tricia booker's my left hook

I'm baaa-aack.

2009-10-31T14:36:00.003-04:00

Click here to access the new and improved My Left Hook available now.

Under construction!

2009-10-28T20:06:00.002-04:00

Okay, now before you give up on me, let me explain that my awesome new site is under construction. So if you faithfully followed me to www.mylefthook.com, only to find that site dissipate late last night, please, please stick with me. Issues should be resolved within a day, if not within hours. I promise! I haven't gone away! Really! I even have three (THREE!) blogs in reserve for immediate publication.
peace. tricia

tricia booker's my left hook: looking for me? hmmm?

2009-10-23T19:40:00.001-04:00

Click here to access the new and improved My Left Hook available now.

tricia booker's my left hook: Still here?

2009-10-18T09:08:00.000-04:00

www.mylefthook.com

Still here?

2009-10-18T09:06:00.001-04:00

Have you found my new house yet? I'm at www.mylefthook.com. If you're having trouble finding/viewing my new site, please email me at triciabookerwrites@gmail.com. Hope to see you soon.
tricia

I'm moving!

2009-10-12T23:02:00.002-04:00

Thank God I don't need boxes for this move.
I tired of saying the word "blogspot," so I've changed my website address. Hope you'll stop by for a chat.

Come see me at: http://mylefthook.com/

American Girl - It's cool to be homeless!

2009-10-07T22:35:00.003-04:00

I have tried to get the Diva interested in American Girl dolls, but have met with little success, primarily because of her loyalty to a funky little doll we affectionately call Baby-Missing-A-Chromosone.
The baby, whose actual name is Cordurory (yes, that’s spelled correctly), was given to her by her Papa six years ago when she was 2, and has been everywhere with us since then. Cordurory has been to Latin America. She has been tye-died purple. She has been left at school for a long sleepless weekend, flung against the wall, and had both her arms sewn back on by kindly Aunt Kay.
One of the Diva’s little friends once begged her mother for a Cordurory doll. “But you have lots of dolls,” the mother said.
The girl said she wanted one like the Diva’s, “all dirty and messy with sticky-up hair.”
Cordurory has a beanbag body and hard plastic arms and legs. She has a cute pink pursed-up cupid mouth, and a nose that looks slightly smashed in. She’s meant to look Asian, but her tiny black eyes appear almost too symmetrical, skinny almond slits a little too close together.
But it’s the hair that really gets you. It’s a thick black mop that sticks straight up and out. It has been washed many times - with Tide, hand soap, dish soap, toothpaste, and Pantene 2-in-1 shampoo. Still, it looks as though it could use a good conditioner.
In the six years that the Diva has been mother to Cordurory, she has received the following American Girl dolls: a Bitty Baby she named Timmy; the historical character with long blonde hair named Elizabeth; and the Bitty Baby twins, a boy and girl whose names have changed a hundred times. All of those dolls currently rest at the bottom of the stuffed animal bin. Naked. Because all of their clothes have gone to Cordurory. Elizabeth even came with a gorgeous real wood canopy bed with satiny blue bed linens. Guess who sleeps there?
Now, I’ve always liked the American Girl doll concept. Give a kid a doll with some sort of historical context, make her read the story, she learns some history and gets a toy to boot.
Addy, for example, has just escaped slavery. Kit and Ruthie are living through the Great Depression. Elizabeth lives during the Revolutionary War period.
And now there’s Gwen. She’s homeless.
That’s right. You can pay $95 plus shipping and handling to acquire Gwen, the homeless American Girl doll.
At least the money goes to a good cause, right? To support programs for homeless children or something? Uh, not so much.
This concept apparently eludes many loyal American Girl customers who have flocked to the company’s defense regarding GwenGate by writing glowing reviews on the website. One woman wrote: Her dress is lovely and so well made. I love the embroidery. Her sandals are so cute and look just like all the little girls wear nowadays. We love the headband as a belt or as a headband.
Seriously? The homeless girl’s dress is embroidered and lovely? It’s white, by the way. It must be vinyl so her mother can hose it down after sleeping on the park bench.
Not everyone is thrilled. Another woman wrote that she wished there were more accessories and outfits for Gwen. But there can’t be! Because she’s homeless! Get it? BWAAA-HAAA-HAAA!
My favorite comment, though, was this: "I bought this doll and was disappointed in her bangs, they are awful short and you can't do anything with them." I’ve never understood why they can’t get good hairdressers at homeless shelters.
So now I’m glad that the Diva has steered away from American Girl dolls, and happily writes long exhausting stories about the adventures of Cordurory, who certainly looks like she’s homeless but in fact lives in a hand-carved canopy bed and despite appearances is very, very clean.
And I hope American Girl rethinks this little Gwen girl. At the very least, make her a bit more realistic. I’m sure those trendy pink flip flop sandals look fabulous. But they're not very practical for the streets. She should probably sell them, actually, and get herself a few accessories. That way she'll really fit in.

He's gay. Or weird. Or weirdly gay. Whatever.

2009-10-03T12:56:00.000-04:00

The Pterodactyl wants me to buy him a purse. Obviously he’s gay. Which would explain his fascination with the hair dryer, his weird attachment to anything fuzzy, and his tendency to sing along to Taylor Swift songs. He’s almost five years old and he loves rainbows. Can there possibly be a gayer sign?
No, I’m kidding. He’s totally not gay. He is obsessed with trains, airplanes and volcanoes. He seems to love boobs. Two little girls in his class have crushes on him. He loves to smash his tricycle into things. He pees standing up. He’s as manly as a boy can get.
But....then again, he did ask me some questions about ballet the other day. He likes to put his stuffed animals in the baby stroller and push them around. He loves baking cookies. Now that I think about it, he really likes to smell flowers and take bubble baths and occasionally try on my dress shoes. He’s kind of a crybaby. I better call PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) tomorrow.
Actually, though, he doesn’t like the color pink. So he can’t be gay.
Okay, you want the truth? The truth is that I don’t care whether my son is gay, or whether any of my children are gay. I particularly don’t care to speculate about my kids’ sexuality when they still believe in Santa Claus and think life’s climaxes are related to fruit roll-ups and the dollar bin at Target.
I’m surprised that not everyone feels that way.
Recently the Diva convinced the babysitter that she was allowed to watch You Tube, and she dug up a Black-Eyed Peas video in which Fergie wears a thong. Now, in all honesty, I find it unlikely that any living breathing thing on earth could watch that video and not feel some sort of twinge of something or other at the sight of Fergie wearing a thong. It really is something to see. So the Pterodactyl exhibited a predictable reaction: he stared and said, “I like her.”
I thought the story was funny and have told it to people. You know what a lot of them have said? “At least you don’t have to worry that he’s gay.”
This statement leaves me a little bit speechless, as I’m unsure whether to say: a. I don’t worry that he’s gay b. this one small incident does not mean he’s not gay c. I was slightly aroused. Am I gay? or d. HE IS NOT GAY!! HE LIKES THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!
If he is gay, the biggest bummer will be that he probably will have to move to another state if he wants to get married. I don’t really care who he marries, as long as the person treats him with love and respect and is not a Republican. But I certainly would rather he settle someplace nearby so that when I’m old I can conveniently interfere in his life.
Hot Firefighter Husband feels the same way about all this. His biggest fear, I think, is that his children will not share his pathological obsession with the Boston Red Sox, an ailment that unfortunately crosses gender preference lines.
I like the Red Sox okay, but frankly I’m a little more dedicated to the New Orleans Saints, and I’m trying to pass that on to the kids. For one thing, I’m a Big Easy native. But also, the Saints uniforms are black and gold, with a cutting edge style that will never go out of fashion. Gay people love that kind of thing, n’est-ce pas?

Success or the lack thereof

2009-09-27T15:31:00.001-04:00

During a recent dinner, the Diva was prattling on about how her teacher has been asking for parents to volunteer in the classroom.
“So I told her you guys could do it,” she said, “since neither of you have jobs.”
Husband and I looked at each other.
“Honey,” I said. “Your dad is a firefighter.”
“Yeah. But that’s all he does, put out fires.”
We’ve never bragged much about ourselves, but maybe we should start, since our daughter apparently thinks our major life accomplishments involve knowing the words to “Rock Lobster” and being an excellent finder of post-storm worms.
Then last week, I received a notice from the Social Security Administration helpfully advising me of the benefits I’ve earned in my lifetime. It listed my annual income for the past quarter decade.
I was appalled. Let’s just say that if I had been responsible for paying back my college tuition, I might currently be up to the fall break of my sophomore year, not including beer money. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for the college fund.)
What is success? Obviously it’s in the eyes of the user of the word. But society traditionally defines it as equivalent to making money, at least when it’s used in tandem with a type of career.
“She’s a successful writer,” for example, does not really translate into, “She’s very talented, and the manuscript she has written looks marvelous in the bottom drawer of her dresser where she keeps it.” That’s just an example.
When we decided to adopt the Tyrant, Husband said to me, “If we do it, then this is going to be your thing.” He meant that I would have to push other career goals aside and focus on the raising of our brood, at least temporarily. He wasn’t being sexist. It didn’t make sense for him to quit his stable job to stay home with the kids so that I could start looking for a job, right? Plus I have always thought full-time employment seemed highly overrated.
The ugly truth, I suspect, is that I am afraid of failure, and so I welcomed the opportunity to step down from the high dive and focus on swimming across the pool. Raising a family, I thought, was predictable and doable and impossible to fuck up. For some reason I have not let myself think ahead to the teen years.
Hot Firefighter Husband harbors no such fears. After the Diva came home seven years ago, he had a mid-life crisis and left his long journalism career to become a firefighter. There have been obstacles along the way, but overall the switch has been a remarkable success for all of us, particularly those of us who’ve always had a hankering for men in uniform.
Now that I’m writing again, it feels like I’m inching my way toward some small semblance of success. I would like to think there is some earned money potential in my future, but based on the last 25 years it seems unlikely.
So what is success? I’m a full-time mother working two (very) part-time jobs and blogging. This year I will make enough money to buy a 1998 Buick LeSabre with 108,800 miles, a new TemperPedic mattress or some low-end breast implants. But since we’re living in a house we can barely afford and sending our kids to a pre-school that costs more than community college, I think we’ll spend the money on boosting our supplies of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, dental floss and bleach, all of which we utilize at an alarming rate, though never at the same time.
I’m trying to redefine success for myself and my family. I want my children to believe that being successful includes being happy and productive, even if the products involved are homemade chicken noodle soup and clean matching socks, but first I have to believe it myself. And if I’m wrong about this and success does indeed relate to how much money you make, then I might as well keep plugging along at trying to change society’s definition. After all, at this point, what have I got to lose?

She's mean and she hits. I want to hit her back.

2009-09-23T17:21:00.005-04:00

On the way home from the gym yesterday, the Tyrant yelled from the back of the van, “Mom! Open it!”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw she was holding a bag of potato chips. “Mommy’s driving, sweetie,” I said. “I’ll open it when---” THWACK. The bag of chips beaned me in the side of my head.
“Well, here they are,” I said.
So you’re on the edge of your seat reading this, I know. Did I slam on the brakes? Pull over and scream until my throat was sore? Eat the chips myself?
No. First I again took note of my 2-year-old’s remarkable aim. Then I opened the chips and tossed them back to her.
She ate one. “I don’t yike these,” she said. She emptied the bag into the cupholder and took a cereal bar out of her backpack. “Open it!”
“Honey, I’m not going to open any---” THWACK. That aim is something, I tell you.
I opened it and tossed it back to her. “I don’t yike it!” She threw it on the floor. Those of you familiar with my chronic roach problems are probably having an “aha” moment right now.
For a long time the Pterodactyl has been terrorizing the family. His screech contains some sort of sonar that penetrates the brain and he’s irritatingly adept at inventing behavior designed to drive me wild -- emptying a basket of clean folded laundry, scribbling on his sister’s favorite artwork, throwing a pencil at me because I didn’t draw an airplane the way he envisioned it.
But he’ll be five in a couple of months, and he’s becoming ever-so-slightly rational. Last night, after I took away his Blankie and Blue Puppy and Fuzzy Pillow because he called me a mean mom, he calmed down enough to get his treasures back and then asked me sweetly to snuggle with him. “Do you still think I’m a mean mom?” I asked. He pulled my face close to his. “Yes,” he whispered. But I didn’t care because at least he was going to sleep.
It’s the Tyrant who has everybody on the run now. We're all bearing scars from her. The boy has a bloody scratch under his eye. My elbow is bruised. She hits. She throws. She bangs. She scratches. She yells. She tells me to go to Time Out about 12 times a day. She’s crazy cute, and she loves to look at me, raise her eyebrows up and down, nod and smile, like she’s letting me in on her secret. But I don’t know her secret. I just think she’s nuts.
My friend Sahmmy (www.sahmmy.com) was appalled at the driving/potato chips story. “Uh-uh. No you didn’t. You pulled the car over, right? And threw the chips away?”
Sahmmy reasons that if I don’t nip this stuff now, the Tyrant will evolve into full-fledged delinquency by kindergarten. “What are you going to do when she’s 13? If she’s even around when she’s 13,” Sahmmy said. I allowed myself for a brief moment to think of an adolescent Tyrant living under a bridge with an eyebrow ring and a tattoo of a cobra around her leg. Ew.
Husband and I are struggling with the discipline thing right now. Discipline is hard work. I don’t like discipline. I much prefer yelling, evil eye stares and stomping my feet. I like my children to be slightly afraid of me so that they can’t tell that I’m actually afraid of them.
I’m not opposed to pops on the bottom. That’s what we call them, because I think it sounds better than hitting my child on the butt. But I don’t think they work, mainly because they’re not painful enough, and I’m not talking about physical pain because I absolutely would never do anything that caused a child more than a second of slight physical discomfort. No, I’m talking regret here. And think about it. Faced with a choice between, say, getting a flu shot and actually getting the flu, but still having to take care of everyone around you as they themselves get the flu and never actually getting to recover yourself except during the long uncomfortable nights when you’re shivering from the fever, wouldn’t you go for the easy short-lived pain of the injection? I’m just talking hypothetically here.
Anyway, a child psychologist recommended a book that essentially lauds “Time-Outs” as the cure for all bad behavior. It’s a decent-sized paperback, and serves as an excellent nightside coaster. The actual Time-Out philosophy has not worked for several reasons, the main one being that the Tyrant will not stay in Time-Out unless we sit on her, and even then we have to sit on her hands, too, or she’ll leave bloody scratches on our backs. She’s very strong.
Our latest tactic has been to put a hook-and-eye lock on her door so we can lock her in her room for Time-Out. I had been holding the door shut, but I started getting calluses on my hands and they hurt, so I asked Husband to install the hook-and-eyes. So far it’s working, though not necessarily as a deterrent. It’s mostly working as a chance for me to catch my breath, regroup, and say, “my children are adorable. my children are adorable. my children are adorable,” 20 times in a row.
If you don’t, upon spending significant amounts of time with young children, begin to have a better insight into child abuse, you need to have your empathy box refilled. I’m not talking about systemic, chronic abuse. I’m talking about the young woman who snaps in the grocery store parking lot because her 4-year-old unscrewed his sippy cup and dumped orange juice on the baby’s face. And the woman was up all night with the baby and hasn’t eaten anything but Cheez-Its all day. How hard is it for that woman to keep her hands to herself in that brief, maddening moment?
I'm not talking about the zany, hilarious stuff. As I'm writing this, for example, the Tyrant is lining up Dixie cups on the window sill and putting a dollop of bubblegum-flavored toothpaste in each one. I'm okay with that. I'm referring to the bad stuff. The hitting, the defiance, the absolute refusal to do something as simple as not spit chewed-up chicken nugget at the babysitter.
It’s hard. It’s very hard. I’m not Mother-of-the-Year, and I know there have been many times that I’ve handled the discipline thing wrong. But I thank my lucky stars every day that my kids came along after I’d been on this earth for nearly four decades, giving me time to ripen and mellow like that excellent Chardonnay I had the other night. Thank goodness I have the patience, or maturity, or age-induced anger management skills, whatever it is, to keep from harming my children.
It’s true that I want them to be afraid of me -- but not because I would ever harm them. As Sahmmy says, it’s good to keep them a little off-guard. I want them to fear me because I’m just a little nuts. Poor Tyrant. I guess that’s where she gets it.

Today by the numbers

2009-09-19T21:56:00.001-04:00

10 -- number of inadvisable food products I’ve consumed today: potato chips, Cheetos, raw brownie batter, Nerds, blue Icee, Mandarin oranges in light syrup, handfuls of Special K with dehydrated red berries, cooked brownies, children’s GummiBear vitamins, and sour IceBreakers.
Discussion: We’re housebound. The Diva still has a fever, Husband is working, so I’m stuck at home with one sickie and two wild animals unable to do anything because of the sickie. I’m trying to placate everyone with junk food feeding frenzies. And I admit it...I’m weak. I cannot stand idly by and nosh on carrots while there are puffy Cheetos to be eaten. Not to mention fresh brownies.
9 -- number of times I’ve logged on to Facebook
Discussion: Now that I’m blogging, I have convinced myself (and Husband!) that maintaining my FaceFriends is an important part of my blogger success. I must keep a presence! I must remind people of my wit! I absolutely must know what everyone is doing at any given time during the day! And frankly, on a day when my most stimulating conversation involves where poop comes from, I just need to feel a little bit popular.
8 -- times the Tyrant has thrown a shoe at someone
Discussion: Okay, this is becoming a problem. The Tyrant has a temper. I’ve mentioned her remarkable aim -- she can bean me in the head with any given object from 10 paces. But shoes are her weapon of choice because there are approximately 98 shoes scattered around the house within easy reach. I’m not sure what to do about it. She won’t stay in timeout, and even taught herself to escape from the belt I have used to keep her there, which I don’t do anymore since it doesn’t work, so I’d appreciate you not calling social services on me. If I take away whatever she’s about to throw, she points her finger at me and screams, “PUH-SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!” so threateningly that I fully expect to be turned into a wart hog when she’s done.
7 -- number of unsupervised minutes it took for the Tyrant to cover 80 percent of her body in black marker
Discussion: My children have always loved stickers, and then graduated to those temporary tattoos that quickly devolve into thin strands of rubber that won’t come off the skin. In addition, the Diva has always wanted me to give her “something to remember you” before heading off to school. So I started the tradition of using a Sharpie to draw a little heart on the inside of her wrist. I thought it was sweet. This has turned out to be a mistake. She interpreted my little love act to mean that drawing on oneself is good, and one of her favorite games is called “tattoo parlor” and includes a menu of things she can draw with associated prices. The Tyrant likes this game.
6 -- minutes all three children played nicely together with bubbles before someone blew bubbles directly into someone’s face
Discussion: The Pterodactyl plays the copy game. The Tyrant throws the Diva’s eraser into the toilet. The Diva takes her Nintendo and hides under the desk. The Tyrant throws a shoe at her. The Pterodactyl eats the Diva’s Oreos. The Diva cries. The Pterodactyl spits at the Tyrant. The Tyrant throws a shoe at him. He cries. The dog eats the Tyrant’s potato chips. She cries. Bubbles finally make everyone happy. Then....not so much.
5 -- number of “iCarly” episodes we’ve watched
Discussion: To all of you people who actually measure the amount of time your children spend in front of the television, I say, good for you. I don’t. I can’t. I’m one of those people who lives in mortal fear of the cable going out, particularly on housebound days when the temperature outside resembles the surface of the sun. And this “iCarly” show, I must say, I find entertaining. Just tonight, an entirely new episode focused on making fun of celebrity chef Bobby Flay by channeling him through a character named Ricky Flame. It was hilarious! In a this-is-how-I’m-spending-my-Saturday-night kind of way.
4 -- time I anticipated having my first glass of wine
Discussion: In fact it was closer to 6 p.m. because I took the children on a bike ride so we could all breathe some fresh air and I could confine them with seat belts for a little while. The problem with having wine, though, is that while it tastes divine and temporarily lifts my mood, it also exacerbates my fatigue so that my motivation for folding the five baskets of laundry has waned. Fortunately Husband won’t be home until morning so I can just pile everything on his side of the bed.
3 -- number of mysterious items the Pterodactyl has wrapped in aluminum foil and spread around the house
Discussion: There’s really nothing to say about this, except that I’m out of foil.
2 -- piles of poop the dog deposited in the front yard
Discussion: I grew up with dogs and I don’t remember spending half my life picking up poop like I do now. When did this become a daily chore? And like it’s not bad enough to use plastic baggies to grab steaming piles of shit -- when your dog is, like mine, addicted to baby wipes, paper towels, checkbooks, Band-Aids and other paper products, you find yourself pulling stuff out of said dog’s butt so often that it begins to feel like an actual accomplishment. Seriously. It’s disturbing.
1 -- number of times the Tyrant flung herself naked off the countertop while eating brownies and landed on her head.
Discussion: Okay, just so you know, I was RIGHT THERE when this happened, and as she fell I grabbed her ankle and held it securely, so that for a moment she dangled upside down and I thought I had saved her from falling. But she’s freakishly wiry and started bucking like a wild mustang, thereby wriggling from my grip and landing on her head from about a foot or so up. I picked her up and set the timer for five minutes, which is my magic head bump number. If a child who has been bonked on the head cries for less than five minutes, we don’t worry about it. More than five requires action. The Tyrant stopped crying in three minutes. I ate her brownie.

**The exactitude of the above numbers has been approximated. Everything else is factual.

The worst flu symptom

2009-09-18T11:37:00.002-04:00

I’m on the mend. The Diva has a fever of 101, headache and a tummy ache, though she claims to have a tummy ache 97 percent of time anyway so it’s hard to tell if that’s a symptom of anything.
At the doctor’s office, she tested negative for the flu, though due to last night’s horrific nosebleed that left the bathroom looking like the aftermath of a machete fight, she couldn’t produce enough quality snot for a good sample.
The nosebleed began soon after the second fever spike. My poor little Diva is accustomed to nosebleeds, unfortunately, and knows what to do, and rarely involves me unless she can’t stop the flow, which happened last night. I settled her in my bed with a couple of towels and helped her squeeze her nostrils. I rested her forehead on my shoulder when her neck got tired. I woke up Hot Firefighter Husband every 10 minutes to consult:
“Honey, we can’t get the bleeding to stop.”
“Huh? What? Just keep squeezing. ZZZZZZZZ.”
Ten minutes.
“Sweetie? Should we try something else? She’s starting to spit up blood.”
“Huh? What? She’ll be fine. ZZZZZZZZZZZ.”
Ten minutes.
Me to the Diva: “Okay, I think it’s slowing down. Just lay here for a minute while I get you some water.”
Husband: “Huh? What? She’s laying down here? Okay. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.”
It’s slightly astounding to me that this man, while at work, can insert an IV into someone’s vein five minutes after waking up -- because at home, when he’s in bed asleep, I’m pretty sure that even if the house was burning down, he would need a cup of coffee before getting out of bed.
And for a medical professional, he’s remarkably blase. Yesterday morning, he arrived home from work and saw the Diva in her pajamas, and I told him she had fever. “So....she’s staying home from school?” he asked. Um......yes, Mr. Paramedic, that’s the recommendation of every health organization on the planet right now, that a person with fever avoid all contact with living things.
Anyway, the Diva probably has the flu, despite not passing her flu test. Oink.
When her fever’s raging, she’s freezing and miserable. A little Motrin brings quick relief, and puts her on an ibuprofen high that makes me tempted to send her to school for a little while. Apparently this strain of flu causes 7-year-old girls to develop verbal diarrhea and become infected with inane, unanswerable questions. Or they’re answerable, but complicated. Okay, fine. I just don’t have the patience to answer them. But seriously.  “Does Miley Cyrus write her own songs?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why doesn’t she write her own songs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you think that?” “Think what?”
“Why do you think she doesn’t write her own songs?”
“I just don’t.”
“But who writes her songs?”
“Honey, Mommy can’t talk right now. I have to focus.”
“What are you focusing on?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what do you mean, Mommy?”
“Okay, honey, you just have to stop talking for a minute.”
“Mom. That sounds a little like you’re telling me to shut up and it hurts my feelings.”
And so on. Then there’s this, as we’re pulling out of the Smoothie King parking lot: “Mommy, why does that sign say ‘Adam & Eve’ and ‘no one under 18 allowed’?”
“Well. Because it’s a place only for grown-ups.” Thinking -- is it reasonable for an Adam & Eve shop to be right next to a Smoothie King? Was there no dark side street available?
“So Taylor Swift could go there! Right, Mom? Because she’s 19!”
“Right. If she wanted to.”
So Taylor Swift, if you’re out there, please know that at least one little girl who counts herself as one of your biggest fans is happy that, though you’re still not old enough to (legally) have a drink with Kanye West, you are old enough to visit sex toy stores, and in fact she would like to know if you’ve ever been to one.
The flu, I can handle. The accompanying curiosity? It’s killing me.

Sick. Tired. But mostly sick.

2009-09-11T21:23:00.000-04:00

It started with a few aches and pains. I thought I was feeling sore from carrying two children a half-mile back from the beach the previous day. (Impressive, yes?)
Day two, I felt a little lethargic. So I gave myself a blast of energy with a high-powered weightlifting session.
That was a mistake. By noon, I had fever. So did Husband. Plus he had a sinus infection and couldn’t breathe, and of course not breathing trumps fever-with-no-other-symptoms.
He rested. I went to the grocery, walked the dog, picked up the Pterodactyl from school, took him to karate, cooked dinner and bathed the kids.
Day three I felt decidedly worse. Day four, the fever broke and a convulsive cough appeared. Day five I went to the doctor. Bronchitis.
So I’ve spent five whole days wishing the hours away, desperate for the moment when the kids were all in bed so I can crawl into bed myself. It’s, for me, the most physically demanding aspect of motherhood -- going through the mommy motions when you know you should be only sleeping, drinking fluids and opening an occasional can of chicken soup.
When I had my hysterectomy a few years ago, I spent one night in the hospital. That next morning after surgery, the doctor came in to check on me. “You can go home as soon as you urinate,” he said.
“I can’t pee!” I nearly shouted. I suppose I said it with a little too much enthusiasm, but I really thought I could use another day of recovery. But then he started talking about sending me home with a catheter, so I focused all my attention on my peeing muscles and went home to “rest” with my 18-month-old son and 4-year-old daughter.
Then, like now, the most painful aspect isn’t really the physical discomfort, although I do think I’ve injured my shoulder coughing. It’s the knowledge that for an extended period of time, I don’t feel capable of being a good mom.
Now, I know you’re thinking -- wait. This is the woman who threatened to rip the legs off her son’s beloved Blue Puppy? She thinks she’s a good mom?
Well, let’s compromise with the fact that I’m the best mom I know how to be. And even on those endless days when the Diva won’t eat anything but bowtie noodles and the Tyrant sticks her stuffed dog’s head in my coffee and the Pterodactyl calls me a poopy weener butt-butt, even on those days we have moments of pure joy and hilarity, when little arms around my neck make all the stale Cheez-Its and laundry worthwhile.
But now, being sick, those moments seem lost and I miss them. I’m exhausted and my chest hurts; I’m short-tempered and in no mood to endure the normal antics of childhood.
The kids sense it, too. The Diva asks me if I’m better approximately every 15 minutes, even when she’s too engrossed in “iCarly” to hear me answer. The Tyrant was sent to the principal’s office. Yes, that’s right, my 2-year-old was sent to the principal’s office, the first of my children to achieve that disciplinary benchmark. She had thrown a block at a kid’s head (Have I mentioned her remarkable aim?), pushed another child, and generally acted like a miscreant all day. She bragged to me about it when she got home.
I don’t miss much about my days pre-mommyhood because though life is very different, I still get freedom in small doses.
Yet here’s something I long for: the luxury of just being sick when I’m sick. I don’t want to act happy to see anybody. I don’t want to talk to someone about a playdate. I don’t want to go over spelling words. I just want to watch television, sleep, and maybe take a bath.
For me, it has been a relatively brief period of low-level misery. Now that I’m on antibiotics, I expect I’ll be back to my pleasantly cynical self soon, interspersing my yelling with affectionate hugs and kisses and making sure my children take gummi bear multi-vitamins in between their Happy Meals.
But I find myself thinking of what it’s like for the mothers with no relief in sight - for the women who suffer chronic illnesses or battle disease while trying to be the familial guiding lights, and often succeeding. I find it astounding, frankly. I’m a healthy, strong woman, but when I think of the pity I gave myself over a little bout of bronchitis, I must tell you: I feel a little bit.....weak.

Okay, she was adopted. But she's not a fish.

2009-09-05T09:02:00.000-04:00

On a recent rainy Sunday, Husband was working and the rest of us decided to have a Movie Morning. A Movie Morning is when Mommy can’t think of anything Mother-of-the-Yearish to do, so she decides to bond with the children via the Disney Channel, which requires more effort than you might think.
The movie playing that morning, as described in the on-screen blurb, was about a boy who starts turning into a fish on his 13th birthday. That seemed a bit quirky, but innocuous enough, and it does seem that children transform themselves as they enter the teen years.
Okay, but listen. It turns out the boy was adopted, and his birth mother is a mermaid who abandoned him on a shrimp boat when he was a baby. The shrimp boat captain and his wife found him and raised him. His only remarkable feature was his tremendous propensity for swimming.
Now that he’s 13, his true heritage is beginning to, um, swim to the surface. Every time he touches water, he grows scales and fins. Seriously. This causes him to lose some popularity points at school.
Then he begins to see his “real mom” whenever he happens by the harbor. She is swimming around waiting for him, gracefully flopping her silvery tail. You see, it’s time for him to join her and fully transform into a “merman.”
Eventually his adoptive parents understand that a merman’s got to do what a merman’s got to do, and they let him go. The plan is for him to spend a year with his “real mom” swimming around the ocean. Then, somehow, he’ll be prepared to come back ashore and be part-human again.
The Diva and I were riveted: me out of horror and the Diva, I think, out of sheer perplexity and perhaps some slight concern regarding her love of the water. But I couldn’t turn it off because I was afraid it would be like saying to my adopted daughter WE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT GOING TO WATCH A MOVIE ABOUT SOME ADOPTED KID.
Now, I’m all for openness and candor when discussing with my children the fact that they were adopted. And thank you, Disney, for helping all of your viewers understand that children who were adopted are so weird and unnatural that they very likely will morph into different species as they age. My children, for example, were hatched underneath the fluorescent lights of an incubator. Our goal is to teach them to fly the coop before they’re 18 so we can avoid paying for college.
Of course my children have birth mothers, and I’m eternally grateful to those women for entrusting me with these gifts of life.
But am I not their real mother? Who feeds them Cheez-Its for breakfast? Who lets them skip brushing their teeth at night? Who taught them the words to “McDonald’s is your kind of place/hamburgers in your face”?
And who will be there when they turn 13? It will be me. I don’t think they’ll grow fins and scales, but if they do, they won’t be swimming out to sea without me. We’ll just move to the Caribbean, I guess, and live on a houseboat and I’ll learn how to SCUBA dive, and together we’ll brave whatever the tide brings in.

What planet are men from?

2009-09-02T20:37:00.001-04:00

Do you think men are really from Mars? Because sometimes it seems like they’re from that other planet. You know. Uranus.
What I mean is that.....well, they're a mixed bag.
Take Hot Firefighter Husband, for example. Once, just after we had started.....um....dating.......yeah, that’s it, we were dating......he let himself into my apartment when he knew I was working late and baked me an apple pie. That same year, he went on a trip to San Francisco and brought me home a 2-inch plastic Buddha statue.
It’s been like this ever since, though I write this with some trepidation, knowing that Husband is quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to me other than finally having my uterus removed.
When I left the house this morning, for example, Husband had just gotten off his shift. He was wearing his favorite beat-up shorts, a t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap, and he needed a shave.
And he was preparing to vacuum.
Uh-huh. It was like suburban mom porn, I tell you. I might have been interested in delaying my exit had I not been afraid it would make him lose cleaning momentum.
Husband does not buy me flowers “just because.” His gift-giving abilities -- well, they suck a little bit, as you might have guessed from the Buddha, which I still have. He once gave me a wooden flying pig with removable wings for Christmas.
But my man cleans, and I find that incredibly gratifying, and pretty sexy, too. He can do some pretty amazing things with those Scrubbing Bubbles.
Yet for every totally rockin’ task he completes, there seems to be some sort of payback.
This morning, as I left the house whistling in anticipation of a clean house, he called for me to take the Jeep. So I walked to the Goddamn Yellow Jeep and opened the door, and stuck my shoe into the 3-inch puddle accumulated atop the floorboard. Somebody forgot to put the top up last night.
The Goddamn Yellow Jeep has long been a source of contention. I was very proud that he sold his little Mazda on Craigslist, and looked forward to lowering our car payment. But he came home with the GYJ, which is the color of an irradiated banana and can certainly be seen from space. Though it’s supposedly “almost new,” it has a huge dent in the side and the gear shift is on upside down. Initially, it only had two seat belts in the back. “We have three kids,” I screeched. Really, I can be an irascible shrew at times. In his defense, he did order an extra seat belt online and has since installed it. It’s purple.
The point is, he didn’t think anything of sending me off in a burgeoning thunderstorm driving a flooded Jeep with half a top and the back windows resting unhelpfully in the garage.
The whole porn image dissipated quickly, I can assure you.
He laughed at me for not wanting to take the Jeep, which made me mad, which made him laugh even harder, which....well, you know where this is going. It ended with me taking the Motorized Landfill instead, screaming at him unconvincingly to have a good day and then calling from the road to apologize 10 minutes later. But still, he shouldn’t have left the top down last night.
None of this would be an issue if I hadn’t last week accepted an actual job that requires me to be someplace on time. It’s just one class that I’m teaching at the University of North Florida, but I do have to show up a couple of times a week. I tried to not take this job by explaining that I would have to come straight from my boxing class on Mondays and so would be late as well as sweaty for those classes, but the department head seemed amenable to that.
On the first day of my back-to-back classes, I taught boxing, changed into my street clothes, flew out of the gym parking lot and promptly got stopped for speeding.
I normally consider it a little embarrassing that the Motorized Landfill is plastered with firefighter union paraphernalia. At least there’s no snarky bumper sticker involving firefighters and poles or anything like that.
On this day, however, the deputy appreciated Husband’s service to humanity and gave me a written warning. Husband later asked me to please stop doing things that required him to write thank-you notes to police officers, and I said I would try.
Are men and women different? I never wanted to think so. But now that I’ve been living with a man for going on 20 years, I feel certain our brains are wired differently. What woman would put a dish towel and a bra in the same load of wash? Or forget her mother’s birthday? Or suggest tying her son’s hand behind his back to practice being a lefty pitcher?
The bright side is that I’ve learned to forgive Husband for these deficiencies, and I’ll learn to forgive him for buying the Goddamn Yellow Jeep which he swears will be with us forever.
But I tell you, that house better be pretty fucking clean.

Update: Okay, the house was pretty fucking clean. But listen: guess how many times I had to hear about it?

The boy of my dreams

2009-08-29T16:19:00.000-04:00

My little Pterodactyl is an enigmatic soul. At night, snuggled in his bed, he pulls my face to his and locks lips with me. “I love you, Mom,” he says.
That happens often, I should say. Other times, he screeches, “GET ME A BOPPY!” and kicks me in the ribs while I’m trying to say good night.
He loves to stroke his big sister’s hair and tell her how beautiful she looks. He also likes to throw his little sister’s beloved Teddy against the wall. The other day while in Time Out, he leaned over and repeatedly deposited globs of saliva on the floor until there was a puddle. Then he rubbed his fuzzy blanket on his upper lip and fell asleep in the fetal position.
He once, in the middle of the night, flushed his nightlight down the toilet where it lodged so perfectly that I had to replace the whole flipping toilet. Then he proudly woke me up so he could show me what he’d done.
This boy, he is kicking my ass. There are times when I think I might die of love for him, when tears sting my eyes just thinking about his toothy grin and sticky-uppy hair and the way he loves to have his ears cleaned. I also often would feel perfectly justified hanging him on a hook by his shirt collar, if I had a hook strong enough to hold him there.
I’d give anything to rid him of his middle-child syndrome (short of having another child, that is), to restore in him the confidence of his baby years, when he knew our world revolved around him. “I wish (the Tyrant) wasn’t in our family!” he tells me all the time. “I told you we shouldn’t have buyed another baby!”
The Tyrant was already 13 months old when she came home, old enough to act adorable and steal toys and generally steal the spotlight from her 2-year-old brother. He tortured her mercilessly until she grew up enough to fight back. Now she’s almost 3 and he’s 4, and they are like two little magnets spiked with explosives. They can’t stay away from each other, but nearly every contact ends badly.
He tries so hard to love her, he really does. When she wakes up, he’ll gently approach her and touch her hair and say, “Good morning!” in his sweetest voice. But the Tyrant, wary after two years of abuse, usually responds with a quick right hook and a growl, and so hurts my poor little boy’s feelings that he dissolves into big fat tears.
So last night, after the Tyrant had called him WEENER BUTT! WEENER BUTT! WEENER BUTT! for no reason, I pulled him into my lap and whispered, “Let’s go for a bike ride. I want to take you someplace special, just you and me.” Normally he argues about alone time with parents because he’s afraid it means he’s being left out of something. But last night, beleaguered, he agreed.
He rode in the bike carrier behind me and I pedaled through the neighborhood. Within 10 minutes, I pulled over in front of a lake surrounded by tree canopy. Hanging in front of us was an old-fashioned swing, fastened by ropes to a high oak branch.
We had to descend the bank slightly to get on the swing. I pulled him into my lap. I walked backwards as far as I could, then let go, and in a magical swoosh, we soared through the air and peaked over the water. I believed in that moment I felt my boy’s heart flying upward with mine, like together we were lifting ourselves above a world filled with pesky little sisters and cranky mothers and weener butts, and at least for a moment, we became part of the very air beneath us.
We kept swinging. We watched little turtle heads pop up in the lake and waterbugs making circles, and listened to the crickets chirp. I nuzzled his neck with kisses and nibbled his ear, which is one of his most favorite things in the world besides airplanes.
“Mom. It’s peace out here,” he said.
We swung and swung. I got vertigo and felt nauseated. I threw up a little in my mouth, and felt a headache looming. But I could not break this fairy spell, this rare moment when my boy felt, more than learned, the meaning of peace.
“Could you take a picture of us so we can remember this?” he asked.
I didn’t have my camera. Of course I would remember it, I told him. But I knew what he meant. Memories morph into blurry versions of reality, particularly for little children who struggle so hard to understand the complexities of a grown-up world. He’s the one who needed the photo, or some other tangible proof of my love that he could turn to the next time he found himself on the wrong side of trouble.
Finally, the sun started setting and tiny no-see-ums buzzed into our noses and mouths, and he said he was ready to go.
We rode home without talking, but I could feel his contentment. When we walked back into the house, the usual chaos reigned. The Diva had taken a shower with the Tyrant, who was screaming that she had soap in her eyes. The bathroom floor was flooded. It was nearing 9 p.m. and no one seemed interested in going to bed. Husband sat on the couch watching preseason football as though armed robbers had told him he’d be killed if he moved.
The Pterodactyl joined the fray, and within minutes, the three were involved in a fracas worthy of being televised.
But later that night, after the household had settled for the evening and I lay in bed mentally steeling myself for the next day, I thought about the secret swing, my beautiful boy, and the way he looked at me when he crawled into my lap to swing. And I thought about his favorite moment of the excursion, when, as he soared over the grassy slope over the calm clear water, I heard a little noise followed by inexorable giggles and his delighted announcement: “I gassed-ed!”

Me and school supplies and finally, the end of summer

2009-08-25T20:58:00.002-04:00

Well, I managed to get the kids back to school. Even the Tyrant is enrolled this year, although it’s only three days a week. Still, for 12 hours each week, I am kid-free, at least until I begin to use the extended day program at the pre-school, which could be as early as next week.
The Back-To-School preparations did not go well, probably because I didn’t begin them until two days before school started. I think I totaled five supply trips, and I’m still missing a red folder and a blue folder with pockets AND hole punch thingies, sheet protectors and a container of sanitizing wipes. I could have bought a small used car for what I’ve spent.
Husband worked the day before, naturally, and sauntered into the school on the first day like Mr. Hands-On New Age Father of the Year. I trailed behind him schlepping the backpacks, unable to stop obsessing about whether I had put a juice box in everyone’s lunch box and if I had accidentally included a peanut-product that would send my daughter’s classmate into anaphelactic shock.
Fortunately everyone was happy to be at school, there were no tears, and as we left the final classroom, Husband and I gave each other high fives and issued joint little whoops of joy. A Father of the Year in front of us turned around and gave us a pointed look. “My wife hates this day,” he said. “She loves spending time with our kids.”
Now, I try not to let these sorts of incidents bother me - you know, these brief moments when other people make you feel like your children should be compensated for merely standing next to you. Coincidentally, something similar had happened the day before when I took my kids to Panera for dinner. As I ordered three chicken noodle soups, feeling actually quite proud that my little children adore eating chicken noodle soup, the Tyrant grabbed a bottle of water and threw it on the floor and the Pterodactyl pulled off my loose-waisted gauchos which I had worn because I felt bloated and the Diva was yelling, “I’ll get all the drinks, Mom!” So I was standing like a middle-aged washed-up hip hop artist with my underwear showing, trying to stash my credit card with one hand while using the other to keep the Tyrant from scratching my eyes out and barking at my kids to stay where I could see them, and the cashier gave me a superior saccharine smile and said, “Have a great evening!” She might as well have screamed at the top of her lungs, “I’M SO FUCKING GLAD I’M NOT YOU!” and started tossing muffin crumbs to my kids.
She was younger and shorter than me, so I threw back my shoulders, looked at her in feigned disbelief, and said, “Seriously?” Then I shook my head, laughed and walked away. And didn’t feel the least bit guilty when my three kids had a combined seven potty emergencies during the 35 minutes we were there.
One of the potty emergencies occurred en masse, as my children have developed some kind of weird simultaneous pooping osmosis. It shouldn’t be an issue at home since we have three toilets, but one of the toilets has a disconnected seat which has led to some awkward instability during business meetings. Consequently, some drama has occurred.
Anyway. Of course I love my kids, and I love spending time with them, particularly when they’re not calling each other “poopy pee-pee weiners” in public but, man, it’s nice to catch my breath every once in a while. And when the father at pre-school made that comment about his wife hating to send her kids back to school, the spirit of Miss Manners hovered over my shoulder and told me to smile and ignore him. But I had a lot of hot air that day, so I blew Miss Manners away, and I said to that man, “I guess she’s just a better mom than me.”

Should she go to Princeton? Or just get her G.E.D....

2009-08-23T08:44:00.000-04:00

Husband and I don’t argue much in front of the kids, mainly because it seems silly to add to whatever neurotic tendencies they’ll develop simply by living with me, but also because I’m nearly always right and I don’t want to constantly correct him in front of his children.
But the other night I was so right about something that I had to give him the dagger eyes while speaking to the Diva in a soothing tone through a clenched jaw. It wasn’t pretty.
It started because the Diva was counting up how many years she has until high school. She figured it out - she has 7 years until high school - then added, “and then after high school, I’ll go to college.”
And Husband said, “Right! If you want to go to college.”
At this point I might have blacked out for a minute, but I’m pretty sure my eyes bulged and my hand flew up to my chin to keep my jaw from falling to the kitchen floor.
I used my sweetest, most enthusiastic voice and said, “Of course she’ll go to college!” I turned to the Diva. “Daddy’s just teasing. Right, Daddy?”
Husband looked at me not at all sheepishly. “If she wants to,” he said.
Then the conversation devolved into a ridiculous “uh-huh” vs. “nuh-uh” type back and forth with the children watching intently like it was Pinky Dinky Doo and SpongeBob Squarepants involved in an angry game of badminton.
Husband got specific. What if she wanted to go into the military, he asked. Again, I had the whole eye-bulging, jaw-catching thing, but I controlled myself. “ROTC,” I responded. Suppose she wants to be a rock star, he countered. Conservatory of music, I replied.
Finally the Tyrant started screaming about something and the debate morphed into whether I should open a bottle of Cabernet or just have a beer.
Now, the truth is that I’m not terribly concerned about the Diva going to college. In my humble maternal opinion, she is the most beautiful child on the face of the planet and will obviously be a supermodel by age 17 and, it’s true, a rock star soon thereafter. But doesn’t it seem premature to already be giving her permission to ditch college? It seems a little like confirming that ketchup is indeed a vegetable before she’s old enough to appreciate tomatoes. Also, I don’t want her to get a big head.
I do find that I’m less worked up than I thought I’d be about my children’s futures, perhaps because I find other parents far too worked up about it. I don’t need my kids to make a ton of money to take care of me in my old age. I’m hoping my parents don’t expect that of me, though I’d be happy to check with our homeowners association about getting a trailer out back.
I’m much more focused on the happiness and well-being of my children, and on manners. I’ve always said that my kids might end up in juvenile court but, dammit, they’re going to say “yes, sir” and “no, ma’am” to the judge when the time comes to speak. Really, I think manners can take you far in this world.
Plus there’s the whole college fund issue, which we haven’t really addressed because we’re finding pre-school costs way too taxing. We keep hoping that, by the college years, our kids will be good at something so they’ll have a chance at scholarships. Maybe the Pterodactyl’s creative trash-talking indicates a propensity for basketball, or the Tyrant’s ability to accurately throw things at her brother’s head shows a talent for softball.
I’m afraid the Diva might be really good at dating, which presents a complicated set of problems and is another reason I’d like to set her sights on college ASAP.
A friend who has two little girls recently confided in me that he didn’t understand why people got so worked up over teenage pregnancy. He just wants his girls to be happy, he said, and if they have babies younger than expected, then he’s just fine with that.
I had to disagree, mainly because teenagers having babies, to me, means mothers of teenagers having to deal with babies ... again. And by that time I can promise I’ll be too tired to do it all again.
All of this means that I think it would be very nice if my kids went to college, and if they don’t, it better be because they found something better to do, which will be fine with me as long as they can be self-sufficient, at least for a while.
Because by then, I’ll just need a little time to myself. That, in my opinion, is what sending your kids to college is all about.

Should I get one? I'm taking a poll.

2009-08-21T14:31:00.000-04:00

Should I get a tattoo?
Husband and I have an ongoing debate about this, and I have promised him that I won’t do it. I’m not sure why he is so offended by the idea, but he doesn’t make many demands of me other than insisting I stay on my happy pills, so I feel like I should comply. Also, he’s worried a tattoo will get droopy when my skin gets old.
Even BFF has weighed in on the issue, sending me articles about how tattoos are “so ‘90s.” Of course, she already has a tattoo, so it’s possible she’s trying to thwart my efforts to be as trendy and hip as her.
But you know, the option just sits there, like the last Oreo left in the pantry. And I want it.
Normally this idea resides benignly in the back of my consciousness, but every so often something happens to propel it forward. Today, the propellor is Michelle Obama’s legs.
If you have better things to do than read about stuff that really doesn’t matter, let me clue you in. The media is in an uproar because Michelle Obama wore shorts when traveling on Air Force One on her way to the family’s Wyoming vacation. They weren’t short shorts, but nor were they long shorts. I’d call them medium. The hem hit her legs about mid-thigh. She appeared to be wearing a twinset with them, which I found a little strange, but whatever.
Now Michelle Obama does have some nice legs, though I don’t think they are as nice as, say, mine, for example, and she looked just fine in her shorts, as though she might be going to a neighbor’s backyard barbecue. Her bottom half was dressed for burgers and Bud Lite, and her top half was dressed for salmon and Chardonnay.
But some media types did not like the fact that she was traveling on Air Force One in casual shorts. They find it “inappropriate.” And I think the implication is that it was inappropriate for her age, which is 28 days younger than me. I am 45.
All summer long I have been tempted to buy myself some of those trendy short shorts to wear, but have been worried that it’s “inappropriate” for my age. But now I’m a little miffed that anybody thinks I can’t wear anything because of my age, so I’m going to go find some today that will hopefully be on sale since I will probably wear them once then give them away.
Same thing with tank tops, which I have been hesitant to wear for years because I was worried I’m too old to have my bra straps showing. But you know what? I now understand that the public at large knows that I wear a bra regardless of whether the evidence can be seen. I’ve talked myself into believing that it’s nearly sexist for me not to be able to show my bra straps. I have boobs! I have to wear a bra so I don’t get sweat marks on my shirt from my breasts bouncing on my stomach! So deal with it, people! And now I wear tank tops and dresses with skinny little straps and I don’t care who sees my bra, as long as the bra is clean.
I don’t think Michelle Obama’s shorts were particularly flattering on her, and they were a little wrinkled in the crotch area from sitting on the plane. I probably would have worn something else. But we’ll never know, as I could never be First Lady or probably even work as an air conditioning repairperson in the Oval Office due to that awkward little incident from my senior year in college.
The point is this: why does anybody care what she wore on the plane to Wyoming? And, by the way, maybe she had been wearing a skirt but little Malia got airsick and threw up all over her and all she had in her carryon was a pair of shorts?
And why can’t I get a small, tasteful tattoo?

Vacation Odyssey: The Final Installment

2009-08-18T14:36:00.001-04:00

MONDAY

It is the final day of the Vacation Odyssey. I will be sleeping in my own bed tonight after 16 days on the road.
The worst has occurred. At the moment I hate the words Mama, potty, hungry, thirsty, and the phrase “The DVD Player Broke Again.”
I’m currently drinking gas station coffee and feeding my pain with chocolate chip cookies and peanut brittle, which is not good for my cavity.
For the past two nights the Tyrant has slept with Husband and me, which is a bit like trying to sleep with a greased piglet. Every part of my body hurts, even the top of my foot, inexplicably.
We’re listening to Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face” for the 148th time this trip, since the Tyrant requests it every 30 minutes. It’s disconcerting to hear a 2-year-old sing, “Baby, when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun.”
“Do you think you’re the only one suffering?” Husband just asked me.
“Woe. Is. Me,” I said. In other words, yes.
We left the Cape Saturday morning.
Here I must insert the caveat that I love my in-laws dearly, and that I treasured my time with them. My kids spent quality time with their cousins, and I’m grateful they’ll have these memories of summer bonding with extended family.
However. I have never been so glad to say goodbye to a purported vacation mecca. So long, weathered gray shingles. Sayonara, federally protected conservation land. Good riddance, fried clam bellies. No more renting wet suits so my kids can swim in August just down the beach from seals. Seals! The water was cold enough for SEALS!
Get me back to Florida, where the gas stations sell beer and wine and the beaches are free and nobody wears shirts when being interviewed on television about hurricane preparation.
After leaving, we spent the first night with friends in New Jersey. We arrived to discover they were having a big party, a social custom which Husband and I vaguely recalled from our youth. Our friends are fabulous hosts, and the food ranged from seared tuna and roasted veggie sandwiches to hot dogs and wings. We tried to be polite guests, although the Tyrant pooped on the party deck 10 minutes before guests were scheduled to arrive and the Pterodactyl threw such a tantrum later in the evening that Husband took him into a closet to mute the sound.
The hostess had worked her ass off preparing for her fabulous party, and get this: when it was over, she went upstairs to bed. Her husband stayed up until 3 a.m. restoring the house to its pre-party state of organized perfection. Then he got up at 7:30 a.m. to make us homemade chocolate chip waffles for breakfast, and the hostess sent us off with a huge box of homemade chocolate chip cookies for the kids. I’ve eaten 11 of them so far.
Perhaps the best thing they did was convince us to take the Cape May ferry connecting New Jersey to Delaware and drive down the east coast of Delaware and through Ocean City, Md. It was a great day for a ferry ride, and the kids ate a hearty ferry lunch of nachos and Lucky Charms marshmallows.
Husband was excited to drive along the beach in Delaware because as a boy he spent several summers there with his grandparents. And we got to spend a lot of time there because the children staggered their potty needs so that we had to stop four times in 45 minutes. I am not making this up. But luckily one of the stops was at a McDonald’s next to a street sign marked Evergreen Road, and Husband by chance looked up and recognized it and so found the little beach shack his grandparents called The Monsoon. That little bout of nostalgia nearly mitigated the toxic conditions we endured in the above mentioned McDonald’s so that the Diva could eliminate four drops of pee from her bladder.
We stopped last night in Emporia, Va., a town which, if judged by its I-95 interchange, should be evacuated and burned to the ground. We stayed at a very pleasant highway hotel franchise. I suspect it was so pleasant because it was about five minutes old. Certainly the paper walls will fall down soon and the building will implode sometime next spring.
But the rest of it? Shit. Even the water tasted funny.
According to our current schedule, we should be home HOME HoMe HOME by dinnertime. First we have to stop at the kennel to pick up the dog. She has been there for 16 days. I’ll have to sign off soon to work on securing a second mortgage to pay for her stay. It will be hands down the costliest single expenditure of the so-called vacation.

TUESDAY

I am writing this from my very own living room. I have survived. I need the proverbial vacation to recover from my vacation. But that’s okay. Not only do I have renewed appreciation for my neurotic little life, I also have renewed appreciation for my chaotic little family. If I ever again have to be locked up in a motorized landfill for 55 hours with salt water taffy, Lady Gaga and four people, there are no four people I’d rather be with for the journey.
Truthfully, though, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Pneumonia and roaches and other vacation hazards

2009-08-11T13:32:00.000-04:00

The house we’re renting on Cape Cod is a cute little cottage except for the roaches, although the pest control guy claims they’re beetles but he agrees that they should not be inside.
Here’s what I don’t understand, however, about this Summer on the Cape phenomenon. Why is everyone so anxious to pay such a premium for so much inconvenience? Okay, it’s pretty here. But what am supposed to do? Besides go to the beach, which is a quarter mile walk along a busy narrow road with no sidewalk, and I can’t drive because you have to be a resident to park there and even if I had a resident sticker I’d have to wait for an hour for a spot.
But back to the house....it is a cute little house. Let’s put little in italics, for emphasis, particularly for nine people. Four big people and five rugrats. The real problem, however, is that when we arrived, it had not been cleaned after the previous renters departed. It was passable, because rental agreements stipulate that you have to leave the house “broom-swept,” whatever that means (Who are these people? Do you think I want to go on vacation to clean somebody else’s house?), but the bathrooms hadn’t been cleaned, the trash had not been emptied, there was even coffee left in the pot. There was a pair of dirty underwear under the bed. Two pairs, in fact. I mean, ick.
After several calls to the rental agency, the homeowner began calling. He called three times. No, he did not want to apologize for charging us $2,700 for the privilege of staying in his dirty house. He wanted to tell us that the rental agency had been feuding with the cleaning company and somehow our house didn’t get cleaned. But it wasn’t his fault.
He came over the next morning to tell us again that he understood this mess wasn’t our fault. Duh. But that it wasn’t his fault either. And that the cleaners would be there soon.
The cleaners came and cleaned the house and that was done. We went to the beach and swam in the frigid waters and dug in the sand, and felt temporarily very Cape Coddy.
Back at the house, the Diva told me her throat hurt. I gave her some ice water. That night at dinner, she told me she was cold. I gave her a jacket. She said she wasn’t hungry. I told her she needed to broaden her culinary horizons. Then I took her temperature. She had a fever of 102, and white pustules on her tonsils.
Husband reluctantly took her to the emergency room the next morning because I couldn’t get a
pediatrician’s office to answer the phone. There is one walk-in clinic that’s open evenings from 5-6:30 p.m., which I don’t find very helpful.
Anyway, the doctor took 45 seconds to diagnose the Diva with strep throat.
At the drug store, after I paid for the penicillin, I asked the pharmacist if he could recommend something to help with the pain in my increasingly throbbing cavity tooth. He said no, nothing other than ibuprofen, and he asked when we were headed home. “Saturday,” I said. “But we’re driving. To Florida.” He whistled.
“Who’s the penicillin for?” he asked. I told him my daughter had strep throat. He pointed at the Tyrant, who was with me. “No,” I said. “She has pneumonia.”
He shook his head, then said he’d be happy to recommend a good scotch.

The same night the Diva fell ill with strep, we arrived home from dinner just after dark. When my sister-in-law turned on the light in the basement bedroom where her two boys were sleeping, dozens of gross brown bugs scurried everywhere. My sister-in-law was, understandably, completely skeeved out by this, and she made her husband sleep in the basement with the bugs while the two boys slept with her in a queen-sized bed. She’s cranky now.
We called the rental company. They spoke to the owner who promised to send over the pest control company to spray enough chemicals to eradicate every known species of bug in the Northeast. We said no, thanks, but we’d rather our children not return to their homes as altered species.
Our 4-bedroom cottage is now a 3-bedroom cottage. Actually, last night it was a 2-bedroom cottage, since the upstairs bedrooms have air conditioning and the downstairs bedroom does not. All those rumors about the Cape having a cold windy summer? Put them to rest. The heat has arrived. Right now, I am writing at 5:30 a.m. while Husband, Pterodactyl, the Diva and the Tyrant pretend to indulge in restful sleep, all in the same bed.
The owner visited the morning after the bug discovery to announce again that this was not his fault because he pays a pest control company to handle this stuff. He did some vaguely threatening chainsaw work for about an hour then cut some of his hydrangeas and gave them to me as some sort of compensation. Then he showed up again last night at 9:30 p.m. to collect bug samples. At this point I think he is stalking us, and I’m going to take my boxing gloves out of the car and leave them in a prominent place.
Just to further complicate matters, the Pterodactyl is having a very rough time because most of his cousins are older and tend to exclude him from playing. He tussled with one younger cousin who bit his finger so hard I thought it might be broken.
I’m getting a little cranky myself. Husband said I barked at the children so loudly at the ice cream store last night that people actually stared. I have no memory of this. Also, I forgot to get my happy pills refilled before I left, so I am parceling them out sparingly.
And get this -- it’s only Day 3. We’re not even halfway through.

Note

2009-08-08T23:09:00.002-04:00

Vacation Odyssey #3 was posted a day late. Sorry. Hilton wanted $10 for wireless connection

Vacation Odyssey #4

2009-08-08T22:23:00.002-04:00

It’s the final day of travel to Cape Cod, and we are finally heading in that direction now at 10:29 a.m. We’ve been in the van for 21 minutes, and I’ve already taken the Tyrant to the bathroom at Stop & Shop, threatened to cut off the Pterodactyl’s hand and throw it out the window, and cried because the Diva didn’t like the DVD I bought for her. I’m exhausted.
It has been a long 15 hours and crankiness has infected everyone at some point. That might be partly because everyone’s a bit constipated as a result of Husband limiting liquid intake to avoid bathroom stops. Except the Tyrant, who is taking the antibiotic Augmentin for her pneumonia. Did you know that one of the side effects of Augmentin is frequent loose bowel movements? The Tyrant has been potty-trained for months. There has been some regression on this trip.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to stop in Hershey, Pennsylvania for the night. We were all excited to visit Hershey’s World of Chocolate, and it didn’t disappoint. Husband called it the greatest entertainment value in the history of America because....get this: it’s free. Free parking, free visits with the giant Reese’s character who looks like a square brown penis with eyes, free ride on the chocolate car which takes you on a tour of a fabricated chocolate factory. But here’s the catch: while you’re riding on the car, you’re breathing in some sort of chocolate heroin fog which makes you think you might die or kill someone if you don’t eat chocolate immediately. Then you exit through the gift shop. And the whole “free” concept goes to shit.
But still, it was fun, a little slice of Americana that I can paste in my mental scrapbook of Nice Things I’ve Done For My Kids.
It was after 9 p.m. by the time we pulled into the Hershey Hampton Inn. It was booked. So was the Days Inn, the Springfield Suites by Marriott, the Harrisburg Residence Inn, and the next four hotels we stopped at to beg for a place to sleep.
We just kept driving and feeding Hershey’s Kisses to the children until they fell into sugar comas and quit crying. We drove until after midnight.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the only hotel we could find was a really nice Hilton and the only rooms left had two double beds so I had to get two adjoining rooms and we all slept great. (Yes, cha-ching, cha-ching, if you’re counting.)
We all felt refreshed for about 15 minutes until the arguments began over who could have which complimentary beauty products. The Pterodactyl was nearly insane with envy because the Tyrant had a shampoo and a conditioner and he only had a shampoo, and only calmed down slightly when I found a shower cap for him.
Husband and I realized the boy was probably hypoglycemic and needed to eat. We all did. So before we left the hotel, we spent $36 in the gift shop for breakfast, not including the adorable heart-shaped mirrored compact the Tyrant stole.
We sat in the luxurious lobby living room and ate blueberry scones, a cold muffin, some fruit, potato chips, two pats of butter and a packet of mustard. The coffee was delicious. We watched guests arrive for some sort of fancy Indian wedding and admired the women’s colorful sparkly saris.
Finally we caravanned through the hotel to our car, lugging the recyclable Publix bags in which our stuff was packed and leaving a mustardy trail of potato chip crumbs behind.
Now we’re driving through New York City. We’re really, truly on the last leg of the first part of the journey. We should be on the Cape easily by dinner. What could go wrong?

Okay, here’s a glitch. It’s a gorgeous day in NYC, and every single person who owns a car is trying to escape via I-95. We will never get out of Connecticut. I’m on the verge of exiting the highway immediately, renting the first house I see and enrolling the kids in school. The Tyrant only sleeps when we play Poker Face by Lady Gaga so I’ve heard it 300 times in a row. The 3-pound supply of Hershey’s chocolate from Chocolate World is dwindling. If my trainer is reading this, consider me a major renovation project to undertake 10 days from now.

Okay, glitch #2. Sister-in-law just texted to me to say she had just arrived at the Cape rental house. She wrote: It’s going to be a long week.
Sigh.

Vacation Odyssey #3

2009-08-08T22:21:00.000-04:00

Day 2.
We all slept well. That’s the good news. And we’re on the road by 7:30 a.m. after a raucous breakfast that ended with my hooligans stealing approximately 400 tourist brochures for places we will never visit.
For the moment we’re quietly chugging along in our landfill, which is really beginning to smell.
“My lunch goal for the day,” I just said to Husband, “is for the kids to not eat chicken fingers and French fries.”
“Yes. I agree.”
“Maybe a Panera, or something.”
“Right. Because the Appalachians are full of Paneras,” he said. “God. Could you be any more suburban?”
“Well, honey. What do you think they’re going to eat at Mama’s Down Home Country Kitchen Diner?”
“Dirt. Or coal residue.”
So now we’re back to being quiet.

I’m thinking about the Diva asking me to explain Hamlet last night, and how she’s getting to the age at which she understands that bad things happen in the world. The other morning I was in bed reading the newspaper, and she was snuggled next to me watching television, which incidentally is one of the most awesome feelings in the world, when she said, “Mom!” in an urgent voice and pointed to an article in the paper. I looked where she was pointing, and saw the headline: Woman eats baby’s brain.
The Diva is a very good reader and it was too late to brush it off and tell her it was nothing. So I was stuck explaining to my 7-year-old that sometimes people get sick in their heads, like their brains don’t work right, and they think it’s okay to do terrible things. And she said, “Oh, right. My friend Jay told me there’s somebody at camp like that.” So I used that diversion to steer away from detailing the story of the woman who carved up her own 7-week-old infant and took a few bites of him.
This all makes me a little sad. I hate that I’ve got to stain, even slightly, her perennial sunny outlook on life. I particularly dislike introducing her to fear, even if it’s a healthy fear, the kind that keeps her safe from predators and prevents her from placing herself in dangerous situations. But I know it’s part of parenting. I keenly remember how I learned healthy fear. I was 7 years old, the same age as the Diva is now, when I broke the rules and rode my bike in the street. I got hit by a car. That showed me.
I certainly don’t wish that kind of lesson on my children. At the moment, I’m happy they’re safe in the back seat watching the Jetsons, and that their greatest fear is that we’ll spend the whole day in the car again, which we will.
Husband just found an NPR station. I’m going to sign off and look for a Panera.

Okay, succeeded in avoiding chicken nuggets for lunch. We had ice cream instead at the Natural Bridge Gift Shop in Virginia, and then we descended 34 stories into the earth to see some caverns, which were very cool. The Pterodactyl was fascinated, especially when we walked over some 2x4s and told him it was an underwater bridge. The Diva was bored to tears. Literally. She was cold. She was tired. She couldn’t see. She was scared. She only rallied when we left through the gift shop, but I’m proud to say we didn’t cave. Pardon the pun.

Vacation Odyssey #2

2009-08-06T23:24:00.001-04:00

Well, we’re five hours into our Vacation Odyssey Driving Trip to Cape Cod and Husband is already in the doghouse.
We are in Bumfuck, Alabama. Today’s headline in the Bumfuck Times is: Feeling Love -- More than 40 students dedicate life to Jesus Christ. On the plus side, Hank Williams apparently grew up around here.
We’ve actually only been on the road for three hours. Add onto that 45 minutes for breakfast, half an hour trying to extract ourselves from the Cracker Barrel Country Store, and half an hour trying to figure out how to insert the disc into the DVD player that Husband PROMISED HE’D FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE BEFORE WE LEFT ON THIS GOD-FORSAKEN JOURNEY.
Part of the problem may be that he decided yesterday that we’d leave Destin at 4 a.m. this morning so that the children could sleep part of the way. Then he bought a bunch of rum and served everyone Exotic Island Punch for the rest of the night.
He did get up at 3:30 a.m. to load the car. Then we carried the children to the car and strapped them into their seats. The Diva resumed slumber immediately. The Pterodactyl dozed off after about 20 minutes. The Tyrant fell asleep three hours later as we were pulling into the Cracker Barrel for breakfast.
We had a nutritious delicious breakfast. (Husband: eggs, biscuits, sausage, grits. Me: eggs, wheat toast. Diva: steak fries and three bites of chicken. Pterodactyl: bacon and butter. Tyrant: eggs, catsup, butter, gummi worms.)
Then we spent half an hour trying to drag our kids out of the Cracker Barrel store, which is like a retail glue trap. At one point, an employee actually walked up to the Diva and placed a giant purple monkey Webkinz in her arms and said, “Feel how soft!” Are you kidding me? Do you think I’m going to spend $20 on something that isn’t going to keep her quiet in the car for more than a nanosecond? Instead we bought candy they could suck on for a while.
Husband is pretending to be fascinated by everything he sees along the highway, including billboards, orange work barrels, hills, and the Hyundai manufacturing plant we just passed. “Wow,” he said. “Now that’s the kind of thing you just don’t see when you’re flying.” He added that he thought it would be really cool to take a tour of the plant.

I asked Husband about his target destination for the day. He doesn’t have one. I’m guessing we’ll stop at whatever point the DVD player stops working. Hopefully by that time, we’ll at least be out of Alabama, where you can still smoke in restaurants and highway road signs advertise the Alabama Division of the Sons of the Confederacy. Yikes.
My back hurts already from contorting myself around to: hand Pterodactyl a sippy cup, rub Tyrant’s leg, pick up Teddy when she throws it at my head, open the computer to the downloaded AAA Triptik, administer the Tyrant’s pneumonia medicine, and pick up Gummi Worms from the ground. Also, nothing perfects the art of coughing up phlegm like a little bout of pneumonia. So I am surrounded by baby wipes full of mucous that the Tyrant has spit into my hand or retrieved from her nose. Too bad the dog is in the kennel - used baby wipes are her favorite snack.

Okay, fast-forward to the night. We’re in a Knoxville, Tennessee Hampton Inn, having accomplished an 8-hour drive in a mere 13 hours. I thought we’d never get out of Chattanooga. But it seemed silly to be so close to Lookout Mountain and not go look out at it. Then it seemed stingy not to ride the Steepest Incline Train In The World, particularly when the Pterodactyl thinks trains are even better than potty talk. And then the Diva got carsick going up the mountain, the Tyrant plastered chewed-up Gummi Worms on her fingernails like nail polish, we all got cranky coming down the mountain, and after eating a late lunch at a fly-infested Wendy’s, we drove a little more and called it a day.
We walked along Knoxville’s riverfront, which was nice, and found a little Shakespeare in the Park and had some ice cream. The Diva inexplicably loved Hamlet and kept asking me what it was about. Like I know, just because I’m a writer.
It was a nice evening. Back at the hotel, the Tyrant's Teddy came up missing, and Husband had to light out into the night to search; he finally found it at the ice cream store, thank goodness, or I seriously would have canceled the rest of the vacation.
I’m really proud of us for getting through this day. I’d even be giddy about it if we didn’t have two more like it ahead of us. Five more, if you count the trip home. Tomorrow I’m going to calculate how much money we’re actually saving by driving instead of flying. My guess? Not enough.

A Vacation High

2009-08-04T14:50:00.001-04:00

A Mother of the Year I know is frequently posting Facebook status reports about her wonderful life with her handsome husband and beautiful children.
You know who you are. And I admit that occasionally I have had less-than-charitable feelings toward you because of your perennially sunny disposition and outlook.
I now understand that I have been jealous. I further understand that part of the reason your life is so great is that you look at your life as being so great.
This burst of enlightenment has come to me courtesy of a fortunate confluence of events. First and foremost is that I have finally managed to regulate both my happy pills and my hormones in a way that allows me to smile without grimacing and fold laundry without the urge to tie bra straps around my own neck.
Secondly, I am on vacation in Destin, Florida and currently writing this from a balcony overlooking the crystal aqua waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And my parents are paying for the condo.
Thirdly - and possibly most importantly - I think I might be maturing. After 4.5 decades of life, I think I have realized that the world doesn’t revolve around me. Nobody really cares about my crow’s feet or the fact that I wear the same clothes for three days in a row or whether I shave my legs. Life goes on for billions of people regardless of whether I’ve bounced a check or waxed my eyebrows or served my children cupcakes for breakfast.
Now, I know you’re thinking that I should have come to this conclusion many, many years ago. But I didn’t, mainly because I am at heart a pretty selfish person. In time, I think I will expound on the reasons I may have developed into a selfish person.
Right now, though, I’m just happy. Life’s not perfect: Husband just took the Tyrant to the urgent care clinic because she either has an ear infection or swine flu and is keeping us up all night with a tubercular cough. I have a cavity. I know it’s a cavity because I went to the dentist and he told me it was a cavity but I canceled my cavity-filling appointment because it interfered with a workout schedule, and now I’m paying the price. And I still have this 24-hour, 32-minute drive to Cape Cod looming before me.
But the coffee is strong, the wine is cold, the seafood is fresh, and the sisters are having fun together. The eye-rolling has been tolerably limited.
It’s a good day. I think I’ll go relax and wait for something to fuck it up.

Addendum: the Tyrant has pneumonia. That has definite fuck-up potential. But I’m looking on the bright side. It’s only in one lung.

Vacation Odyssey, Volume I

2009-08-01T22:58:00.001-04:00

I have great news. Today is the start of our two-week cross-country odyssey, which includes back-to-back extended family vacations and driving to Cape Cod in our motorized landfill which has 94,000 miles on it.
It is possibly the most fun you can have in a minivan with one overly-optimistic adult, one adult of questionable mental stability, two young children, one barely potty-trained toddler and no liquor.
Obviously this is not great news for me. But it is exciting news for those of you who like my blog, and even better news for those of you who, for whatever reason, have wished misery upon me. Your dreams are coming true as we speak.
We are currently driving to Destin, Fla., for a visit with my side of the family. It’s a 6-hour drive. We left our home at 10 a.m., and right now, it is 2 p.m., and we have traveled about 100 miles. There have been six stops so far - one to drop the dog off and go to the bathroom, one to buy a toy and go to the bathroom, one to buy food, one to just go to the bathroom, and two stops to buy food and go to the bathroom.
The morning began ominously. Upon waking, the Pterodactyl made the horrifying discovery that he had left his Leapster at the restaurant where we ate dinner last night. The Leapster was to be his sole entertainment for the road trip, other than eating sugar. But Hot Firefighter Husband jumped in the car and retrieved the Leapster, saving (a small part of) the day. When he returned, he left the Tyrant unsupervised near the luggage and she dug out the Diva’s Nintendo DS and broke it in half. First destination: to buy a new Nintendo.
After all the stops, we’re now cruising along with two of the three children asleep. The Tyrant threw two lollipops at my head so my hair is sticky, and there’s a strange flapping noise coming from outside the car that apparently wasn’t covered under last week’s $2,200 check-up. Husband is on steroids for burgeoning sinus infection and is already sick of me. He’s driving right now listening to his iPod with earphones.
But we’ll reach Destin before dinner and have a very nice time. Our condo is right on the beach and the kids will play with their cousins and we’ll have frozen fruity drinks every afternoon. The only wild card is my dad, who quit smoking for the 800th time a week ago and informed me yesterday that he still hates everybody, which is unfortunate, unless I can convince somebody to give up a little Ativan to slip into his coffee. Or beer.
No, the real fun will begin in a week, with our 1,519 mile trip to Cape Cod to congregate with Husband's side of the family. The AAA Trip Estimator puts our travel time at 24 hours and 32 minutes.
Visiting Cape Cod in the summer is an annual vacation, but we usually fly. This year, we (Husband) waited to long to buy airline tickets, and we (Husband) decided against selling a kidney to pay the last minute fares.
Husband has a nostalgic vision of car trips from his childhood, the longest of which was nine hours. “I’m having a great time!” he said to me at the last rest stop. “What could be better than being together as a family?” Then he bought me some coffee from a vending a machine.
Of course, he’s driving, listening to music with earphones, and I’m getting wet sticky candy beaned at my head and wrenching my back every 10 minutes trying to retrieve dropped items and address the Diva’s running list of questions and commentary: What’s a shoplifter? When are we gonna be there? My stomach hurts. Can you buy me the game Clue? I wanna be Miss Scarlet. Can I play a computer game? I’m ready to get out of here. I’m tired. What can I do?
Well, we’ve finally reached Tallahassee, averaging about 45 mph on the highway when you include all the stops. All children are asleep. The strange flapping noise has disappeared. I’ll sign off now. I must concentrate on convincing myself that I don’t have to pee.

A great diet I don't recommend

2009-07-29T22:16:00.002-04:00

I’ve always thought that I was one bout of botulism away from my ideal weight. I now know that I’m one-half of a bout of botulism away.
I feel certain my recent stomach woes came from a can of tuna salad. You know - the kind that’s already mixed together with mayo and junk so that you can eat it in your cubicle with crackers?
I ate it for lunch the other day, and every bite further confirmed my suspicion about its grossness. But I ate it anyway.
The queasiness began immediately. I had rinsed out the can and placed it on the counter so that I could recycle it, but every time I looked at it I was nearly overcome with nausea. So I threw it in the trash. But then every time I opened the trash I imagined the bad tuna fumes reaching up like long green fingers to shove more grossness down my throat.
By evening I was having hot flashes and cold sweats, which made me decide that all of my symptoms were due to hormone withdrawal. I had forgotten to refill my prescription two days earlier. So I called Husband and, again, hot firefighter to the rescue. He showed up in the ladder truck to deliver my hormones.
But it wasn’t the hormones. By evening I was puking violently while the Diva watched “iCarly,” occasionally yelling out to me “You okay, Mom?” and me yelling back, “Don’t come in here, honey!” and all I could think about was that fucking tuna salad can.
It’s possible, I guess, that I picked up some sort of stomach bug, but we are leaving for a vacation with my side of the family in three days and my mother is obsessively paranoid about stomach ailments. Even the mention of an upset stomach has my mom reaching for the Immodium or at least for the Pepto-Bismal. So I’m steadfastly sticking to my botulism theory, in part because it’s too late to arrange for my rented condo to be contained in sterile bubble wrap.
I am happy, though, that I’ve managed to drop three or four of the 30 pounds I’ll gain simply by being in the same zip code as my family. You know what I mean. Nothing says “family vacation” like the complete reversion to childhood paranoia and pettiness, and my adolescent obsession was being the fattest one in the family. Which I wasn't! Well, okay, I was. But now, here at home, I’m fit and healthy and comfortable in my skin. On family vacations, I am a raging wart hog with toilet paper stuck to my shoe. It’s nearly impossible, without a full-time therapist and serious psychotropic drugs, to overcome this innate transformation, though I’ll take any help I can get.
And with this in mind, I’ve got one thing to say about botulism. Bring it on.

Is it time to talk about sex?

2009-07-27T20:04:00.001-04:00

One day in 7th grade religion class, Elle started passing around a note.
Every girl who read it dissolved into giggles then passed it on. When the note came to me, I opened it up. It said: Did Joseph fuck Mary or did God fuck Mary?
I dissolved into giggles and handed the note to the girl next to me. Eventually Mrs. K. confiscated the note, and contorted her face while screaming, “DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY? WHO THINKS THIS IS FUNNY?”
I laughed because I was supposed to, but I didn’t really think it was funny because I didn’t know what fuck meant.
So I went home and found my mother in the laundry room and tearfully told her I thought I was old enough to learn the meaning of the word fuck.
Later that night, she gave me a couple of books she had been saving and we talked about it, and then I knew all about sex.
Ever since then, I have believed that I learned about the proverbial birds and bees far too late in life.
But now that it’s nearly time to start teaching the Diva about sex -- she’s almost 8 -- I’m thinking that she should never find out. Or that maybe I should just tell her, “Penises are really gross,” and leave it at that. But that wouldn’t work since I have a 4-year-old son who has a penis, and I don’t want her to tell him it’s gross, even though I prefer to think of his penis as more of just a little stick that pees and not an actual penis. (That’ll come to an end, too, I fear -- yesterday the Diva found a Black-Eyed Peas video online showing Fergie in a thong, and the Pterodactyl said, “I like her.”)
Call it residual Catholic guilt, sexual repression, whatever -- I know that I’m supposed to teach my daughter that sex is healthy and beautiful and something wonderful that occurs between two people who love each other very much, but I just don’t think I can do that when the truth is, the idea of a penis anywhere near her precious little ... um ... my Great Aunt Eva called it her pock-a-noose ... so the idea of a penis anywhere near her pock-a-noose makes me feel dizzy and weak and like I want to hurl. Seriously.
Yet I’m painfully aware that the time is drawing near. BFF’s son, who is even younger than the Diva, asker his mother last year where babies come from, and BFF told him a convoluted story about how the mom really loves the dad so the dad gives the mom a seed and the mom puts the seed in her belly and the baby grows. Of course he had all sorts of follow-up questions, like, where does the seed come from? Did you swallow the seed? Oh. My. God.
“Oh, no,” I told her. “Listen. Let me introduce you to the word ‘magic.’”
“You do not tell your children that babies come from magic.” She was aghast.
“Oh, yes I do,” I said. That’s also how I explain Santa Claus, rainbows, and how Papa’s bones got to heaven after he died.
I realize that the Magic Reasoning won’t -- and shouldn’t -- last forever, and as if to mock me I’m finding sexual innuendo in every children’s show I watch now. Last week the kids were watching “Max & Ruby,” a sweet insipid little cartoon about Max the bunny and his big sister, Ruby, with occasional appearances by Ruby’s friend, Louise. On this particular episode, the three little bunnies were playing doctor, and I hear Louise say in her gentle little bunny voice, “Okay, now, Max, Nurse Louise and Nurse Ruby are here to check you out! Open wide!” and I swear I had to glance over at the television to make sure they weren’t watching the Playboy channel.
Plus, the Diva is into watching sitcoms now, and I’m sure it won’t be long before iCarly or Hannah Montana or those idiot Suite Life boys have some sort of sexual escapade.
I’ll come up with something. In the meantime, if she asks me what fuck means, I’ll just tell her the truth: it’s what Mom says when she’s really really mad and she forgets to just say shit.

About the drinking, Part II

2009-07-25T21:04:00.001-04:00

Writing about my teen/young adult partying exploits resulted in some significant inward groaning, but it was pretty effortless. Lots of people have similar stories to tell, though not everyone can talk about launching the African Queen from its floating berth at the 1984 World Fair in New Orleans.
It’s much harder to write about how drinking affects my life now.
I suspect there are a number of people who read Part I and assume this will be a glowing endorsement of some 12-step program, a penitent account of how I came to realize the error of my ways.
That’s not the case.
I know a couple of people who don’t drink, never have. I know lots of people who don’t drink very much - Husband included. And I know several people who don’t drink anymore because they did realize the error of their ways and quit.
But mostly I know people like me, who like to drink and drink often and sometimes drink too much.
Husband and I don’t argue very much about serious stuff. I mean, we argue about the dishwasher (AGAIN with the dirty blender!) and whose turn it is to pick up dog crap in the front yard.
But here’s one thing we’ve fought about often: drinking.
It bugs him that I enjoy my wine. It bugs him less now than it did because I’ve come up with some rules. I’m always able to drive the kids to the hospital if I’m alone with them. I limit drinking before the kids’ bedtime so I won’t be too cranky while putting them to bed. I don’t get mad at Husband when, thinking I’m acting tipsy, he makes me eat something, or passes me a glass of water and tells me to drink it.
But I guess it’s still an issue, because we fought about this very column. Statistics say that at least one of our children probably will battle a drug or alcohol problem, he points out. How can we best prepare ourselves to deal with that eventuality? And is it okay for our children to grow up thinking that alcohol is something fun and whimsical and harmless?
Now I know you’re thinking - uh, if it’s causing problems in your marriage, and you have to come up with rules about it, you’ve got a problem.
Well, yes and no. Yes. But no. And I’m working on it, and I’ll do whatever I need to do to remedy the situation. Except, perhaps, what it takes.
My shrink once asked me if I’d ever thought of not drinking. “No,” I said. She looked at me sort of knowingly. I’ve been looking for a new therapist.
What is about drinking? It’s not like I even get drunk any more.

Okay, I’ll be honest with you, after that last sentence, I shut down the computer and met a girlfriend for drinks. And, unfortunately, we met at Pusser’s and it was half-off all wine, and it seemed downright irresponsible not to just get a bottle. Getting the second bottle was definitely irresponsible, but by that time a third friend had joined us, and after all we were celebrating my friend’s first grandchild. I’m pretty sure my friend was desperate to prove that she’s not yet grandmotherly, which she isn’t (she’s six months younger than me!), and so I felt obligated to help her feel young and vibrant and still able to party.
The next morning I woke up with a hangover. When you’re my age and at my alleged level of maturity, you don’t like to think of yourself as having been drunk, and you come up with a number of reasons for why you have a hangover. On that day, yesterday, I reminded myself that I had not eaten anything for many hours before I started sipping wine. When my friend and I realized we needed to eat, we ordered rare ahi tuna. So for dinner I had wine and raw tuna. Then I arrived home an hour and a half late -- babysitter wasn’t too happy -- ate four oatmeal raisin cookies, four Advil and a bite of cold pizza, and fell asleep in my clothes. And I broke rule #1.
On the bright side, I did a killer workout the next morning at the gym to sweat out the toxins and my guilt and did not have any wine at all yesterday or today.
Why did I do that? Why do people drink? There’s tons of research on that, and I can only speak for myself. I consider myself a “social drinker,” but what does that really mean? That I don’t do shots any more? Which I don’t.
Again, the real issue here is how all of this affects my children. The Diva, now 7, has definitely reached the age at which she’s aware that there’s something attractive and mysterious about “grown-up” drinks. Yesterday while I was cleaning the kitchen, the kids were playing family and I heard her tell the Tyrant, “Ok, honey, the babysitter’s here. Mommy and Daddy are going out to have cocktails.” But I’m not alone here. My BFF’s son named one of his imaginary friends Chardonnay. Though really, my friend’s more of a Pinot Grigio gal.
I wonder sometimes what my life would be like without drinking. Better? Boring? Would I play more board games? See more movies? I do think I would lose 10 pounds pretty quickly, and that’s an attractive motivator.
I don’t think I’ll find out anytime soon, though I haven’t ruled it out. I think my lifestyle -- kickboxing instructor and full-time mom -- keeps my drinking issues in check. I’m healthy and I love being strong of body and mind, and on the vast majority of nights I go to bed early and sober and wake up rested and happy. But I really like having a drink or two, and on the rare occasion, three or four.
I wonder if I’ll change my habits when my children are teenagers, and I believe that if I have to, I will. Husband is hoping that the Diva, who was born in Vietnam, has the somewhat common Asian trait of being allergic to alcohol. Sometimes, frankly, I wish I had it, too.
(Man, this was hard to write.)

About the drinking, Part I

2009-07-22T09:49:00.001-04:00

About the drinking.
Part I
I entered high school in 1977. Across the nation it was a time of bell-bottoms and tie-dye. At my Uptown New Orleans private school, it was the age of the preppy. The cool girls wore LaCoste shirts and straight leg corduroy pants. The cool boys wore the same thing.
One of my first dates was with a boy named Mike. I really wanted to hang out with the straight-leg crowd. Mike had a lot of feathered black hair, a huge Italian nose, and ... bell-bottoms. And polyester shirts. But he was so darn nice, and he adored me.
I was 16 years old, it was summer, and on Wednesdays it was 50 cent hi-ball night at a bar called The Boot, which is where lots of Tulane University frat boys hung out. Mike took me there. I went up to the bar and ordered a hi-ball. “I’d like a hi-ball,” I said. The bartender just looked at me. “Uh, what kind of hi-ball?”
The question stumped me. That’s how young I was. I thought the hi-ball was a drink. I eventually ordered a screwdriver, and then I got really drunk and ended up with a hickey on my neck that my mother noticed before I did. Which was awkward.
I often think of that night as the beginning of my formal relationship with alcohol. The high school years were a blur of bars and “open parties” by kids whose parents were out of town and to which everyone was invited. We all knew the drill regarding area bars: Shanahan’s checked IDs but nearly always took fake ones; Fat Harry’s never checked; Nick’s was nothing more than a long stretch of plywood - you could stand in the parking lot while someone else bought you a drink; ATIIs was pretty strict, but if you had a date who knew the bouncer you could get in. Nick’s, incidentally, had the most amazing concoctions. My sister’s favorite was the Wedding Cake, which I swear to you tasted just like wedding cake.
We drank astounding amounts for teenagers. And most of us could drive - the drinking age in Louisiana back then was 15. Designated drivers were - well, what were they exactly?
The only hard part was acting sober upon returning home, though usually my parents were asleep and I could sneak to my room. But when that got too taxing, there was always Leesa’s house. Remember Leesa, who stole my date at my prom? (See Prom in New Orleans, June 8). Leesa’s mother and father were bona-fide artist hippies, and seemed to think Leesa could make her own decisions, which was not true, but that wasn’t my problem. Anyway, we often told our parents we were spending the night at Leesa’s house because Leesa didn’t have a curfew. We didn’t exactly spend the night there, since we usually didn’t get home until 4 or 5 in the morning. But we did spend the morning there, and nursed our hangovers with Tab and donuts.
Frankly it was exhausting. I think my mother thought college would calm me down. But Irish Catholic schools with enormous football traditions aren’t known for their staid atmospheres. At Notre Dame, our freshman year resident assistant gave us sage advice: All men are shits, and don’t drink the Flanner punch.
Of course I drank the Flanner punch, and (re)-discovered for myself that all men are shits. And that was just the first semester.
By sophomore year, I had been appointed chair of the Tailgating Committee, and was in charge of securing kegs before every home game to raise money for our dorm. My aunt has a great picture of me sitting on a keg handing out cups with dozens of guys handing me dollar bills. It gave me some solid retail experience.
By the time I graduated from college, I had been grossly, awfully drunk more times than I can count. There are dozens of legendary stories -- the time I was making out in the dorm’s common room with some guy, but kept running upstairs to throw up and brush my teeth before returning to make out some more. The fist-fight with a guy in the parking lot. The spontaneous midnight road trip to the Kentucky Derby with -- um, is who I went with even important?
I thought about how much I drank, particularly on Sunday mornings when I felt near death. I occasionally looked at literature about how to tell if you were an alcoholic. Inevitably, the pamphlet would ask 10 questions, starting with, “Do you ever have a drink before noon?” I never drank before noon, so I always told myself I was fine.
I was an expert at nearly all drinking games. Quarters was my specialty because I have a particularly perfect nose; a quarter rolls off of it at just the right angle to bounce into a shot glass.
I never wanted college to end, but thank goodness it did. After college, I held several years worth of jobs conducive to partying. I traveled in Europe and worked in a London pub; was a tour guide in the Louisiana swamps (partied after the tours, not during); and then, I worked for two years on the Mississippi Queen steamboat.
On the MQ, we worked 12-hour shifts. The remaining 12 hours were spent drinking, either in the crew rooms or on shore when the boat was docked. My favorite party boy was Thomas the chef; during one shore outing in Greenville, Mississippi, we found a juke joint way outside the city. My clearest memory of the excursion starts with us dancing on the bar and ends with us hitchhiking back to the dock and leaping to the deck after the lines had already been untied.
In 1988 I was accepted to the Masters in Journalism program at Boston University, and re-acquainted myself with people who actually read books. My seminal moment came during a discussion about that year’s presidential campaign pitting Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis against the first George Bush. Kitty Dukakis, the governor’s wife, had just admitted to being an alcoholic because she had “blacked out” a couple of times after drinking.
I remember making fun of her for claiming to be alcoholic. “Really. Who hasn’t ever had a blackout?”
There was a pregnant pause. “I haven’t,” said one friend.
“Me, neither,” said the other.
I still can see the light bulb that appeared in my brain at that moment, with the words, “Hmm. You should think about this.”
I’ve thought about it ever since.
I realize much of this story has entertainment value, but I don’t recall these chapters of my life proudly, or even fondly. To paraphrase modern lexicon, it simply is what it is, and for better or for worse has become a part of me.
More about that in Part II.

On feeling old in my head

2009-07-20T11:24:00.001-04:00

Husband and I had a date last night, and we were walking to a restaurant near the beach when a gaggle of drunk young women spilled out of a poolside bar into the parking lot.
One of them yelled, “Hey, look at this!” and she pulled down her white bikini bottom and lifted up her beach cover-up. She had a substantial white dimply ass with some sort of tattoo.
This went on. She walked across the parking lot -- waddled, really, since her bathing suit bottoms were around her knees - sipping a drink and wiggling her bare butt, which wiggled quite a bit, mooning the block. Her friends were howling. Husband feared the image was burning into his brain.
I have never been into looking at asses under the best of circumstances, with the exception of clean baby butts, which are of course adorable. But other than that, really, I can do without seeing anybody’s rear, including my own. I don’t even want to see the ass of Brad Pitt, though I would probably be fine looking at it if it was wearing tight jeans.
But here I was staring at a particularly unattractive ass on a drunk girl. And there were a dozen thoughts that could have been going through my head, ranging from: “that poor girl, she must have been drinking on an empty stomach,” to “Quick, honey, call the police.”
This is what I actually thought: I’m so old.
We all know the traditional ways to recognize the onset of middle age, and frankly, though occasionally disarming, they’ve not been terribly upsetting. The Diva likes to ask me to raise my eyebrows so she can run her fingers over my forehead furrows. She thinks that’s hilarious. I have a few gray hairs, but nobody notices because I yank out the noticeable ones. And I have the normal aches and pains, but really I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, and in better shape, too. I sort of have to be, since I am 45 years old and have a 2-year-old. How am I going to hold her down in time out if I haven’t adequately built up my triceps?
No, the real surprise has been watching myself get old in my thoughts, in my perspective on things like drunk girls taking off their pants in parking lots, or my attitude toward modern teenagers. At least four times a day I find myself thinking, KIDS THESE DAYS! and then thinking, I’m turning into a cranky old shrew.
At the Diva’s day camp, for example, one of her teeny-bopper camp counselors mouthed off to me the other day while I was trying to console the Diva regarding her confusion about how to get in line to climb the rock wall.
“Uh, I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said, irritated, with hands up, palms facing me, like he wanted to push me out of the authoritative orbit he envisioned around him.
I had just come from my boxing class. I wore my all-black workout gear and my bandana doo-rag, and it took all my willpower not to push out my chest and say, “You talkin’ to ME?” I did manage to wag my finger at him, though, menacingly enough that he took a step back.
And I walked away thinking KIDS THESE DAYS!
In my defense, though this probably sounds like more evidence of my shew-like aging process, I do believe modern parents have been way too focused on fostering self-esteem in their children without teaching them basic manners, how to tie their shoes, and the importance of society’s hierarchy - as in, let old people have your seat and don’t talk to almost-old people as though they were stupid.
On the bright side, I have more patience, and didn’t summon the manager at the grocery store yesterday when the bag boy said, “Jeez, what do you give those kids to eat, pure sugar?”
I just rolled my eyes at him and said, “This is what kids are like. Consider it birth control.” And in my head I added, “....in the off chance that anybody wants to have sex with a skinny little doofus twerp like you.” But I kept that to myself, of course. Which is one of the things I’ve learned to do in my 4.5 decades on the planet.
Similarly, I did not shout something obscene at the bottomless drunk girl careening around the parking lot last night. Husband and I simultaneously made the “tsk, tsk” sound and ushered each other forward like an old married couple. The only thing missing was a hand-knit shawl around my shoulders to protect me from the night air.
I must tell you, however, that after the incident made me feel old, it made me think about drinking, and embarrassing myself when drinking, and the fact that it’s high time I came clean about that. Stay tuned.

Why do I blog? Do you care? Thanks! I knew it.

2009-07-17T14:10:00.000-04:00

“Do you work?” the woman asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I work in the laundry room.”
She gave me her best patronizing smile, and clarified her question. “Do you have a job?”
Feeling generous, I threw her a slow-moving softball. “I’m a writer.”
“Really? What do you write?”
Zing! Outta the park!
I wanted to put my arm around her shoulder and whisper conspiratorially. “Listen,” I’d say, “here’s the deal. I do manual labor all day, except when I’m watching “The View.” Mostly I write checks, but now I write a blog, along with 12 million other people, and the .00007 percent of the U.S. population that reads my blog seems to like it. (Yes, I worked out that figure, though my math is undoubtedly faulty.)
Everybody seems pretty tired of hearing about how hard full-time mothers work. I’m a little sick of it myself. Frankly, I feel very fortunate that Visa, American Express and my Husband have all collaborated to make it possible for me to stay home with my children. Of course it’s hard work, even physically demanding at times. Just yesterday I had to throw the Pterodactyl over my right shoulder to drag him out of summer camp while holding the Tyrant with my left hand, which quickly went numb.
More taxing, though - at least for me - is coming to terms with who I am, redefined. I once won national awards for my writing, held the title of university professor, and helped launch a community-wide service organization that continues today.
Yesterday’s big accomplishments included pulling the rest of a coloring book out of my dog’s butt, stealing a 15-minute nap, and taking the Tums away from the 2-year-old before she ate more than one.
When I graduated from college, my dear friend Kay and I said tear-filled goodbyes on the steps of our dorm. “I’ll vote for you when you’re running to be the first woman president,” I sobbed.
“You go find your Arabian prince,” she sobbed back.
See, her dreams were a little loftier than mine. Kay has achieved something close to her goals. She’s not The President, but she’s a president - of a public relations firm. She constantly emails me from exotic locations. She travels the world doing glamorous things and looking fabulous.
I did marry a prince - a metaphorical one, and he doesn’t have a kingdom, and he’s not Arabian, though he has a nice olive complexion. But what I really wanted, even then, was to be a writer, the type of writer whose words rested on the tips of everyone’s tongues, who appeared on “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” and caused traffic jams at book readings.
Well, I’m not that kind of writer, at least not yet. But I am the kind of writer I should be - the kind who simply has to put words together in order to feel complete. Telling people I blog, I must tell you, is a little embarrassing at times, much like it’s embarrassing to tell people you’re a writer. For me, it’s tantamount to saying you’re unemployed.
But I’m moving past that perception because it just feels so good to do this. I love being a mom, except for the parts involving cleaning toilets, chopping raw chicken, little boys peeing in the flower garden in front of the preschool, poop in public pools, siblings hitting each other, and head lice.
And I love being a writer, except for the parts involving people asking me about being a writer. In other words, I know I have a pretty good life, having two jobs, both of which actually cost me money.
Husband once told me that I didn’t have to be extraordinary. Then he amended his statement before I jumped all over him for it. “What I mean is, some of the most ordinary people live the most extraordinary lives.”
I like that. So that’s what I’m aiming for. Nonetheless, the next person who asks me what I do will get no ammunition.
“I’m unemployed,” I’ll say. And reasonably proud of it.

Not without my daughter - and another chicken taco

2009-07-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

Two years ago this month, I was living in an apartment in a nice section of Guatemala City.
It was a cute little spot, not far from the main avenida, with several little restaurants and shopping areas nearby. It was very safe. It was extra safe, in fact, because the International Olympic Committee was holding its annual meeting a block away to decide the venues for upcoming Winter Olympic games, and there were soldiers with machine guns on every corner. So it was very safe in a terrifying sort of way.
My infant daughter and I had just been released from a Guatemalan hospital, where she had been treated for viral pneumonia, a staph infection in a weeping wound on the back of her head, thrush in her mouth, dehydration, malnourishment and chronic diarrhea. She wasn’t really an infant anymore -- she was 9 months old -- but she weighed just 11 pounds and she didn’t smile, so she was very babyish. I slept in the bed with her every night because she wouldn’t let go of my hand, and I learned how to say, “Can you check this I.V.?” in Spanish. The coffee was excellent.
My Guatemalan attorney - let’s call her Idi Amin - told me to just go home and let her handle everything, but Husband and I decided that this skinny little unsmiling urchin simply needed us. Plus, the doctor said she would die if she went back to the orphanage.
We rented the apartment so that we could take care of her while we waited for the paperwork to clear. Husband stayed home in the U.S. to take care of the other two children, though he came down once so I could fly back to see them.
On pleasant afternoons, I’d stroll the baby -- she wasn’t yet the Tyrant - down to the Taco Tico for lunch, where I’d chat with Mario the manager and order the chicken tacos. During one particularly surreal dining moment, I sipped my El Presidente beer, ate my tacos and listened to “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” on the stereo system. Mario knew the words.
It would have been a nice little life, had I not been 2,000 miles away from my family and desperately fearful of Idi Amin coming to steal my child. Also, the machine guns kept me slightly on edge.
Though the baby slept a lot, I was very busy keeping all her medications organized, at least at first. After she got better, I stayed busy getting to know her. We watched “Good Morning, America” every day together. Actually, we watched it about 12 times a day, because that’s how often The American Network played it.
One day, Idi Amin called to say that she was going to visit the judge who had the power to sign my paperwork and let us go home. I don’t like to hate people, but if Idi Amin was in a room with me, I would feel perfectly comfortable chopping off her arms. But at the time, she had legal custody of my daughter, and I had to constantly reassure her that she was indeed the most brilliant, compassionate, powerful woman to ever walk the planet.
After she called, while the baby napped, I got on my knees and began to pray. I had not prayed in a long time, and I was not convinced that it would do any good, but it was all I had. Next door to my apartment a political rally was being held, so the background to my fervent pleas to God was a lot of fervent Spanish chanting.
I cried until I began to heave, and heaved until I choked. I knew we would never leave this child, but I couldn’t fathom how we could make this work.
The judge did not sign my paperwork that day, nor that week, nor the next. She didn’t sign it for four more months, in fact. By that time, I had returned home and left the baby with a family I’d met through friends of friends. She was far outside of the city, away from the hands of Idi Amin, and I returned to Guatemala to check on her every three weeks.
The baby was 13 months old when she came home to us for good, and ruined the Pterodactyl’s life. But that’s another story entirely.

How do I love thee? More than I like you, sometimes

2009-07-12T21:26:00.000-04:00

During the Pterodactyl’s third year, I took him to the pediatrician with some alarming symptoms.
His temper tantrums had come to resemble volcanic explosions, complete with rumbling and the spewing of liquid. He was completely unreasonable and occasionally downright mean (not unlike how he is now, in fact, at age 4).
And his little voice was so raspy, it pained me.
Dr. M examined him from head to toe. “Well,” he said. “He’s hoarse and raspy because he screams so much. And he screams so much because he’s 2.”
So the diagnosis was that my boy had a terrible case of the Screaming Meanies. It’s apparently a chronic condition because he still suffers from it. It doesn’t make me love him any less. But let’s be frank: there are lots of times when I’d rather not be around him.
Having children is a constant battle of contradictions. Your heart expands impossibly, and sometimes feels like it might explode into a millions shards of love. It can be painful. I remember biking over a bridge when the Diva was a baby, and suddenly becoming paralyzed with the fear that the Diva might grow up and fall off that bridge one day.
Yet the love, ever-present, can be tempered by....resentment?....no, let’s call it extreme frustration and exhaustion. Just yesterday, I left the house to walk the dog, and the Tyrant pressed her tiny nose to the living room window and threw me kisses goodbye. She smiled her best smile, and did a little dance and waved at me, never taking her eyes from mine. As I walked the dog, I was struck with the possibility of being hit by a car and never seeing her again, and my love for her felt like it was the blood in my veins, running through my body and nourishing it with life.
Ten minutes later I found her naked, eating lipstick and throwing dollhouse furniture at the Pterodactyl. The blood-love turned to gelatin and I suddenly needed a long solitary nap.
We love our children so much. And there are times when we can’t stand them. It’s the part of motherhood no one tells you about - that your 7-year-old will say “whatever,” when you ask her about her day, that your son will learn to incorporate the words poopy, weener and pee-pee into every lullaby he knows and that your toddler will learn how to climb up on the counter, open the medicine cabinet and help herself to some Tums. Or that while you’re on the phone, the children will decide to play a violent rendition of musical chairs to Lady GaGa’s Poker Face and the baby will beat a lizard to death with a diving stick.
Last night, we took the trolley down the beach, and the Pterodactyl, obsessed with all things that move, was beside himself with excitement. “Look, Mom! I see a lake!” he shouted as we rode past the retention pond behind Target that we pass every single day. His sense of wonder made me weak with adoration. Later that night, at a restaurant, he stole his sister’s crayon, dropped his lemonade on the floor, drew all over the Diva’s picture, and locked everyone out of his room when we got home. Classic Screaming Meanie.
But he’s my Screaming Meanie, and I couldn’t possibly love him more.

Why I haven't written, or why I am a bitch

2009-07-09T07:38:00.001-04:00

I haven’t written anything in several days. I’m sure the two or three of you keeping track assume I’m occasionally too busy being a domestic goddess to keep up with my blog.
But that’s not it. The truth is that the prescription for my happy pills ran out a week ago, and my primary care physician wouldn’t refill it without an office visit. I like my doctor, but there are a couple of issues. One, since I moved he’s an hour away. And two, he can’t ever see me right away, which means I’m inevitably stuck talking to the P.A., who takes my blood pressure and asks me if I’ve had any suicidal thoughts. Of course, the only ˜†˜¥
¢ ´˜∫∫†∞(I’m leaving those symbols in because the Tyrant just wrote them with her toes)
suicidal thoughts I’ve had are the result of running out of my happy pills, but I just smile politely and say, of course not! He is now my ex-doctor.
Anyway, Prozac is supposed to stay in your system for a while even when you’re not taking it, so perhaps my panicked irritability is psychosomatic. If so, I pronounce myself a mental Goliath, because let me tell you, I make a convincing raving lunatic. Yesterday, Husband took apart the baby crib and built the Tyrant’s big girl bed, took apart the futon and moved it into the guest room, put together the bookcase I’ve been asking him to build for months, vacuumed the house, cleaned the kids’ bathrooms and let me go to the gym from 6-8 p.m., a time also known as the “witching hour.” And you know what I did? I took some time for myself and then berated him for putting the blender in the dishwasher without asking me if I needed it first.
Yes, I am the wife from hell. Or I can be. If I was a man I would have left me a long time ago.
Envision me, right now, raising my hand to be called on and meekly offering, by way of a defense, that I do suffer from a mental illness. Over and over I’ve been diagnosed with depression. What do I have to be depressed out? Well, nothing. That’s why it’s classified as a disease.
Millions of people suffer from mental illnesses far more debilitating than mine. But for me, living with untreated depression is like having a severe head cold that won’t go away. I can function, but it’s really unpleasant, and I’d rather be in bed.
The combination of medication, regular strenuous exercise and a healthy diet keep my little problem manageable, and now that my medicine cabinet has a full bottle of little green pills, I’m much more apt to smile at my children and ignore them when they take every clean sheet out of the linen closet to build a fort. Just this morning, in fact, at 5:15 a.m., I found the Tyrant sitting on the kitchen floor digging through my purse.
It was all just fine. In fact, it gave me something to write about.
Happy day.

Don't ask, don't tell. It's gross, okay?

2009-07-04T13:57:00.003-04:00

I am a big believer in “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” It makes a lot of sense to me on many levels, none of which have anything to do with gays in the military.
Well, maybe it has a little to do with gays in the military. I believe homosexuals and heterosexuals have the same inalienable rights, including the right to sign up for years of bad food, poverty wages and travel to war-ridden lands.
But I’m not going to ask gays about their sex lives -- and I certainly don’t want them to tell me about it. I’m not, in fact, going to ask anyone about their sex life, and this applies to all public figures (particularly, it seems, governors) suffering from incurable verbal diarrhea. Please pardon the profanity here, but they have got to shut the fuck up. It’s bad enough that they cannot control their equipment. But let’s face it -- they’re hardly alone in that respect.
What makes them so spectacularly unique is their predilection for trying to explain. I was ready to believe Gov. Mark Sanford was misquoted when he said that though his mistress is his “soulmate,” he’s trying to work things out with his wife. Then I heard it with my own ears. Seriously? Is his wife a blow-up doll? Because that’s the only way I can imagine it working at this point.
Then former New York governor (and serial john) Elliott Spitzer weighed in on the Sanford affair. While trying to defend the indefensible, Spitzer pointed out that “at least” he didn’t fall in love with the hooker he was screwing. That seemed a little self-righteous for a man who so recently lost the respect of nearly every person on the planet. Did Harvard not offer any classes on the Basics of Discretion?
So it’s convenient that the Obama administration is scrutinizing “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” I believe it’s high time the phrase be taken out of the military realm and applied to the general population. Do not misconstrue this as a way of excusing indiscretions such as adultery and improperly using taxpayer dollars to be skanky. Gov. Sanford, I am not going to ask you how many times you had sex with your girlfriend from Argentina. Please, in return, don’t tell me.
I know this will be difficult to enforce because, in my experience, men love to share details. I know a few men, in fact, who are perfectly comfortable sharing such intimacies at cocktail parties, baseball games, and in grocery lines -- often with people they barely know . It provides for some hilarity, of course, especially when alcohol is involved. Still, I must say I find it appalling.
I’m not sure I want Husband indicating to anyone that he finds me attractive, much less admit that we’ve ever had sex. And the same goes for the intricacies of our relationship. If he needs to work out some kinks during those rare (okay, frequent) times when I am indisputably unlovable, he can talk to one or two friends who have been approved by me for that purpose. Otherwise, he must keep it to himself. And in the event that things don’t work out between us, after he’s released from the hospital he certainly can’t go on national television and announce to the world that he’s fallen out of love with me, regardless of whether he says it with a twinge of regret.
So today, on the Fourth of July, when Americans worldwide are celebrating our independence and the freedom we have to express ourselves, I’d like to suggest that we also celebrate our freedom to be quiet. Really. C’mon. Just shut the fuck up.

Stay-cation, Part II: the partial suck

2009-07-02T20:48:00.000-04:00

The Tyrant slept in until 7 a.m. yesterday morning, and then she entertained herself while I drank coffee and read the paper in bed.
We’ve turned a corner, I thought happily. Every few minutes she would run into my bedroom and check in with me before scurrying off to do her business. I was finishing entire articles and even contemplating world affairs.
On the fifth or sixth check-in, she seemed very excited. She spoke a lot of gibberish, pantomimed doing a shot of something, then ran out. I thought I should investigate.
She somehow had toppled my purse from the kitchen counter, dug through it and found my emergency supply of Benadryl. (I have kept an emergency supply of Benadryl in my purse ever since the Tyrant sat in a fire ant pile last month.)
She managed to twist off the top and take a swig. And boy, was she proud of herself. “I did it! I did it!” she shouted about a thousand times.
Well. I decided I shouldn’t tell Husband about this due to the recent multi-vitamin incident, which really wasn’t my fault because it was SUPPOSED to be a childproof cap, but I told him anyway and he wasn’t happy. It might have set the tone for Stay-cation Day #2.
I really wanted to leave for the zoo by 9 a.m., but Husband’s previously mentioned clean floor fetish got in the way. In addition he was moving super slowly because he had suddenly developed some sort of chest infection, which made me angry.
I consider it one of my most critical faults that I become infuriated when Husband is sick. As soon as he starts with the coughing and achy business, I start my eye-rolling. I am not sure why I’m like this. It’s possibly because he doesn’t seem able to distinguish between being really sick -- I-can’t-get-out-of-bed-sick -- and what I call “man-sick,” which is more like Boy-I-wish-I-felt-a-little-better-sick. So I never know whether to ban the children from his room and cook some homemade soup, make sure the life insurance payments are current, or just smile sympathetically as I leave him with a couple of kids. Really, if he ever develops some serious illness, I may have to kill him.
At any rate, we finally left the house at 10:24 a.m. We stopped at Starbucks. The Tyrant was well-behaved in light of the Benadryl. After getting back on the road, I was in the middle of telling Husband a very important story involving the previous evening’s Pterodactyl meltdown when he spilled some iced latte down the front of his white t-shirt.
It shook him up, possibly because the chest infection was already spreading to his brain. I kept reminding him we were going to the zoo, for pete’s sake, and who would care? But I could tell he wasn’t going to move past it, so I purposely spilled some coffee down the front of my white shirt, too, which made him smile a little bit but really pissed me off. Because I had looked a bit put together for a zoo trip, but now looked like a slovenly matron who’d never heard of bleach.
Now here’s the surprising part: we enjoyed our time at the zoo. The Diva and the Pterodactyl especially appreciated when the gorilla peed right in front of them, and the Tyrant still hasn’t stopped talking about the size of that gorilla’s butt.
I enjoyed it, too. Lovely birds everywhere, beautiful foliage, what’s not to love? Aside from the Benadryl and coffee incidents, I thought it was a decent day.
Today, the chest infection became a member of the family. It waffled between glueing Husband to the bed during Wimbledon and helping him thrust the mop over the immaculate floors, after which it temporarily expanded into something like pneumonia. It is currently watching a Cubs game and considering what to have for dinner, but I expect it to carry Husband to bed very soon, certainly before it’s time to take out the dog.
The big activity for the day was going to the library. The Diva checked out books about Barbie, fairies, Rapunzel and Paula Deen’s home cooking. The Pterodactyl picked books about bridges, airplanes and volcanoes. Right now they’re reading the books to the giant stuffed elephants they bought at the zoo.
The chest infection will accompany Husband to work tomorrow, of course, which leaves me in charge of the final day of Stay-cation. I’m not going to be very ambitious. I’ve learned my lesson. Adventure Landing, the zoo, the library -- all worthy field trips. But the Pterodactyl pointed out in his inimitable way that he and his siblings are not impressed with the glamorous life. At the zoo, I tried to interest him in the number of wood storks nesting in a single tree. “Yeah, great, Mom,” he said. “Blah, blah, blah.”
Tomorrow I think we’ll just go to the pool.
NOTE: Husband just read this and is going to bed grumpy because of it, and wants it pointed out that he watched the kids for 1.5 hours while I got my hair cut today.

A Stay-cation! Um...does it suck?

2009-06-30T16:05:00.001-04:00

We are attempting the trendy stay-cation this week, having a vacation at home. So far the result has been mixed.
Yesterday we went to the Adventure Landing water park, and Husband and I were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t a more appalling place to be. The pool water was actually cool and refreshing, considering the outside temperature was near apocalyptic, and the crowds didn’t arrive until we were ready to go. The Diva ran into a friend, so we didn’t see her for two hours. We only lost the Pterodactyl three times, and only had to pull the Tyrant’s head out of the water once. All in all it was a satisfying experience. It might have been an excellent experience if management would decide to sell alcoholic drinks, though I can see how that would dramatically increase everyone’s risk of drowning.
Today, however, Husband is working, so it was up to me to come up with the day’s activities. We went to the gym so I could think about it during my workout. I came up with a great idea -- we could watch a movie in Mommy’s bed then have a fashion show and take crazy pictures. We were all a little excited about this. But then I let the Diva carry an enormous bowl of popcorn to my room. A glass bowl. She tripped over the Disney princess suitcase the Tyrant uses to carry around important stuff, fell down and landed in a pile of shattered glass.
Her hands were covered in blood. Then I realized she had drawn tattoos all over her hands with red marker, so the blood was not so bad. But when I washed her hands I could see there were a bunch of teeny tiny shards of glass protruding from the cuts. Shit.
So I called Husband the paramedic. He said, “Shit.” So I called the doctor, and he said to bring her in because he had tweezers and a strong light and could pick out all the glass. Then Husband called back and said he was driving the fire engine over with the trauma bag.
“That seems extreme,” I said. But who am I to argue with the paramedic?
I put the three children on my bed and ordered them to stay there, and began to clean up the mess. But I couldn’t do much because I don’t know how to turn on the vacuum. (Have I mentioned that Husband has a clean floor fetish and does all the floor work himself?)
Within five minutes Husband pulled up in the gigantic ladder truck, which is used for rescuing people out of 10-story buildings when it’s not being used to pull teeny tiny shards of glass out of the hands of little girls. Husband leaped out of the truck in his official firefighting boots-pants outfit, complete with suspenders, and strutted to the front door, looking sort of hot. I had to tuck this tidbit of information to the rear of my brain since I was in a post-workout cloud of sweat, and was busy trying to act like I knew how to operate my own vacuum.
Husband removed all the glass from the Diva’s hand while she sniveled, swept up the glass and popcorn, showed me the on-button for the vacuum, kissed me goodbye and drove off in the fire truck.
Then the Tyrant ate a business card and the dog started puking up piles of mucus with grass in it.
That’s how today’s stay-cation has gone. No one’s in the mood for taking pictures at the moment, but I’ve demanded a 45-minute rest period for us all to regroup. That will take us closer to Happy Hour, which might make me more receptive to letting the children further destroy the living room by building a fashion show runway.
For now, the household seems content with some sippy-cups full of milk, SpongeBob Squarepants, and the promise of a swim if the weather holds out. By that definition, everyday is a stay-cation. Enjoy! Tomorrow, the zoo....

Should I go hiking? You be the judge

2009-06-26T16:55:00.001-04:00

My ex-friend broke up with me about two years ago. She said I was too judgmental and hypercritical.
I was shocked. I cried about it to my husband. “I am not judgmental,” I told myself, and everyone who would listen. Now I’ve changed my mind, and I have a confession to make: I’m judgmental.
Just today, in fact, I was judging the woman who left her big-ass white Mercedes-Benz, engine running, in the fire lane to run in and retrieve her children from pre-school. Did she not think we all would have liked to park in the fire lane and leave our engines running? And I judge Husband just about every day. He’s obviously a lesser-developed human as only a caveman would load the dishwasher the way he does it. Don’t even get me started on the way he folds clothes.
Also, quite unreasonably, I judged the Pterodactyl to be deserving of having his fingers removed when he kept trying to hold open my eyes as he watched the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
I’ve been thinking more about my judgmental nature in the wake of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s trip to “hike the Appalachian Trail.” You know what? I’m not feeling very judgmental about it. I think the reason I’m not summoning my indignation is that I don’t really care about Gov. Mark Sanford. Not that I think he did the right thing - but it seems to me so easy to sit home on my couch and talk about what an ass he is. And I do think he’s an ass.
But I think it’s much harder to openly judge people we know. Frankly, I know lots of people - men and women - who’ve had affairs. Do you think I’ve ever said to them, “You know, I think you’re really a douchebag for cheating on your spouse.” I have not. It just doesn’t seem polite. Instead I’m blogging about it.
I do believe in forgiveness, and that people can change. For example, I do think that if Husband “hiked the Appalachian Trail,” that he would subsequently become a changed man and never “hike” it again, mainly because his “hiking” equipment would be extremely damaged.
I wish I had the courage to judge people who have, in my opinion, lost their moral compass. I would like to silently wish them well, then subtly eliminate them from my life.
Obviously this would get complicated. I’m pretty sure one of the Mother-of-the-Year’s I know has a little racist streak. But she is very, very organized, and I might need to take advantage of that one day.
Another Mother-of-the-Year recently told me that she doesn’t let her children watch any television. That’s just not right, I thought. I feel very judgmental about that. But if she wants to have my kids over and help them organize a state-of-the-art stage production with costumes and lights, I guess I’ll let them go.
I’ll just make sure get their boob tube fix before they go.

Wonderwoman? Or just a little nuts?

2009-06-23T21:57:00.001-04:00

We all have moments or occurrences that have changed our lives. I have five: meeting my husband, meeting each of my children, and having a hysterectomy three years ago.
My uterus served me no purpose in life, and I was glad to be rid of it. I dance through the tampon aisles. Whenever I see an advertisement for Midol, my heart skips a joyous beat because I’ll never have menstrual cramps again.
Regaining control over my body re-ignited my lifelong athleticism, and, no longer hampered by the proverbial curse, I attacked a fitness regime with new enthusiasm.
Which brought me to Matt.
PART I
Matt is my personal trainer. Total alpha male. When we first met, as we sat in the gym talking, my husband walked over, put his arm on my shoulder, bent down, and kissed me on the mouth very deliberately. I later questioned him about this unusual display of affection. “Would you rather I just peed on you?” he asked.
Matt’s built like a meticulously piled stack of bricks and mortar, a short young fireplug of a guy, just turned 29, with a blocky head covered by a short blond buzz cut and some scruffy cheek growth. Strange tattoos cover his arms (and his torso, I think, but I’ve never seen it). One of them contains the word “sinner” if you look at it from one direction and “saint” if you read it upside down. Don’t ask me how this works but it does.
It’s a strange sort of intimacy that develops between trainer and trainee - Matt, after all, is slavishly devoted to my body for two hours every week. He knows how much I weigh, which of my muscles is strongest, and whether my calves have gotten bigger. He can probably estimate my body fat percentage, and he can definitely tell you when I’ve shaved my legs.
And let me tell you: thanks to him, I am strong beyond your wildest assumptions. In the gym, I can do deep-knee squats with 135 pounds on my back. I can do three sets of push-ups, a minute per set. Real push-ups. I can run a half-mile in 3.5 minutes. None of this is uncommon, of course, for athletes. But I’m a 45-year-old mother of three. I take extra fiber and a geriatric multivitamin every day. I have spider veins and have been known to complain about “kids these days.”
More important to me, though - and here’s my real strength - I can move mountains. My physical abilities carry me through the bleakest of days. When my spirit sags wearily and my kids seem to be sucking the life right out of me, my stamina powers me up. My physical strength has become my mental strength.
I have taken some heat from family and friends for having a personal trainer during this economy. It’s true that we’re not rolling in cash -- Husband is a firefighter, and we’re practically selling plasma to keep our kids in pre-school -- but I can’t give up this man. I’ve given up the cleaning lady and making do with one pair of sandals this year. I’m drinking cheaper wine, though I still can’t bring myself to buy Yellow Tail. Husband and I didn’t celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. I’m only getting my hair cut every six months. I even gave up my yearly bikini wax.
My sister-in-law told me recently that she had gotten a personal trainer as well, and was loving it. “She’s so nice,” she told me. “Sometimes, if I’m having a bad day, she’ll just take it easy on me, and we do a lot of stretching.”
I thought about this. When I’m having a bad day, Matt says things like, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
My workout routine isn’t for everyone, I know that. But for me, the crow’s feet around my eyes seem a little less prominent when my triceps are visible.
And let’s face it, I’m just a little addicted to achieving what I thought was impossible. The other day, as I was doing what seemed to be my 400th set of lunges carrying a 35-pound weight in each hand, I reminded Matt that he had worn out my arms just two days earlier.
“I know,” he said. “It’s called undulating periodization.”
Undulating periodization? It would have sounded vaguely erotic had my arms not been on fire.
I would have complained had I not seen the weakness, disguised as sweat, flying into oblivion.
PART II
In addition to being my trainer, Matt has evolved into my boxing coach. Matt is one of those nutso Ultimate Fighters who can kill a man with his bare hands. How anyone steps into a fighting cage with him is beyond my comprehension. Sometimes, when he’s demonstrating a punch to me and I see his fist coming at my face, the knowledge that he would never in a million years hit me seems secondary to the fact that he can move at the speed of light.
I also take kickboxing classes. So between the classes and Matt, I’m pretty sure that, no matter who you are, I can kick your ass.
My husband works out with me occasionally, and has watched me box. He told me I looked “fierce.”
“Sexy fierce?” I asked.
“Uh, no,” he said. “Just fierce.”
I don’t care. My right hook is so strong I’ve knocked the catching glove off of my partner during sparring. There are few men brave enough to come to boxing class, but I can hold my own against any of them.
It’s one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done.
Now, I realize that lots of people might find this a little silly. And truly, I’m sure I’ve looked ridiculous at times, with my wife-beater black tank top and bandana around my head.
But there’s nothing like feeling a punch connect, even if it’s connecting with a thick padded mitt. It’s a rush, and it’s addicting, not just because of the power but because I’m unexpectedly excelling at something so improbable.
Matt has suggested - I don’t think he’s joking - that I try sparring with someone for real. I told him I think I’d be terrified. “But that’s why you do it,” he said. “If you weren’t terrified, what would be the challenge?”
Maybe I could make something happen in the ring. I have the strength, I think, and the stamina. And I have a couple of secret weapons. The first is that I’m cleverly disguised as a middle-aged suburban mother of three. And the second is - have you guessed it?
It’s my left hook.

Gimme a break

2009-06-21T22:01:00.000-04:00

The big kids drew brown marker stripes on the baby’s butt and the toilet overflowed and the Pterodactyl tracked poopy water everywhere. We bought two pairs of shoes for the Diva and brought the wrong pair home and while I was driving I had to stop a fight about who had more imaginary lollipops and I never did get a Father’s Day card off to Dad.
The Diva starts camp tomorrow and she was only going because my friend was in charge of it and my friend tells me today she got fired last month and so sorry she forgot to tell me and the Diva is supposed to pack a “trashless” lunch and what the fuck does that mean?
Husband hung up on me because I was yelling at him about babysitter issues and dog hasn’t had a real walk in days and her breath smells like a landfill. The Tyrant has learned that slapping me in the face stuns me long enough for her to get away and the Pterodactyl was so mean to his sister in Target that I pinched him.
I never did give the music teacher his end of the year chocolate basket and so now I’m gradually eating it.
I watch tv and read the news and I know what’s going on in the world and I know that I am in the luckiest, oh, .0001 percent of the world’s population, I know this. And I love my life and I really believe that I have the most beautiful children on the planet and I wouldn’t trade for a private Caribbean island the secret sign that the Diva and I share or the way the Tyrant tells me, “yuda best” or the way the Pterodactyl practically sucks my skin off when he kisses me good night.
But on some days, it would be nice to just catch a break.

Dads who like nail polish rock

2009-06-20T15:30:00.000-04:00

One year for my birthday my father gave me a blanket for riding bareback on my horse, and I still think of it as the best childhood present ever. Another year he came home late from a business trip on my birthday and gave me a rubber snake. Which was weird. But it was from my dad, so I named it and kept it for years as a treasured possession. (My dad will read this, by the way, and deny that the snake incident ever occurred.)
Dads are most extraordinary, imperfect creatures ever. A good one is a mixture of love and irritation, trust and suspicion, energy and laziness.
My father is the perfect mix of imperfection. His love for his daughters so overwhelms him that, these days, he cries nearly every time he talks to them. But last time we were together, he got into an argument with the 2-year-old Tyrant over potato chips.
But that’s okay. It makes for good family lore, and over the past four and a half decades such incidents have created the imperfect, deliberate mix of me.
I feel the same way about my husband-as-father. He’s currently reading the paper in bed while wearing a handmade necktie and watching a Blue’s Clues episode with the Tyrant. But he’s capable of blocking out a child’s heartfelt expressions of love in order to catch the Red Sox highlights.
I was going to write a list of good paternal attributes. But we all know what those are: love, attention, discipline, blah blah blah. Instead I’ve made a list I think I’ll call Stuff About Dads, compiled with enthusiastic nods to my father and my husband, the two best men that I know. I love you both to the moon despite the fact that you occasionally gang up against me.

Dad once gave me his fishing rod after hooking a blue marlin and let me reel it in.
Husband knows exactly what to say to calm down the children after I’ve threatened to pull the legs off their favorite stuffed animals.
Husband doesn’t get the least bit jealous when the Pterodactyl gives me open-mouthed kisses.
When I first became a journalist, my dad thought I was so good that he suggested I not put my name on my stories in case some people were offended by them.
Husband thinks daughter is so beautiful that he sort of hopes she’s gay so he won’t have to deal with boy issues.
When I was 12, Dad made his secretary type all of my poems and he published them in a little booklet called “Tricia’s Treasures.”
Husband hardly minds at all when the Pterodactyl wears pink nail polish and lip gloss.
Husband defends Pterodactyl admirably when I complain that all the bathrooms smell like pee.
Husband is self-appointed Arbiter of Homework, which is fortunate as I have so far declined to participate in nearly all school activities.
Dad has pushed the Prom Dress incident (see Prom In New Orleans blog entry) to the farthest recesses of his brain.
Dad bought me a pony when I was 8, and for years let me think that I paid for it with the $20 I had saved in my piggy bank.
Husband has nearly consented to let the Diva pierce her ears and has patiently taught the Tyrant to watch baseball with him.

Most of all, they rock because they think I rock, and on my worst days, believe me, that’s a lie they tell themselves.
So Happy Father’s Day to my dad and my husband, and to all the dads out there, and to all the moms who have to be dads, too. Hope your day is filled with homemade neckties, colorful cards and the beverage of your choice.

Talk to me, baby.

2009-06-18T20:52:00.003-04:00

Forgive my lackluster computer skills. You shouldn't have any more trouble leaving comments after the posts. Sorry about that, girls and boys. I know how y'all like to gab. xo tricia

Call me when there's blood

2009-06-18T16:19:00.001-04:00

When I was in kindergarten my parents had a strict rule against riding bikes in the street. One day, while Mom was shopping and my sisters and I were with a babysitter, I broke the rules and was hit by a car. (I learned my lesson, though.)
Soon after that, I peed on top of a yellow jacket nest, which is not something I recommend. I suffered a few dozen stings in some delicate areas and a trip to a country hospital.
What I remember most about both events is the utter lack of drama that followed. Of course there was some immediate panic regarding my safety, but once my parents confirmed that I’d be fine, it was pretty much over. The night of the yellow jacket assault, in fact, my parents went square dancing. They did at least let me lay in their bed and Dad bought me my favorite candy (Cracker Jacks) and a new album (Uncle Remus).
But by this time, my parents had four girls ages 7 (that was me), 5, 4 and an infant. I guess they needed to get away, even if getting away involved wearing a string tie and a puffy crinoline skirt.
When I think about it, I’m surprised Mom left us with some of these babysitters, particularly the one who let me get hit by a car. And then there was Mrs. Parrera, who made us take baths with our underpants on and wouldn’t let us eat food in the house.
Even when my sister broke her leg, there wasn’t much to it. In fact, my parents didn’t believe it was broken for two days and my dad actually made her walk on it. In all fairness, my parents probably took their cue from the medical community. There’s an oft-told story in our family regarding my little sister eating dog crap, and the pediatrician telling my mother to call him when my sister starting barking.
My point. I need to make it before I start churning up some indignation on behalf of my childhood. My point is this: As your children multiply and begin to take over the house, your panic meter adjusts. You learn to distinguish between life-threatening (viral pneumonia, staph infection, near-drowning) and Another Incident That Will Complicate My Life (ear infections, splinters, febrile seizures). Occasionally the two categories will overlap, such as when the Diva got a splinter in her big toe that turned into a staph infection, but in general, it’s an easy line to draw.
Conflict can ensue, however, because not everyone shares the same standards. For example, at my gym, there’s a rule in the KidZone regarding colorful snot. A child with colorful snot is not allowed to stay in the kids’ room. The snot has to be clear. Now, in my opinion, all snot has some color to it, whether it’s snot from a terrible cold or from a little sniffing pepper incident. (Look, he’s never going to learn if he doesn’t try it.)
I will admit to occasionally giving my child Dimetapp so that the Snot Police in the KidZone don’t ruin my workout. On the flip side, I’ve never brought a child to the KidZone with a fever, at least not knowingly.
It’s also difficult to regulate children with different pain thresholds. The Diva visits the school nurse any time her eye itches. The Tyrant can go uncomplaining for days with an ear infection so severe that gross stuff is leeching out of her ear canal. The Pterodactyl doesn’t care about the pain so much as the injustice that may have inflicted the pain.
So around here we have a saying: If you’re breathing and not bleeding, you’ll be fine. Occasionally, we have to adapt that, as the children occasionally bleed. But SpongeBob Squarepants bandages clot the blood nicely.
Of course, if anything serious ever happens to one of my children, I will spend the trip to the hospital ripping out my hair and flogging myself. But my husband will be there beside me, saying, “You’re breathing and not bleeding. You’ll be fine.”

E. Coli? Sharp scissors? Pshaw!

2009-06-17T16:44:00.001-04:00

When I tell people I have three kids -- or when they spot me at the pool simultaneously trying to pull my bathing suit top back on, wiping baby snot on the tiles and jerking the Tyrant’s head out of the water -- they inevitably comment that I must be very busy.
But “busy” is not the word I would use. It’s more like treading water -- I’m not doing anything other than flapping my arms and breathing. It’s exhausting, but not particularly productive, like an adaptation of the old “one step forward, two steps back” cliche. For example, just yesterday I saved $50 by taking the Diva to the library instead of the bookstore for books. But before we could check anything out, I had to pay $48.40 in late book fines.
The day before, after making the grand announcement that the Tyrant was potty-trained, she drank too much pool water and delivered a gross liquid-y poop that left gloopy brown puddles on the pool deck. (Hello, communitywide E. coli outbreak!)
Bringing my second child (the Pterodactyl) home -- going from one child to two -- was an adjustment, but it was manageable. The Tyrant was a game-changer. I distinctly remember one night after the Tyrant came home, after all three children were finally asleep, that Husband and I leaned against the kitchen counter and stared at each other.
“We ruined everyone’s lives,” I whispered.
I was so frazzled by the onslaught of chaos that I once let the Pterodactyl go for a playdate with the son of a woman I barely knew from the gym. I didn’t even know her last name. In my defense, she seemed very nice.
Anyway, the chaos didn’t die down so much as become tolerable and predictable. I now know from experience that I do indeed have time to run to the bathroom and wipe someone’s bottom before it’s time to flip the egg. In the time it takes to watch one episode of “SpongeBob Squarepants” I can put in a load of laundry, cook some noodles, take the dog out and post a status report on Facebook. Hey, a gal’s gotta have a social life.
And my standards changed. I used to interview babysitters with KGB-like acumen: References? CPR certification? Driving record? It’s a little different now. As long as they haven’t been convicted of anything, who am I to judge?
I once kept vigilant track of what my kids ate to ensure the ingestion of all necessary vitamins and minerals. Now I just want to make sure they eat enough that they don’t turn into cranky, wild-eyed maniacs. The Diva has eaten canned spaghetti for the past three days running, and I’ll be honest with you, I just feel grateful that the Campbell’s people were thoughtful enough to put extra calcium in each serving.
I also don’t freak out nearly as much as I used to. When the Pterodactyl pushed a little girl down the slide his first year of preschool and she broke her arm (I’m pretty sure she had weak bones to begin with), I went overboard with apologies. I wrote a letter to the mother, bought the girl a gift, and cried in the principal’s office. Yesterday when he packed a pair of kitchen shears for summer camp, I just told him Ms. Stacy wouldn’t like it.
So now it’s summer. I tread water daily -- both figuratively and literally -- and my arms have gotten stronger because of it. I can balance a glass of wine in one hand and a dog leash in the other, while counting the number of times the Diva jumps rope and scream at the Pterodactyl to pee in our bushes, not the neighbor’s. And you know what? Sometimes I even enjoy it.

Are You There, God?

2009-06-15T16:39:00.000-04:00

Are you there, God? It’s me, Tricia. I’m flying down the road right now and I could really use some of that patience that you and Job have made into some sort of virtue. The Pterodactyl has unbuckled his seat belt in order to grab the Tyrant’s lunch box, and there’s no place for me to pull over, and I just uttered the words, “Son! If I get into an accident I’m going to be very upset with you!”
I realize you have no incentive for listening to me other than the generic promise of salvation. I have not been very attentive due to my experimentation with atheism, and I’m sure that if you do exist, you’re still offended by the Diva asking why there’s a “t” on top of every church. We are gradually working religion into our home-based curriculum, but she gets a little freaked out by the crucifixion so we’re taking it slow. Also, please don’t be mad about the Tyrant singing the blessing song while she sits on the potty. She’s only two, and it really is a catchy tune.
As you know, I have referred to myself as a recovering Catholic, which accurately describes my efforts to forget Mrs. Killeen the religion teacher telling me in 8th grade that she had four breasts.
But I’m also disillusioned with some of those weirdo philosophies. I’m glad you convinced His Holiness that babies who die without being baptized don’t have to hang out forever in limbo, but seriously, it took you long enough. I mean, my children haven’t been baptized - at least to my knowledge. I have a lingering suspicion that my father might have poured some water over each of their little foreheads and made the sign of the cross, which counts if a believer thinks another soul is in danger of eternal damnation.
At any rate, my children certainly haven’t done anything to warrant eternal damnation or being suspended in limbo, though at the moment I’m willing to have them suspended anywhere as long as it’s soundproof.
Which brings me back to the children and my request for patience. I’ve noticed that the Diva and the Pterodactyl, now 7 and 4, are at the age when it would be super-convenient to use you to explain a few things.
Like death, for example. Their grandfather died recently, and they want to know he’s in heaven. I’d like to have your permission, despite my doubt that heaven exists, to confirm that yes, Papa is in heaven, along with Boston the dog and the frog Daddy accidentally squished in driveway. The Diva wants to know how Papa’s bones and blood got up to heaven, and I told her that you’re magic, a little like Santa Claus, and can invisibly lift bodies up through the skies. I’m sorry, but I could not bring myself to tell her that Papa had been incinerated, his ashes put into a box and the box left overnight in the trunk of my sister-in-law’s car.
God, I tell them, is also the reason that people eat chicken, that animals in the wild kill each other and that thunder is noisy. (Their dad tells them the scientific explanation for thunder, but I can never remember it.)
I appreciate your understanding in this matter. In return, I will open my heart to any patience you want to send my way, and I promise to make Husband stop referring to surfing as a religion.
Please give our love to Papa, my grandparents, and Aunt Beulah, who are near to you if you are there. And give my best to Uncle Tony, though you’ll probably have to send him a message as I think he settled a little further south.

Too Many Cheez-Its, Not Enough Wine. Or Vice Versa.

2009-06-13T15:35:00.001-04:00

I like wine. But I can’t drink as much as I used to for a number of reasons. First, my middle-aged metabolism has changed and I seem to get tipsy...okay, drunk...a little more quickly now. I think I used to be cute in a flirty, happy way when I was tipsy/drunk. Now that I have some wrinkles, I’m pretty sure I’m a lush.
The more important reason I can’t drink as much is because I always need to be able to drive my children to the hospital in case of an emergency. This philosophy was confirmed the day after Christmas when my 2-year-old daughter, the Tyrant, leaped into my lap, flipped over backwards, knocked over my wine glass, fell on it, and stabbed herself in the chest. In that instance, fortunately, my husband the paramedic decided to mend the wound with a Steri-Strip. It only left a small scar.
The incident taught me a lesson. And now I have yet another reason to avoid excessive drinking. Suppose I happily sipped a glass or three of wine with a girlfriend while a babysitter minded the kids, then came home to find a house with no electricity and the Tyrant unwilling to sleep without her noise machine?
This is exactly what happened last week. The power went out for no discernible reason at 9 pm and did not come back on until 5 am. Around midnight, there was a convergence of notable events: my pleasant buzz was wearing off, the headache was settling in, and the house was getting warm due to lack of air conditioning. It was very very dark. And the Tyrant woke up.
Husband was home but due at work the next day. It clearly fell under my job description to see the baby through the night.
I tried everything. I put her in bed with me; she wouldn’t stop whispering in Husband’s ear. I rubbed her back; she kicked me. I gave her a sippy cup with milk; she drank it and threw it across the room.
Finally I resorted to bribing her. “If you stay in your bed, I’ll give you Gummi Bears,” I told her. I offered up a handful.
“No want it,” she said. “Wanna watch teebee.” Which I totally would have let her do if THE FUCKING ELECTRICITY HAD NOT BEEN OUT.
So there I was at 3 am, rocking the baby in a hot dark room, sucking on Gummi Bears and listening to the pounding in my head.
Eating the Gummi Bears started me thinking about all the crazy stuff I buy now that I have kids. Cheez-Its, I think, are the worst. I hate Cheez-Its. I have never liked Cheez-Its. I have never liked the way they smell. And don’t get me started on the ones shaped like SpongeBob Squarepants. Just plain weird.
Yet I find myself gulping down handfuls of Cheez-Its all the time. I swear it’s what keeps me from achieving bodily perfection. Cheez-Its have some sort of magnetic attraction to my hand, which flings itself to my mouth like an automated crane arm. One minute I’m in the gym doing bench squats with a 30-lb. weight in each hand, and the next minute I’m flying down the road in my gold Toyota minivan, humming along to the chicken dance song and shoving Cheez-Its in my mouth.
I know not everyone feeds their kids like I do. I was teasing my cousin Kay one time, and told her, “I bet you never let your kid eat Goldfish off the floor,” and she said, “Um, I’m not sure he’s ever had Goldfish,” and right away I could see we were very different.
If it didn’t promote harmony in my house, I certainly wouldn’t buy Cheez-Its. Nor would I buy Easy Mac, Fruit Roll-ups, Campbell’s Mega Noodle Chicken Noodle Soup, Gummi Bears or mini-marshmallows (the Diva puts them on toast).
I’d most definitely still buy wine, of course. And to be honest, knowing what I know now, I might still buy Gummi Bears because they did manage to eliminate the rancid taste in my mouth during the Night of the Power Outage -- so much so that when the Tyrant quit singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Pee Pee (her brother taught her that version) and asked for some Gummi Bears, I had bad news.
“I ate them all,” I said. And then the power came back on.

Again with the things we say...

2009-06-12T10:59:00.000-04:00

Top 10 things that have been said in my house over the past 24 hours:

10. Don’t put Teddy in the toilet plunger holder! That’s gross!
9. Okay! I’ll get the lizard out of the toilet. Just don’t pee yet.
8. You have to wear pants if you want to play in the fort.
7. Please don’t wear your brown velour dress today.
6. If the power doesn’t come back on, I guess I’ll just go sleep at work.
5. If you stay in your bed, I’ll give you Gummi Bears.
4. I didn’t hurt the lizard. It’s fine.
3. Why does your hair smell like throw-up?
2. How many glasses did you have?
1. No. I ate them all.

A Correction Regarding the Enema

2009-06-11T15:24:00.002-04:00

My mother called me regarding the prom story (see Prom In New Orleans, 6/8 entry) to voice an objection.
She has never given me an enema, she insisted.
But I had quite a vivid memory of it. We were at my grandmother’s house, and I was begging her to take me to the hospital, and she refused because she said if you go to the hospital with constipation all they’re going to do is give you an enema, so she might as well just give me the damn enema and save us all the time and the money. She probably didn’t say damn; that’s me.
She was adamant, however, that it had not happened, and this is how she knew: Her mother-in-law -- my other grandmother -- apparently had been really big on enemas for her six children, using it to solve any ailment from nausea to a disagreeable nature, which believe me was probably quite common in that house. This makes sense to me because my father finds discussion of anything that occurs in the bathroom to be just short of criminal behavior. Anyway, my mother said that knowing how “WaWas” (yes, that’s what we called my grandmother, no time for that right now) traumatized her children by giving them not infrequent enemas, she had sworn to never give any of her children enemas, ever, much less when they were 17 years old.
I felt equally adamant about my memory, but her logic was more compelling, so I thought about this for a long time.
And then I had a more accurate recollection. My mom actually administered a suppository, not an enema, to cure me of the constipation resulting from the liquid diet I was on following the wisdom teeth surgery which I had three days after my prom.
I stand corrected. Thanks, Mom, for your elephant’s memory. And for, you know, the suppository. I’m sure that it was better than an enema.

You (Didn't) Say What?

2009-06-10T11:09:00.002-04:00

I just screamed the following at my kids: “WHAT DID I JUST SAY? SPEAK NICELY TO EACH OTHER!” But they evidently did not like my tone because the Tyrant pointed her finger at me and said, “No! Stop it! Don’t do dat, Mom!” and the Pterodactyl did his eye-blinking thing which means he’s about to cry.
When kids become old enough to theoretically listen to their parents, most parents find themselves saying all kinds of things they swore they’d never say. I’m not one of those parents, as I did not make any promises regarding what type of parent I’d be. But I do find myself saying lots of things I never thought I’d have to say.
For example, yesterday while swimming, I had to repeatedly tell my 4-year-old son (the Pterodactyl) to stop grabbing my breast, sticking his finger in my ear and trying to pull off my bathing suit top. And then when in the bathroom, the Tyrant (she’s 2) had to be (forcefully) told not to put her head into the toilet to see her brother’s poop. I didn’t really care about her seeing her brother’s poop, but the Pterodactyl gets really freaked out about anyone other than me looking at his poop, and even me seeing it has a rigid routine. I have to tell him not to worry, he can try again later, then act all surprised when I see that he has in fact produced.
Of course, children say all sorts of unexpected things, too. The Pterodactyl just this minute walked up to me and said, “You may not put fire on a rose.” Awww, you’re thinking. How sweet. Please note that last week he said, in reference to his little sister, “I told you we shouldn’t of buyed another baby.”
And right now he’s telling the baby she has poopy ears, and she’s holding her ears and crying. And so I find myself yelling, “HEY! ENOUGH WITH THE POOPY EARS TALK!”
So on it goes. I’ve told my son that we do not flush our nightlights down the toilet, that pretending to pee on people is rude, and that it is absolutely not okay to put your sister in a gym locker and leave her there. I have instructed the Diva that she may never again use Sharpies as face paint, that stubbing her toe does not require wrapping her entire foot in a roll of toilet paper, that being 7 years old does not mean you can give yourself medicine, and that pretending to brush your teeth is not at all the same as really brushing them, a fact that seemed to surprise her. I have repeatedly instructed the Tyrant that she may not: eat dog food, wash her hair with body lotion, paint her sheets with lip gloss or slap my face in public. Unfortunately she seems to not understand basic English.
I see all this, however, as a positive form of communication since there are so many things that I don’t say to my kids. I’m currently seeing a shrink to help me parent my son, and I’m also seeing a different shrink to help me deal with the fact that I need a shrink to deal with my son. The first shrink told me to figure out my “moment,” the signal to myself that I need to take a few deep breaths and regroup. For her, she said by way of example, she can feel her heart rate speeding up.
I knew exactly what she meant. For me, it’s when that little voice inside my head starts saying, “Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.” It honestly happens just about every day. But so far, I’ve never said that aloud. Well, that’s not true. But I’ve never said it aloud to my kids and I’m rightly proud of that.

Prom in New Orleans, or How I Lost My Dress

2009-06-08T12:08:00.001-04:00

Twenty-four years ago, I walked down the aisle in a long white dress.
It was my high school graduation, and that’s how the young Catholic ladies of the Academy of the Sacred Heart entered adulthood. On graduation night, which was followed by prom, we wore long white dresses that had been approved by the nuns in advance. I suppose it was to symbolize our virginity, though in all honesty a nice shade of beige might have been more appropriate.
We were thrilled to graduate, of course, but the real excitement was the partying that followed. It was 1981 in New Orleans; the drinking age was around 12 and we were issued mixed drink tickets when we arrived at the dance. The Neville Brothers played at our prom.
My junior year prom date had been a nice young man from a hard-working family. He was modestly handsome and quiet; a decent boy.
My senior year prom date? Not so much.
David had made the rounds dating the coolest, baddest girls in my class. He did drugs and had failed a grade. When everyone else got tired of him, he settled for me, and I was thrilled. What geeky redhead wouldn’t want to date a lazy drug-dealing stoner scheduled to drop out of high school? He used to sing REO Speedwagon to me: “You know, I know all about those men...” He thought I could attract other guys! That seemed SO romantic!
By prom time, David and I had just about run our course. There had been a few missed curfews, a couple of broken dates, and one incident which I’ve permanently erased from my memory.
But I had asked him to prom and, frankly, I didn’t have anyone waiting in the wings.
It’s a sad, sad fact of life that at the times when our parents should mean the most, we’re constantly peeking around the corner, looking for something we think will be better. That was me on graduation night. There were my parents and grandparents and sisters, craning their necks to see me, beaming not just with pride but with that deep, endless bittersweet love that comes with watching your child grow up. And there was me, also craning my neck, looking for my no-good dipshit date to show up.
I think I looked beautiful that night. My mother and I had picked out the design of my virginal dress, and it was tailor-made. It cost $500. I will never forget that. I loved it. I told her I would get married in that dress.
David was late and he missed me receiving my diploma. And then after the ceremony, he said he had to give some people a ride to the prom and would meet me there. I found that very unusual, but I rode with some girlfriends and it was fine.
I was well into my second rum and Diet Coke by the time he arrived at the prom. It had taken him over an hour to get there. His eyes were very red and sleepy-looking. But he was NOT stoned, he said. It had taken so long because they had a flat tire on the way, and when they stopped to fix it, they couldn’t find the jack, but then someone stopped to help them, and he’s really sorry but it wasn’t his fault that he had a flat tire and blah, blah, fucking blah.
Whatever. I got over it and we all got drunk and had a blast.
Then it was time for the after-party.
David was driving his grandmother’s car, and we were double-dating with Leesa and her boyfriend, Doan. Now Leesa was just about the prettiest girl in the school but she was a couple of highlights short of a dye job, if you know what I mean. She always got the hottest guys, but they weren’t dating her for the conversation.
So it was kind of exciting when we decided to change clothes in the back seat on the way to the party. David and Doan were in front pretending not to look, and Leesa and I were shimmying out of our dresses and into shorts and shirts. I’m not sure why we were doing this. But the combination of David not watching the road and him being drunk and stoned led to him running off the road and hitting a light post.
It was a little bit of a buzz kill. Fortunately, it happened right in front of a Denny’s and we were all a little bit hungry. So we extracted the car -- bummer about the dents, but it still ran fine -- and parked, and ran in for some breakfast.
Eggs and bacon sobered us up enough to go to the after-party. We stayed for a while, and then arranged with some friends to meet up at Fat Harry’s, by far our favorite Uptown bar.
I know it seems unusual for high school girls to have a favorite bar, but again, this was New Orleans. We had been going to Fat Harry’s since we were 15 years old. It was where I first learned that rum didn’t contain any carbohydrates, and that sometimes throwing up after drinking too much can make you feel better.
When we got into the car, I realized that the paper bag holding my beautiful tailor-made virginal white dress was gone.
It wasn’t a very big back seat, but I crawled back and forth 20 times to make sure it wasn’t there. I looked in the trunk. I looked in the front. I looked in the glove compartment. I ran back into the party house and searched there, too. I looked under the car. I looked in the grass beside the car.
It was gone. A pit settled firmly into my belly. Guilt flushed me like a sunburn.
We discussed the matter at length. Obviously the dress had been stolen, either while we were having breakfast at Denny’s or while we were at the party. There was nothing left to do but go to Fat Harry’s.
At Fat Harry’s we ran into Russell, the security guard from our high school, just recently off duty from the graduation festivities. He began to buy us celebratory drinks, and pretty soon he became our very good friend. We also ran into Russell the ex-Fat Harry’s bartender, who I had been furtively dating since realizing the David thing wasn’t going to work out. He announced to me that he was moving to Colorado, and so I invited him to hang out with us for the rest of the night. David didn’t seem to care.
By this time it was getting close to 3 a.m., which was my curfew, but we weren’t ready to go home yet. We were hungry again. So I called my parents and told them we were going to breakfast and would be home after that. It was prom night, and they trusted me. They said okay.
So David, me, Russell and Russell, and Leesa and Doan went back to Denny’s for breakfast.
After breakfast we all noticed dawn was breaking, so we decided to go to a park to watch the sun rise over the Mississippi River.
The Butterfly was beautiful at that time of the morning. We ran around like the buzzed and worry-free high school graduates that we were. Well, actually, I ran around. Doan had passed out in the car, and Leesa and David “went for a walk.” I played tag with and then made out with Russell the bartender. I’m not sure what Russell the security guard was doing.
Around 8 a.m. we decided to call it a night. We piled back into David’s grandmother’s wrecked car and headed home. On the way, we passed David’s high school, and David suddenly remembered that he needed to pick up his transcripts so that he could apply someplace for summer school. I am not making this up.
So he parked. Leesa had (allegedly) cut herself while on her “long walk” with David, so she went with David to the front office to get a Band-Aid while he secured his transcripts.
Russell the bartender said goodbye and walked home.
I sat in the car with passed-out Doan and Russell the security guard.
We waited for an hour. I tried to find David and Leesa but couldn’t. I called my parents again. “Come home immediately,” my mother said. Then she hung up.
I called a cab. But I didn’t have any money. So Russell the security guard and I left Doan and hopped into the cab. He was the school security guard, after all. I think he felt obligated to escort me home.
I arrived home around 11 a.m. with no dress, no shoes, no money and no date. Russell paid my fare.
I was grounded for three days until I had surgery to have my wisdom teeth removed. I couldn’t eat solid food for days, and became constipated, and my mother had to give me an enema. I think she might have believed in karma at that moment.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, and I couldn’t agree more.
If I had to do it again, I’d go to the prom without a date. I’d have my parents pick me up from the after-party. I’d invite my mom to have breakfast with me the next day. And while waiting for my mouth to heal from wisdom teeth surgery, I’d definitely hit the prune juice.

Gay marriage, kidneys and glitter

2009-06-05T08:50:00.002-04:00

The Diva has four days left of first grade, and I must say she has learned a lot this year.
To begin, she knows every word to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl" (and I liked it) and can sing it without stage fright on almost any occasion. She also has learned what it means to be “Goth” (thank you, Adam Lambert), that leprechauns aren’t real, and that you should never wear a skirt on days when you have gym class.
Let’s face it: those are some of the most important things she’ll ever learn.
Oh, she has progressed in the usual subjects. Her reading has advanced enough that I have to block the pornographic emails from my friend, Joey, and her math is acceptable, though let’s just say she should feel grateful she has all 10 fingers to help her.
It’s been a steep learning curve for me, however. First, I never understood how involved I was supposed to be in my child’s education. I just assumed I’d send her off to school and the teachers would take care of everything, from teaching her how to tie her shoes to helping her fill out applications for college financial aid. I mean, I understood I might need to help her with homework now and again, but the first time she came home with an assignment involving pipe cleaners, I was shocked. I’m supposed to keep things like pipe cleaners hanging around the house? And glitter! Let me tell you -- if I kept glitter on hand, this house would look like a fairy princess house of horrors. Every surface would sparkle so brightly we’d all need sunglasses inside. Even the dog poop would be twinkly.
In honor of my darling daughter’s successful promotion to second grade, I’d like to highlight the key lessons we’ve managed to absorb this year.
1. When your teacher is throwing up in the classroom sink, it’s polite to hand her a paper towel.
2. Oreo cookies are not considered a healthy snack, despite the fact that a single serving contains 4 percent of the recommended daily allowance of fiber.
3. The meanest girls have blonde hair and are unbearably cute. Key word: unbearably.
4. Enlightening your first grade class about same sex marriage can be awkward for the teacher.
5. School officials think a tiny little case of conjunctivitis is grounds for a quarantine.
6. If you wear a Jonas Brothers t-shirt, boys will (accurately) accuse you of being in love with the Jonas Brothers.
7. Mrs. D had to go the hospital because she has a kidney!
8. Having a playdate with a friend who talks about kissing boys on the lips can send your mother spiraling into apoplexy.
9. It’s good to know how to walk home from the bus stop by yourself in case your parents can’t read the bus schedule and wait at the wrong place at the wrong time on the stormiest, coldest day of the year.
10. A Starburst left at the the bottom of your backpack for months on end can still pack the same flavor, but with a little extra fuzz.

We just hope that, despite all the cuts in public education, the next dozen years prove to be equally as productive.

A Turtle Life

2009-06-03T14:45:00.003-04:00

Today was the Pterodactyl’s last day of preschool before summer. It was a Beach Party, except we didn’t do it at the beach, so the only water was inside of the water balloons, and the only breeze was the occasional kid sneezing.
But it was cute, of course, with big hugs and smooches from the preschool teachers and a bunch of 4-year-olds arguing about who got the biggest goody bag.
“Another year!” said my friend, Mother of the Year. “It goes so fast!”
“You think so?” I asked. “Because really, I’m not finding that.”
It’s true! Oh, the years pass quickly, I suppose. It’s already June, tomorrow’s the Fourth of July and pretty soon I’ll be perusing the dregs of the Halloween costume display at Target trying to talk the Diva into being a Goth Witch with pink hair.
But the days! The hours! The minutes till bedtime! It’s a grind, I tell you, and maybe I’m just a grumpy shrew, but I think more than a few of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
If the Tyrant poops in her underpants one more time, I swear I’m going to start giving her Immodium. If the Pterodactyl doesn’t stop calling me Pee-pee-head, I’m going to give him a soapy mouth. I mean it. And the Diva - she’s pretty fucking perfect - but really, she loses every single thing she owns every single day. How am I supposed to know the secret spot where she hid her yearbook so that I wouldn’t find it?
And this daily routine! I am Sisyphus, I tell you. The kitchen is clean every morning, and then suddenly my checkbook is stuck to the counter with maple syrup glue. All of the Tupperware has been organized, and then it’s all being used as hospital beds for Webkinz. I finally fix the hinge on the storage ottoman, then Pterodactyl draws a blue ghost on it that honestly looks like a smiling penis. And no, Sharpie ink doesn’t come off of leather.
I count the hours until naptime, which only give me 1/3 relief as only 1/3 of the brood naps. Then I count the hours until 5 pm when I can have a glass of wine - and yes, I know, that’s a problem all its own, and I’ll deal with that another time - and then I count the hours till bedtime.
I really, madly, desperately love my kids...so why do I hail bedtime as something akin to the Rapture?
Well. On that note, Tyrant just did it again. She’s dancing through it, but I’m going to clean her up. It’s nap time.

The Love of a Boy

2009-06-02T16:52:00.001-04:00

My son has a crush on his preschool teacher. While taking a bath last night, he told me, “I want my hair to be all clean, so Miss Rebecca will say, ooh, that smells good.”
I’m not sure how much hair-smelling Miss Rebecca does, but I know she’s luckier than last year’s teacher, who was rather well-endowed. At the end of the year, Miss Sheila said, “We love our Nico. I call him our little perv.” As in pervert. Because each time Sheila would offer him a hug, or a snuggle, she’d feel his little hand sneaking under her blouse toward her breast.
My 3-year-old son, copping a feel off his pre-school teacher. I thought he only did that to me.
My son is the funniest person I know. Like all kids, he’s a sponge. He throws back my phrases and admonitions daily, making me feel like a shrew. “Mind your business!” he yells at his sister. “You take care of your own self!”
Some things I assume he learned in preschool, like “Zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket!” The other night at dinner, we asked him to say the blessing. He sang in his adorable off-key rasp: “Listen carefully, listen carefully, hear my voice, hear my voice. We are getting ready, we are getting ready, to clean up toys, clean up toys.”
I have three children, and Nico is the middle child. Last year, when we brought home his little sister, it pretty much ruined his life. I had anticipated the chaos of having three children; I had anticipated that life would be crazy, that I wouldn’t have as much time to myself, that I’d cook less and read less and do more laundry. I didn’t anticipate Nico’s complete and utter grief. For months, he was the saddest child I had ever seen.
He likes to measure his love for people, and those closest to him, he loves “five.” Sometimes he even loves me “ten.” When he’s mad, he loves me one.
For a long time, he loved his sister zero, though now he loves her more since he gets sent to time out if he doesn’t. Forced love.
One night Nico didn’t want to go to bed. I finally resorted to yelling at him, and he yelled back. “You go to jail, Mom! Go to jail!”
I said fine, I’ll go to jail if you’ll go to bed, and he agreed. But he snuck out of bed to see where I was, and when he found me on the couch, he started fussing again. “That’s not jail!” And so then I felt obligated to have a heated discussion about why it’s inappropriate to send your mother to jail.
Finally, I wore him out, and tucked him for the final time. “Give me a kiss,” I said, and he did. “That makes Mommy so happy,” I said.
He pulled my face close to his, looked into my eyes, and whispered, “I don’t want you to be happy.”

Sheet

2009-06-02T16:38:00.000-04:00

My 2-year-old now says “shit.” She was playing with my cell phone, and she said, “Shit. I forgot.” And in case I wanted to delude myself into thinking she said, “sheep,” or “ship,” she then said, “Shit. Oh shit.”
At the time the kids were having dinner. It was kids choice: they chose oatmeal, Mac n’cheese and smoothies. Neale had smoothie-infused mac n’cheese.
It’s bad enough that Neale and Nico both say “Damage” as a curse word. The intent is there – they think they’re saying dammit, just like, oh, mom, for example. But they say “damage,” which I don’t correct, because for one thing it’s a perfectly acceptable word, and for another thing, they might as well learn now how to use obscenities in an inoffensive way. Which does not include saying “shit,” particularly when you’re two and rarely wear pants.
Now I can’t really blame Neale for saying shit, since she’s not had a great day. Nico made her a breakfast of Cheez-Its and raisins but he ate all the Cheez-Its and she doesn’t like raisins. Then I let her sit in an ant pile, and continued chatting away even as Neale began screaming because I thought maybe she was just getting tired.
So Neale got about a 100 ant bites (that’s conservative, by the way), a trip to the doctor and a lot of Benadryl, which made her cranky and led to her passing out in her mother’s bed and waking up when she peed in said bed. She did manage to pee on Dear Husband’s side, though, and Dear Husband never notices those things.
In addition, Nico bopped Neale on the head at least five times today, including once with a wooden flute.
If I was Neale, I would be saying worse things than shit. But still….it’s not cool, and I know that, and obviously I now know that I’ve got to work harder to clean up my fucking language.
I am thinking of reviving some oldies but goodies, like Jeez Louise!,, Durnit!, and my personal favorite, used by my grandfather, Got Doggit! But it will take time.
At any rate, if you happen to be hanging out with me and hear my daughter cursing, just smile at her and say, “Wow! You see a ship?”

The Unfortunate Incident Involving the Neighbor, the Newspaper and an Onion

2009-06-01T14:05:00.001-04:00

Motherhood has imbued me with a certain sense of entitlement that I’m not at all entitled to have.
When someone honks a horn at me because I accidentally weave out of my lane because I’m reaching behind my seat to shove a sippy cup in somebody’s mouth, I think, “Hey! I got three little kids here!”
When I leave the Starbucks table covered with crumbs and spilled milk, I think, “Gimme a break! I got three little kids!”
When I let my children watch three consecutive hours of SpongeBob Squarepants, I usually feel completely justified. “Hey!” I think. “I need a break! I got three little kids!”
So when I woke up last Saturday - or when the 2-year-old Tyrant poked me in the back at 6 a.m. wearing sunglasses and carrying a purse and saying she wanted to watch teebee - I felt reasonably okay about swiping the neighbor’s newspaper.
I did have to talk myself into it. It was an oversight, I thought. The paper guy skipped us, which isn’t really fair, and I’m the one up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I’m the one who needs the paper the most. I’m the one who has to watch insipid toddler shows. I deserved the paper. We paid for the paper. We’ll just pretend the paper guy skipped George’s house instead. Or maybe I’ll drink my coffee, read the paper, then fold it up and put it back in the green sleeve and throw it in their driveway. They always sleep late anyway (though we haven’t lived here long, and I really have no idea what time they get up).
But the morning got away from me as usual. The Diva wanted her waffles with the burnt part cut off. The Pterodactyl wanted his hot dog with the mustard squirted in a perfectly squiggly line. The Tyrant pooped on the floor. I mean, would they really want the paper back?
I had nearly succeeded in smothering the incident when Husband admitted to me that he had paid the bill late. We’d been cut off.
That changed everything. It was not an oversight at all. No unfairness. Just slackers.
I spent the entire day making up lies to cover my tracks. My daughter grabbed the wrong paper! The dog chewed it up! Weren’t there meteors in the area?
Oh, the guilt. It nibbled at me like a rat.
That night, we were having dinner guests. As I cooked, I realized I needed an onion.
I don’t really know the other neighbors well enough to borrow anything, so I sent the Diva over to Mr. George’s house, sort of hoping they wouldn’t be home, but they were, and she came back with an onion. My shame intensified.
“You must never, ever tell them,” says Husband. So I didn’t. But I posted about it on Facebook as a sort of confession. It didn’t go over well. “You’re an inveterate thief,” said Josh. “Stealing is stealing,” said Donna.
And now I can hardly look at their house any more. Over the past two days, I’ve baked them muffins, picked up dog poop from their yard (not even my dog’s), and complimented George’s wife Ann on her clothes. And I keep thinking, either they know, or they think I’m stalking them.
The good news is that my sense of entitlement has certainly been stifled, at least when it comes to stealing. Frankly, I just find the guilt too exhausting. But you should still avoid my table at Starbucks. Plus, now that I think about it, last time I was there, I took a newspaper. And I was by myself. But gimme a break after all. I got three kids...