Phook and Big W go to daycare

So, the not blogging thing. Let me explain. I accidentally got a job. And it is a nightmare.

Here's the thing. When I became a SAHM, I figured we could sort of kind of afford groceries after the bills were paid. What I wasn't planning on was thousands of dollars of dental work, car repairs, and inconvenient birthdays of loved ones. The savings account, which once seemed so plump and ripe that it was dripping juice, now seems like a lifeline that is inching away and which I will soon be unable to grab. Cue insomnia, a constant state of low-grade panic, and forgetting to eat for 36 hours at a stretch. Big W has been stressed out about the cashflow.

However, Phook and SAHMing Phook remain my absolute priority. So I've been watching the local paper for job opportunities that will allow me to Phook it up and bring in a wee bit of cash to alleviate the steady siphoning out of the savings account. A few weeks back, I saw an ad for a cleaning person for a local daycare center, 8-12 hours per week. I called and learned it paid $6.60/hour. I leaned over, vomited, and then asked if I could pick up an application. Things progressed and I found myself sitting there for an interview, where the director of the daycare informed me I was overqualified for cleaning. I was shocked, let me tell you, by that assertion. Anyhow, she proceeds to offer me a position as a daycare teacher. She's desperate to hire me, so I can bring Phook for free. And she's throwing around big numbers like $7.40/hour. (Did I mention that I used to make $7.40 in the amount of time it took to walk down the hall, take a whiz, steal a few corporate logo pens from the supply room, and stick my head in someone's office for the sole purpose of screaming, "Fuck!"?) Anyhow, she said I could work as much or as little as I wanted. I sputtered, stuttered, and found myself saying that I could be available a few afternoons per week. She asked me no questions, such as the all-important, "Do you like to hit kids?" I guess I did fill out a form authorizing a background check, but I was seriously hired based on the presence of my body. I found that a wee bit disturbing, what with the fact that she was going to unleash me, alone, with a room full of children, and that seems like serious business. Wow.

So a few weeks ago, I went in there and spent an hour watching the mayhem in the center, and I was then deemed ready to work with the little children. I have since been working with the children. It is so unbelievably hard, I don't think I'll be able to capture it in words. First of all, let me say that this is a non-profit center and I think about 90% of the families who bring kids there receive county funding to pay for the care. So we are talking about very low income families in a very low income part of Wisconsin. This itself is not the problem. Children who sometimes show up with ripped clothing and dirty hair are something I can work with. But let's be realistic. There are a host of issues that come with low income living situations that are very, very difficult. Many of these children have significant developmental delays (nonverbal three-year-olds, anyone?). Even more of them have serious behavior problems, and cannot be directed, redirected, or reasonably handled as far as I can tell. There are some nice families with some nice kids, but there are lots of fucked up things going on in a lot of these kids' homes.

Now, this place is governed by some code regulating how licensed daycares operate. So there is this big calculation where each kid is worth a point value based on their age, and you can't exceed a certain number in terms of supervising kids. So babies are worth a lot, and as the kids get bigger they are worth less, meaning that the older they are, the more you can watch at once. The other day, I was solely responsible for 11 children, including Phook. Generally, I have at least 8 under my care. And generally, at least 5 of them are in some way damaged goods. Since the center is relatively small and since I am there in the afternoons when attendance is lower, I am usually the only teacher there for much of the time, so I have children ranging in age from Phook to an 8 year old. I am supposed to be implementing a curriculum of activities with these kids, somehow coming up with a learning activity that will occupy and be meaningful for this huge age range. Yeah, I went to school for education and I know about differentiating instruction, but babies and 8 year olds are different fucking animals. We can't all do a science experiment together without someone ending up a cyclops.

In addition to this, there are all these procedures that are necessary so as to not break any laws regulating daycares. Things have to be sanitized with various products in various orders. Hands have to be washed in like 400 different scenarios. Diapering requires a masters degree. In order to orchestrate snack time, I have to get 16 little hands washed, sanitize a table in a two-step process, find and prepare the snack, get 8 wild kids into chairs and keep them there, distribute napkins and cups for milk, pour milk from the main container into smaller dispensing containers, wash my own hands, distribute the snack without actually touching the food myself, and sing a lame "thank you" song. All this while holding Phook, so she doesn't get trampled. Did I mention that part? (And yes, body that governs daycares, she did stick her fat little hand into the giant vat of goldfish crackers while I was dispensing them and manage to cram several fistfuls into her face before I noticed what was going on.) And this is just snack, when I am lording over something they theoretically want to participate in. You should see what happens when I try to make them draw something. Fuck me.

In short, I have never worked so hard in my life. It is the hardest work I have ever done. Sure, at my big corporate job I worked long, thankless hours, and I spent a lot of years feeling criminally underappreciated. I busted my ass at that job and took every minute of it to heart, which hurt an awful lot sometimes. But when you consider physical demands and the constant vigilance necessary to make sure no one in a room full of children of questionable parentage is asphyxiating on a crayon, this is, minute by minute, harder. When I get home, I feel like I am on fire from the middle of my back to the tips of my toes. I have Big K rub my feet each night because I cannot sleep until he does, they hurt so badly. And I am being paid $7.40/hour. I really cannot believe that this is the value our society places on this much work. It is really truly a tragedy. Not for me so much as for the people who are working in a daycare in order to feed their families. I am working in a daycare in order to ease the burden of attempting to maintain a modest middle class lifestyle despite my family's income being slashed by significantly more than half when I became a SAHM. No one here is going without anything they really and truly need. There has been mourning over wants, but we are fed, clothed, and housed, and Grandma J has offered to buy Phook boots and a snowsuit if necessary. The tragedy is that there are a lot of people working like dogs in this type of job and praying they don't get evicted. It has really kind of shaken me up, this day trip into the world of minimum wage earners. In my old life, I was used to people complaining about financial problems concerning their ability to contribute heavily to retirement and college fund accounts. In this world, people are talking about getting title loans on their piece of shit cars so they can buy groceries. These people would laugh until they cried if you told them how worried you are about your ability to send your kid to a private college. It's just interesting what financial stress is for different people. There is a lot to think about there, for everyone.

Okay, enough social commentary. The thing is, I am really questioning whether or not this job is worth it. So many of these children are incredibly difficult to work with. There are very few moments when no one is crying, screaming, climbing on something dangerous, or hitting another kid. I am constantly breaking kids up, telling someone to stop doing something, or trying to distract a kid who is about to lose their shit. And again, I am toting Phook through most of this. And none of the little clowns can remember my name, so there are always like 5 whiny voices saying, "Teacher, Teacher, Teacher!!!" in need or want of something that is usually unreasonable. It's god damned mayhem.

And then there was Friday. It had rained all day (as Wisconsin is apparently a hot bed of precipitation these days), so the kids were cooped up maniacs. Kids who always nap did not nap, because the puppet master of the universe had decided to fuck with my shit. These two boys, who are 4 and 3, respectively, and each have shown me a complete inability to follow even the simplest command, such as "Don't shit on that, please," are just wild. They will not stop chasing each other and screaming indoors. And then they decide to shove each other, and they both start crying and screaming, "Mommy!" This went on for hours, and I tried everything I could think of to settle them down, separate them, etc. The older boy finally goes home, and I'm thinking that now the remaining bastard will settle down. Finally, near the end of the day, the sky clears and we go outside, and I'm thinking I'm home free until they get picked up. Well, my little precious Phook was standing by the playground equipment, and this kid, who is pretty close to nonverbal, runs past her and purposely shoves her to the ground. She starts sobbing. I pick her up and then reprimand the kid harshly. I'm seriously pissed at this little fuckwad. About ten minutes later, this kid is sitting on the swing, and Phook is crawling around nearby, watching two other kids build a sand castle (or perhaps it was a sand meth lab). She starts to crawl past fuckwad on the swings, who is not swinging because he refuses to pump his own legs. I say to him, kindly, "Now be careful not to hurt the baby." And the little bastard reaches out and hits her across the face. She starts crying and falls over. Now, I think every parent makes the statement, "I'd kill for my child," but I think it's kind of a cavalier thing to say, because there's a pretty decent shot you're never going to have to. That being said, I can now confirm that I would kill for my child, because if I would have had a weapon, I would have offed this kid. I have never had such a strong physiological response to something in my life. I became an animal...my heart started pounding in my chest and I started breathing hard, and tears started pouring down my face. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone do anything to hurt Phook. And it hurt. Me. I took the kid by the arm and pulled him across the playground and sat him down on the ground, and I held him on both sides of the face and screamed at him some unholy sentiment that I don't even exactly remember. It had no value, I'm sure. My money is on the fact that this kid has antisocial personality disorder, even though he's a toddler. I'm sure he'll be dismembering cats well before kindergarten. And you'll see him on the news with his chest freezer full of heads sometime around 2025. Yeah, his ride came to get him while the burning tears were still streaming down my face. I explained what had occurred and he says, "Well, your daughter will be awfully tough. I'll have a talk with him tonight." Yeah, fuck you, buddy. Hey, I'm all in favor of letting my kid take a little gravel to their knee when they ride their bike like a moron. But the assault of an infant is not on my schedule of activities for toughening up my offspring. Kids push and shove over toys...I get that. But this was just unprovoked psychotic aggression against an innocent baby, who happens to be the love of my life. I was still breathing heavily 3 hours later, no shit. I am breathing heavily now, actually, as I relive it here in these words.

So at this point I'm not sure what I am going to do. It seems quite obvious that I should quit, really. I just had such high hopes for this. Make enough money to buy a few groceries. Get Phook some more frequent exposure to other kids. Bring my kid to work for free, sacrificing none of my SAHM ideals. No nights or weekends. Sounds so good. So I'm pretty disappointed that it is so, so bad. I am scheduled to work the 4 remaining days of this week, due to the director going on vacation. I will not quit this week and force the damned place to shut down just because I'm really pissed. I'm not sure what I will do the following week.

I don't know, people, this is a piece of shit up in my happy land. And that is why I haven't been blogging.

Focus on the Phook

Clearly, despite my best efforts to provide you all with an educational post about a dying art form, you bastards are more interested in the cuteness of my kid. I understand, really, I do. And since I aim to please here on Momma Says the F Word, I am gonna give you a giant helping of what it is you really want. Phooktastic Phookie, that is. I realize I've been a been a bit selfish lately, blogging about my own lame interests and whatnot. So let's return to the heart of this here blog and observe the Phook in some amusing poses, and learn a little bit about what she has been up to of late.

Let us cut right to the chase and talk about the wildly insane physical capabilities that have just been blowing my mind lately. A couple weeks ago, I stood her up next to this garage sale find from Grandma J, one of the many items in our home I refer to as a "Bub car," and then I flipped my lid as she showed me she could push it and walk behind it. She would probably push this thing to Canada if I lined her up on a straightaway with it.

Not long after we discovered this capability, the child started working on the magical powers of freestyle standing. It started with the kid pulling up to standing on something as per usual, followed by her letting go of the object and standing there looking proud of herself. We cheered and clapped like lunatics, as you might expect. Phook quickly grew tired of this circus act and moved on to the far more impressive object-free stand up. One day we were in the kitchen, and all of a sudden she was squatting, and all of a sudden she was standing there, looking at me proudly, like a little beacon of upright cuteness mysteriously deposited midfloor. I required defibrillation. She has increased her prowess in this area and now performs the stunt regularly, even going from squatting and playing back to standing multiple times. Holy shit. Phook, the stander:


In addition to the standing, there has been some tentative walking. Yeah, I said WALKING. That is, if you count 4 consecutive steps as walking, which I'd kind of like to if you don't mind. Yeah, the child is learning to walk. How on earth could this be occurring? I do not know. In addition to that, I suspect we have a climber on our hands. Here she has climbed onto her dipe box, just for giggles. (I don't know if the shot reveals this, but both knees are on the box. Cripes.)


Then we have her other game o' the day, which is cat tackling. More specifically, tackling Uncle Growler. The other cats are smart enough to avoid this. Yeah, she chases him down and tackles him, and holds him for as long as possible. I love this shit.


Another great Phook skill is the adventure that is "So Big." The child has learned it and loves to play, with gusto, as seen below. What's especially charming is that if she is in a room and doesn't feel that enough people are looking at her, the arms go up without prompting. She knows it is a surefire winner.


Phook also had an adventure recently that involved petting bison. We have a bison ranch nearby and they had their annual "Come Pet the Bison and then Eat a Bison Burger" event, so we went. Here is an aerial shoot of Phook, Big K, and bison.


Phook also recently went to the 1st birthday party of one of her little homies, and they had a special cake for the birthday girl to dig into. And other babies were invited to assist. Phook got a little cakey. (And let's be honest. Half the reason I posted this picture is because it reveals that I may have actually unearthed at least part of the bone structure of my face after swathing it in a generous layer of cheek fat for nearly a decade. This is progress that cannot go unrecorded.)


And here we have a Phook pic taken on a recent voyage to Auntie Hode's area. (Part of the reason for my brief blogging hiatus.) We found ourselves on a lovely beach and we found Phook quite lovely. She loves the water. A wee tadpole.

Another shot of her at the beach, looking just freaking edible:

And a shot of her after leaving the beach, passed out in the car seat, hair sticky with sand and foul enough that I could turn it into a mohawk without water or product:

Phook and toast:

And finally, I'm gonna give you an action sequence. When visiting Hode, we went cherry picking. It was great fun. I felt that Phook would look charming if photographed next to fresh-picked cherries. This is what occurred. First, she grabs the cherries:

After deeming them palatable, she goes face down in them of course:

Followed promptly by jamming her face full of them (note the chipmunk cheeks):

And finally more gleeful grabass with the cherries:

This was followed by me running over to her to fish them out of her mouth, only to find that she had swallowed at least two handfuls, complete with pits. (They all came out in the end, let me assure you.) So, anyhow, that is what El Phookerino has been rockin' these days. I think I love her.

Operation Blueberry

So. I haven't blogged at you lately. Sorry. A lot has been happening. I have a lot of posts brewing re: a lot happening, but this is the one you're getting tonite, peeps. People seemed moderately interested in my Operation Strawberry post about canning, so I decided to document my blueberry adventure for you crazy kids. If you don't give a shit about the preserving of foodstuffs, you might want to skip this post.

Now, for the two of you still reading. A couple weeks ago I heard a rumor that blueberries from Michigan could be ordered through my local Amish grocer. Yes, there is a small Amish grocery store about 10 miles from my home. I'm not sure how the whole Michigan blueberry transport happens, given their Amishness, but these are things I'm not meant to know. Kind of like understanding the trinity. So I ordered myself a 10 pound box of blueberries and they arrived without incident. I had a hard time deciding what to do with them...there are so many tasty blueberry canning options available. I finally decided on this recipe called "Blueberry Bonanza" which allows you to start with one pot of blueberries and end up with both blueberry syrup and blueberry butter. (This recipe is in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.) Now I'm gonna show you how this is done.

You start by taking some bowls into your living room because you are too impatient to wait for a more reasonable opportunity to deal with fresh, squishy produce. You put a few in a bowl to placate your kid, and you end up letting her eat approximately 3 cups of unwashed blueberries, resulting in two subsequent days of wildly colored blueberry poo, not to mention a lot of stains.


You then let the cat get involved, and watch the animals battle for survival.


Next, you take 12 cups of (delicately) washed berries and put them in a pot with 3 cups of water. You bring them to a boil over medium-high heat, crushing them with a potato masher as you go.


Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. (This doesn't look like a gentle boil, but it gets foamy.)


Now your kid is getting angry, so you let her go to town in your unbreakable shit cabinet, keeping her occupied for 4 minutes.


Then you transfer blueberries to a dampened jelly bag or a strainer lined with several layers of dampened cheesecloth (what you see here is a jelly bag hanging from a jelly bag contraption), set over a deep bowl. Let drip until 5 cups of juice has been collected, adding water if necessary to yield the required quantity. (This was not necessary in the case of my blueberries.) This is fucking messy, so I recommend some sort of splatter protection (hence the purple bowl).


Puree remaining pulp and juice in a blender or food processor. You now have a thingy full of juice and a thingy full of pureed pulp.


You are now making blueberry syrup. (I am not documenting the blueberry butter because this is already gonna be too long.) In a big saucepan, combine 1 cup of water and 3 cups of sugar*. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Stir in the blueberry juice you collected in the prior step, 2 cups of corn syrup, and the juice of 1 lemon. Return to a boil, reduce heat to medium-high and boil steadily, stirring occasionally, until mixture is slightly thickened, about 35 minutes.


Now you have a product that is ready to preserve. This is where you go from cooking to canning. This is where you start throwing around liquid hot magma and screaming a lot. This is something you do with your kid well out of arm's reach. The first couple times you attempt to coordinate the process of getting everything into jars, you will freak out and burn yourself. My sister calls it "go time" and routinely needs to breathe into a paper bag. Me, I enter a zen-like state and operate with catlike speed and reflexes. I can control my heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature just like one of those kick ass monks. It is quite possibly the only time I am calm.

The key here is preparation. There is a specific canning toolkit you should probably invest in if you are going to attempt to do this. Basically, you need a boiling water canner (a giant pot with a rack to hold the jars) and some tools to get the liquid hot magma from place to place. I like to have all my tools ready to go before I start. In the picture below, the blue thing on the left is the funnel you place in a jar to prevent mayhem from happening when you are filling jars. Then I have a little wet rag which is used to wipe jars before the lid is put on (more on that later), a standard ladle, a hot pad for my pot of magma, and my jar rings:

While you are cooking your food to be canned, you will want to simultaneously be bringing the water in your canner to a boil. You will want enough water in the canner to cover the jars. Now, your jars themselves also need to be hot because if you put crazyhot food into a cold jar, things will explode. You have options here. You can run them through the dishwasher and pull them out steaming hot. I have no dishwasher (fuck), so I put the jars in the canner itself as I bring the water in it to a boil. Obviously you need to have the jars clean when you start. In addition to hot jars, you need hot lids. Simply put the lids you will be using into a little saucepan, cover them with water, and heat them on low. Do not boil them, as you will fuck them up if you do. On the left, we have lids bopping around in their warm water and on the right we have jars sitting in the canner waiting to be filled:

Now you pull your syrup off the heat and put it on your hot pad. Step back and collect yourself. Now you remove a hot jar from your canner (or dishwasher), place the funnel in it, and ladle the syrup into the jar. The recipe will tell you how much "head space" you need. This is the distance from the top of the food to the top of the jar and it is important that you not blow this by too much, lest your jars not seal or other badness happen. In this case, we only need 1/4 inch head space.


Once it's ladled in there, you need to skim off the foam. Certain recipes will produce an unsavory foam and in these cases the recipe instructs you to remove it. You can either skim it all off of your big pot or skim it off of each individual jar. I don't know why, but I prefer to skim each jar individually. I like to use a grapefruit spoon for this (weird, I know) because the angle seems to work well.

The next step is very important. You need to carefully wipe around the lip of the jar in order to remove any food residue that might be sitting there. If you leave it on there, you will compromise your jars' ability to seal, and that would blow. You can use a wet paper towel or a clean wet rag. I used to go the paper towel route, but now that I am single-handedly saving the environment, I use a cut up t-shirt rag.

Now you are going to take your lid out of your warm little lid saucepan on the stove, and gingerly place it on your jar. If you have invested in the little canning toolkit, you will have a sweet little magnet tool to do this with:

Now you take your ring and tighten it onto the jar, holding the lid in place (not too tight, as this is going to come off after your jars have sealed anyhow):

Next you take your jar with your neato jar lifter (from kit referenced above) and place it into the canner, which is ideally boiling by now. Your canner rack should be elevated above the water so you are not inadvertently processing some jars longer than others. Be careful.


Once all your jars are loaded into the canner, slowly lower the rack into the water and put the lid on. If it is not boiling yet or stops boiling, wait for it to return to a full boil, and then start timing your "processing time," which is always outlined in the recipe. Don't fuck with this. In the case of our syrup, it is 10 minutes. (Note that there are altitude adjustments necessary if you live somewhere up in the nosebleed seats.) At this point, you should grab a forty of Pabst and toast yourself, because if you're not in the hospital yet, it's pretty likely you'll survive.

Once the processing time is complete, carefully raise your rack of jars and remove them with your neato jar lifter to a nice towel you have prepared for yourself in advance. You will then hear the angels sing in the form of cheerful little popping sounds as your jars seal. This is the canning-gasm. You will then walk around, smugly eying your jars and not wanting to put them away, secretly hoping that someone will stop over and happen upon your awesome red power. Here is the finished product, both blueberry syrup and blueberry butter:


Don't touch these things for 24 hours. Don't let drafts get at them. Then, remove the ring, clean off your jar if there is any mess on it, and gleefully label your product with its contents and the date. Note that you should also check each jar to make sure it sealed. Simply press on the lid; if it doesn't bounce back at you, it is sealed. If it does bounce back, it is not sealed and therefore not preservable. Eat it right away or read up on options you have for re-processing it (I'm not going into that 300-level shit here).

Now, you might have some leftover blueberries, so make a pie. Duh.


And you might still have some leftover blueberries, so make some blueberry waffles, top them with your blueberry syrup, and feed them to your cute, appreciative husband, who is going to kick your ass for posting a topless photo of him on the internets:

Then feed some to your baby (perhaps sans syrup):


And see that perhaps just making the waffles would have been good enough:


So, there. Don't say I don't love you. I freaking photographed a solo canning mission for you punks and risked my life doing it. I just want to throw it out there that if you want to try canning, this is not the recipe to start with. It has a shitload of steps and jelly bags and other shit involved that you don't want to mess with as a novice. Go for a nice quick jam or something. And if you're gonna do this, remember to always follow the instructions in the recipe exactly, or else you might end up quite dead. Thank you for shopping at 1953. See you next time.





A side note on sugar: Yeah, there is a lot of it in many canning recipes of this nature. You can pickle stuff, make salsas, preserve fruits in very light syrups, and otherwise do lots of canning that doesn't involve tons of sugar, but things that involve some level of gelling are probably gonna call for sugar, sometimes in horrifying quantities. Since my dad is diabetic and I too am interested in not eating tons of sugar, I've looked into this quite a bit. The last time I checked the Splenda website, they said their product was not recommended for canning. I read somewhere else that this is because Splenda and other sugar substitutes will break down during processing and alter the taste of your product, but that may have been bunk. I just accepted it as fact from Splenda. You can find no-sugar and low-sugar recipes out there if you like; the general recommendation that I have read in multiple places is that if you want to make something without sugar (such as a sugar-free jam), go ahead and use a recipe specifically designed for this and then sweeten it to taste with Splenda or whatever once you are actually eating it, because it's gonna be shitty if you try to eat it naked. Under no circumstances should you attempt to modify a recipe that calls for sugar just because you're feeling frisky. You are doing a bad chemistry experiment, and you might die of something really gross if you don't follow established canning recipes exactly. As for me, I make things like this as an occasional treat for my family and to put in gift baskets and the like. I don't generally recommend bathing your gastrointestinal tract with blueberry syrup on a regular basis.