Smrt Lernins

Let me tell you about Officer Daddyman’s cast and two slings.

Earlier in the week, Daddyman hurt his shoulder while exercising. He’d probably irritated it a few days before then, but he really did on a number on it Wednesday night. That’s the same day that Babypie came down with the Death Cold. On Wednesday night, I came down with the Death Cold, and was sick throughout Thursday, the day that Daddyman went to the doctor and was told he had a torn or pulled tendon in his shoulder. He was ordered to two weeks of PT.

Since Officer Daddyman is a police officer, he kind of needs two arms to do his job, so this was already pretty stressful for him. The shoulder would not, however, be the low point of Daddyman’s no good, very bad week.

No, the low point was yesterday, when I left the kids with him for an hour to go run some errands. While browsing the aisle at Target, I received a call from Daddyman, saying that I probably needed to come home and take him to the urgent care, because he’s pretty sure he just broke his hand and he can’t drive himself. Apparently, Babypie had knocked or pulled over some part of the Wii equipment and Daddyman did a poorly-planted “take a knee” to catch it, favoring his right side to avoid hurting his shoulder further. His hand hit the floor at just the wrong angle with all of his body weight on top of it, fracturing the fifth metacarpal. He’s in a splint-cast thingy and has to go see an orthopaedist on Monday to find out whether the (rather inept) urgent care doctor was right when he said the bone might need a pin.

The long and short of it is that Officer Daddyman now has NO good arms. He has limited arm mobility on the bad shoulder side, but no shoulder mobility. He has shoulder mobility on the broken arm side, but no arm/hand mobility. He can feed himself, though he wasn’t too great with the grapefruit, and he managed to do a little on the computer with his left hand on the mouse, which means he will hopefully be able to return to work after the ortho checks him out. He’ll quite obviously be on light duty for several weeks, so he’ll probably be stuck on PDO (the desk), and he won’t be able to do his part-time work, which is something of a financial blow. I’m really glad I’m going to be watching his co-worker’s child, because that’ll mean we won’t actually be making less money. *phew* So relieved that’s lined up!

Anyway, send some love and/or prayers and/or positive thoughts and/or sympathy Officer Daddyman’s way, because it sucks to have two arms in slings.

Ok, this isn’t actually a treatise, but it is his explanation (swiped from the comments of the Weekly Reviewins I posted today) of how he uses the abacus with Tank. I’ve had several people ask me how we’re integrating the abacus, but I’m not the one doing it, so I had to rely on Officer Daddyman to betray his secrets. Since not all of you read all of the comments, I thought I’d post it here for your enjoyment:

The abacus I bought for Tank has 2 rows each of 5 different colored beads (blue, green, red, yellow, tan). We started by just using the blue beads to count to 20, as well as writing the numbers on the dry-erase board. About two weeks ago I started writing some simple addition and substraction problems on the dry-erase board, Tank would use the abacus to find the answer, and then he would write the answer on the dry-erase board.

Last week we used the green beads to count by 10’s, and wrote that sequence on the white board. We then did simple addition problems using multiples of ten to illustrate how the tens and units place combine in written form and with the abacus. For example, we would write out 20+2=22 and he would count out 22 on the abacus.

Today we ventured into subtracting from numbers greater than 20. First we practiced substituting 10 blue beads for 1 green bead, and vice versa. Next, I wrote down some subtraction problems on the board with numbers greater than 10, and we practiced starting with a green bead and exchanging it for 10 blue beads to facilitate the arithmetic. The final problem (his Challenge problem) was 30-14. He was a little confused at first, so I re-wrote the problem as 30-10-4. He understand that no problem. We started with 3 green beads and he took away a green bead (10) and then exhanged a green for 10 blue to subtract the 4.

When I told him how well he did with subtraction, and that he even figured out the Challenge problem, he said “I know! That’s what’s making my mind get bigger!”

The abacus is a great tool, and I have the advantage of first learning arithmetic using one. I used poker chips to teach Cpt. Science about odds and ratios. I highly recommend Texas Hold’em for those concepts.

I’m working on a post about my disdain for the “bad mom badge” trend that seems to be going around, but right now, I am too tired and surfeited on chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes* to really write anything of great profundity.

Instead, I’m going to write some mushy stuff about Officer Daddyman, because today is his birthday, and he deserves mushy stuff written about him at least twice a year (on birthday and anniversary) at a minimum.

Officer Daddyman is the homeschooling daddy that every homeschooling mom wishes she had on her side. He does math with Captain Science almost every day. He does computer programming once a week. He helps research curricula (he’s an excellent researcher), but when I settle on something, he supports me as the primary home educator. He’s been 100% supportive from the beginning. In fact, he was really the one who got us started on homeschooling as a possibility and he’s helped me make it a reality. When I see other homeschoolers talking about unsupportive spouses, I wish I could send them a little bit of Daddyman’s awesomeness.

He’s a Big Damn Hero. Not only does he strap on the whole kit n’ kaboodle–bullet proof vest, uniform, badge, gun, etcetera–but he’s loaded himself up with knowledge above and beyond the average cop. He developed a passion for learning about domestic violence (psychology, laws, all of that) and goes above and beyond to help DV victims (usually women). He’s taken advanced DV training and would like to work for the DV detective unit some day. He’s developing a personal safety and self-defense course to offer to women in the community, for free, to not only teach them basic defense skills, but to identify abusive behaviors early and understand risk factors. He occasionally even pops onto the WTM forums to add his voice of experience to a DV-related thread.

He cooks brunch several days a week. The kids and I eat a light breakfast when we start the school day, but once Daddyman is up and rolling (and showered and all that), he puts on a good spread — bacon, eggs, pancakes or waffles, and sometimes eggs Benedict or just really nice egg sandwiches. He’s a good cook, too!

He makes sure I get “me” time. Once a week, I join Patchfire and my other “girls” for frozen custard and/or a hot beverage (now that Rita’s is closing early). Hey, we’d hit a bar, but we have to be up to homeschool the next day (and one of us is a Mormon…and pregnant). He stays home w/ the three kids, gets them to bed, and doesn’t complain when I don’t bring custard home to him. He’s actually gotten pretty good about getting Babypie down for sleep about half the nights I go out!

Best of all, he’s the kind of man who is so confident and comfortable in his own masculinity, that he’s not only willing to pose for a picture where he knows he’ll be “holding” Tinkerbelle, but thinks it’s funny when his mother-in-law has the “Disney Fairies” border added…and then posts it on Facebook (where his wife reposts it).

Officer Daddyman: great husband, great daddy, all around good guy, and pretty darn cute to boot! Happy birthday to my seriously awesome husband.

*8 sticks of butter, baby. And entirely from scratch. That’s how much I love my husband!

This is not a post about where I was on September 11, 2001.

While I remember that day in great detail, my experiences and emotional responses on 9/11 became stunningly irrelevant just shy of three years ago, when Officer Daddyman graduated from police academy. By the time the next September 11th rolled around, what I thought about on that day, what I feared, had changed.

Here’s the thing: when you’re the wife of a police officer, every cop is your cop. This seems to be fairly consistent across the board for the officers’ wives I’ve met. When an officer dies, even if s/he was in another department, another state, hell, sometimes even in a movie or on TV, you take it personally. After all, that officer probably wasn’t doing anything significantly different than what your own officer does. Sure, larger states with bigger metropolitan populations are more likely to have a higher number of officer deaths, but as the ambush and murder of the Lakewood officers showed us, an officer can be in danger any where, solely for putting on the uniform that day. Any officer could pull over someone harboring extreme anti-government sentiment, could go out to a call that turns ugly, could end up in a completely unexpected situation. As Officer Daddyman puts it, there is no such thing as a “routine traffic stop,” and as a cop’s wife, you can’t help but take it to heart when an officer isn’t going to make it home to his family.

Every cop is my cop. That’s what I think about now on September 11th.

Seventy two law enforcement officers died on September 11th, 2001, including 23 officers from the New York City Police Department, three officers from the New York State Office of Court Administration, five officers from the New York State Office of Tax Enforcement, 37 officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, one officer from the US Department of Justice, one officer from the Department of the Treasury, one officer from the Department of the Interior, and one fire marshal from the New York City Fire Department (fire marshals are both fire fighters and certified law enforcement officers). A staggering 343 fire fighters and EMTs also died that day.

These men and women didn’t “lose their lives,” a saying I have grown to strongly dislike. “Lost” implies something being misplaced, a lack of intent. While I’m sure none of these officers began their day, let alone their career, with the expectation of a terrorist attack that would kill almost 3,000 people, they didn’t stumble accidentally into their profession. Some of them became cops because they wanted to help people and serve their community, some were following in the family tradition, some were just taking the best job they could get with their skill set. They were regular people, working a profession that is often thankless, often unrespected, usually underpaid, usually overworked. They did exactly what I know my husband would have done under those terrifying circumstances. They did their job and some of them didn’t come home.

The police officers who died in 9/11 aren’t a list of numbers and names. Everyone one of those officers was a person — a father or mother who didn’t make it home to children; a spouse or girl/boyfriend who didn’t make it home to a partner; a child who didn’t make it home to a parent; a brother or sister who didn’t make it home to a sibling. Any given officer isn’t all that different from the ones who died getting people to safety on 9/11. He puts on a bulletproof vest and sidearms instead of a suit and tie. She walks up to your car knowing there is no such thing as a routine traffic stop. If a horrible tragedy occurs, their job is to run at it and not away from it. They do their job and sometimes they don’t come home. That’s the knowledge they put on every day, along with their uniform. I wish people would think of that the other 364 days of the year.

Every cop is my cop on September 11th…and every other day.

Today’s question is from an anonymous commenter on Formspring. S/he asks, “How do you find time for your relationship with your husband when you’re so busy with your kids? In a world where divorce is common, how do you keep that spark there? What do you talk about in the evenings? Do you ever find homeschooling consumes you entirely?”

What? What’s that you say? I can’t hear you, as homeschooling has eaten my head. *crunch crunch*

In all honesty, homeschooling does sometimes consume me entirely. It takes up most of my morning and afternoon. Planning takes up a portion of my evenings. Homeschooling certainly takes up a large percentage of my thoughts. I spent a neat little chunk of time writing about homeschooling.

Homeschooling hasn’t been the biggest stumbling block in our marriage this past year+, though. The thing that has really been draining is parenting in general. I have spent the last five straight years pregnant, breastfeeding, or a combination of the two. We have three children, ranging in age from 17 months to almost ten, plus a beagle. Someone always wants something from me. I’m tired and drained, physically, mentally, and emotionally, much of the time. I’m tired of people touching me. I have stints of a lot of anxiety, both generalized and specific. I can’t use the bathroom without a pottience or someone banging on the door, hollering through the door, sniffing and scratching at the door, crying “Mama! Mama! Mama!” outside the door, or getting into a fight downstairs. We’ve had one or more small people sleeping in our bed with us for the last four years. Mix that up with Officer Daddyman’s work (very late nights) and the homeschooling in the morning, and sometimes it does feel like the whole world, or at least the portion of it occupied by our children, is trying to come between us.

Keeping the spark is hard. A lot of the time, I couldn’t care less about the spark. I’m starved for a few minutes of intelligent adult conversation far more than I’m starved for romance. I sometimes trend towards not making enough effort, because I’m just too lacking in energy to care. Even in the less sparkful times, however, I always find Daddyman interesting. I like talking to him. I’m interested in what he has to say, whether it’s stories from work or explanations of a game system he’s working on. I like how he seems interested in all the probably-boring stuff I did during my day. I stay up almost every night until he gets home, even if that means forgoing a couple extra hours of sleep that I probably need. We spend a little time talking, maybe watch an episode of whatever show we’re watching on Netflix (right now it’s Studio 60 on Sunset Strip), maybe eat a little snack. Sometimes we have Quality Adult Time™ together. Sometimes we just have time together.

We have periods when we spend a lot of time together, periods where we drift too often to our separate computers, but mostly, I like Daddyman more than I like just about anybody else, and he seems to like me pretty well, and I think that’s what keeps us going. I like parenting with him, having general life stuff with him, having conversation (however trivial) with him. We actively work on getting it together and keeping it together. We’re honest with each other and we try to lay it all out there so nothing is hiding, building up resentment. Every once in a while, we have great big fights and great big make-ups, and that’s always nice, too, in the long run. It’s a work in progress, but I think any good marriage is. I want to keep working to find ways to make it better. I want to keep working to find ways to not just keep the spark, but to want to keep the spark. I see us making a lot of improvement in that area. I think it will keep getting easier.

Ultimately, I don’t think homeschooling is any more (and probably less) of problem in our marriage than any thing else. It’s a common interest and a shared project, and it means we’ll nearly always have something to talk about.