A Mighty Worrier

Worrying is like paying interest on money you may never borrow.

I’m pretty sure that quote’s from Stuart Smalley, the daily affirmation spewing self help guru Al Franken used to play on SNL. And it’s brilliant. I mean, I don’t even know who any modern day philosophers are. Which is just as well, really. I’m content having Smalley as my Nietzsche.

Though truth be told, I still am worried.

Worried about little Miss Paigey. Sweet, precious dumpling of all dumplings, who, despite being 16 months old now, has apparently sworn off ever learning to walk. Something I wouldn’t have necessarily been too concerned about, if it weren’t for her doctor not liking it. And determining that we need to have her ASSESSED.

The thing is, I used to spend a fantastic amount of time worrying. My father is a world-class worrier, so I’ve learned from one of the greats. But strangely, as a mother, I’m really not at all neurotic.

It’s kind of like how you can develop allergies at a late age, or have your hair go straight after a pregnancy or something. I mean, I birthed these babies—beings I adore and cherish with a maniacal fervor—who you’d think’d be the perfect subjects for excessive irrational fears and fretfulness. Yet somehow, I’ve always just felt in my no-longer-as-taught-as-it-once-was gut, that they’re alright. That whatever little thing came up, would turn out okay.

But as some weird consolation prize for being so even-keeled, I get this walking thing. It’s like there’s some maternal anxiety load-balancing taking place. Like some Greater Being decided that some woman who’s out there devouring her stomach with stress that her four-year-old might not get into Princeton some day, that she got some sort of temporary respite from it all, and me, who’s been sailing along just fine, thanks, was given a Gross Motor Skills Delayed child to up my blood pressure.

And so, taking the bait, I go to that inevitable Mama place, wondering, “What did I do to make this happen? How’s this clearly my fault?” And, sure, I’ve expended a lot of energy infantalizing Paigey. Wanting her to stay my wee baby forevermore, and not grow up and go off to the mall or the reservoir or whatever teenage haven is hip 15 years from now, and abandon her adoring Mama. Yes I’ve thought those stay-a-sweet-immobile-baby thoughts. But I’ve never bound her legs to prevent her from crawling or anything. I mean, it’s not like I’ve knocked her down when she’s tried to pull herself up on the coffee table.

Because, sadly, she’s never really tried to pull herself up. And she’s not even crawling “right” either. She sort of scoots along on her bottom from a seated position. Uses her legs against the floor in a windshield wiper sweep to pull herself forward. And sure, when she gets up to full throttle, the girl can moooove.

But it’s just off. Way off.

Now, ask anyone whose child is 15 or so, and they’ll hurry to tell you how their kid didn’t walk until they were, like, five. That they never crawled or scooted or anything and then one day just sprang up and started walking. How the only word their kid could say until age 12 was “baa-baa.” And how today they’re enrolled at MIT and are champion breast-strokers. (Swimmers that is…)

And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE hearing about other kids who were worse off than Paigey. I mean, no parent’s rambling tale about their child is more interesting then when it’s being told just to make you feel like your kid’s superior to theirs.

Bring it on, people! The phone lines are open.

Alas, the pit of my stomach has been telling me Paige’ll be okay. We’ve already got her a great—get this—pediatric chiropractor. (I know, I know, I’ve been living in California too long.) And next week she’s getting some thorough long-awaited assessment by some state-sponsored place that’ll eventually hook us up with physical therapy for FREE. Plus, I got a lead on a nice local pediatric orthopedic guy. And when I say “nice” it’s to say he’s married to the friend of a friend, and is known to be, well, friendly. Unclear still whether or not he’s actually good at his job.

So we’re doing all these things. And even though she’s squawking during the chiro sessions, bawling and looking at me beseechingly as if to say, “Wouldn’t rummaging through my play kitchen be a much more fun use of this time?” Even though she’s not liking having her legs prodded and massaged and moved, at least I know that it’s for the best. And that in a matter of minutes she’ll be dry-cheeked and peering through her fingers, flirting with someone in the waiting room as I pay up and schedule another visit next week.

Today though, for some reason, all the things I was told we need to do—stretch her this way, encourage crawling that way, decrease her time in the Ergo carrier (my preferred mode of baby haulin’)—all the directives today seemed daunting. Seemed to reinforce in my mind that there is something wrong. That it won’t get better overnight. And that it’ll take more therapy sessions where Paige cries from discomfort or frustration, and Kate tests the patience of the once-friendly receptionist, and I realize that despite how many snacks I packed, it still wasn’t enough.

Apparently this is some parental rite of passage I must endure, so 15 years from now I can prattle on to someone else—some fretful parent of a late walker, or slow talker, or bad sleeper—letting them know that we went through it too (and far worse than them), and that eventually everything turned out just fine.

Don’t Know Much About History

Doesn’t it seem like William Safire should have some sort of Nielsen box set up, so the language trends he writes about reflect a wide array of American households, not just what he hears in whatever entitled old white man circles he rolls in?

Sure, there may be some technical hurdles to overcome before people are willing to have their voice boxes wiretapped. Still, it’s a good idea, don’t you think?

Anyway, until they iron out those kinks, I’ll just report here what I’m hearing uttered around the McClusky casa. Which is to say, the McClusky house. (In case you don’t speak Spanish.)

Kate’s modifier of choice these days is the excessively California-surfer-dude sounding double-header, “super super.”

During dinner: “Paige is spitting milk, and being super super funny!”

Attempting to influence me: “I let my boy watch a super super lot of TV. He says to me, ‘Mommy, can I watch TV?’ and I say, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes!’”

Observing a dead houseplant: “Mama, that plant is super super thirsty.”

I’m not sure where she picked up the expression. Figuring that out’d be like trying to track down the genesis of a preschooler’s perpetual runny nose. Where would it get you anyway? Easier to just accept it into your maternal maelstrom as a minor annoyance, and keep rolling.

At a dinner party this week, my neighbor Chicken Daddy and I were comparing notes about the progressive private schools we went to as kids. Or more specifically, about the pot holes of ignorance those schools left us with. Huge knowledge gaps our parents paid good money for.

His school clearly exceeded mine on the hippie groovy scale. They studied American history every other year, and in between learned about the histories of other cultures. “But get this,” he tossed out. “When we did do American history it wasn’t even about the presidents or the Civil War. It was Native American history.”

God, I just love that.

Anyway, as a result, he’s apparently well versed in things like wampum macro economics, but couldn’t tell you the first thing about what the U.S. Senate does.

This is fantastic news. It makes me feel far less freakish and alone about my similar vein of standard-knowledge naivite. Plus, I now know to never partner with him playing Trivial Pursuit.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I have the excuse that my school didn’t teach the things I’m stone dumb about. They likely did, but I was too busy rolling up notes and sticking them in pens I disemboweled for cheeky “Oh, here’s your pen back, Pam” under-the-teacher’s-nose note passing.

Being caught up in all-consuming God-this-class-is-boring-but-isn’t-Dean-Klitzner-sooo-cute? brain activity seemed like a good thing for me to be doing at the time. You know, instead of laying down fundamental knowledge that would serve me in a lifetime’s worth of jobs, cocktail party banter, and trivia games played drunkenly at rental ski houses. Oh well.

So my brain’s lacking some standard info it really should contain, but as a tragic counter balance it’s brimming with crap that’s of no discernible use at all. I mean, if I could have a yard sale and clear some of the worthless knowledge out, it’d be a long day and all, but I think I could make some serious bank, even if I sold it all cheap.

And I can’t even imagine what I could do afterwards with that freed up brain space! I could maybe retain the fact once and for all that Mark’s birthday is November 19th, not the 17th. Or memorize a big chunk of Pi, or be able to recite the names of all the state flowers.

One of the things that for some reason I’m chock full of—and have been lugging around with me for decades now—is, tragically, radio jingles from the 70s and 80s. Ads for a random assortment of currently likely-defunct Rhode Island businesses.

There’s one for some big car dealership that used to be in Warwick. And of course, who can’t reel off the Van Scoy Diamond Mine song? Most locals can summon those verses faster than the date of their wedding anniversary.

But long before Van Scoy set the small state’s standard for advertising ear worms, a jingle for a New England grocery chain called Fernandes ruled the airwaves. My three older sisters adored that one. Or rather, they loved mocking it.

And really, how couldn’t they? It was sung un-ironically in a wretched—or rather wicked—Rhode Island accent. And one thing that bound us Bruno gals together, was our shared superiority complex about—of all things—our elocution. Pride in how distanced we felt from the take-an-R leave-an-R masses that surrounded us. The name Martha, for example, is pronounced back home Maaaath-UR. Simply take the ‘r’ from where it belongs in the beginning of the word, and tack it on the end where it doesn’t. It’s nearly as complex a linguistic formula as Zoom‘s Ubbi Dubbi language (which I also happen to speak fluently, though it wasn’t the primary language spoken in our home growing up).

So the Fernandes ad went—and I’m deferring (in part) to phonetics here—”SOO-puh SOO-puh MAH-kit with a lot more speh-SHILLS every daaaaaaaay! Fih-NAN-deez knows the waaaay!”

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting where someone tossed out the dazzling “super supermarket” marketing concept. And where someone else cried out “It’s brilliant!” and they linked arms and vowed that together they’d spin it into commercial gold.

If you ask me, that’s the kind of history they should write about in text books.

I know it seems like it’d benefit me more knowing what the Speaker of the House does, instead of having scads of lame, outdated radio jingles committed to my everlasting memory. But hey, I’ve made it this far in life, and I feel like what I don‘t know hasn’t really made me miss out on a lot. And for that I am super super grateful.

In the Know

Every once and a while Kate takes it upon herself to enumerate the things the people in our family “know a lot about.”

Here’s what she came up with at dinner last night:

Herself
* Cars
* Bunnies

Mark
* Cutting (not a la Angelina—cutting as in carving meat, cutting pizza, etc.)
* Cooking things
* Fixing things
* Blimps
* Everything
* Tools

Paige
* Babies
* Talking baby language

Me
* Babies
* Mommies
* Planting flowers

Now, I don’t mean to be petty here. I’m the first to admit that my husband is a modern day Renaissance Man, but saying he knows a lot about everything? Sure there’s cycling, linguistics, technology, music, The Simpsons, installing car seats, comic books, writing, barbecuing, gadgets, soothing crying babies, science fiction, cutlery, online communities, reading super fast, urban planning, the Civil War, and molecular gastronomy. He knows a ton about those things. But, Kate’s paternal adoration aside, isn’t saying he knows a lot about everything a bit of an exaggeration?

Well, if you were to ask him, he might not think so.

In college, Mark and his BFF, Christian, used to play an aren’t-we-so-young-and-brilliant game, its premise being that they could recite off the cuff three facts on any given topic. While drinking beer at the local watering hole, one imagines.

The Eiffel Tower? It’s in Paris. It was named after its engineer, Gustave Eiffel. It’s the tallest building in Paris.

You get the idea.

Anyway, however good Mark may be at that game, by my count three data points—even if he could produce them on virtually everything—does not, in my book, constitute knowing “a lot” about those subjects.

But really, of course, I’m just jealous. Since it saddens me to think that Kate doesn’t perceive my ken as extending beyond the maternal arts. What about all I know about yard sales? Parallel parking? Taking really hot showers? Unrelenting sarcasm? Downward dog? Or toe picking, for God’s sake? Don’t those things count for anything? Or maybe it’s just that in Kate’s mind they fall under the vague rubric she calls “Mommies.”

I really shouldn’t blame Kate entirely for my petite neurotic reaction to her dinner-time game. She’s just calling it as she sees it. Really I should be thankful she didn’t add “Bellowing, ‘Can I please just have one minute here?’” or “Putting little girls in Time Outs” to her list of things I know a lot about.

Fact is, I’ve been doing a fair amount of wondering what it is I do know a lot about, all on my own. Trying to remember what I’m good at. Something that might be applied in such a way that I can make some money from it.

Because, after a glorious trip to the beach on Sunday, sandy sleepy kids piled into the car and u-turning our way out of Alameda, Mark and I stumbled into a conversation that I knew was coming eventually. The one in which we faced up to the fact that it’s time for me to get back to contributing to the family’s bottom line. Hopefully in no soul-sucking cubicle-dwelling full time capacity, but by freelancing or project work, or some utterly ideal, flexible and lucrative, creative part-time job.

So on Saturday night I went to bed, a sometimes-ashamed-to-admit-it Stay At Home Mom. And somehow by Monday I woke up feeling, well, unemployed.

What a difference a day makes.

Under Pressure

My birthday falls on Mother’s Day this year, giving me a small (sour) taste of what it’s like for those poor souls who are born on Christmas.

And God help dear Mark, who has his feet up in the starting blocks awaiting my decision on what I want to do. He’s desperate to make the day special for me, but to date we’ve had several discussions where he’s attempted to focus my thoughts and narrow down the options I spew out. Each of these conversations has ended with him squeezing the top of his head and whimpering softly.

I just can’t decide.

So far we have lunch reservations at 12:15 at ad hoc, Thomas Keller’s allegedly (hopefully) family-friendly restaurant, and at 1:15 at a bistro called The Girl and the Fig that I’ve been wanting to try. Not that we intend to challenge the girls’ restaurant manners—or any progress I’ve made on my postpartum bod—by eating two back-to-back lunches. I just thought it’d be nice to have options in Napa and Sonoma. (And for karma’s sake, we’ll cancel whatever ressie we don’t intend to use in advance. And by “advance” I mean within AT LEAST an hour of our reservation. If I’ve made a decision by then.)

The thing is, there’s also part of me that wonders if I just want to have Mark pack a staggeringly fabulous picnic lunch and take the kids for a hike or to the beach or something.

I mean, doesn’t that sound good too?

It’s one of those times I really wish I lived in Wichita. It’d be so freeing knowing we were going to Applebee’s since it’d be the only game in town. And I’m not sure, but I don’t think they’ve got much outdoor splendor to add in as a contender.

At night we have a sitter. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I haven’t determined whether darkening the door of A Cote, our cherished local haunt, makes sense after a potentially big lunch. I mean, it’s so tacky getting gout during a recession.

There’s also been some talk amongst the Mama Posse about getting together for some late afternoon cocktails that day. A proposal I never refuse from those women. (Or practically anyone else, for that matter.) But we were kinda tipsy when that idea came up, so who knows.

I’ve been telling most people that what’s likely to happen is I’ll get a migraine from the stress of trying to have a fun day to the second power, and’ll end up spending it in a dark room, dry-mouthed and fraught with pain, clutching an ice pack to my noggin.

But here’s the thing. I think I’ve even made that claim enough times now that the pressure to have a migraine is also too great. I’ll probably end up having performance anxiety over that too.

I’ve never understood when people just decide to “not do” holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas because it’s too much of a hassle, or there’s some negative association with the holiday they want to sweep under their emotional carpet. I can’t help but think that making those days not feel like those days takes more energy than just cooking a damn turkey. Which is to say, the duck-and-cover avoidance approach just isn’t an option for me on Sunday.

Ellen emailed last week to see what I’m doing for Mother’s Day. She’d spaced on it also being my birthday, and suggested we get together and do something for Mom, since we still haven’t convened for her death-iversary. And at this point I’m thinking, what the hell. Maybe we should just celebrate Fourth of July too.

I Could Have Told Him So

Fearful as I am to do so, I have a confession to make.

For some time now—several months, really—despite the fact that I’m a mother of a one- and three-year-old, I’ve been getting blissful, uninterupted nights of sleep. Just like normal people without kids get.

I mean, with the exception of a trip to Lake Tahoe a couple months ago, which had us all bunking in one room and therefore victims of Kate’s nocturnal verbal outbreaks (and door-banging trips to the potty), my blissful nighttime slumber could be in some kind of Serta Sleeper TV ad. Okay, so my hair gets a lot nappier from sleep than those mattress models’ apparently do, but STILL. What I’m sayin’ is we put those kids of ours to sleep in the evening, and God bless ‘em, we don’t hear from them again ’til morning.

So Saturday we visited our friends Kristen and Suneel and their delicious 5-month-old Jackson. (Total future husband material for Paige.) At one point Kristen turned her tired eyes to us, and looking almost uncertain whether she should even venture to do so, asked how sleep was for us at this point.

Now, I’ve passed through the portal into parenthood, and as part of that process I’ve been fully indoctrinated in Belief in the Mighty Power of Jinx. Particularly when it comes to discussions of successful sleep patterns. Aside from it being socially malodorous to brag about one’s child’s good sleep–especially to other potentially sleep-deranged parents whom you’d like to retain as friends–it also inevitably brings into play the potential for the good sleep spate to, well, shit the proverbial bed. For karma to spit in your eye and say, “Ten hours of straight newborn sleep, you say? Well here’s a night you won’t soon forget.” [Roll track of demonic laughter.]

This is all to say, as much as I wanted nothing more than to allay this new-Mama friend’s anxieties about how many years of crappy sleep she was staring down the barrel of, I was also—selfishly, I admit—fearful to even answer her question.

Blessedly, that night, despite having uttered aloud that our sleep was actually quite good these days, thank you, our familial sleep groove went unaffected.

But then, Mark had to duel with fate. And out of the blue in the kitchen last night, he mentions all casual and stuff, how we never even had to sleep train Paigey Wiggle in order to arrive at her current state of excellent sleep-through-the-nightery.

You think you know someone. But what ON EARTH would compel him to utter such a thing aloud?

Yeah, yeah, it’s painfully—exhaustingly, ahem—clear where this is headed. Which is to say that Paige decided to enter an unprecedented middle of the night cry-a-thon last night. In her 15 months of life the girl has not bawled as much as she did last night. There was cacaphonous wailing, and possibly even rending of garments, though it’s hard to tell with those feety pajamas. The girl had me out of bed three seperate times, alternately shoving my breast and/or a dropperful of Tylenol into her mouth to quell her insistent wake-the-whole-house-up-when-it-was-really-otherwise-quite-cozy-in-bed fury.

Finally I just decided to hold and rock her for roughly EVER until I was certain she was in a deep deep sleep and any small lurches of my body didn’t make her fear I was going to set her back into her crib and re-ignite the earsplitting wail. As sleepy as I was, it was pretty damn cute that a few times as she was about to doze off she’d wake herself up to reach her arm out to make sure I was still there.

Still, my sleeping uninterrupted would have been cuter.

The whole incident made me want to get in the car and drive like a crazy lady the hour-plus trip back to Woodside to pound on Kristen and Suneel’s door at 3:30AM—when, God knows, they may well have been awake with their baby anyway–to tell them how horribly terribly sorry I was to have forgotten the most important piece of parenting information I could ever hope to impart to dear friends such as them. Whenever it is that wee Jackson does start sleeping like a champ, for the love of God, DO NOT UTTER A WORD ABOUT IT BETWEEN YOURSELVES OR TO OTHERS.

Things that did not happen today

Today part-way through an article in Us Weekly about how celebrities lost their postpartum weight—or maybe it was the story about George Clooney and his ex-girlfriend having recently “kept in touch” via email—I set the magazine down in my lap and ran my mind though a voluntary exercise of abject terror.

I was at the chiropractor. Sitting on the table in a blue hospital gown and an absurd little triangular lead apron, a grossly inadequate-seeming shield for my baby-makin’ parts from the x-rays I’d just had taken. X-rays of my lower back and neck–standard stuff the new doc figured would confirm his garden variety “baby trauma, computer hunch, yadda yadda” diagnosis about my bag of bones.

At some point in the middle of whatever article it was, I suddenly realized just how long I’d been sitting there reading that crappy magazine. Long enough to envision a scenario whereby the doctors were all in the other room, leaning with concern into the light box of my x-rays and discussing just how they’d break the news to me about the wretched thing they saw–long enough to make that terrible image suddenly seem as though it was without a doubt what had to be happening and why I was waiting so damn long.

And here I’d been. Haplessly reading a magazine. Ignorant and blissful. Expecting that after scanning the pictures showing celebrities doing things ‘just like us’ (putting money in the parking meter!) the doctor would come back, inform me the x-rays were just fine, tell me to get dressed, direct me to another room for a heat pack and a few righteous neck crunches, then send me on my way home to collect Mark and the girls for a rainy-day visit to the wildlife sanctuary.

But really what would-could-might be about to go down would make these few page-flipping minutes seem like the happiest carefree bored would-that-I-could-go-back-there time ever. What if the doctors came in, stern and serious? And after our talk I had to dig out my cell phone, call Mark, tell him he needed to come meet me there, or maybe even at the hospital? What if something suddenly on this otherwise nondescript day sent me into a mother-love panic about my fragile and about-to-crumble mortality jeopardizing my happy-go-lucky magazine-reading life and my heretofore inadequately appreciated days and months and years with my beloved husband and those blessed beautiful girls?

It could happen.

But in some deep deep place I think I somehow knew that this whole mental spiral was only meant to act itself out in my mind. Based in part on the odds. But also because if I thought it might really be happening I don’t think I could even bear to conjure it up. To take it all the way though to the sickening horrible thought that I can barely force myself to return to now—my sweet small children, motherless.

Who knows what triggered this sudden ardent need for a heroin-heavy dose of life perspective. Maybe, God willing, the doctor’d come back in, all in a flurry with some double-booked back-up of neck-wringing to wrangle with, and like some hairdresser who’s gotten behind on one appointment that’ll screw her for the whole day, apologize as he hastily loaded a heating pad on my back to move me through the rotation and out the door—one more down.

And thankfully, blessedly, thank you thank you thank you Mr. Universe, Sir, some version of that did happen.

But still in my relief the thought lingered that maybe one room over there was another woman who wasn’t so lucky. And if not in this doctor’s office surely somewhere nearby someone was getting crappy news. Someone’s plans to go home and heat up leftover chicken soup for lunch were about to be shot to shit.

I had a professor in London my junior year of college. A rapid-fire-talking layered-clothing-wearing kindly woman whose voice was as high-pitched as it was shrill. Truth be told I don’t even remember what genre of lit she taught, though it seems like it should be 19th Century.

Anyway, one day I went to her office for our tutorial—the one-on-one sessions that comprised the Brit’s collegiate learning structure. (“Here’s the syllabus. Read the books. Meet with me every other week–maybe over a pint–to chat. And turn in five papers by the end of the term.”) So I walk into her office. She’s all in a tizzy–much more so than her usual state. Wisps of gray hair flying out of her bun and glasses low on her nose. Standing up behind her desk slapping together teetering piles of books and papers and folders and a tea cup or two while clucking to herself, “Oh, Margorie. Come on now! Come on.”

Then, having done nothing to acknowledge my presence at her door, she lets out a sudden shriek, “Oh yes! Yes, yes, yes!” And clutching a little ratty brown leather billfold to her chest and exhaling deeply closes her eyes for a moment then flaps them open wide cackling, “Kristen! Dear! I am so very happy to have you be the first person to know that my wallet is now found! Hiding right here in plain view! And you know really, it’s such a thrill. Sometimes,” she said leaning closer to me, and I can still picture her grinning giddily on the verge of this, “when you think something is lost—you’ve utterly and uncompromisingly convinced yourself of it, and then—behold!—why it’s suddenly right there! Right back there for you! Do you know how sometimes it’s really such a wonderful delight to have it back that it sort of makes having lost in the first place actually quite worthwhile?”

Yes, Margorie. Yes, I do.

No Place Like Cards for the Holidays

The most socially acceptable medium for showing off one’s kids seems to be the holiday photo card. I mean, it beats the expense, travel, trauma–and let’s face it, limited exposure–of the child pageant circuit.

My sister Judy always calls in any feedback she’s gotten about our cards, which is nice. She covers off on some of the “what cute kids!” compliments that I might otherwise miss out on.

Judy’s best friend Lindelle, who lives on the East Coast, apparently called her last year at 5AM California time squealing about Kate’s posed-by-the-fir-tree innocent beauty. (Despite the two plus decades Judy’s been out here Lindelle has not yet caught on to–or simply decided to ignore–the time difference.) Good Auntie that Judy is, she was willing to take the call despite the early hour, in order to thoroughly process and discuss all elements of the card. (And that’s just one reason why they’re from-womb-to-tomb friends.) 

Judy called in her report about this year’s card a couple weeks ago. Blah blah blah Kate is pretty. And apparently word on the street is that Paigey’s a ringer for our mom. When I shared this with Mark, he claimed he’d been hearing that Paige is a wee version of him.

In either case, both these comments set off my internal awww meter.

But then with further reflection–and a dash of neuroses–it got me wondering. If Paige looks like my mother and Mark, then Mark looks like my mother, right? So does that mean that in some short-circuited Electra-like Complex I married my, uh, mother? And then, did my mother and I give birth to a female baby who looks like my shoulda-been husband?

It’s all just too frightening and confusing.

Maybe next year we’ll just send out cards with pictures of Santa. 

Mama’s Little Girl

My mother used to make up crap constantly. I mean, it was all in the service of urging one of her four daughters to do something, and as the mother of one child who’s turned the unbearable age of three, I can feel her pain. At one point the poor woman had a newborn, an 11-month old, and a 22-month-old. (Then ten years later I happily hit the scene. Surprise!)

Anyway, knowing what I know now, whatever the woman went through to get through the day is totally fine by me.

Her specialty was outlining elaborate reasons why things should be done. Often she’d add some statistics to back-up her argument. And I’m not talking about the classics like “you have to wait at least an hour to swim after eating.” She’d bust out much more detailed data. And although she’s not around to ask the origins of her plentiful stats, I have every reason to believe that based on how convenient they were to her–and the fact that with re-use the numbers sometimes changed–I’d wager she made them up on the spot.

“95% of household accidents happen from untied shoes!” she’d bellow after me as I ran through the house.

Throughout the winter months I’d hear some variant of:
“If you don’t wear a hat you lose 85% of your body heat through your head.”

And of course there was:
“70% of kids who sit that close to the TV develop vision problems, you know.”

Her: “Do you know how many kids who ride their bikes without helmets get into accidents and turn into vegetables?
Me: “Uh… sixty-five percent?”

Who knows. Maybe in Reader’s Digest or whatever women’s magazines she was reading at the time they had entire sections devoted to citing maternally-weildible stats like these. Perhaps she really did have primary sources for it all.

She also had an arsenal of other warnings. They were statistic-free but still rife with veiled health threats: “Drinking coffee will stunt your growth” was one of her evergreens, though I don’t remember ever wanting so much as a taste of her coffee when she was having a cup. Maybe the sum-total of her maternal sleep deprivation by the time I was born led her to preemptively fend people away from her coffee. And again, who could blame her?

Even later in her life when she was so sick that her body could barely process food, she’d insist we stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home from chemotherapy. Something I argued fruitlessly with her about until, requesting the doctor back me up one day, he pulled me outside the exam room to gingerly advise me that if coffee was something she enjoyed “at this point in her life” I should just let her have it.

Hello gut-wrenching reality check.

But anyway, where the hell was I? Mom. Coffee. And most importantly stunted growth–believe it or not, that being the little nugget that I was making my way toward. (Still happy you’ve come along for the ride?)

The thing is with Paige–the gal I’ve been trying to get to through all this Mom memory blather–is that she’s so utterly delightful, delicious and unbearably baby-like still. It devastates me to think of her growing up. Truly! If only I thought the coffee could stunt her growth, I’d give it a shot. (Then I’d just need to figure out how to administer it, since at the ripe age of 11 months beverage-wise the gal’s still exclusively about the boob.)

When Kate was a baby I did one of the smartest things a new mother could do. I got a sitter to come over one day a week–the neighbor’s part-time nanny who wanted extra hours. She watched Kate on Friday nights too so Mark and I could go on dates, ultimately talking about how much we adored (and missed) Kate.

I’ve said it before and no truer words have I spoken: Better to pay for babysitting now than marriage counseling later. (Copyright, 2005-2008 McClusky)

Aaaanyway, it was that nanny, Blanca, who dealt me my first eye-opener about Kate’s growth. I was looking through some larger-sized baby clothes and commenting on how darling they’d be once Kate fit into them. And in her sweetest, non-confrontational, most respectful way, Blanca looked me straight in the eye and said, “Uh, Kristen? She’ll fit into those now!”

And sure, it turned out that maybe I was infantilizing ole’ Kater Tot a wee bit. I realized that maybe we were shimmying her into the 3 to 6 month clothing when really, heck, those 9-month duds weren’t exactly big on her. (Or maybe even fit.) It was just…she was my baaaby! If she was fitting into these bigger clothes it meant–absurd as it is to consider when it’s a matter of months–she was growing up.

This brought into perspective the crying jag a friend told me about years earlier when her husband assembled their first-born’s crib. The baby wasn’t even three-months-old, and was just making the move out of the bassinet. As her husband toiled over the assembly directions, Lisa threw herself on their bed for a dramatic “she’s growing up sooo fast” bawling sesh.

Today I think this is not crazy-lady behavior at all.

Well, whatever psychological force was holding me back from Kate’s move away from babydom seems to only be amplified with Paigey Wig. With Kate, I think it was that she was my first. But with Paige, she’s my last! And such a dumpling, that one! A living doll, I tell you!

Isn’t it okay for me to still dress her in snap-crotch onesies when she’s in high school? And really, what 8-year-old needs treads on their shoes when a soft hand-knitted booty is so much comfier? And say what you will about the independence kids get from walking about on their own. Isn’t there something to be said for the cozy warmth and security that a sling could provide a preteen during those often awkward and trying pubescent years?

Of course, taking the worst possible opportunity to do it, when she’s pushing herself backwards around her room (her brand of crawling) and sobbing dramatically because she needs a nap, I decided to go through Paige’s drawers today and purloin all the obviously outgrown clothes.

Alas, there’s no future sib to get another round of wear out of the burgundy Catamini romper, or the brilliant NASA shirt our friend Kenneth gave Paige. Gone for good is the peach cashmere cable knit cardigan that made both Kate and Paige’s cheeks look flushed and utterly edible. And even the threadbare but darling Carter’s standbys–the now-pilly footy PJs with the lamb and giraffe appliques. I’d think twice about putting them in a thrift store pile based on their condition alone, but can’t bear to rid myself of the outfits my sweet girls wore curled up like angels asleep in their cribs. (Sleep has so many rich positive memories for mothers.)

For weeks–maybe months–now, Mark has emerged from dressing Paige remarking that he’d had to “wedge a leg” of hers into a certain pair of pants or had to “stuff her into” her pink hooded coat. (His none-too-subtle cues to me to get the girl some new clothes.) And half-heartedly I’d mumble something to appease him for the moment.

Well Miss Paige, today you’ve officially made the transition to 18-month-old clothing. (The fact that baby clothes are often sized older than the wee ones themselves is particularly cruel to me and my type.) May your plump little ham hock thighs never strain beneath the pressure of the 0 to 6 month pea green Zutano fleece pants again. And know that even if we don’t have the good fortune that you somehow acquire coffee, devise a way to consume it, and it actually results in retarding your growth–even if that never comes to pass, just know that you’ll still always be my little girl.    

Confessions of a Dirty Woman

No one ever thinks of themselves as being unclean, do you think? I mean, I think it’s like craziness. Those who are don’t think that they are. And therefore you can never really know if you’re dirty or crazy, or God forbid, both.

Unfortunately, as Mistress of the Mansion here, I’ve recently gotten some distressing clues about the state of our cleanliness. But instead of sweeping this information under the proverbial carpet, I thought I’d just come out and confess. Maybe sharing this will aid in getting me the help I apparently need.

So, last week for us was rife with celebration. We hosted a big fun holiday shindig Saturday night, dined in SF with visiting friends Sunday, and had an over-the-top 20-or-so course dinner at The French Laundry on Tuesday.

Wednesday, when I should’ve been holed up filling out my Betty Ford Center application, I was out schlepping the kids around somewhere. And when I unfolded what we refer to as the Silver Stroller–since anything even remotely gray is silver in Kate’s charmed world–I pulled down the rickety worthless visor to found an uneaten yet terribly unappealing crepe–strawberry and Nutella, if you must know. One that’d we’d greedily ordered as an extra and which had been wedged in the visor since our jaunt to the local Farmer’s Market uh, three days earlier. I ran it inside the house–disgustedly holding the edges of the paper plate by my fingertips like it was a live mouse–while Kate screamed after me for all the ‘hood to hear, “What is that, Mama?”

Um… Ick!

One more reason to expedite our now Silver ‘n Brown Stroller to live out the next few million years teetering atop a bunch of other abandoned crap at a dump. (Sorry, Al Gore!)

Later that very day, while preparing a sumptuous meal for my family, I reached into the cupboard for the lettuce spinner. When I opened it I nearly Edvard Munch screamed to see it already contained some lettuce. From the party on Saturday night! And what’s more, it had also developed a noisome pale green liquid sloshing around in the bottom of the bowl.

How utterly charming.

As if these two incidents–in the same day, no less–weren’t enough reason for me to call a producer from Oprah and give myself over as the subject on their next filthy housewives segment (a nice counterpoint to their always-riveting OCD hand washing shows), there’s more.

So, in the winter sometimes ants come into the house. This is not unusual for these parts, and I’m not trying to defend myself here but I will say that the ants in Northern California are SUCH WIMPS. I mean, the first small smattering of rain sends them running inside frantic-like. They’re all, “Oh, it’s wet out there! Oh, it’s chilly! We’d really be much happier trooping along in a creepy single file line around the grout in your bathtub, or swarming around that raisin your kid dropped in the front hall.”

Don’t get me wrong. We loathe, detest, and abhor the suckers. Mark wields his stink-trail killing can of lemon scented Pledge like he’s Rambo with a ‘roid rage, and undertakes what he maniacally calls a “bloody genocide” while I tend to the crying cowering children in the other room.

And, now that I’ve laid my secret ant shame bare, I’ll go so far as to reveal that at its worst I’m plagued with nightmares that I’ll come home some day and an ant will be sitting in his boxer shorts on our couch, drinking one of Mark’s Firestone Double Barrel Ales and watching Bravo reality TV.

Such attitude they have! Such entitlement! And worst of all, such large families.

But, as I said, you can litter any home around here with the highest grade free-range organic Agent Orange and a few of those little suckers will still ferret their way indoors. So, at least I know that my filth is also that of my neighbors.

Until yesterday. I was changing Miss Paige. Had her up on the changing table and cooing some lovesick Mama blather into her sweet punum, and seconds after tearing open the diaper Velcro, what do I see marching dizzily across her bare butt cheek?

Well, I think you know.

After Mark and I lamented that this was about the most tragic thing that could befall our sweet cherub’s innocent pudge, we resorted to epic overuse of the expression “ants in your pants,” and have been delightedly accusing Paige of having them since. Using cute baby voices of course.

I’ve long contended that the elevator buttons at Target were some of the dirtiest places on earth. (Think of the cumulative effect of all those germ-infested nose-pickers who insist on pushing the buttons…) But after the events of this past week, I’m fearful that there’s a considerable amount of filth much closer to home than I’d care to admit.

Help me make the country a whole lot greener

Several years ago Mark prohibited me from ever using Evite again.

Back then we were in our stupidly fabulous Noe Valley flat (which we took no credit for the chic-ness of, it was all the gay owners), and we were throwing a party for some reason or other. And bucking old school tradition and everything I was ever raised to know, we used an online invitation.

It was a new age, and I was trying to embrace this whole internet craze.

My painstaking efforts to ensure the invitation was as witty and clever as possible and that I’d selected the cutest of all the design templates, turned instantly into an obsession over checking the status of responses once I hit Send and the invitation went out.

The thing is, it’s amazing how much time you can spend sitting in front of your computer hitting Refresh to see who all has responded. Or, as I was looking at it, seeing who your real friends were. These Evite things even tell you the date people first look at the invitation–all great information for building your case against your perspective guests.

“This is insane!” I’d call to Mark where he was lying under the car changing the oil. “Kevin saw the invitation four days ago and still hasn’t RSVPed. What’s he doing? Waiting for a better offer?!”

And through the shower curtain I reported, “The Vaheys are a “yes with bells on,” the Surhs regret that they’ll be in Tahoe, and Ellen, Heather, and Tim and Kara still haven’t even seen it. Do you think I should call them to make sure they got it?”

Mark, pulling back the curtain to reveal a shampoo-foam covered head says, “Kristen, you have Got. To. Stop.”

Well, here I am today, a recovering Evite sender thanks to quitting cold turkey at Mark’s ultimatum-like urging, and he–my very own “sponsor” as it were–has unwittingly provided me with yet another outlet for obsessive monitoring. What’s that you ask?

Google Analytics.

This brilliant web-based tool–available to me at all hours of day and night–informs me of nearly everything I want to know about the people–you, as it were–who come to this very blog. I can see how many people visit, how long they stay, how they got here, and even what state they live in. The only information I’m lacking is my readers’ favorite type of tea, and rabid Decaf Earl Grey lover that I am, I don’t discount this as non-critical information.

But the where readers live thing. It’s that which brings me to my most recent little hobby, perusing the map graphic to see if I’m filling in the states–flushing out the map with readers in every port, as it were. How the map works is the concentration of readers is expressed by the darkness of the color green. So, my great state of Cali, where my largest readership hails, is the darkest forest green. Vermont, on the other hand, where motherload mania hasn’t kicked in quite yet, is but a pale chartreuse. Godforsaken reader-free states like Louisiana are a pale piss yellow.

Late at night when I’m having my everyone’s-asleep-and-I-should-be-too Me Time, is when I do my most fervid blog reading, blog posting, and crazy lady blog analytics reviewing. Wielding the mighty power of the information Google so enchantingly provides me makes me feel at times like part of CNN’s crack political team. You know how over the past year they were always interacting with some overly hi-tech absurd map to illustrate something like how Clinton was faring against Obama (I know. So old school to think of that now!)? It’s like I’m a not-as-smart-as but I’d boldly venture to say cuter version of Candy Crowley.

Wielding the data, yo.

Knowing all this state stuff has also allowed me to determine that the almighty bloggess Dooce, who I wittily emailed several weeks ago to entreat her to glance at my lowly mortal blog, has not in fact dropped by. Her home state of Utah is still that maddening, taunting, yellow.

I should point out that it’s not even like I’m hell-bent on building a motherload empire or anything. In fact, when this whole blog thang started a few years ago, more than anything it was an outlet for this suddenly-staying-home mama to use my Big Girl voice (and words). And aside from the nursing and diaper changing and constant cell-phone use, it was simply something to do. I didn’t expect for a minute that there’d be any readers other than Mark, my father, and my friend Julie, all of whom I was paying at the time.

But now years later, being handed the god-like power to assess who stops by unpaid, my Achiever self kicked in in that empty place where my workaholic corporate self used to reside, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to see all those states lit up bright green like a, well, Christmas tree. In this year of economic-slump low-budg Christmas gifting, what better token could be bestowed upon me? Aside from a black (and a brown) pair of boots, tickets to some first-class child-free Caribbean resort, and personalized Crane’s stationery, I can think of no better present.

In all, there are eleven states I’m lacking. Though I’ve already gotten friends working on Indiana and Maine. (Thanks, Julie and Mary!)

So then, if you’d like to get swept up in the unbridled joy of this Very Special Christmas Project, here’s how you can help. Reach out to your former college roommate who’s now living in Iowa, and ask her to check this blog out. Or that cousin in West Virginia who you secretly, naughtily always harbored a crush on. Or what about that old friend from the summer camp with the long Indian name that you went to year after year and eventually was a counselor at? The woman you recently got back in touch with on Facebook. Isn’t she living in Delaware now? And if someone knows somebody in Wyoming–though I can’t imagine how anyone could–just think how their cold dark winter days would be brightened by a little dose of motherload!

I’ve also got Montana, Vermont, and Tennessee up for the taking. What folks in those states need more than ever is, no doubt, this very blog.

And hey, have your friend post an identifying comment like, “Hoosiers in the house, yo!”, to receive extra credit points and my eternal adoration.

For a quick review, here are the eleven states (in no particular order) that I need readers in:

1. Montana
2. Wyoming
3. Utah
4. Iowa
5. Indiana
6. Tennessee
7. Louisiana
8. West Virginia
9. Delaware
10. Vermont
11. Maine

Just imagine the happy scene on Christmas morning when the McCluskys are gathered under the Christmas tree with Paige clapping with glee on her first Noel, Kate tearing through her stocking, Mark capturing it all in pictures, and me, laptop balanced on crossed legs, checking the daily Google Analytics report to discover that it’s all green green green! No better gift could be given, not only to me, but to my neglected husband and children.

I’d love to see it at least once before Mark dismantles the program in a New Year’s effort to preserve both his sanity and mine.