5 Cups uncooked long grain rice
• 1 pound uncooked scallops or shrimp (if shrimp, peeled & deveined)

In a dutch oven (or  a large pot with a lid that fits), cook chicken in 1 Tbsp oil until no longer pink; remove and set aside. In the same pot, cook and stir the kielbasa, peppers and onions in remaining oil until the onions are tender. You may have to add a little more oil. I did. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

Stir in the broth, tomatoes, water, mustard, parsley, thyme and Worcestershire. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover & simmer for ten minutes.

Add the rice and return to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 25 – 30 minutes or until rice is tender. *** If you are using scallops, set your timer for 20 minutes instead and then stir them in and reset your timer for another ten minutes ***

If you used shrimp, after the 25 – 30 minutes stir in them and the chicken in, cook for 2 – 4 minutes longer or until the shrimp turn pink.

If you used scallops, stir in the chicken and cook until heated through.

We made this last night before graduation and no one had a chance to eat it. I took a bowl to my friends house when we dropped off the kids, and when we got home at 10 we all ate. It was delicious. The original recipe called for less chicken and kielbasa, added ham, cayenne pepper and was shrimp not scallops. I think this is so forgiving because it’s a jambalaya, and the one I shared above just turned out perfectly. If you want a little heat, add the cayenne pepper. It called for 1.5 – 2 tsp, but adjust to taste. Maybe a dash of Tobasco or the like instead even. We will definitely be making it again. Yep, ours is gone, but hey, we fed seven adults dinner with it and two portions for lunch today. Not too bad! Not too pricey either. I don’t have a break down, but I think it was maybe a dollar or two a serving in actual food cost (not accounting for time to prepare or energy to run the stove).