Tuesday, July 1, 2008

I'm Better Online

The Best Laid Plans
2008


I'm not such a great grandma. . . I'm a great planner. (The blog Oma is better than the live one.) I am the first to admit that sitting alone with an idea book is easier than picking up 500 wooden beads after a toddler drops the baggie. Some of my weekend reality checks:

  1. One sick little girl just missed her mom. She wasn't the least bit interested in my button collection or anything else in my overflowing bag of tricks.
  2. I was enthusiastically reciting my well-practiced "Once upon a time, in a nursery rhyme..." chant when three bottles of root beer spilled all over the couch. "Cha-Cha..."
  3. After I spent two tedious, useless hours over a minuscule boondoggle instruction book, my son came and showed me how to do it in ten minutes.
  4. The cookie cutters and sprinkles were silently tucked away, and I opened a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints.
  5. My grandkids will remember take-out pizza instead of home-canned peaches.
I'm a wannabe.

In his office, Dee has a picture called The Salon Tiroler, by Franz von DeFregger. (He's a genre painter in the style of Norman Rockwell.) The guy in the bright green jacket is all decked out like a genuine mountain climber, in his brand-new, spotless duds, regaling the real Tyrolers with his well-researched tales. They're in worn-out leather pants, sporting feathers from pheasants they shot themselves, smoking the pipes they carved. He talks the talk, but they walk the walk.

You, my bloggie buddies, get my Norman Rockwell version of myself, while my grandkids get a stick figure drawing. I'm better in my imagination. While I totally enjoy making all my plans, the actual activity has an added measure of chaos. In other words:

I'd be a great Oma if it weren't for all these kids!


How do your well-laid plans turn out?

15 comments:

Jake said...

Luckily my kids don't read your blog yet. So they don't have any expectations...they just love the REAL you!

SydneyMin said...

I like this "keepin it real" post :) One thing you can't fake is warmth and a fun attitude, and you have a lot of both! That is what your grandkids will remember about you, not how to boondoggle :)

Ashlee said...

You've got the boy scout motto down..."Be Prepared", and then know how to wing it when the preparation aren't really going to work out. It's the best of both worlds!
I'm a planner too. Overly so. And it is always so frustrating when things don't work out according to plan. But, I'm sure your grandkids LOVED the "other" stuff and didn't even know the difference.

kenju said...

LOL....thanks for being honest! I don't think any granmother's actual plans ever work out exactly as she imagines.

Ink Poison said...

I have a hard time factoring other people's plans into my plans.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for this post about not having things turn out exactly as planned for the family. So, I am not alone!

I make grandiose plans, too, and think everyone will LOVE them as much as I do. Sometimes they DO pan out and everyone has a wonderful time and other times my plans go right down the drain into the garbage disposal.

Well, as they say in baseball, you will never make an error if you never try to make the play.

mama jo said...

you know the old saying...
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry..
but, you seem to carry it off.

gramakas said...

I'm sure everyone had a wonderful time just being together! That's what really counts! (I do keep a Dora, the Explorer DVD at the cabin just for back up!)

Diane said...

For some reason this post really struck a cord with me. (I've looked in for a while, but have yet to comment.) Thanks for making me smile! Not the traditional grandma? That's great! Who wants to be remembered for the boondoggle and the canned peaches anyway! At least that's what I tell myself! You go Oma!

Moon said...

I loved this post..Why? because it was honest and NORMAL and like a day in the life of ALL of us lol, for one reason or another. I love to plan and prepare and ultimately, often its for nothing...We aren't perfect and we would be boring if we were lol.
Oh, and remembering that grandma can feed them take out pizza sometimes is pretty cool too lol!!

Keri said...

I think we're all much better online than in person, thanks to spell check, photo shop, and skewed self perception!

Nina said...

You may take yourself to task at not being as spectacular in real life as you are online. I beg to differ with you . . . You ARE spectacular!!

diane said...

I've had to learn to go with the flow. It has helped me learn to live in the moment. Your grand kids are lucky to spend time with you and your girl scout cookies.

MissKris said...

Being the full-time stay-at-home Grandma that I am during the work week, I take it one day...one minute!...at a time. But I've learned in this short span of time since this has become my life 'career' at this particular moment to go with the flow and just love the babies for who they are...not what they're DOING!!! Ai yi yi, my Dylan is one busy, busy boy!

Nana Connie said...

This post reminded me of my fourth of July extravaganza activity that I planned for Kenz and I. We took a crowded bus to a park, spent oogles on junk food then settled in to watch the firework show....the lights went off, the moment was finally here.... a quiet boom! Where were the fireworks?.... they were as tiny as dime... miles away, barely visible.... The best part of the whole thing was holding her hand when we were walking back to the bus in the pitch dark.

Enjoyed reading your post. Grandmothering can be almost as hard as mothering. At least we know this by experience and we can count on spilled rootbeer