A Word from Mr. Kristen McClusky’s Wife

Got my knickers in a twist and sent this letter to the head of my former prep school today.

A justifiable rant, or am I off my rocker?

Dear Dan:

As an alumna and lifelong fan of Wheeler, I want to thank you for the great job you’ve done helping me feel connected to all that’s happening at the school. I appreciate hearing about everything from curricular enrichment to campus development, how my donation dollars are being spent, and even being kept in the loop in times of tragedy. All these things have made me feel closer to the Wheeler community than I have in years. If I didn’t live 3,000 miles away, I’d send my daughters to Wheeler in a heartbeat.

I’m sure it’s in that same spirit of inclusion that somewhere along the line correspondence to me from the school started to be addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Mark McClusky.” My husband has attended some Wheeler events with me, and even he commented on how odd it is that as a result my own name has dropped off all mail from the school.  

I know this is likely is a matter of old-world etiquette. And in that vein, it makes me ponder whether Mary C. Wheeler herself was ever married. I don’t believe she was, but I can’t help but wonder if she had been–even back in 1889–whether she’d have named her progressive all-girls school something akin to The Mrs. John C. Smith School.

It appears that you are mindful about how you present your own name in school correspondence–sometimes signing with the familiar “Dan” rather than using your full name and title. I’ll continue to look forward to receiving news from Wheeler. I just hope that going forward you’ll be as thoughtful about how you address the envelopes as you are about their contents.

Best,
Kristen Bruno McClusky, ’85

Consider My Hat Eaten

Remember in the die-if-I-missed-it show of my teendom, Happy Days, when Fonzie attempted to admit he’d made a mistake?

Well, if you weren’t as devoted a viewer as I was, I’ll tell you about it. He’d do this super goofy but kinda-funny-because-it-was-predictable thing where’d he’d say, “I was wrr-wrrrr-wrrr…” and inevitably someone like God’s own Ritchie Cunningham would say, “Wrong, Fonzie? Are you trying to say you were wrong?”

Well, despite the myriad similarities between Fonzie and me–including the fact that I like conducting meetings in the bathroom–this week I had reason to actually feel happy about admitting that I was wrong.

But first, the back story.

Before having Kate, my concept of work had one modality: working 50-65 hour weeks,compulsively checking email when not at work, never knowing when a pitch would require unexpected late nights/travel/migraines/beatings from executives, never knowing when the work that we spend long hours and late nights producing would result in beatings from clients, and intermittent Sunday evenings rife with stomach-clutching because it’d all start over again in a matter of hours.

After having Kate and taking a hiatus from work my psyche was able to unfurl from it’s abused-child fetal position. And unbelievably, for the first time, the simple realization that there were other kinds of jobs out there came to me.

Unfortunately, agency life, for all it’s unpredictability and manic peaks and valleys, did get me accustomed to creature comforts far beyond Bagel Fridays. It was creative. It was lucrative. It was never boring. My co-workers were always funny and mostly brilliant. And the flip side of the burning ulcers was the ‘the client loved it’ adrenaline rushes.

Teeninsy Kate injected her existence into my life with the dramatic flourish of a table being hurled on it’s side during a round of Go Fish at a nursing home. She was a mindblowingly happy-making, wanted and welcomed addition to my life, but oooooh-ee! Did she ever change things.

Unsurprisingly, there was no turning back to my old job life. But nearly a year into careerlessness, I started to get small twinges of wanting to do something. I talked to friends, joined LinkedIn, winced with introspection, lunched with former co-workers, and massaged my temples in an attempt to conceptualize the kind of job that’d be both gratifying and allow me moderate to lavish time with Kate.

My criteria were: part-time, lucrative, flexible, creative.

Ever the realist, Mark said, “Pick two.”

In this process I was like a spider, dragging anyone within reach into my web to wrangle over the whole morass with me. Which is to say that aside from Kate Kate Kate, I had a new conversation topic to drone on about to anyone who’d listen.

And throughout all this thought and blather I made what I thought were two brilliant assertions:

1. The vast majority of part-time jobs require hair nets.

2. Job sharing is a myth.

I mean, here I was living in San Francisco for God’s sake, and I didn’t know a single person who job shared. And if I didn’t know anyone here who did, you can bet your Blackberry that folks in Omaha weren’t.

But then, last week, I was proven wrong by a dear friend who I’ll mysteriously dub “Sherry” so as to conceal her not-yet-started-the-gig identity. Yes, after a series of phone calls and interviews that spanned several weeks, my dear Miss Sherry got herself a two-day-a-week job. Job-sharing with another woman.

But wait! I also must mention that this job is in her field, at a super-cool company, senior management level–and she’ll even get mondo employee discounts that’ll rock her whole family.

No burger flipping required! (In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and guess there’s not a deep fryer in the whole building.) No calling the men Mr. So-and-So and getting flowers for Secretary’s Day! No whispering, “And what are you wearing, Arthur?” into the phone while the kids play in the other room!

And best of all, NO HAIR NETS.

In the words of my people from the great small state of Rhode Island, I am SO WICKED HAPPY for her. And for the slim ray of hope this casts for all the other talented professionals who–mothers or not–have great contributions to make, years of senior-level experience, want or need to make money, and require flexibility.

Now that that myth has been busted, does anyone know if that toothbrush photo from the Jamaican vacation story is true?

Forget John Malkovich. I want a portal into Kate.

I collect brother-in-laws named John. I currently only have two, but my sister Ellen is single so there is a chance that I could add a third to my set some day.

My one brother-in-law John–the Coastie who’s married to Mark’s sis, Lori–he and I have a long-standing joke about the Miller’s $30-spending-max holiday gift exchange. It goes back to when I wasn’t yet married into the family, as he was. He delighted in taunting me year after year about whether or not I’d be on the gift exchange list. Then he’d dangle his inclusion in my face by saying “Neener neener neener!”

It was clearly a very mature joke, and likely not funny to anyone other than John and me, but isn’t finding those perversely-amusing common grounds to laugh about when you’re flying on tryptophan and bourbon what brings families closer together?

So anyway, now that I’ve made the grade and am officially and securely part of the gift exchange, I got an email from Mark’s cousin Maggie’s fiance Josh. (You following that?) Due to his engaged status he’s in the mix this year (though frankly I think he was last year too and the Millers are growing a bit lax about the exclusivity of membership). He got Kate to buy for this year and wanted some ideas about what she might like.

Pondering what gift booty would delight Little Miss Kate made me realize the extent to which three-year-olds live in an altered LSD-trippy parallel universe. One where the most mundane everyday objects take on a fascinating sheen.

Like, we were at a toy store yesterday and amidst all the cool fun stuff and actual toys, Kate spotted a plastic placemat with pictures of something like goldfish on it. She woozily, adoringly clutched it to her chest like a diamond tennis bracelet from Tiffany.

“This placemat, Mama,” she whispered with reverence. “I love this placemat. Can I please get it?” Then, realizing there were others with different designs she started yanking them off the rack with delirious glee. “Oh look they have more! There’s this one? I love this too! I want all of them, Mama! Can I have all of them? Please?”

Invoking my well-honed powers of Resisting a Child’s Desire to Buy Crap, I heard myself say, “If you really want one you can ask for it for Christmas.” Then I thought what an absurd Christmas list item that is. Other kids want dolls, Legos, Thomas the Tank Engine. Kate wants a placemat. And she’d truly be BLISSED OUT to get it.

Before having kids I cracked up hearing that my friend Shelley’s son slept with his beloved Wiggles video. As in, clutching the actual video in the box, not having it playing while he slept. Well, joke’s on me when Kate spends a rainy winter night cuddled up with her stuffed dog Dottie and a placemat.

Kate’s other Christmas list items are barely better. Somewhere along the line she suddenly decided that scarves were the coolest things EVER and spent the better part of a 75-degree day pleading with me as if her existence depended on it–and how could I be so cruel as to deny her?–”I want a scarf, Mama. A SCARF! I need one right now!” The small plastic bowl with a snap-top lid that a friend recently left at our house became another object of lustful desire. They’ll be happy to know she had to hug it during several potty sessions. (I ran it through the dishwasher.) And truly I can’t think of any gift she’d love more than a package of seeds–poppy seeds, flower seeds, any type really as long as they are little and plentiful. I’d even wager you could wrap up a dust bunny in a little box and Kate would ceremoniously carry it to her altar–I mean her play kitchen–with the intensity and loving care you’d reserve for a baby bird.

Anyway, I hope all these things are providing Josh not only some good gift ideas but also the realization that, as a man on the brink of marriage, the next big plunge into parenthood could result in becoming the owner and operator of a small person who you love madly madly madly but whose passions and interests you can rarely make a whit of sense of.

But hey, it keeps things lively around here.

As for Paige, she’s also happily entrenched in her own trippy reality. Sadly we’re past the stage where she’d wave her arms around, catch sight of one hand, then slowly turn it over and back in front of her eyes, examining it as if this brilliant device was something she’d never seen before and wasn’t right there, attached to the end of her arm. God, Mark and I loved that.

If Paige was writing an online dating bio she’d add the fringe on the bottom of the couch to her list of interests. Despite whatever real toy she’s given to wrangle with on the floor, she’ll eventually roll herself over to the couch and flap one hand slowly through the tassley fringe with deep contentment.

And whenever I carry her in my front-pack and we walk under a tree, Paigey arches her whole body backwards to stare up at the leaves and the light and laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean, sure, leaves certainly are funny, but they’re not quite the laugh riot Miss P makes them out to be.

All this fascination with the mundane has made me realize how much being a mother is like working a crowd of drug-addled concert-goers. Most of the time I’m in a Stadium Security role, just trying to coral the happy trippers, and make sure it all stays mellow and fun and no one loses an eye. But inevitably somewhere in the course of the day I’m more like a Rock Doctor triaging bad trippers in a tent, helping them get through fits over inanimate objects they’re convinced have come to life to torture them. You know, managing a situation like: ” This sock is hurting me!!! It hurrrrrts meeee! Bad sock!! BAAAAAD!!”

Oh sure. A bad trip like that? I’d say I take on one of those–sometimes as many as three–nearly every day.

And to think I don’t even have a walkie talkie or a medical degree.

Birth Announcement Breeds Confusion, Resentment

My friend Geri, who I see and talk too far less often than I should, called yesterday.

Geri: “Okay, so first off I have to say that when I got this red envelope in the mail from you I thought, ‘Oh God, she’s already sent out her Christmas cards. And it’s just days after Halloween.’ “

Me: “And you were disgusted by what a super organized stay-at-home mom I’d become? You were ready to totally write me off as a friend?”

Geri: “Well, not quite write you off… That’s a bit extreme.”

Me: “But then you opened it? And realized it was just a really really late birth announcement?”

Geri: “Exactly. And my faith in you was restored.”

Yes, last week, just days after our beloved newborn Paige turned, well, nine months old, we popped her birth announcement into the mail.

We figured that years from now, when she and Kate are in their thirties and looking through old shoeboxes of family photos and memorabilia, Paige will care more about ever having had a birth announcement than she will about the fact that we got around to sending it out so bloody late. In fact, if she doesn’t look too hard at how very large she was in the pictures, perhaps she’ll never even make the connection.

Speaking of lost connections, on an online video chat with my Dad and Joan last week, I mentioned that they’d be getting a birth announcement in the mail from us soon, “just in case you were wondering if I was still pregnant.” Which caused my dad to lean distortingly close to his computer video lens and say, “What’s that? You’re pregnant?!“

Ah dear. Perhaps sending this card out now did more harm than good.

Well, despite what anyone else says, we still want to shout it from the rooftops:
“Paige Victoria McClusky is here! She is a supreme addition to our family, and we love love love her more than you’d ever know!”

Take that! We’ve announced it. Even if she did make her entrance nearly a year ago.

Pizza, Wedding Champagne, and History Being Made

It wasn’t until some time late Monday that I realized that Mark and I staying home alone with the kids on election night was a poor decision. So I called out to my Friday Mama Posse like a deer raises her tail to signal her kinfolk.

Sure we have young kids. Yes, it’s a school night. But heralding this new desperately needed change, something that’s been dangled in front of us tantalizingly for so very long–if, or when, we finally get it and seal the deal–we really need to be in the company of friends.

So I heated up some homemade squash soup, tossed champagne left-over from our wedding into the fridge, and called an order in to Extreme Pizza.

By 7:30 Megan had already cried tears of joy, most adults were wearing old party hats from Kate’s second birthday, and I was drunkenly photographing my “I Voted” sticker in different settings–on a doll, on Baby Wes, on Mary‘s forehead. Oh, and let’s not forget me making Drew pretend to shoot up with the Fisher Price doctor’s kit syringe.

Good times.

One could make the argument that the kids–bleary-eyed one-year-olds and amped up three-year-olds who were ravaging the house with a toxic combination of toys, organic Teddy Puffs, and each other’s rabid encouragement–were acting more mature than the adults.

Aside from the two lucky ones who scored our limited Baby Sleeping Vessels, the kids stayed up way too late. And the adults drank way too much.

We’re all paying for it today, and I can’t think of any reason more worth it.

Barack on, Obama! Once these hangovers pass we can all work on getting used to what it feels like to be proud of our President. And heck, maybe even our country.

Can I hear an Amen?!

Halloween Hi-Jinx Chez McClusky

Our Halloween decorations this year included a large bag of black plastic spiders. Kate and I both spotted them amidst all the other spooky crap at Target and I’m not sure which one of us got more OMG-I-must-have-them-now fired up. Suffice it to say we couldn’t wait until checking out to bust into the bag.

My guess is this delightful sack o’ arachnids were meant to adorn the nearly suburban-mandatory big fake spider web that covers the pumpkins on the stoop or is stretched across the front porch. But at that point we hadn’t rigged our web yet. And when we got home, somewhere in the course of the day Kate had dropped one in the hallway by her bedroom. I have to admit that more than once I walked by the same fake spider sitting in that same place on the floor and had a momentary ick shiver. Which got me thinking that less truly is more.

So I stuck one on the soap bar in Mark’s shower.

After getting ready for work the next day Mark didn’t say a thing, and I later discovered our eight-legged friend on my pillow. And from there we went back and forth–it was in the medicine cabinet on his toothpaste tube, in my jewelry box, under the sheets on his side of the bed, yadda yadda yadda.

But of course, I had to think of the way to end this cat and mouse game with enough flourish to mark it as the grand finale. And also to assert my clear and evident spider-hiding domination. I mean, not that I’m competitive or anything.

As I pondered my coup, I was chagrined at the thought that in the few days leading up to Halloween Mark was going to be in New York. And then–duh!–I realized that having him find it there–while I was home in California–should be my genius next move. So, when he was  taking his pre-airport departure shower at the painful hour of 5:30AM, I sprinkled the entire bag of spiders into a section of his suitcase, reserving some for inside a pair of dress shoes he’d packed.

It sucked voluntarily getting out of bed in the wee small hours to do this, but I’m willing to make sacrifices like that to secure my place on the medal podium of pranksterdom.

The voicemail Mark left me after unpacking his bag at the hotel–and sending a bunch of spiders flying–was, “Well played, honey. Well played.”

Of course, when he got home a couple days later, I pulled back the sheets of our bed to see all the spiders come home to roost. Sure, it surprised me, and sure, gave me the proverbial willies, but we both knew that the game had really ended with my bold and brilliant suitcase move.

Or so we thought.

Today, Mark sent me an email from the office entitled “I don’t know if you’re teaching Kate tricks.” Turns out that when he put on his cycling jacket to ride to the gym at lunch he discovered that the pockets were filled with dozens of small wooden mushroom- and pepperoni-painted disks, part of the pizza-making toy Kate’s currently obsessed with.

Mark was fairly certain that this was my handiwork, or that I’d coached Kate to do it. But I’d undergo a polygraph to prove that the girl acted entirely on her own. I wasn’t even aware she’d done it. Though if I did happen to catch her red-handed, God knows I wouldn’t have stopped her.

Ah well. Just when I thought I had the last laugh, little Miss Kate comes in out of the blue and ends the game with a dazzling flourish.

Well played, Katie. Well played. 

Ack! There’s somebody in there!

Last week, while Mark was in Neuva York slumming  his way through dinner at wd-50 alongside Gourmet Magazine editor Ruth Reichl, food critic Geoffrey Steingarten, Chef Grant Achatz and other foodie luminaries, our neighbors took pity on the girls and me and had us over for pumpkin-carving and pasta.

In a rookie-level tactical error, I fed Paige before the rest of us sat down, then realized I’d dashed any hopes of her sitting out our meal patiently from her high chair. Employing an Italian-American approach to problem solving, I looked for some more food I could stuff into her.

Did they possibly have any Cheerios, I asked. “I think so,” said Jennifer. But then looking at the box, “Oh, but they’re the sugary Honey Nut ones. Will those work?”

Mark and I fully embrace the No Sugar for the Kids so There’s More for Us patented approach to childrearing. So, I paused for a brief moment before my own desire to eat uninterrupted won out and I succumbed.

At nine months, Paige is proficient at swiping Cheerios off her tray and even picking them up with her pincer grasp, but she still hasn’t had the I-can-put-these-in-my-mouth-all-by-myself realization. So after I inserted the first-ever dose of sugar into her innocent little bouche, her eyes widened, and she excitedly tapped her fingertips together, signing “More! More!”

It was the first time she’s signed! I’ve only been trying to teach her a few signs–more, all done, milk–seeing as, well, seeing as I only know a few myself.

And earlier in the day when she got all babbling arm-waving hopped up looking at some pumpkins I asked her if she’d like to touch them, and wonder of wonders she reached right out and she did!

Call it parental goofballness, but it is amazing to get those first hits of two-way communication with your little bundle of chub. It’s not like you don’t expect it to ever happen, but after nine months of feeding and bathing and diaper-changing marked only by intermittent smiles and laughs–which don’t get me wrong are akin to a narcotic for a sleep-deprived Mama–after all that it’s still thrilling and freaky and somewhat unbelievable when you suddenly get confirmation that there is in fact someone in that baby body. And that they are listening.

Jennifer and I encouraged Paigey to sign “more” a couple more times to validate that, yes, she was in fact doing it. Woo hoo! I gave her a million proud kisses all over her head like she was some prize-winning Basset Hound at Westminster.

Of course, it’s been nearly a week and she hasn’t signed a single time since. Granted, she also hasn’t had any more Honey Nut Cheerios. 

Your Coffee Table Needs to Meet this Cookbook

I’d just like to say that I’m prouder than the mother of an honor roll student. Proud of my husband Mark, that is.

Back when Kate was a few months old, she and I tagged along with him on a work trip to Chicago. Maybe I have some Nordic blood I’m not aware of. Something that drove me to bring my wee tender infant to Chicago on a winter weekend that served up record cold. As if thrusting this defenseless small thing out into blasting bitter winds and inhuman sub-zero temps was some cultural rite of passage that if she managed to survive would result in her being given a secret name from a tribe elder.

But really I think it was just me wanting to get out of the house.

Yeah, so anyway, we went there and it was chilly. And we stayed in a schmancy hotel. And the first night Kate arcanely (and cruelly) managed to wake up every hour at the same exact time (3:14AM, 4:14AM, 5:14AM) forcing me to stick a boob in her mouth to quiet her down because Mark had to wake up the next day with some hopes of having slept enough to be an intelligent functional journalist. Those few nights comprised perhaps the most miserable ones of my infant mothering.

But all that aside, Mark and I did go out one night to an amazing restaurant called Alinea to eat the most decadent, fascinating, and theatrical meal of our lives. All 25 or so courses. Not to mention the 15 wine pairings. (But really, after the eleventh glass of wine, who can keep count?)

In fact, the business behind Mark’s trip to Chi-town was that he was interviewing that restaruant’s chef, a guy in his early thirties named Grant Achatz who’s a disciple of His Holiness Thomas Keller, and a frontiersman in the realm of molecular gastronomy. That scientifically-alchemized and post-modernistically presented haute gourmet food utterly unlike anything your mom used to make. And food that many moms–from my mother’s generation at least–might never appreciate the staggering artistic and experiential merits of. (I can hear my mother now: “You’ve got to be kidding me! For the price of that coo coo meal you could’ve put a down payment on a perfectly good house!”)

So, after that trip Mark wrote a story for Wired about Grant. They stayed in touch. Gourmet named Alinea the best Restaurant in America. Grant was named the Best Chef in the U.S. by The James Beard Foundation. Grant got cancer. He started work on a cookbook. He asked Mark to write an essay for the book. Grant also asked Geoffrey Steingarten and Michael Ruhlman to contribute. (This, by the way, is like being invited to play golf with Tiger Woods and, well, some other really amazingly super good and well-known golfer.) Grant’s cancer, blessedly, went into remission. The book, Alinea, went on sale over a week ago and I believe is now in its fourth printing. I’ll resist the cookbook/selling/hotcakes metaphor-pun.

I can’t imagine people are snatching it up because they’re in a rut about what they’ve been serving for dinner and want to mix things up a bit and wow the kids with some Surf Clam with Nasturtium Leaf and Flower with Shallot Marmelade. Or maybe have the neighbors over for Sunday football and some Foie Gras with Spice Cinnamon Puff and Apple Candy.

The book has a “How To Use this Book” intro, and it actually says that they do want you to venture to produce some of its recipes. But it’s unlikely that any non-professionals (aside from one blogger with a lot of time, patience, and ambition) would do so. Hence the brilliant term “coffee table cookbook.” Aside from the complexity of the number of components and steps and even the staggering grocery gathering that’d be required, you’d also need a kitchen stocked with a madman’s array of chemicals plus state of the art hi-tech equipment that can do things like turn fresh parsley into powder or make Gob Stopper shaped spheres filled with unexpected innards, like say, curry sauce. Or Concord grape. Or, heck, both.

Not that that’s a recipe mind you, but this book is packed with similarly mind blowing match-ups that you could never in your most drug-induced Suessian dreams conjure. And if you ever have the very very good fortune to eat at Alinea–something you really should try to do before you take all your foods up through a straw–you won’t believe you’re actually eating these sublime things all together or that you love how they taste.

And for God’s sake if you do eat there, be sure not to go with your mother or your brother-in-law or whoever it is who’ll be too freaked out by the food’s novelty or who’s an unadventurous eater or is even just an old school party pooper. Or maybe on the other hand, bring them along! Require them to just shut up and eat, and watch as the kitchen and the front-of-the-house staff knock their damn socks off! I promise you the next day they’ll quit their 17-year run at the accounting firm, hop a flight to Fiji and take up kite surfing.

But oh, where was I? The book. The book. I’m telling you, it’s like that. It’s not just like flipping through the utterly comprehensive and practical yet curveball-less Joy of Cooking. It takes you places. This is not a cookbook that you buy for your friend who likes to cook, although he certainly will love it. Buy it for someone whose culinary specialty is a toasted bagel and know there will be something that will floor and amaze even her–not to mention the people who come across it on her coffee table.

There’s science! There’s art! There’s technology! There’s food! There’s stunning photography! And there’s my husband’s name. Right there on the cover page.

So recently I suggested you make a contribution to help fund breast cancer research. Today I’m advising you to go out or go online and buy this book. Not because I want to help sales for Grant or for Mark, though they are nice guys and God knows Grant is a fascinating and crazy hard-working genius. But because this book could boost your cool quotient exponentially. Not to mention the effect it could have on many of the folks on your holiday shopping list.

Help cure cancer, save your soul, then impress your friends. You can thank me later.

Kate Walks the Catwalk

Tomorrow is the local kiddie Halloween parade, and Kate’s school’s Fall Festival and some pumpkin ho-down at a nearby cemetery of all places. Kate, Paige and I will be debuting our 2008 Halloween line of haute costumery. Tonight as I was double-checking every last detail of our ensembles like some OCD Project Runway contestant I told Mark I felt like it was the night before my thesis presentation.

Which is, needless to say, utterly pathetic. And perhaps an indicator that it’s time for me to rejoin the workforce. Either that or resign myself to housewife life and sign up for a Betty Crocker cook-off.

Though our costumes do rock so incredibly hard that we’re sure to stun and amaze all who see us. And if we don’t all I can say is poor Mark will have himself one brutally long ugly night of talking me down off the ledge of irrational female emotions. 

It’s weird that as hopped up as I am to trot the girls (and sure, myself) out on Halloween, in the very same week it became brutally clear how remotely not cut out to be a Pageant Mom I am. Which isn’t to say that I entered Paige into the Little Miss Fatty Legs Northern California Regional Semi-Finals. Though if there was such a pageant and I was the type to enter my nine-month-old daughter, I can assure you SHE WOULD KILL.

My encounter was actually a gazillion times more chill. My gargantuanly talented photographer friend asked if Kate would–well I don’t even want to use the term because it makes it seem like more than it was but–model for a shoot she was doing. No big thing–just some pics for a website (or catalog?) for a Brangelina’s kids level-of-schmancy children’s clothing line.

Of course, while knowing it was so not remotely a big deal there still was one wee part of my being that immediately interpreted the invitation to do this as my friend’s way saying that she’d truly never looked upon a more beautiful and luminous child than Kate. Ever.

And so, knowing Kate has the star power to be the next Brooke Shields but because we’re not the types to do anything about it other than leave a trail of love-struck 3-year-old boys in her wake, I happily agreed to help my friend out and do this it’ll-be-fun shoot. And immediately put Kate on a strict grapefruit and Tab diet… Okay, well not really.

So, two days before the shoot I noticed Kate had a dark quarter-sized bruise on her cheek that appeared in that way that little owies crop up all over 3-year-olds who engage in some sort of Ultimate Playground Fighting all in the name of good recess fun. One day before the shoot Kate and her friend Owen decided to give each other magic marker “tattoos” akin to a prison gang ritual. Kate’s cheek, neck, and the length of her arm were inked in what I was sure was wash-awayable marker, though Mark’s bath-time washcloth dermabrasion had no power over them. And the actual day of the shoot she get a big red ballerina stamp on her hand from dance class like some little raver club girl.

It’s not until you want your child to be free and clear of bodily markings that you realize what a typical week in the world of a preschooler serves up to their dermis. Sheesh.

And the fact that the thought did cross my mind that all these things could affect THE PICTURES scared me into wondering if there’s some latent Pageant Mother embedded deep deep inside me just waiting to bust out like an alien from Sigourney Weaver’s stomach.

Well, suffice it to say that Kate doesn’t seem to have the, uh, temperament to withstand a mellow photo shoot at our good friend’s house where she’s usually comfortable enough to frolic naked in the backyard kiddie pool and raid their selection of sippy cups.

A simple request to try on a pair of tights–this doesn’t even include the dress, boots, sweater and hat which were ultimately required–caused Kate to scream “NO!” in painfully close range of my face, then run off to pry the play cash register away from the hands of one of the other more serenely-natured girls.

Finally, miraculously, the entire outfit did get onto her body, despite the tricky Euro buttons up the back of the dress, and the hysterical crying fit that ended in a series of those hyperventilating quick intakes of breath, a snot-smeared face, and my promise to pack her to the gills with ice cream the moment we got home.

Thankfully the woman who was running the shoot was a mother too, and told me one girl/model recently wouldn’t even getting dressed. That left me feeling like my Ivy League-level aspirations that got knocked down to a good liberal arts school at least didn’t devolve into the community college outcome that that other poor mother walked away with. Misery no doubt loves company, but loves someone who is worse off even more.

I don’t know yet whether the pics of Kate were even use-able. My friend managed to tell little sweet stories to Kate while photographing her, brilliantly distracting her from her satanic crying spell. And since most of the other clothing ended up being too big for Kate, it turned out I only had to wrangle one outfit on her and then we were free to go. Of course, in writing this I realize that was likely the polite way to excise Little Miss Tantrum from the scene.

Whatever the case, as we headed out the woman actually asked if we’d ever want to do it again, remarking that Kate is “really beautiful” and kindly leaving out the “when her head is not rotating full circle and she’s not puking pea soup” part of the sentence. Perhaps she’ll bring some sort of kiddie sedative along next time. Or better yet, something mind-altering for the adults.

Driving down the mountain from my friend’s house I saw Kate in the rear view mirror looking worn out and gazing out the window. I asked her what she thought of having her picture taken and she said weakly, “Good.” Did she think it was something she’d want to do again I asked, mostly out of curiosity about what she’d say. She perked right up, leaning forward with a million-dollar smile (best one of the day) and chirped, “Yes, Mama! Yes, I’ll do it again!”

I’ve no idea what would make her want to re-enter the Zone of Wailing Misery which she was so entrenched in just moments before. Either modeling shoots are forgotten like the pain of childbirth, or the extent to which Mark and I restrict Kate from having sweets is so great it was a small price for her to pay to get an ice cream sandwich.

If we ever do decide to do it again, I just have to figure out what treat I’m going to allow myself to have at the end.

Little Mitzy, R.I.P.

My dear friend Shelley, with whom I rented a Victorian in San Francisco for some seven or so years of single-gal debauchery, had a childhood dog named Mitzy. In that way Shell and I have of happily talking non-stop whenever we see each other, we’ve covered a lot of conversational ground about everything from current life issues to childhood tales.

Shelley grew up in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. One day she and her mother discovered that little Mitzy, who was but a wee Chihuahua, had somehow been left outside. Being out in a Minnesota winter can be physically devastating for an adult human. Temps drop to absurd sub-zero levels, and in no time eyelids can seize up, snot can freeze in your nose… Well, you get the point.

When the little Mitz-sicle was discovered by the back door, a forlorn young Shelley snatched her up, carried her carefully inside and planted her on a heating pad, while likely weeping and assuredly whispering heartfelt apologies.

Miraculously, little Miss Mitz warmed up and bounced back. And yet Shelley never did dedicate her life to the church. Go figure.

Anyway, I’m a huge dog person. I adore the beasts. Yet I always found that story hilarious. Maybe it was more about them having a lap dog–one named Mitzy no less–that just slayed me.  That coupled with the fact that as an adult Shelley and her husband Don are so not Dog People. Somehow all those things, along with my sick sick sense of humor, have led me to razz Shelley mercilessly about Mitzy whenever anything about the cold, or small dogs, or forgetfulness, or heck even heating pads, comes up in conversation. (Yes, it’s a tough job being one of my friends.)

Well last night at dinner Mark mentioned that when he’d gone in to get Paige that morning a window in her room had been left open all night and she was–yes, you got it–a little Paige-sicle.

Thankfully Paige didn’t require the “To the heating pad, STAT!” treatment that Mitzy did, nor did Mark have to cradle her carefully to prevent possible cracking. He just closed the window, put a little hat on her, hugged her up, and moved her to a warmer part of the house.

We’re in this Indian Summer season here in the Bay Area. During the day in the sun it can get well into the 70s, but at night the temps drop 20 or more degrees. At any rate, the window staying open was decidedly my fault. I’m the one who puts Paige to sleep at night and closes her curtains. I should have checked the window then, and somehow didn’t.

And of course yesterday the little dumpling woke up with a runny nose and sneezing the cutest saddest little sneezes you ever did see. Today she’s no better. At nearly nine months old, she’s got her first cold, poor dear.

Guess who is fretfully whispering “I’m sorry” into little ears now?