Stayin’ Alive

I’m dripping with get-rich-quick schemes. Not that I’ve ever set any in motion. I just keep them mentally tucked away. They’re like alternate 401K policies. You know, something I can tap into if the financial going ever gets rough.

One of my first entrepreneurial ideas was the seemingly brilliant gym-laundromat combo. I hatched this concept back in the days of laundry-facility-free post-collegiate living.

I could imagine no better double-dose of self satisfaction than doing laundry while working out. Dump your clothes into washing machines and do a half-hour of cardio. Flip it to the dryers, then lift some weights. Towel off, maybe even shower (if you’re lucky enough to live near one of the deluxe full-service locations), then fold your laundry and go.

After such a highly-functioning hour, one could easily spend the remainder of the day watching a People’s Court marathon and eating Pringles, guilt-free.

Yes, that was how my mind used to work.

But these days, with two wee ones, I can see myself spending a day parked in front of the TV as easily as I can imagine my two- and four-year-old cooking me dinner from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Besides, life with a washer/dryer on-site has become a given, not a fantasy. Alas, my gym-laundromat idea has lost a bit of steam.

My next dazzling idea—one that’s sure to delight backyard barbequers the world over—is much more aligned with my current Mama-mode lifestyle. The idea is—drum roll please—the Hot Dog Patty™. Yes, the it’s-so-brilliant-why-didn’t-YOU-think-of-it hamburger-shaped hot dog. It alleviates the pesky grocery-store hassle of having to estimate how many hamburger and hot dog rolls to buy.

Now I admit, the Hot Dog Patty has a few aesthetic hurdles to overcome before it starts flying off grocery store shelves. But I’m confident that with the right team behind me we can iron out those kinks, and before long be rolling in round hot dogs and riches.

Oh I’ve had other ideas. Outposts where singles can rent puppies to more easily pick up people in parks. Career counseling for mothers going back to work after baby-tending breaks. An online store selling black-out room-darkening curtains in cute patterns for baby rooms.

For a short while I was hopped up on making a compilation CD entitled High School Funeral Songs of the 80s. Now, I realize this is much more of a niche item, but I’ve spoken to a few people (who, granted, were inebriated at the time) and they seemed really keen on the idea. In no way do I want to disrespect anyone who’s had the misfortune of attending such a sad event, but hearing those standards like The Rose and Wind Beneath My Wings again can’t help but bring you back to another time and place.

And I can’t be the only self-absorbed socially-obsessed teen who fantasized about my own fabulous, flower-festooned funeral. I mean, I’m not proud to admit it, but I daydreamed about the over-crowded church. The sobbing preppie popular boys, bereft that I was gone when they’d never asked me out (or ever even really noticed me). I’m certain other people imagined their popularity soaring like a Bee Gees song on the pop charts once they were suddenly gone.  I mean, gone in some way that still allowed them to look fabulous in an open casket, feathered hair perfectly in place.

But once more, the passage of time, and a blessed mellowing of my dark tastes, changed all that too. Long before adulthood any off-color funeral fantasies I had petered out. And with the birth of my children, they were utterly and wholeheartedly extinguished. (Gone too, thank God, is my bad hair, which really never took well to feathering anyway.)

A few weeks ago, I tagged along with Mark on a blissfully child-free four-day work trip to New Yawk City. We ate indulgent, gout-inducing meals at erratic, family-unfriendly hours. We strolled down crowded streets holding hands, tried on overpriced shoes, and whenever the spirit struck us headed back to our hipster hotel to nap, smooch, or watch bad TV in bed. I carried a Big Girl purse, without a single diaper or Kleenex.  And one night we spent $70 on just three cocktails.

Ah, New York!

It was, as the French say, incroyable. Mark made me laugh until I cried. He dazzled me with his killer charm and dashing good looks–even busting out a swank pin-striped suit for one party. Throughout the trip he reminded me how damn lucky I was to have landed him. I mean, not by pointing it out to me or anything. Just by being him.

We even missed the girls at the same times, somehow synching up our indulgent carefree episodes and our sudden desperate needs to call home. It’s nice to know that when we’re not busy with all that kid-tendin’ Mark’s still my favorite playmate.

Another thing that kept coming up on the trip, for me at least, was the weird nagging sense of needing to, well, to stay alive. As much fun as I was having away from the kids, I kept remembering my parental responsibility to return home in one healthy and functional piece. To have fun, but to do it safely. Even though I wasn’t pushing a stroller, I still waited for the ‘walk’ signal to cross the street. Well, at least most of the time. At any rate, it turns out that being a mother has engendered in me the ultimate opposite experience of the teen-aged funeral fantasy.

Blessedly, our plane back to SF touched down uneventfully. We drove home without incident. And when we joyously burst into the house, we found Kate watching TV, oblivious to our arrival. Like some dog you leave at the kennel who has to punish you for your absence, she foiled the rapturous leaping-into-my-arms reunion scenario I’d played out in my mind. Instead we got, “This is a show about pets. Shhhh… I’m watching it.”

Paige was napping, so we got even less happy homecoming hoopla from her. Oh well.

A couple nights ago Mark strode from the kitchen to the living room saying, “I can’t believe I keep forgetting to tell you this!” He went on to describe a conversation he and Kate had the day before. Out of the blue she asked him what happens to children when their parents die. And Mark, dumbfounded, managed to muster the response, “They live with someone else who loves them very much, and they take care of them.” And he tacked on, “But you don’t have to worry about that. Mama and I are going to be around for a very long time.”

She asked this, Mark said, in a total matter-of-fact way—no tears or fretting. And she accepted his response similarly, with a satisfied nod and a look out the window.

I nearly vomited with sadness and love hearing this. It was all I could do to not bang open the door to her room, and throw myself on her sweet sleeping self, never to let go.

“My God,” I asked Mark dry-mouthed, “How the hell did you cope with that?!”

“We were driving across the Bay Bridge,” he said, “But I practically abandoned the steering wheel to crawl in the back seat to wrap myself around her.”

Word to that, man.

Dear Kate—and Paigey Woo, too—you girls are extra-specially lucky because you have a Mama and Dad who are working really hard at sticking around for a very long time for you. We have no intention of missing your hellish teen years, or Princeton graduations, or the time in your twenties when you move back home unemployed and start dating creepy older men who we disapprove of. In fact, when you guys are living with us then I thought maybe we could have a standing Tuesday night Scrabble-and-tomato-soup-and-grilled-cheese date. What do you think?

I want you both to know that I love you both like a total crazy lady. In a way you’ll only understand when (if) you have kids of your own. And with full awareness of how utterly cheesy it is, I will say here and now that you two girls are without a doubt the wind beneath my wings.

Glass Half Full

In our house love is measured in ounces. Between Mark and me at least.

Our unexceptionally-appointed kitchen has one of those do-hickies in the refrigerator door that dispenses filtered water, ice cubes, and—well, I don’t mean to brag here but—crushed ice too.

It makes me feel like royalty.

Growing up I lived in a lovely house in a beautiful seaside town. I went to an excellent school, and my dad had a good job. We had a Black Labrador, and my mom took painting classes and did lots of gardening. You could call it an entitled life.

But it was New England. Which is to say the richest man in town drove a battered ancient Volvo, everyone we knew set their thermostats to bone-chilling temps in the winter, and my mother didn’t subscribe to a single magazine. She read old back issues our neighbors passed on to her.

It wasn’t until the late-80s that my sisters and I, home for a holiday and desperate to check our apartment answering machines, went to the Apex in Pawtucket to buy Mom a touch-tone phone. Had we never done this, and were she alive today, I’ve no doubt she’d still be dragging her finger along that rotary dial, and swearing every time it slipped and she’d have to start all over again.

When I started going to school in Providence, I got a taste of life beyond the crusty Yankee world. Not that my city friends weren’t New Englanders too. But some of them were, well, new school.

I had to mask my amazement when, while making packets of Swiss Miss cocoa at Diane Prescott’s house—a structure that amazed me in its unapologetic immensity and modernity (not to mention that her mom drove a brand-new bright orange Pacer)—all we needed to do was turn the knob on a tap at the side of their kitchen sink. Amazingly, the spigot produced boiling water, instantly. It was so handy, so indulgent, I felt simultaneously dazzled and dismayed by it. Nothing should be so easy.

Of course, I never let on any of this to Diane. Though I’m sure she did wonder why, at age nine, I was perpetually desperate for a cup of tea.

But now I’m a Californian. Someone who has had regularly-scheduled massage appointments every six weeks, like haircuts. Someone who—before having kids at least—filled empty spots in the weekends by having Asian immigrants slough dry skin off my feet and scrape dirt from my toenails. I’m no longer amazed (or scandalized) when I walk onto someone’s deck and see a hot tub.

I don’t see any of these changes in me as indicators that I’ve struck it rich. In fact, I’d guess Mark and I have less money that our parents did when we were kids. It’s just that here, on the Left Coast, personal indulgences are not poo-pooed. They’re actually encouraged; signs that you’re taking care of yourself, not acting hedonistic.

When my mother visited San Francisco, sometimes between Scrabble games and her scouring my coffee pot I’d suggest that we go get mani-pedis. But she never had any desire to try one. In fact, she seemed turned off by the idea. Like her take on restaurants—”If you’ve got a kitchen and know how to cook, why would you go out?”—she was unshakeable in her views.

Our rental-house refrigerator’s water and ice dispenser is like some weird time-and-place machine. More than once when someone comes over for the first time, I’ve commented on it as I get them water. “We never had one of these when I was a kid,” I say, pressing the glass against up against the fridge door. “I feel spoiled rotten that I have one now.”

I’m laughing when I say it, but I’m really only half-kidding.

The downside to our water dispenser? It’s painfully slow. (Was Diane Prescott’s like that too? I can’t imagine it was.) To fill even a rocks-sized glass takes something like a minute, maybe two. That might not sound like long, but it feels like dog minutes. I’ve missed the better part of brilliant stories our dinner-party guests have told while I was slavishly refilling their glasses. And after packing snacks, changing diapers, and putting on coats—trying desperately to get out the door—I’ll realize I need water for the girls. My momentum screeches to a halt as I press each sippy cup against the door and wait, my blood pressure spiking.

Sometimes when this becomes unbearable I pivot to the sink to slosh water in the cups. Relief! But inevitably I envision the presence of microscopic water-borne carcinogens. I picture myself polluting my babies’ pure bodies. The burden of that guilt is sometimes worse than tacking another five minutes of lateness onto wherever it is we’re already supposed to be.

In the evenings when the girls are in bed, Mark and I convene on the couch. It’s where we exhale after punching the clock for the day. And like a game of chicken, one of us eventually gets up for something—to pee, to flip the laundry, to get ice cream—and asks, usually without thinking, “Can I get you anything?” It’s only when the response is, “Sure. Water would be great,” that we realize what we’ve done.

I joke that our water dispenser should also serve Ritalin. I can’t imagine anyone, even with a normal attention span (unlike my hummingbird-fast one), not finding the process painful. In fact, Mark tends to just use the tap these days. But every once and a while he’ll come back to me and hand me a pint-glass that’s filled nearly to the top. “This,” he’ll say proudly, “Is how much I love you.”

Expectation Setting 101

Last week I tried on a Vera Wang wedding gown.

No, no, I’m not getting married, or remarried, or even renewing my vows. I’m happily hitched, thanks. And, I haven’t actually tried on any dresses recently. The Vera Wang wedding gown is my favorite metaphor to describe venturing into territory you can’t afford.

Back when I actually was on the market for a nuptial frock, I acted prudently. One of the benefits of holding out to meet your second husband (and skipping over the first), is that nearly all your friends have gotten married before you. So you learn from their mistakes.

I don’t even remember now who it was who told me, “Don’t—I repeat DO NOT—try on a Vera Wang gown. You will look stunning. You will fall in love with it. And it will be impossible to go back to the dresses that are in your price range.”

What you have there is good advice.

Shopping for real estate gives one another good opportunity to learn this lesson. Pop into the open house for a multimillion dollar fabulously-renovated Victorian (with garage!) and you will be ruined—RUINED, I say!—when your agent shows you the $750,000 ranch-style fixer that’s in your budget.

Alas, time goes on, and without vigilance we slip up. For me, it was at an EBISA event. No, not a sushi restaurant, EBISA the East Bay Independent School Association. They host a fair where all the local private schools have booths and gleaming 4-color info packets and engaging teachers and smiling students. All the ingredients to reel you, if you happen to be me, in.

I’d spent the night before sitting up in bed scouring some materials Mark brought back from a similar event at Kate’s preschool.

“This one doesn’t even talk about the teachers,” I bellowed from the bed to the bathroom, where he was brushing his teeth.

“I have no idea where this school even IS,” I mutter, flipping through the pages as Mark pulls off his t-shirt to climb in bed. “You’d think they’d at least include the school’s address here somewhere.”

But one place totally drew me in. Quotes from alumni discussing how the school shaped them to become thoughtful, caring adults. An interview with a long-time teacher who was retiring, and her words about the school being like family. There were the requisite pics of happy diverse students in creative classroom settings. And an unexpected section about their commitment to service-based learning. An academic backbone and a heart.

“Oh my God, this one!” I say to Mark, slapping his back as he attempted to sleep. “I LOVE this school. And… Oh God.  It’s TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS a year for kindergarten.”

At the school fair the next night, I bee-lined for their table. I saw the head of the school, whom I recognized from their flyer, and two fresh-faced teachers who radiated enthusiasm.

“Okay, so I feel in love with this school last night, reading your folder in bed,” I proclaimed, surprising myself with my dramatic opening statement. But I got the attention of the head of the school. She laughed and put her hand on my arm. “Great!”

“It reminds me of the school I went to in Providence called Wheeler,” I said. And oddly, I suddenly felt the smallest bit choked up.

“Oh, Wheeler!” She said. “I know it! A wonderful school. In fact, for years I sat on the board there.”

That was it. It was like the cupid of expensive private schools came and shot me with his bow, a direct hit to my nostalgic heart. It was like it was meant to be.

I mean, I’m not one to look past those obvious signs in life. And this one was huge. Neon. Indisputable.

On the drive home I was giddy. Because of her late September birthday, Kate wouldn’t qualify for entry until fall of 2011. But I was so fired up, so ready to become part of their community, their family, the thought of having to wait seemed like torture.

But by the next morning, the real torture was the crushing reality of the school’s price tag. How could we ever swing $20k a year? And for 13 years in a row? And that’s not even taking into account Paige’s eventual tuition.

“I guess we could just pick which one of them goes there,” I told a friend later on the phone. “You know, like, ‘Sorry Paige. You need to stay back on the farm and work. Kate? Well, she had more potential for book-learnin’.'”

Later in the day I drummed up the idea that I could get a job there to get discounted or free tuition. I’m no teacher, but there must be other things I’m qualified for. Janitor? Crossing guard? Lunch lady?

I called My Frienda Brenda, a college chum who is currently kid-less. “So,” I tell her. “It’s totally depressing that in two years we may be spending $20,000 a year on school for Kate.” But really, once I sober up to the fact that we’ll likely never afford it, what’s more depressing is that we may not be.

Too Young to Feel this Old

“So how much of an old lady am I?” I asked a friend the other day, as she came back from putting the kettle on. “I brought my own teabags.”

“Well, that depends,” she said. “Do you also have packets of sugar in your purse?”

Heh.

For the record, I am not in the habit of making off with fistfuls of free sugar packs from restaurants. Well, not yet at least.

But lately it’s not just my teabags that are making me feel old. My lower back has been seizing up in the middle of the night. Waking me up and requiring me to spend several minutes just trying to roll over or move my legs to stretch out a bit. It’s excruciating.

Even my chiropractor wants to throw in the towel. And I’ve formed a twice-a-week habit with him.  But he suggested I see my primary doc for an MRI, and thinks I should get some physical therapy.

Add to that this cold—this loogie-laden, dull-headed seasonal cold that’s persisted now for well over a week. It saps my energy, leaving me lifeless by early afternoon, to the extent that I push aside soul-sucking guilt and plop Kate in front of TV while Paige is napping, so I can get some rest myself. By the time Mark gets home I’m a dishrag, stumbling through the day’s final acts of Mama-hood grumpy, impatient, and having slim hope I’ll feel any better the next day.

And Mark, my sprightly hubbie nearly five years my junior, even he’s coming undone lately. Ever the weekend warrior, he can hop on his bike after several computer-bound days and conquer a mountain with impressive ease. But suddenly, without even falling or wrenching it, he’s got a jenky knee. His body is letting him down for the first time ever, and it’s utterly infuriating. Digging an ice pack out of the freezer last week he grumbled to himself, “Is this is just what happens when you get old?”

But my bad back and his bum knee aside, it’s nearly Halloween. And no holiday makes me feel more young at heart.

For a week or so I was bereft, lacking a brilliant costume idea. For myself, that is. I feared I was losing my edge. I was coming up with possible get-ups that were both obscure and impossible to implement.

“Paige will be a piano… And I’ll be Liberace!” I declared to Mark one night.

“Liberace?” he said, making a face like he’d sucked a lemon.

It wasn’t very supportive of him. But really I had no idea how I’d make Paige into a tiny grand piano anyway.

Then an idea came to me. Something kinda funny and doable that’s not lowering the bar over my past twisted, sordid, or absurd costumes. Something that won’t make me feel like the mother of two who had to hang it up.

What is it? Well, like the names of children I’m pregnant with, I don’t reveal anything until the Big Day.

Anyway, I set out for one of those pop-up Halloween superstores to forage for supplies. Inside the shop I tracked down a salesgirl, likely a student from the nearby Cal-Berkeley campus. Even though I’m making Kate’s requested dog costume (I know, BO-rrrring!), I’m curious to see what they have by way of props.

“You know,” the co-ed says, twisting a long lock of hair around her finger, “We don’t have animal costumes here. But we have another store in Emeryville. You might want to check there.”

“So wait,” I say. “What you’re saying is, you all don’t carry animal stuff, but another branch of the same store two miles away might?”

“Yeah. Weird, right?” she says. “I mean, when I got here I was like, where are all the animal things? Those are pretty standard costumes, right?”

“So do you think, it’s some sort of Berkeley thing?” I say, getting a little amped up with the absurdity of it. “Some kind of vegetarian-minded animal-cruelty type thinking?”

“Huh,” she says, looking out of the corner of her eyes, thinking. “Yeaaaaaaaah… Probably.”

Okay. So I feel old.

My Good Egg

I’ve not always been the best bed mate.

Mark may not often admit that, the dear, unless you catch him on a morning when I’ve had what he refers to with restraint as “a particularly active night’s sleep.”

You see, he’s a light-as-a-feather sleeper. And I could slumber heavily alongside a train track. I’m a deep deep sleeper who’s also on the move, stretching, flopping over then back like a fish, pedaling an imaginary bike, or curling fetally into what Mark calls my “comma position.”

I do sleep as a high-impact sport.

Mornings, the volume of my hair snarl and the intensity of Mark’s bloodshot eyes are the indicators of  just how fervidly I’ve thrashed through the night. Usually without ever pulling out of my corpse-like slumber.

I am not a night-time tinkler. (In fact, I hold mortals who speak of “getting up at night to pee” in mild to moderate disdain.) Before kids became part of our traveling show, I’d fall asleep on planes prior to take-off, and be nudged awake before landing by flight attendants insisting I “return my seat to the full upright position.” At the dramatic height of a movie or TV show, I could suddenly nod my head, let my jaw hang lax, and conk out cold.

Sleep is my super power.

Of course, I’ve been pregnant twice too. So Mark’s also suffered through months of me engaged in nighttime aerobics, but wielding a large inner baby and scads of assorted pillows I’d pack around myself like I was some fragile teapot being sent through the mail.

I suddenly discovered what it was like to wake up in the night, uncomfortable with a hip that seemed it was being crushed in a vice. Add to that, I was having to pee. (Me!) My pillows were my desperate effort to defend my long-cherished run of failure-proof sleep. They were my mental and physical support. Like a full-body nighttime bra.

Yet even they failed me. Because whenever I rolled over I’d need to reconfigure the innumerable group of them on the new side.

As if that weren’t bad enough, once I’d finally get settled the skin on the soles of my feet would feel dry. (My own personal crazy-lady pregnancy thing.) So I’d reach to my bedside table for lotion, sweeping my glasses to the floor, clanging my glass of water, and ultimately, upsetting my strategic pillow array. Waah!

Poor Mark. A frat boy after a night celebrating his 21st birthday couldn’t sleep through that.

Often, understandably, Mark would give up and schlep to the couch. And as long as his pillow and blanket were gone by daybreak, so friends or house cleaners wouldn’t question the health of our marriage, I was admittedly happy to be alone. Doing snow angels in the sheets with my immense baby-filled body. Not worrying about moving too much and keeping Mark up, I’d fall asleep nearly instantly.

Alas, it’s likely Mark’s days of pregnancy-induced couch sleeping are over. (Sniff!). But this week I’ve had a cold. I NEVER get sick. My take on colds is akin to the mortal weakness of night peeing.

And Mark’s been so horribly busy at work. At night he gets to crawl into bed with me sniffling, snorfling, coughing, and worst—doing the Bruno triple throat clear. From my lump on the left sife of the bed I radiate germs and self-pity like rays from the sun. And my already unsexy cadre of nighttime attire has bottomed out with the cold-weather return of my flannel Lanz of Salzburg granny gown.

Let’s just say I’m no Betty Draper.

But through it all Mark’s been the attentive tough-love nurse. “Have you even taken zinc? Or Vitamin C?” he’ll ask, then sigh, trundle off, and return with a handful of pills and a tall glass of water.

This morning he delivered a cold pill and some decongestant or other before I even got out of bed. I mean, at least that’s what he SAID he was giving me.

But seriously, if you haven’t met my husband, let me tell you. He’s a good egg.

When the girls were wee babes and I was getting up a lot at night to nurse, since Mark holds the title of World Featherweight Sleeper, he’d be up too. In fact, he’d be the one shaking me to consciousness when the monitor was blaring baby cries and crackling static at Volume 11, right at my ear.

“Uh, honey? Kristen? The baby is up.” And I’d've been on such another stratosphere of deep sleep I’d walk heavy-legged and dull-faced down the hall towards the crying.

But when I got back into bed, without fail, he’d have fluffed my pillows.

I know it seems like a small thing. But it was such a sweet act of I-wish-I-had-boobies-and-could-help-out-more kindness. If I weren’t so damn tired, I’d have taken his face in my hands, planted a big smooch on his forehead, and blubbered happy words of appreciation.

Turns out having one’s head drift down into two perfectly fluffed pillows is an exceptional simple pleasure. Especially when you’re months into no more than three or four hours of sleep at a stretch.

And another thing about that man, because I’m on a roll now. When he’s cooking? And cutting up carrots for something? He chops off a little nubbin of one and brings it over to me wherever I am. You know, like where I’m setting the table, or digging in the bottom of the closet for my other clog.

I don’t even remember how it is that I told him about this, but the reason he does it is it’s something my mother would do. She spent 70% of my childhood cutting up raw vegetables to set in front of me. Or handing me a piece of celery off the cutting board, before dumping the rest into a pot.

Speaking of her, I had that phone thing happen today. The thing people talk about when someone close to them dies—still getting the impulse to pick up the phone and call the person, then having the realization that you can’t.

Google really should work on that.

Anyway, what’s weird is that it’s been ages, like, over five years, since mom and I have had one of our meandering, sometimes only mildly-interesting daily phone calls. So I’ve been over that phone call habit for a while now. Or so I thought, at least.

But earlier tonight, after Kate’s dance performance and before dinnertime, I was tired. I’d been on Mama duty all day, with a ragged voice, goopy cough, mounting headache, and two young unsympathetic charges. I was summoning my last bits of patience and energy to get a bare-bones frozen ravioli and salad dinner on the table.

I was cutting up carrots to steam—’cause it turns out my mother’s veggie-pushing got passed down in the genes—and as I turned on the oven to warm some bread, it started. Not that I thought I wanted to call her per se. It’s more that this string of thoughts about feeling worn out, and the girls arguing over books in the other room, and it starting to get really cold at night here now that it’s fall—this series of thoughts I was running through in my head were things that were somehow sort of customized for her. The kinds of things I’d be telling my mother if I could.

And then that one part of your brain that can be sitting back when another part is doing something else, it prompted me with the thought, “Hey, seems like you want to be calling your mother right now.”

Which had the potential to take me to the brink of feeling far worse about the state of things than I already felt. I mean, feeling sick and tired is one thing. But the dead mother trump emotional card always beats out everything else.

But blessedly, before I could even go there, the lock on the door clicked in that barely audible way it does when Mark comes home. And Kate sprang off the couch with an amped-up need to tell a story, and Paige, from her spot on the floor stretched out her arms for her tragic pick-me-up-you-don’t-KNOW-how-much i-missed-you act.

In a snap, that little door click redistributed all the energy in the house. And when the door swung open, it was like all the thoughts swirling around in my head got sucked outside in the back draft.

Sometimes that man has just got perfect timing.

Ahead of Schedule

Last week our Israeli babysitter came up to me holding Kate’s new anatomically-correct doll. She had its diaper pulled down.

“Okay, so what is this?” she asked, waving the uncircumcised plastic penis at me. “Really, Kristen,” she said, in mock dismay. “I don’t know about this!”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “That doll? Definitely not Jewish.”

For the past couple months, whenever we’d go to our local toy store, Kate would immediately run over to where this doll was shelved. It was all boxed up with a pacifier, a bottle you could fill with water, a diaper, and a little training potty. Oh, and a penis! An actual working—well peeing at least—penis.

Or as Kate says, a “pee-NOOS.”

Now, I realize this pronunciation is absurd, but you try telling an, ahem, self-assured young child that she’s saying something wrong.

Anyway, for weeks she’d visit her pee-NOOS doll and totally obsess over how much she loved it, how great it was that it really tinkled, how desperately she needed it, and how I’d better get it for her before someone else came in and snatched it up.

Oh, and did she mention it has a pee-NOOS?

Now, I didn’t expect that Kate would become quite so interested in pee-NOOSes at this age. I mean, she’s FOUR for God’s sake. And this particular pee-NOOS doll obsession actually began when she was three. (We staved off getting the damn doll until her fourth birthday.) But three, four, whatever the age—I couldn’t even utter that word until I was MUCH older. As in high school, maybe. And then, (and even now a little) not without giggling.

At any rate, it seems that a lot of things around here are progressing faster than we expected.

Last night before dinner, Kate was sitting at the table doing some little art project, and I called to her from the kitchen to please wash her hands before dinner. She ran past me and mentioned something about also “having to clean up the hair on the table.”

“Huh?” I said. “Hair?” And I walked into the dining room to see scissors, purple construction paper, and Crayons, covered with a layer of wispy locks of hair.

Now, for some reason I had no idea where this hair, this FINE BLOND LITTLE GIRL HAIR, had come from. “Is this from a doll, Kate?” I asked, confused and annoyed.” It really took me a couple minutes, hearing her innocent “I dunnos” then eventually noticing her new asymmetrical ‘do, to finally grasp that it was her hair.

Ah well, there goes the cute bob. Now her hair looks like one of those choppy surfer dude wigs. Well, on the right side at least.

“I thought we’d have to wait until the teen years to worry about this,” Mark muttered as he set our turkey burgers on the table.

And then, mid-way through our meal, Paige shoves her fingers down her throat. All the fingers on one hand. She gags, then looks around at us, and makes a huge proud grin. From across the table I’m yelping, “Paige! What are you doing, Paige?! Don’t do that!” as Mark turns his head away so she won’t see him laughing, and want to do it more.

So then, we’ve got rampant pee-NOOs interest, self-hacked punk haircuts, and pre-bulimic baby behavior.

God help us when these girls turn five and two.

Festival of Four-ness

I’m not going to lie. I spent a lot of time crying by the clothesline at the birthday parties of my youth.

Well, not A LOT of time, and not at other people’s parties. Just some intermittent spells at my own parties, when things were happening like other kids were winning the games, or someone else got the big pink frosting rose (even though I’d already been given the bigger pinker one).

I mean, I was THE BIRTHDAY GIRL. Did that not count for anything? In my childhood concept of that term all would bow down before me, I’d miraculously (blindly) reunite the donkey with it’s tail, and Lynn Froncillo wouldn’t show up in a dress that was prettier than mine.

I remember my mother or dad coming over to pry me away from my clothesline-clinging Zone of Despair, but in that way that you have a memory that’s a photo, not a video. I can picture them with me, but hell if I remember what they said to get me to pull it together enough to re-enter the party mix.

So Friday night, the eve of Kate’s big birthday throw-down, I went into her room as Mark was about to read her bedtime stories. Channeling my best inner June Cleaver, I smoothed my skirt, propped myself at the edge of her bed, and serenely said, “I’d like to talk to you a bit about your party tomorrow, Kate.”

I went on to say that sometimes parties can be disappointing. Sometimes your friends don’t do what you wanted them to, or don’t come when they said they would, or don’t sit at the place with the pink paper plate even though they’re a girl and shouldn’t be sitting at the place with the green paper plate. I said that sometimes you get presents you don’t like, or want, or already have, but you still have to be polite and say thank you.

And just when I felt I was getting warmed up and was awash in my own brilliant sage mothering I see Mark dragging his finger across his neck, eyes popping.

Turns out I’d beaten away at my points somewhat excessively, leaving them in tatters like some ravaged, child-attacked pinata.

Well, either all my blather worked, or I never even needed to go there. The party was a blast. No tantrums, no tears, no jumpy house injuries, and no four-year-olds in the liquor cabinet. Kate and the guests appeared to actually–gasp!–have fun! What’s weirder is, Mark and I did too.

The worst behavior the birthday girl displayed was a repeated refusal to open the present her cousin so sweetly followed her around with, holding out to her. Well, that and her lack of interest in digging into gift bags after skimming off the first item. (Note to self: Develop bedtime tutorial on deep-diving into gift bags, with follow-up lecture on expressing appreciation for even the bottom-most layer of presentry.)

The gaybors brought Kate a gift they’d been billing for days as “the gayest gift EVER.” When she opened the stuffed Yorkie in it’s pink-and-purple leopardskin and gold patent leather carrying tote (replete with collar, leash, and hair accessories) she squealed and ran into the house to stow it safely away from potentially-thieving guests.

Speaking of gay men, the best gift we got this weekend is that Paigey started cruising! No, no, not trolling around public parks for action… She’s walking by holding onto the couch and the coffee table! She’s making her way across the house by leaning against the toy shopping cart!

Our little lax-muscled toddler is finally gaining the fortitude of body and spirit she needs to get ambulatory. If she continues to progress at this pace, I’m hopeful we’ll be hosting another party quite soon, the promised She’s Finally Frickin’ Walking! champagne-drenched Paigey-fest.

Anyway, back to Kate’s festival of four-ness. Once all the kids were dragged home for naps and low-blood-sugar transfusions, some of the neighbs stuck around under the pink mesh tea party tent. It was lovely. We indulged in more daytime beer drinking, cupcake eating, and general catching up. There was even an engagement story to savor.

I’m so grateful the party was a hit, and that unlike her dramatic mother, Kate didn’t let the less-than-perfect moments prevent her from enjoying the day. But I can’t help but wonder if it all went off like it did because we don’t even have a clothesline.

Remember the Lake

On our way through Marin County—heading towards beaches, hiking, and the Redwoods—we pass by a dumpy roadside motel. The Fountain Motel.

It’s where my mother, my sister Marie, and I once stayed when I was a kid. A dreary gray box of a place, up on the main road, with a requisite off-kilter cement fountain plopped out in front.

So when Mark’s ‘rents were here last week, we were stuck in a good-weather weekend traffic snarl, right in front of said motel. Admitting this was the site of a bygone Bruno vacation—something I’m often compelled to do, despite the shame of it—no doubt makes one wonder whether it was a voluntary vacation. Or if maybe we were on the lam. Hiding out from Interpol. Waiting out time until we got our Witness Protection Program permanent digs.

Or, maybe back then it was nice? Or at least nice-ish? Or maybe at least clean, and a good value?

All I remember about it was that the bedspreads were kinda flashy…

At any rate, it’s odd having a reminder from a childhood trip so close by. Maybe if my mother would’ve known that someday I’d settle in the Bay Area, and that for some unGodly reason that motel would still be standing and in business, she’d have opted for someplace clean AND cute.

Aside from that trip (and an admittedly fabulous tour of Europe), I can’t remember many vacations I took as a kid. I mean, I do have an especially horrible memory. But I can’t help by think that parents put a lot of planning, energy, and moolah into family outings that end up passing through the kids like so much Mexican drinking water.

For my girls, I think I’ve cracked the code to making vacations memorable. The way to hold onto something is to do it over and over and over again, right? Right! Which is why I’ve decided we’re inviting ourselves to spend Labor Days from here on out with some of Mark college friends, at their lake house in Minnesota.

The cabin’s a two-hour drive from Minneapolis, and the perfect blend of charming simplicity meets dazzling natural beauty. It’s feet from the lake. And one whole side of it is windows. So even when you’re inside, say, lying on the couch with a book and a beer, you still feel like you’re soaking up the great outdoors.

I have another annual trip in my past. A now-bygone camping trip—okay, okay, it was at a hippie music festival—up in Humboldt County. I went maybe six times—or eight?—with a big group of old Bay Area friends.

Now, the downfall of vacationing in the same place every year with the same group of people is the exhaustive rehashing and glorified storytelling that takes place about years past. “Remember in ’99 when Al brought that blender with a rip-cord starter engine, and decided to make margaritas at the crowded campsite at 3AM? I thought those guys from Oregon were going to kill him!”

Ah, Al.

Well, we’re finally settling in back home after our new-fangled family-style annual lake house vacation. It was Kate’s second Labor Day weekend on Lone Lake. (She couldn’t remember the first one. My genes.) Last time Paigey was with us too, but in utero.

Lest any of this year’s highlights be forgotten, I’m capturing some here. I figure we can just print this out and read from it around the campfire next year. Then we won’t even have to endure the labors of a spontaneous ad-libbed conversation.

Remember when 4-year-old Spencer used the bacon-grease-drenched paper towel to wipe off his face?

Remember when Gary spent an evening organizing a big box of Crayons according to the pretentiousness of the color names?

Remember when Paige squealed and clapped like an organ-grinder monkey every time Dulce the dog walked by?

Remember when a bird flew into the yard squawking wildly, causing us to look up and see a bald eagle soaring overhead?

Remember when Kate said, “The shadows on the lake look like squid, Dada.” And a beat later added, “I don’t know what squid are.”

Remember the day we ate pig five ways (bacon at brekkie, ham in a salad at lunch, sausage-’n'-cheese glop dip with cocktails, and home-smoked pulled pork sandwiches and pork and beans for dinner)?

Remember when Kate was so goofy crushy on 7-year-old Max, and she tried to impress him by saying things like, “I wrote a 4, Max. Want to see it?”

Remember how Uncle Gary was the sweetest manny EVER to all six kids? (Mental note: Bring him along on all family vacations. Better yet, have him move into basement room as au pair.)

Remember when the college co-ed during the Surly Brewing tour asked Omar beguilingly “How do you drink so much beer and maintain that girlish figure?” and he replied, “Chasing after my four kids.”

Remember how in an unusual bout of “sure-I’ll-try-that” Kate agreed to be towed in inflatable dinghy behind the speedboat, and grinned and gave thumbs-ups the entire time?

Remember when it was taking a while for Gary and proud Eagle Scout Mark to light the campfire, and young Max asked if they’d “ever done this before?”

Remember when Becca regaled us with excellent ER tales of an overweight woman unaware she was pregnant—or in in labor, a snowmobiling tweaker, and a girl skewered by a long golf cart prong? (Don’t worry, the skewered girl got better, the tweaker’d only imagined there was a bomb following him, and the ignorant preg-o decided to keep the baby because she figured it’d give her “something to do.”)

Remember how babies Leo and Paige communicated through the clear dog door like separated lovers at a prison visitation?

Remember how Omar still didn’t beat Mark at Trivial Pursuit?

Ah yes. Good times, all.

On our last night, when Kate should have been saying charming polite goodbyes she opted for an epic tantrum. Once she calmed down enough to speak, she admitted her fit was about having to leave. We’d been with our friends for five days.

“Next year,” she said between big weepy intakes of breath, “Can we stay for six days?”

The Table

Mark predicted it would happen.

The table was an antique, but it was rickety and lame. On its journey from the East Coast one of its legs came loose. So Mark took it down to his basement workbench lair to work his handyman magic.

Once the glue set, we turned it upright and set it in our entryway. But when we stepped back to admire it, we saw that the now-sturdy leg had been glued on crooked.

It was like the table was determined to be imperfect.

But many of my mother’s possessions were that way. To wash clothes at her house you set the dial to a line she’d drawn on the machine’s control panel. (God knows how much trial and error it took to find the exact spot that resulted in a well-washed load.)

Anyway, by the point we noticed the leg was all dooky, there was no way to break it off and reset it. And unless you stared at it, you’d never notice.

So, we sort of propped it up. Mark rolled his eyes. But how do you argue about your wife’s dead mother’s table? He insisted it wouldn’t last long, and agreed that we could keep it there while it did.

The thing is, there’s a glacier-sized expanse in our basement that’s packed floor to ceiling with most of Mom’s former furniture. End tables, chairs, a kitchen table, a hope chest, and endless endless endless linens. Things that either don’t look right with our other stuff, we don’t really need, or that just don’t fit in this small house. Things I imagine I’ll spread around our dream manse one day, thrilled I had the good sense to store them all these years.

So, even in its lame duck state, I was delighted we could wedge something of Mom’s into active duty.

The story, of course, leads to a crash, right? A deafening, frightening crash that I heard just as I stepped onto the sidewalk. I was fetching grocery bags from the car and had left Paige roaming free-range indoors.

I flew up the stairs, dove into the house, and saw Paige unscathed on the living room rug, cradling a doll and blinking up at my terror innocently. Then at my feet I saw two overturned potted orchids, a bottle of wine I’d set out for my sister, and an overdue library book. Oh, and the table itself, pitched forward onto the floor, with two of its legs snapped off and lying amidst the other detritus.

I hadn’t even touched the thing as I’d walked out the door. It only took the slightest waft of air to have it crumble. For it to give in to its broke-down nature.

I couldn’t bear to deal with it. Could I have gotten it fixed? Probably. Could I have saved its parts, if only because they were Mom’s? The thoughts crossed my mind. But I fought the deepest pack-rat part of my soul. I pushed aside the instinct that I have to hoard even pom-pommed tennis socks and baggy-kneed PJ bottoms because they were my mom’s.

So when Mark came home, he carried it out the front door, around the house, and set it alongside the garbage cans.

When I emptied the recycling bin the next day I saw it there. I considered hauling it back inside. I considered putting a FREE sign on it. But then I got distracted, went in, and forgot.

Yesterday morning, I hauled a toxic overfull diaper-pail bag to the trash. And as I heaved the thing into the can (using my porta-potty mouth breathing technique), I looked down to see that the table was gone.

Poof!

Mom’s old table. Scuttled off by some delighted sidewalk scavenger. Swallowed up by the city. Never to be seen again.

Home Is Where the Fart Is

Had a little scatological childhood memory today.

It was an image of my mother standing in my grandmother’s kitchen. And she was telling me, “Sometimes, when you’re on vacation, you don’t poop as often as you do at home.”

A mighty maternal pearl of wisdom, no?

It came back to me this morning when the girls and I stumbled into the house. It was barely 11AM, but we were exhausted, starved for lunch, and supremely sick of what we were wearing and each other.

On our way back from the airport we’d dropped Mark off at work, and I wasn’t sure which of us had it worse. Me, still with the kids and operating on a migraine-tauntingly slim night’s sleep? Or Mark, having to utilize his brain for the day, and requiring socially-acceptable breath? (He, having informed me earlier on our flight, that my breath was “not its best.” Causing me in my delirium, to throw my head back and laugh wildly, no doubt further distributing my foul oral odor. My apologies to the passengers of Flight 817.)

So then, back in the house after eight days absent. I tossed some drive-thru burgers at the kids and humped our nine—yes NINE—items of luggage (the beer didn’t explode!) into the house. Then, I set the girls free to reacquaint themselves with their toys, their books, their bedrooms’ dust bunnies.

Eventually Paige scooted over to where I was sorting laundry. A malodorous Paige. And I realized that all those irregularly-timed and unusual-food laden meals she’d eaten throughout our trip, had made their long-overdue exit diaper-ward. Perhaps, I couldn’t help but think, due to Paige’s return to the familiar, comfortable setting of our home.

Anyway, more on our hi-jinx in Minnesota once I wash my hair in this time zone, channel the energy of a not-too-old-for-this 26-year-old mother, and forage for milk and other unfrozen foods for my hungry, hyperpooping children.

I’m nearly too tired to tell for sure, but it seems like it’s good to be home.