Maxwell 46: Relegating the Kids' Table to the Vestibule

[Bluebirdbluebell]

21 minutes ago, Caroline said:

I live in New England. I've heard of head lice, but luckily have had no experience with them.  I asked my husband who has six sisters, and he said they were not a problem in his family either.  He grew up in western NY state.  Our families were super lucky evidently.  I'm ok with that

I grew up in New England. I will say it's more common among white people. 

Also while lice and being searched for lice aren't pleasant, it's not life-threatening. There much more unpleasant things that could happen to someone. 

(I never had lice, but the school nurse searched my head for them.)

Edited March 12, 2021 by Bluebirdbluebell

[ElizaB]

2 hours ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

This may seem overly harsh, but I think it's weird that Anna Marie is travelling out of state for medical treatment. She's done this three times now and it's questionable to me if there's any real advantage to not using the local doctors. It seems likely that she is looking for people who tell what she wants to hear. At least it seems to be real medical care, but that's a good way to find a licensed quack.  

I hope she's getting the medical care she needs. I also hope that the hernia problem is resolved and doesn't reoccur. There is a higher risk of reoccurance without the mesh. 

I wonder if she seeks these out of state doctors because she needs to ensure she gets proper rest. She makes up an excuse as to why a certain doctor is better and gets to go away and ensure she is well rested before she returns home. 

[Hane]

@fundiewatch, Sarah’s book “Summer with the Moodys” has been free on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited since its release. Some time back, maybe in the Yuku days, at least one of us did a chapter-by-chapter analysis. The book gave us a vivid look into Teri and Stevehovah:

Mom Moody spends a *lot* of her time alone in her room, “reading her Bible,” considering the fact that she has four kids whom she’s homeschooling. She can’t be arsed to join in a family game of hide and seek, and when her oldest daughter (who is maybe 9 or 10) decides to earn money by starting a home baking business, Mom devotes zero time helping her learn to bake. I was amazed when at one point she takes the kids on a field trip to a dairy. (Of course, a significant point was how perfectly behaved the Moody kids are and how bratty some other little kid is.)

Dad Moody is a smug, condescending so-and-so to the adults outside the nuclear family, but it’s obvious that Sarah is convinced he is all-wise and to be adored. 

There’s a dig about the kids’ grandparents, who “aren’t ‘saved’ yet.”

Edited March 12, 2021 by Hane

[LilMissMetaphor]

9 hours ago, Hane said:

 

Mom Moody

Dad Moody 

 

Moody and Doody.  

But really, Moody is an odd choice for a family name.  Dare one say it, if not a synonym for, certainly a symptom of, depression? I'm sensing some subtext, Sarah.  Mom IS moody.

[JermajestyDuggar]

I was the weird kid who enjoyed lice checks in school. Our nurse was so careful and it felt relaxing. Almost like when you get your hair washed at the salon. I think we had live twice when I was a kid. It was always my sister who brought it in our house. She had a perm and always had to brush it. She basically looked like a poodle. So if she couldn’t find her brush at school, she would use someone else’s. Great idea right? Sigh. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 hour ago, LilMissMetaphor said:

 

Moody and Doody.  

But really, Moody is an odd choice for a family name.  Dare one say it, if not a synonym for, certainly a symptom of, depression? I'm sensing some subtext, Sarah.  Mom IS moody.

I always assumed it was after whomever they named Moody Bible Institute.  Idk if it's the same flavor of fundy, but it brings it to mind.

[Alisamer]

17 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I always assumed it was after whomever they named Moody Bible Institute.  Idk if it's the same flavor of fundy, but it brings it to mind.

The name Moody always reminds me of Mr. Moody, my high school art teacher. He was an exuberant, energetic, creative, encouraging small Black man. He would have disapproved of Stevehovah but would have encouraged the girls to reach their full potential as individuals. 

On lice - somehow my sisters and I never got head lice. There were checks at school, and once when we were exposed at a GA camp mom made us undress and dump our bags in the laundry room in the garage before allowing us in the house and then had us shampoo with the anti-lice stuff (which I thought was pretty over-the-top, TBH), but we never actually got them somehow. They were really common though and something everyone knew existed by at least first grade.

Although I suppose if you are raised like a Maxwell, sheltered from others, not attending any group activities, homeschooled exclusively, etc. then you might not come across lice?

[Hane]

2 hours ago, LilMissMetaphor said:

 

Moody and Doody.  

But really, Moody is an odd choice for a family name.  Dare one say it, if not a synonym for, certainly a symptom of, depression? I'm sensing some subtext, Sarah.  Mom IS moody.

Their name comes from the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody. 
 

Does anyone else remember the character Moody Spurgeon MacPherson in the “Anne of Green Gables” books? His parents gave him those names because they were grooming him for the ministry.

Edited March 12, 2021 by Hane

[sparkles]

 I lived in fear of lice when the Sparklet was in school because she has super thick hair and at the time she was in elementary school it was very long. Combing and picking nits would have been a massive undertaking. Somehow, despite a few major infestations in school, including kids she was friendly with, she never had them. 

There was so much WTFery in that first Moody book but one thing that really stood out for me was when the kids met some older guy who asked them to call him by his first name and Steve Mr. Moody said no because he said it was disrespectful. No, buttmunch, what's disrespectful is dismissing a person's completely harmless personal preference simply because YOU don't like it.

[EmmieJ]

On 3/8/2021 at 11:04 PM, WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? said:

I am a generally boring person, but I'm no good at schedules or rigid routines, and I almost make an idol out of variety. (For example, I drink tea most mornings, but I have a different kind of black tea every day until I start over again. I seem to own a ridiculous number of kinds of tea.) I see the value in routine and repetition, but I'm not good at it.

I'm fond of cross country skiing (though I've only gone a few times since I had kids), but I'm not much of a hiker. I'd rather stay up late than wake up early. I love, love, love reading fiction! I've never dusted a ceiling fan (never owned one!), or polished a cabinet. I don't own any warm vests.

I sometimes think I'm the Anti-Maxwell™️!

LOL!  I am a creature of routine, mixed with some spontaneous decisions here and there.  For example, I start every day with brewing a small pot of coffee for myself.  It's keto coffee, so I have ghee and whipping cream in it and that is one of my favorite moments of every day:  sipping away at that first and best cup of coffee, with three cats scattered around me on the couch.  

I now both stay up late and wake up early!  Could be a sign of getting older, not needing as much sleep?  I have dusted a ceiling fan many times, but it wasn't on any set schedule.  Whenever I happened to notice the dust was getting thick on the blades, I'd climb up on our small step ladder and dust away.  (Now I live in a home with only one ceiling fan - in our rarely  used dining room and perhaps I better check it for dust.)  

I own two warm vests, one a blue puffer vest and the other a reversable flannel vest - I love them because when it's cold in my area of northern California, the vest is usually enough to keep me comfortably warm.  A jacket would quickly get too hot for me.  

[PennySycamore]

@EmmieJ, We had our two ceiling fans in the kitchen/den removed when we had that area renovated last fall.  I was OK that the kitchen one was gone, but I kinda wanted to keep the den one as I got hot so easily.  When the den on was gone, I noticed a dingy ring on the den ceiling.  I did dust occasionally, but that fan had been up for more than 30 years.  I don't know how years worth of dirt that was up there.

[Tatar-tot]

Where would the kids pick up headlice? It is usually transferred kid to kid. Anna & Chris’ kids never leave the house except to go to The Elder Maxwell Estate.  
Isn’t this the second time these kids came down with headlice?  If so they need to fumigate their property. 

[MamaJunebug]

16 minutes ago, Tatar-tot said:

Where would the kids pick up headlice? It is usually transferred kid to kid. Anna & Chris’ kids never leave the house except to go to The Elder Maxwell Estate.  
Isn’t this the second time these kids came down with headlice?  If so they need to fumigate their property. 

Along with the bedbug that wasn’t — or was it????

Things are bizarre in Maxwellland. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

53 minutes ago, Tatar-tot said:

Where would the kids pick up headlice? It is usually transferred kid to kid. Anna & Chris’ kids never leave the house except to go to The Elder Maxwell Estate.  
Isn’t this the second time these kids came down with headlice?  If so they need to fumigate their property. 

Don’t the Maxwells go to regular church now? Maybe playing with other church children passed it on to them. 

[Bethy]

Re: Head lice - I'm a teacher on the East Coast and those nasty buggers run rampant just about every fall when school starts. Presumably a lot of it comes from camp, team batting helmets, sleepovers, etc. in the summer and the parents just didn't catch it before school started so the teachers and/or nurse did. I assumed it was a universal terror but from what I'm reading here, perhaps not.

28 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Don’t the Maxwells go to regular church now? Maybe playing with other church children passed it on to them. 

They do now, but AFAIK last summer when C&A's kids had lice, they were still at the nursing home. I'm sure The Elderly™️ can still get head lice. I have a friend whose whole family got infested as kids because of the coat racks at church. So they could have picked it up from a coat storage situation, or maybe just from close contact with the residents before/after/during services. Years ago there was a post from when they visited John Marie's family who apparently also nursing-home churched, and there was a picture of John Marie's mother holding the hand of one resident with her other hand on the shoulder of another (it was an awkward reach) captioned "The elderly love touch" or something mildly squicky-sounding but yet valid (pre-Covid, many lonely residents didn't have regular visits from loved ones to give them hugs, though I'd be loathe to apply that assumption across the board and would never drape myself over a stranger without consent.) If they all embraced that thinking, they probably encouraged the kids to go around and hug all the residents. All that long hair trailing behind the girls would give plenty of pathways for lice to take hold. And once they were home, sleeping in their bunk beds, sharing combs and brushes and hair ties, sitting close together on the couch for hours of Bible time every night...of course it spread to all the girls.

[SPHASH]

Update-2nna's surgery went well

[fundiewatch]

@Bethy is John Marie Cathy Jo D’s brother? I think they nursing home church as well. 

[Bethy]

42 minutes ago, fundiewatch said:

@Bethy is John Marie Cathy Jo D’s brother? I think they nursing home church as well. 

Yes. I think - but I'm not 100% sure - that their mom passed away a couple years ago. Seems one of the Max sisters visited Cathy Jo and her mom's death was referred to in the blog post.

[Threff]

I had a music teacher at school called Miss SomethinglikeMoody (won’t give her real name here). This post just reminded of her. I went to a very posh school, and she was awfully dowdy and sort of meek. She made the mistake of trying to treat us as adults, as if we were people deserving of respect. We were O Level students (14-16 years old for those non-Brits) and we were horrible to her. As posh privileged kids with a bunch of problems, we despised her look, her clothes, her hair, her demeanour, just everything, and we let her know it, because we could, and we were acting out a whole of shit we were otherwise dealing with. But that was NO excuse, and I feel awful about it to this day. I wish I could say sorry to her.

[catlady]

On 3/11/2021 at 12:43 PM, Alisamer said:

I also tend to love a twiddley phrase, but I do think this is the best way to look at writing most of the time.

It works for words, too. One word I'm coming to hate lately is "utilize". Everybody everywhere seems to be "utilizing" everything all the time.

USE, people, you can use things. Sometimes "use" makes more sense than "utilize", and it's definitely less pretentious sounding most of the time. Utilize your option to use simpler words when they work better, and save the fancier ones for when they really are a better choice!

 

On 3/11/2021 at 12:47 PM, Coconut Flan said:

While we're at simplifying, please let's quit curating unless working at a museum or something similar.  

Can I add to the list?  Since when did “handful” become the universal replacement for “few”?  I get inexplicably annoyed seeing handful when quantifying something that can’t be held in one’s hand.  So while handfuls of jellybeans or business cards are fine, what exactly is a handful of people, or places, or times?  “Few” is a perfectly good word.

[allyisyourpally5]

Hands up as another strange child who enjoyed the bi-annual (?) lice check. Our school nurse was also really careful about it and used little sticks like tooth picks to work her way through your hair. It was essentially a ten minute head scratch and gave me chills! But I love a good head massage now and having my hair washed at the salon so....that’s just me.

 

[smittykins]

18 hours ago, sparkles said:

she never had them. 

There was so much WTFery in that first Moody book but one thing that really stood out for me was when the kids met some older guy who asked them to call him by his first name and Steve Mr. Moody said no because he said it was disrespectful. No, buttmunch, what's disrespectful is dismissing a person's completely harmless personal preference simply because YOU don't like it.

I was always taught that you called an adult outside your family/friend group Mr./Mrs./Ms. unless they said otherwise.

[fundiewatch]

11 hours ago, Bethy said:

Yes. I think - but I'm not 100% sure - that their mom passed away a couple years ago. Seems one of the Max sisters visited Cathy Jo and her mom's death was referred to in the blog post.

I think that was Anna, but a few years ago Sarah also went there, and honestly it seemed more like a Sarah-retreat. Cathy Jo and her mom took her kayaking and they went out for coffee and played board games. Cathy Jo sightings are some of my favorite. She just seems so dang diligent and kind. When my son gets married someday I hope she’ll come help me. 

[Jana814]

47 minutes ago, smittykins said:

I was always taught that you called an adult outside your family/friend group Mr./Mrs./Ms. unless they said otherwise.

I was taught this also. 

[fundiefan]

42 minutes ago, Jana814 said:

I was taught this also. 

I don't remember exactly what I was taught, but it must have been something similar. I referred to the parents in our neighborhood by their first names. People I knew well, first name. But, anyone outside that was Mr/Mrs/Miss. 

My BFF's mom's name was a woman's name but could be shortened to a boy's name. My name is a boy's name, or nickname. She was the only person ever allowed to call me the even shorter version of my name and in turn, I called her the boy's nickname version of her name. I have no idea how, when or where it started, but to this day it's the same. We see each other every once in a while as we now live in the same suburb. We still refer to each other the way we started roughly 45 years ago. Just a couple weeks ago I heard the short version of my name being shouted in the grocery store. I didn't pay a lot of attention until I turned to go down another aisle and there she was. 

On a side note, in any other time in life that would have been one of the strongest, biggest, longest, all encompassing hugs in life. I was so extremely sad we didn't get to touch each other.