Belated Birthday Interview

Our friend Adam’s father used to interview him every year on his birthday. Even better, he recorded their conversations, and Adam now has all the tapes.

I absolutely LOVE this idea. I was dead-set on doing this with my kids. But along with my intention to make elaborate photo-filled scrapbooks of each of their lives, and to never feed them frozen chicken nuggets—let’s just say my plans changed.

A few days ago I was reading Millions of Miles, the blog of a lovely woman named Megan who I met at BlogHer this summer. She posted a interview she’d done with her son on his fifth birthday. And I thought, “By gum, I can do this! IT IS NOT too late!”

Sure, Kate turned six about six weeks ago. And there are those first five years that I totally missed. But instead of kicking myself that it wouldn’t be perfect, I decided to just start now.

And no, I didn’t record it. In fact, I didn’t even write the questions myself. I hope Megan doesn’t mind I ripped off her questions. If I decided to write my own, another year might pass by.

Me: If a genie would grant you only one wish, what would it be?
Kate: To only eat bubble gum.

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Kate: A ballet teacher.

Me: Do you want to get married when you grow up?
Kate: Maybe.

Me: Do you want to have children?
Kate: Maybe.

Me: Do you feel different now that you are six?
Kate: Yeah.

Me: How so?
Kate: I’m taller. Way, way taller.

Me: What is your favorite color and why?
Kate: Turquoise because sometimes the ocean is turquoise.

Me: Who is your best friend and why do you like them?
Kate: Lily. Because she’s so nice.

Me: Now that you are six, do you think you’ll have a boyfriend?
Kate: Uh-hmm.

Me: What do you think about world peace?
Kate: It should always be nice and calm around the world. No wars.

Me: What is your favorite TV show?
Kate: [pauses] Let’s see here. My favorite? Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Me: What do you like most about school?
Kate: Free time.

Me: What do you like to do in free time?
Kate: Drawing and writing.

Me: What is your favorite thing about yourself?
Kate: I like to eat bubble gum.

Me: That’s your favorite thing about yourself?
Kate: No! I’m good at drawing.

Me: What is your favorite song?
Kate: Fireworks

Me: If you could have any super power what would it be?
Kate: Turn into mermaid and breathe under water.

Me: What is your very favorite thing to do?
Kate: Color. Art projects!

Me: What are you most afraid of?
Kate: Wolfs [sic]

Me: What is your favorite thing about me?
Kate: Cause you love reading to me. We love reading together.

Me: What is your favorite thing about Daddy?
Kate: He’s such a good doctor when I have boo-boos.

Me: What is your favorite thing about Paige?
Kate: She’s so fun to play with. [pause] Can I do an exclamation point after that?

Happy birthday, sweet Kate. Here’s to hoping I remember to do this again next year.

A Fish Called Wanda

At a dinner party my sister hosted once, one of her guests left the table to use the bathroom and his boyfriend leaned over and whispered, “I’m sorry that Roger’s not been himself. He’s been a total wreck ever since Brenda died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” my sis responded. “I didn’t know… Who—if I may ask—was Brenda?”

“Our cat,” the man said solemnly.

This just slayed my sister and me. Not that her friends’ beloved pet had croaked, but their cat’s name. I mean, really. How many cats out there are named Brenda?

Last week we had a playdate with a boy from Kate’s class. He, as it turns out, has two cats (neither of whom are named Brenda), two rats (who were surprisingly loveable), several fish, and a yard full of carnivorous plants.

His mother read in this here blog about our attempts at buying a fish for Kate. Our failed attempts. And as a self-described “fishaholic,” she kindly offered to give me a crash course. Call it Fish 101.

A bargain-hunter after my own heart, Fish Mama emailed me links to used tanks on Craig’s List. She offered to escort us to a pet store to pick out some finned friends when our tank was up and running. And in the meantime, she invited us to hang out at her house to meet their menagerie of pets and meat-eating plants.

Needless to say, it was incredibly thoughtful and helpful. I’d put my incompetence on display, and she was throwing me a lifeline. One that might get us closer to making good on Kate’s birthday present, instead of having to sell her on the benefits of a pet rock or imaginary puppy.

Besides, this mom and I had been meaning to get together for over a year now. Ever since I sent her a crazy-lady email following her visit to Kate’s school when she talked to the kids about her job sending robots to space for NASA. Yes, it was the most impossibly cool “What Mommy Does for Work” classroom presentation ever. One which NO MORTAL COULD EVER FRICKIN’ HOPE TO FOLLOW.

And yet, even though I lashed out at her that she’d set the bar stratospherically high (no pun intended) for the rest of us, she was genteel and friendly, even suggesting we get together some time.

Anyway, if you’d seen how overwhelmed and utterly inept Mark and I were in our recent efforts to buy Kate a fish, you might’ve thought to yourself, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to buy a kid a goldfish.”

But for us, apparently it does.

Although, as it turned out it didn’t work out that way. Because the day after our playdate—in which I was indoctrinated into the world of fish and filters and cleaning out tanks and led to believe how easy it all could be—the girls and I ducked into a bird store. A local little place that looks trapped in the 70′s, next door to our favorite ice cream shop. And there, tucked away on the back wall, Kate fell in love with a bluish, purplish fish—a betta. Just a single little dude swimming around in an old-school glass fishbowl.

I immediately tossed in the towel on the idea of an entire aquarium. And that Saturday, while I was out of town visiting a friend, Mark and the girls brought that little, inexpensive, low-maintenance bundle of love home.

For all its flowy beauty and apparent lack of brawn, it turns out the thing’s a pretty aggressive “Siamese fighting fish.” So much so that you can’t have more than one of them in a bowl at a time. I guess it turns into some sort of back-alley pit bull willing to fight to the death. Not very good at working and playing with others. Looking at the puny, femmy thing, it seems unbelievable—like calling an orchid a bully—though I have no intention of testing how amicable our new fishy friend really is.

Bettas are also one of those animals where the males get the all pretty colors and the females are more drab and dull. So the shopkeeper informed the girls that our new family member is a “he.” This fact meant little to Kate, who is resolute in her determination to believe that all the dolls, stuffed animals, inchworms, ladybugs, butterflies, and snails that she ever encounters and takes under her wing are girls. In Queen Kate’s world being a girl is the only option.

When I returned home late in the afternoon of Fish Acquisition Day, Kate raced to meet me at the door and yanked me by my arm  to our built-in hutch, the home of the new fishbowl. She stood in front of it, then jumped aside to do a Big Reveal (all HGTV-like) and to make the very special introduction. “Mama,” she said, her eyes shining with glee, “this is our new fish. Her name is… KAREN!”

Yes, Karen.

A week later, Mark brought a snail home from the pet store. And not because Karen was lonely (though I have fretted about that). No, Mark bought it because he’d read [Warning: The following content may not be suitable for all readers] snails EAT THE FISH’S POOP.

What, you may wonder, is the upside of that vile fact? You have to clean the fish bowl less often, of course. And we’re all about low maintenance here. (And yes, I’m currently in the R & D Phase of creating a strain of snails that you can stick in baby diapers. I know, I know—it’s GENIUS.)

After plunking the snail into the fishbowl to commune with Karen, Mark stood back and asked the girls, “What do you think we should name it?” And without a second’s thought Kate blurted out, “CARLOS!” As if she’d always known that she’d someday name a snail that.

Of COURSE his name would be Carlos. Duh.

So then, we’ve got Karen the male fighting fish, and Carlos the shit-eating snail. I take back anything I ever said about Brenda the cat.

Oh Danny Boy

I screwed up my very first relationship at age six.

We were in the line to go the bathroom at school. Boys on the right. Girls on the left. And Danny Palumbo leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You’re my girlfriend.”

This news came as a surprise. I mean, I wasn’t totally clear what being Danny’s—or anyone else’s—girlfriend really meant. But I assumed that if I was someone’s girlfriend, I’d at least have known about it.

So, with the defiance of a budding feminist, I put my hands on my hips and leaned back towards the Boys’ Bathroom Line to inform Danny, “I am NOT.”

Then I spent three years consumed by a crush on him. Ah, the power of suggestion.

Danny had glossy black hair, worn in a bowl cut. (This was a fetching look back then.) It was very Moe from The Three Stooges. And where I was a good girl—walked around by my teacher to the other classrooms to show off my handwriting—Danny was a bad boy. He had a sidekick, Les Dunbar, and their antics no doubt sent teachers home desperate for a drink at the end of the day. Once they went to the bathroom and put on all their clothes backwards. This created quite a ruckus when they were called up to write on the chalkboard. Good times.

The way they rolled was the second grade equivalent of driving motorcycles and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. And I loved it.

Anyway, after much reflection I decided that if I could have a do-over, I’d respond to Danny’s claim on me quite differently. I’d gently help him reframe his statement. “Danny, are you trying to tell me you’d like to be my boyfriend?” I could say. I mean, if it weren’t for my knee-jerk feminist slap-down—I am SO not your chattel, dude!—we might’ve trooped off happily in our respective bathroom lines with the magic of romance tingling in the air.

Well, my little Kate’s in first grade now. Last year everyone in her class was matched up with a second grade “partner pal.” Throughout the year these pals do various projects and activities, in the hopes that their pre-fab friendships will generate some inter-grade community love.

And it totally works. It’s a sweet program. Very smart of the school to do.

For a long while I knew little to nothing about Kate’s partner pal. She told me he was a boy, and I sometimes heard about their craftsy collaborations. Like, Kate mentioned they made masks together at the school’s Festivus party. (What? Your kid’s school doesn’t celebrate Festivus? Weird.)

And for some reason I had the fleeting thought that because Kate’s partner pal was a he, he might not be down with having to hang out with a kindergartener. I hoped—for both their sakes—that their enforced times together weren’t too weird or awkward.

Then, at a school event half-way through the year, I finally met the kid. And in no time I realized that he and Kate certainly are pals. In fact, when she saw him that day she ran up to him and hung on him like those monkeys with long arms that they sell in the zoo gift shop—the ones where you Velcro their hands together and can loop their limbs over something like a lasso.

Although it pained me to see how annoyingly in-his-face Kate was, it seemed that this boy was either impeccably polite, or not annoyed by her attention. Or both.

Perhaps he was more sympathetic to my kindergarten daughter than I thought he might be.

We’ll call him Ted. Kate calls him Ted-Ted. Yes, apparently Kate’s one of those females who’ll call her boyfriend “David” when everyone else on the planet calls him “Dave.” Or worse, she’ll call him some wretchedly-personal pet name for all the world to hear. So I’ve got that to look forward to.

For Kate’s birthday party she made up a list of guests. When given this opportunity she thankfully doesn’t go overboard, wanting to invite 300 of her closest friends (like I do). Instead, she included her besties from school, a couple neighborhood chums, some close family friends, and Ted.

I wasn’t sure whether I should discourage this. He was, well…. older. And Kate’s a young first-grader. Would he really be keen on the scene at a sixth birthday party? For a girl no less?

But I saw his mother—a super friendly, down to earth mama—in the schoolyard the next day. I sidled up to her and mentioned that Ted made it onto Kate’s party list. Then I found myself trying to convince her that it wasn’t weird Kate wanted him to come. “There’ll be a couple other older boys there,” I stammered. “And we’re having a magician—so it won’t be all girly.” Finally I shot out, “I mean, if he doesn’t want to come, that’s totally fine too.”

But she smiled her down to earth I’m-so-centered smile and put her hand on my arm, “Ted is comfortable around kids of all ages.” She scratched her address on a post-it, and handed it to me. “I’m sure he’d love to come.”

These days when I drive Kate to school, if she sees Ted walk by she frantically screams to him from our closed-windowed car, “Ted-Ted! Ted-Ted!!” as if she’s warning him a tidal wave’s about to crash over his head. When I pick her up, if I stop to chat with another parent she’ll sometimes ask if she can hang out with Ted until we’re ready to go. And thrillingly, Ted did come to her party. He was the oldest child there by far, but his mom dropped him off happily, and he was totally comfortable in the scene. He even engaged in brilliant banter with the magician.

Some little part of me still frets that Kate’s annoying this chap. That her unbridled adoration is getting old. That he’s on the brink of getting some playground restraining order on my naive young daughter. But when I emailed his mom to ask for her address (again) so we could send them a thank you note, she mentioned that Ted had a great time at the party. She even commented on how much she likes the “sweet friendship” they’ve formed.

Which just goes to show that my ability to understand the elementary-school male is still apparently broken.

I snapped out of my neurotic mama mode and realized that it is sweet. This Ted fellow is a genuine, friendly, nice boy. Hardly the rogue-ish Danny P. of my younger days. Why wouldn’t he like hanging out with my genuine, friendly, nice daughter?

If anything, I should probably be worried that my assertive girl has leaned this lad’s way and claimed with an air of authority, “Ted-Ted, you’re my boyfriend.”

And for all I know, he’s said, “That’s right, Kate-Kate. I am.”

How Much is that Guppy in the Window?

Karma’s a bitch. Here I was lacking a plan, so I took the easy path. And where did it lead me? Hell. Specifically, pet hell.

I’ll explain. Kate recently turned six. And Mark was away for work the 10 days before her birthday. So I planned the party, and shopped for the pinata, and food, and decorations. I came up with activities for the kids, hired a magician, attempted to gussy up our yard. I scoured social media outlets, cookbooks, and the Inter-Web for the most succulent, moist chocolate cake recipe in all the land.

Then one night, toiling over a hot laptop and reviewing my gift purchases on Amazon, I lamented that I hadn’t ordered a special present for Kate. So I emailed Mark.

“What do you say we buy her a fish?” I suggested. “I mean, just write a promissory note, then we can all go together and she can pick it out.”

From Down Under, hours later, Mark received the email and shot back, “Great idea.”

I brushed my hands together with the smug satisfaction of a mother who had in fact done it all. Easiest. Present. Ever.

That must’ve been when the gods looked down at me and shared belly laugh. “Foolish mother!” they chortled. “She thinks it’ll be easy, does she?”

Then, to put my all my perfect party planning to shame—to show how powerless I truly was—they cursed me with overcast weather on the day of the party. It’d been in the low 80s and gloriously sunny for over a week, but the day of the party—the outdoor party in our backyard—was bleak and chilly. The Bay Area’s legendary Indian Summer let me down.

Had I only known that the gathering of gray clouds that day was a foreshadowing. Oh, the party went off without a hitch, weather aside. But the next day we piled into the car, the girls chanting “Fish! Fish! Fish!” and Mark and I smiling at each other from the front seats, smug with the sweet knowledge that we were doing something wonderful to enrich our darling nuclear family.

Hey, we were hardly buying the kids a Labrador Retriever. But, you know, baby steps.

Mark had sussed out fish stores online and took us to a place two towns over that was supposed to be “the best.” The squat, windowless building was covered with a mural of tropical fish, and I delightedly sing-songed to the girls as we pulled up, “Guess which place we’re going to?”

It was all so thrilling and wonderful. I took a history-capturing photo of Kate, arms and legs stretched wide, in front of the mural before we entered the building. Mark gallantly held the door open for me and I smiled as I slipped in. A happy young family on our way to add a fishy friend to our ranks.

Inside, the walls gleamed with rows of brightly lit tanks. Within them stirred all manner of colorful, flowy-finned fishies with green sea grasses swaying. The girls ran from one tank to the next. “Nemo!” Paige squealed. “Whoa, look at these guys!” Kate yelped peering into a tank of small silvery fish glowing with purple iridescence. “I want them!”

While the kids and I explored deeper into the store’s back rooms, Mark got the attention of a young Asian employee—a collegiate tattooed fish geek—who we eventually met up with at the front of the shop. I pulled out a scrap of paper from my purse and recited to her the amount of space we had for a tank. (I had every detail figured out.)

Okay, so tanks. Fish Geek Girl started reeling off statistics about cubic something-or-others of water, and pointed to a wall full of spankin’ new, unoccupied fish homes. “This one’s a little smaller. It needs a light, but it’s got the filter built in. Now for a little more you can get this larger tank, with the light and the filter, but the lid is sold separately. This one is a kit and where you think it would be the best deal, you’re actually better off buying a light from these people, and a filter which will last you three to four years, then get the tank over here from this other vendor but they are totally compatible—as long as you make sure you’re getting everything in the M Series.”

The wall of tanks started to swirl together before me. Like fly-vision I was seeing hundreds of identical images. Despite how dazzlingly confusing just picking a tank was, there also seemed to be some digital ticker tape of the cost of all this flashing behind Fish Geek’s head. The numbers multiplied the more she talked.

At this rate we’d get one goldfish and have to decide whether it was Kate or Paige who we could send to college. I was starting to wonder whether we should’ve gotten pre-approved for a loan before entering the fish store.

I swallowed hard and looked over at Mark. Usually when my brain starts short-circuiting his is still going strong. (One of the many benefits of having him around so much.) Alas, turns out he wasn’t even tuned it. Instead he was preventing Paige from reaching into a tank to grab Nemo.

“Okay, uh, well that is all good to know,” I stammered. “Maybe you could tell us a bit about maintenance?”

“Well, depending on which tank you get [of course!] you’ll have to change half the water in the tank bi-weekly or one-third of the water weekly.” This was turning into a math word problem. I was afraid she was about to ask me how fast the train was traveling.

Then Little Miss Fish Facts moved across the room to Vannah her arms alongside a display of pumps. “Now with these pumps you can…”

I was growing dizzy. I felt like if there was just a window I could look out, I could somehow steady myself. If it’s possible to get sea sick in a fish store, I was.

Water changes? Filters? Lights? Thermometers? Whatever happened to those goldfish that you won in a plastic bag at the carnival?

Oh wait… I remember. After short stints as “pets” they went belly up. Those simple fish-bowl fish never lasted very long, maybe because they needed confusing costly contraptions to keep them going. Eventually they all experienced tragic toilet-borne funerals.

Standing in that store I felt the way I did when I almost bought a Honda Accord. It was when Mark and I were dating, and I needed a reliable car to get me to a new, far-flung job. I’d gotten so far as to select the color, interior, and options, and they were pulling my new ride up to the showroom from an off-site parking lot.

But I panicked. Suddenly a Honda Accord seemed like the most wretchedly safe, generic, boring commuter-mobile I could ever own. It was like if I bought that car I would be giving up my personality altogether. Every ounce of me-ness would be whitewashed with soul-robbing sensibility. There was no way I could go through with it. But I also couldn’t bring myself to share my change of heart with the super high-pressure salesman. So I whispered to Mark, “Uh, I can’t do this. Tell them no.”

I think he whispered back something along the lines of, “You fucking tell them! I’m not going to tell them!”

But anyway, this fish thing was different. We were in it together. I touched the arm of Fish Girl before she launched into a lecture on solar-powered filters and said, “I think we need a minute.”

Then I turned to Mark and said, “Let’s get out of here. This is insane! Maybe at that other place we can get a frog or something. Something easier to deal with.”

Fast-forward to Pet Store #2, where we met a tortoise. It was darling! And seemed so right for us in so many ways. The girls could take him out of his tank and play with him on the floor. Can you do that with a fish? Noooo. Plus, no filters! No water to change! No temperatures to fret over!

This all sounded great. Then the male equivalent of Fish Geek Girl informed us, “Now, these tortoises live to be 80 to 100 years old. Some breeds get to be 100—even 120.”

Okay, so this was the opposite end of the toilet-funeral spectrum. Instead of having to comfort the girls about the death of their fish some day, Mark and I would be moving this turtle to a nursing home with us. Paige’s grandchildren would be playing with that damn, un-killable pet.

I’m sorry, but even a truncated 70-year turtle existence was way, way too long.

But then, to really wrench at our heart strings the Reptile Dude plucks a couple itty bitty baby tortoises out of a tank. Suddenly every kid in the store was crowded around us. They were ADORABLE. I don’t care how long these little guys live, I wanted one. I wanted two!

“Now these fellas grow to be about twice the size of Martin over there,” he said, nodding his head towards an enormous tank. The turtle inside looked to be about the size of a bear cub. These turtles would require their own bedrooms one day.

But they were cute! I was undeterred.

Then Our Knowledgeable Salesperson starts in on how the tortoises eat table scraps—the ends of carrots, wilted lettuce, withered cucumbers. They were like living compost heaps. What could be greener? What could be easier? Turns out I have a refrigerator FULL OF TURTLE FOOD on any given day. What dumb luck!

As Kate and Paige acted proprietary with the wee turtles the other store-kids were pawing at, Reptile Ron went on. “Now these little guys have shells that are forming still. So you’ll need to bathe them in water just about up to their shell lines for 20 minutes a day. But only for the first two to three years.”

Did he really just say “ONLY for the first two to three YEARS?”

I nearly kicked the man in the crotch. I didn’t manage to get my own children into the bath every day for their first two to three years.

I snatched those darling turtles out of the girls’ hands and plopped them back in their tank. Not an option.

But I never say die. There must be a perfect pet somewhere in this huge store. What else could he show us?

Next up, a variety of small, darling frogs. They really were cute. Brightly colored teensy things, hopping around in little mossy, leafy fairy realms. I cut to the chase. “Talk to me about maintenance. Gear. Feedings. Baths.”

“Well, you have to spray water in their tanks every day. They need the moisture,” he started. “And they eat crickets…”

“Live crickets?” I interrupted.

“Uh-huh,” he said. Then he gently explained that their “live food needs” would require us to drive to the pet store once a week, just to keep us in crickets. He failed to mention how the hell you got the crickets into the tank. And the potentially-traumatizing Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom experience of watching the wee frogs devour their dinner.

“And how often do you feed them these crickets?” I ventured.

“Every day,” he replied cautiously.

And really, I know it shouldn’t be so shocking to think that a living thing needs to eat every day, but I was horrified. Disgusted even. Every day? For the love of God, no.

I tugged on Mark’s sleeve. “Uh, I think we need to go home,” I whispered. “Regroup. Do some research. Sell the girls on a pet rock maybe.”

And so, we left. Somehow we got the girls into the car without them screaming, whining, throwing wild tantrums. Somehow they weren’t hurling accusations at us of being bad, lying parents who’d promised to buy them a pet. It was one of those eery times when the kids just seemed to go with the flow. They did what we needed them to do.

“We need some time to think about what the best choice is for us,” Mark said as he clipped them into their car seats. We looked at each other over the roof of the car before getting in, and rolled our eyes. What the HELL had we gotten ourselves into?

When we got home it was time for dinner. Late really. And once we’d cooked, and eaten, and cleaned up the dishes, we needed to start reading the kids their bedtime books. So we washed their hands and faces, brushed their teeth and hair, and got them into bed. There would be plenty of time for a bath tomorrow.

Then Mark and I went on with our evening, secure in the fact that—despite their state of compromised cleanliness—we didn’t have to worry that without having had a bath the girls’ shells might dry out, shrivel up, or crack. These human pets? So easy. Even if when they woke up in the morning we would have to feed them all over again.

Give Me Your Money

I’m a sucker for a compliment. Like last year, a friend emailed me saying she needed someone like me—”a responsible person with a dynamic personality”—to do her a favor.

Responsible? Dynamic? Aw, shucks. Before even reading what she wanted, I was in.

Turns out she needed someone to round up some folks and get them on a bus to the farm where she was getting hitched. The task required a firm but friendly approach. The ability to work with old and young alike. It called for one part charm, one part organization. It’s like the gig was custom-made for me.

I shot her back an email. “When do I start? And do I get to carry a clipboard?”

So it was not surprising last spring when I got an email from the Development Director at Kate’s school, and responded like I did. They needed a “captain” for Kate’s classroom. Someone to be a liaison between the parents and the Board of Directors for the annual fund-raising drive.

“So many people have told me you’d be perfect for this,” she wrote.

What could I say to that? I mean, other than, “I’m your gal!”

It wasn’t ’til a few weeks ago when our first meeting was announced that I wondered how I got reeled into this role. Did the Development Director really hear I’d be great? Or had she sent the same message to four other people before me? People who were smart enough to not take the bait.

I decided that she must have been sincere. That it was my winning personality that got me into this. Into what some might find an unenviable role.

While I got ready to head out to my first meeting, Kate stood by the sink to chat. With a toothbrush sticking out of my mouth I explained to her what the fund-raising committee does. “All the cool classes [brush brush brush] like wood shop and Spanish [spit!] and music, and movement [brush brush]—I’m helping raise money for [spit!]. You know [wipe mouth with towel], to make sure you can still have those classes [peer into mirror, fluff hair].”

“Oooh,” said Kate, pondering. “Well Mama, I hope you raise one… hundred and… fifty-five dollars!”

“Thanks, kiddo,” I said kissing her head and slinging my purse over my shoulder. Walking out the door I thought, ‘God help me if that’s all I can do.’

But thankfully, I’ve put some thought into this whole fund-raising thing. Even if traditional approaches don’t work, I’ve come up with some innovative ideas. You know, I’m thinkin’ outside the box.

Like, I figured I can volunteer as a car-door opener. Some parents help do this in the mornings in front of the school. It’s like drive-thru fast food meets private education. You pull up and don’t even have to get out of your car. Someone just opens your back door and yanks out your kid and their over-sized backpack.

I figure if I volunteer I could peer in at the parent drivers and say things like, “Nice new Mercedes, Jim! Things at the bank must certainly be going well for you. Have you thought about what you’re giving to the school this year?”

Alternately, people with crappy cars (like mine) must be saving money by not indulging in German automotive technology, right? “You’re certainly not throwing money away on fancy cars,” I can bellow to the driver as I use one hand to extricate their child. “Get a tax break! Bust into that nest egg you’ve been hoarding and make a fat donation to the school!”

I can see it now. People will be pulling over to dig out their checkbooks (I’ll have a pen handy) to make dazzlingly impressive donations on the spot. (Which may, I realize, cause a traffic jam. But really, in the end won’t it be worth it when those spiffy new xylophones arrive in the Music Room?)

I’ve also been scripting a few lines about donations based in direct correlation with the size of women’s engagement-ring diamonds. “What’s that there, Sheila? Two carats? Two-and-a-half?” I’ll purr admiringly. “You must have some moula you can shake free for the school, no?”

I can’t wait to share these guerrilla fund-raising tactics with the committee. I think they’re really quite brilliant. And to think, I never even went to business school! I was just an English major!

Last year I rallied the moms in Kate’s classroom to go out for drinks one night. Even deep into the school year there were so many mamas I’d barely gotten to know. Birthday parties and playdates are fun and all, but it’d be nice to hang out without kids demanding our attention. And with wine.

So this year I decided to start early. Back to School Night was last week. Mark was in Australia for work, so I needed a sitter. I figured I’d make good use of her services and go out for une petite drinkie after the meeting.

So I emailed the moms in Kate’s class—would anyone like to join me? Let’s tack a little socializing onto the end of a school meeting. Let’s let our hair down a bit. Let’s tie one on, sisters, free and unfettered, without our little ones (or even spouses) nipping at our heels. What better way to kick off the school year?

But I didn’t have everyone’s email addresses. Kate’s in a K-1 combo class and I didn’t know the new kindergarten mamas’ emails. So I promised I’d track those women down later. But if anyone knew how to reach them, please forward my email along.

And what a night we had! Fast forward to me, ravaged senseless by gin and showing off my C-section scar at the restaurant. Then later, the moms of Room 2 went all Coyote Ugly—dancing on the bar in an act of drunken homo-erotic bacchanalia. It was off the hook!

Okay, okay… so those things really didn’t happen. Our outing for drinks was lovely, but not wild by any means. Sure, we considered jetting off to Vegas on the fly at one point, but the idea never really took off. In fact, it was what happened in planning to go out that makes up this here story.

Because one of the moms forwarded my email to the group list the teacher uses. A perfectly reasonable thing to do. So ALL the parents in the classroom got it—not just the mamas. This may or may not have left some dad’s feeling left out. Which certainly was not my intention. But I fear that some papas were wondering why they couldn’t come and booze it up too.

The emails started flowing. A handful of women “would love to join.” Others were checking with their better halves to make sure they could slip away. One mama suggested a tiki bar that’s in staggering distance of her house. Another said, “as long as they have wine” she’s in.

Then one brave dad spearheaded the retaliatory drinking brigade. “Why don’t the fathers get together for a beer too?” He summoned an opposition party of wounded left-out daddies. It was a decided “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em” approach. And even though I could have offered for us to all go out together, it seemed apparent that we were well past that.

Oh it was lively. It was interesting. My small idea was certainly taking on dimensions I never anticipated.

I was suddenly envisioning Back to School Night in a new light—all us parents wedged into small wooden seats in the classroom, moms on one side, dads sitting across the room separately, sneering.

Hell, the way this was unfolding I was maybe going to have to host a pre-party so everyone could loosen up a bit before the meeting. You know, some kind of tailgate in the elementary school parking lot. I mean, there wouldn’t be any drugs or anything. But you know, maybe a few pony kegs. A tray of Jell-O shots. And maybe some of the sensitive new-aged dads would get into the spirit and arrive in face and body paint—in the school colors, of course—like some misdirected, intellectual Oakland Raiders fans.

All I’m saying is I’d be open to seeing that.

At the end of Day One: The Happy Hour Email Incident, the two room parents and I got a note from the teacher. She kindly cautioned us not to use the group email she’d set up. Turns out she’d also been getting everyone’s responses throughout the day. And although she was chuckling about it, several other teachers let her know that they’d been getting the emails too.

Yes, my innocent let’s-grab-a-drink-together invitation—and everyone’s RSVPs, commentaries, and alternate plan suggestions—were being sent TO EVERY TEACHER AND ADMINISTRATOR IN THE SCHOOL.

Um… oops!

Yes, the next morning an official email went out to the entire school community outlining the Dos and Don’ts of the school’s group email lists. And it encouraged us to set up our own email lists.

Message received.

Oddly, a few hapless fathers continued to respond to the all-call for Dad Drinks throughout the day. “Wish I could, but I’m traveling for work!” “Sure, beer’s always good!”"Catch you guys next time for sure!” [Wince.]

On Back to School night one of the teachers—a sweet, funny guy who I adore—whispered in my ear as I walked into the room, “We’ll keep this quick, Kristen. We know you have some drinking to do.”

Nice.

Another mom informed me that some school staffers were now referring to Room 2 as The Drunk Tank. Greeeeeat.

Yes, it’s all hideously embarrassing. But the way I figure it, Kate’s only got four years left at that school. And Paige starts there the year after next. So hopefully in the seven years before she graduates my reputation as the Boozey Rabble-Rouser Mommy will have waned some.

But in the meantime, I want to humbly say to all the teachers, administrators, moms, and dads whose feelings I may have hurt or whom I otherwise annoyed, “I was wondering if you might be interested in writing a nice big check to the school.”

Down Undie

Mark’s in Australia for work. He’s already experiencing tomorrow today, thanks to fun with time zones.

As for me, I’m marking the passage of time in terms of changes of underwear. Specifically, how many of these will take place between now and when he returns.

And trust me, I’m not implying anything sexual here. In fact, it ain’t even my undies I’m concerned about. It’s Kate’s. And by my count we have three more pairs of fresh panties to change into before Mark gets back. Three more protracted, tear-drenched, maternal-mind-losing overhauls of undergarments.

God help me to survive them.

Why, you may ask, is a simple clothing change such a chore for my sweet eldest child? Why does my body clench in stress when it’s time to do something so simple as get dressed in the morning?

Because I have a sensitive child. A sensory-sensitive child, to be more precise. What you and I see as a no-brainer garment we mindlessly toss on each day, is some sort of vice-like, itchy, binding, pressure chamber to dear Miss Kate.

It hasn’t always been about the undies. We’ve gone through this with socks. We’ve experienced it with shoes. Dresses with zippers were once attempted—no more. And pants? Stiff jeans? Ha! Never happen. There are certain types of clothing that are unquestionably off-limits for Kate.

There is a way to treat this issue. We’ve seen an occupational therapist. We’ve brushed her. Done joint compressions. We’d recite incantations if it would help. Mark and I would both probably make deals with the devil if we could. We’d do ANYthing to make this go away.

And for a while, it did. Getting dressed in the mornings became, well—normal. Unremarkable. Tear-free even!

But damn the new school year and all that transition times bring. In so many ways Kate has been fine. She loves school, has great friends she kept in touch with all summer, and even has the same teacher as last year because of the blended K-1 classroom. But clearly something is up.

Because two days ago it took 45 minutes and a sobbing freak-out for her to even TRY to put on clean underwear. And the day before, when I was desperate to leave the house? I confess. I caved. I let her wear the same undies she had on the day before. (A terrifying last resort for a clean freak like myself.)

And after my heart breaks that something so simple is such a struggle for her—after 25 minutes of feeling sad, I start to feel sorry for myself. And somehow the sympathy turned self-pity turns into unbridled frustration. And irrational maternal behavior.

Which is why, on Sunday morning when it was 80 degrees out and our friend’s pool in Napa was beckoning, I made a terrible, harsh—and ultimately ineffective—threat. I told Kate that if she didn’t get her undies on in five minutes that—that—that I would cancel her birthday party.

Even as I said it, I knew I’d never do it. Which is, of course, the worst kind of threat. This is Rule #1 in the Maternal Handbook of Threats.

Plus it seemed just plain mean.

But, man, was I frustrated. “On my last nerve” as my friend Jackie would say. And I wanted Kate to understand how serious I was—desperate really—about her needing to at least TRY. Without trying we’d never make progress. We’d still be sitting in that room now, with her bare-assed. I watched her flop around on her bedroom floor moaning, “ALL my panties are bad. I don’t like ANY of them.” And I wanted her to know I wasn’t planning to engage for another 45 more minutes in this fun game.

Did I consider letting her go commando? Yes, for a second. Did I consider letting her wear the same panties for a THIRD DAY? No.

And just to be sure I wouldn’t buckle on that score (and be arrested by the Department of Underwear Health, a.k.a. The DUH), I threw the twice-worn ones into the washing machine at about Minute 23 of her tantrum. Getting back into those soft, worn-in undies was NOT going to be an option.

The birthday threat did nothing, other than make Kate scream “You’re mean!” and sadly make me think she was right. So I moved away from the stick, and offered a carrot. “You can watch five minutes of TV if you put on these panties.”

And you know what? She wiped the tears off her eyes and perked up like she’d had a shot of espresso. And then she just put them on. Just like that. Like we hadn’t just spent the past hour trapped in what seemed like a bad, overly-dramatic liberal arts school play.

So when she finally, finally put on the damn underwear, it totally pissed me off.

Don’t get me wrong, I was happy that this long international ordeal—which was likely overheard by neighbors and passers-by who were speed-dialing Child Protective Services on their cell phones—was at long last coming to an end. I was just shocked to see that she really had it in her to put them on. Suddenly her sensory affliction seemed a lot like some let’s-torture-mommy power play.

All that time she couldn’t do it when I was asking nicely. Then pleading. But for a five minute dose of TV crack? Clearly that was a game-changer.

We had friends over for cocktails a few weeks ago. We were sitting in our back yard on the kind of glorious, sunshiny late afternoon that makes you smug about living in California. Mark was whipping up a assortment of fab-u-luss drinks. We were nibbling on overpriced stinky cheese. And we were with our beloved Brooklyn friends whose company we had for an extra day thanks to Hurricane Irene.

It was lovely. Lovely if you turned a blind eye to our scruffy, brown, hay-like, embarrassment of a lawn.

We don’t have sprinklers in our back yard. And we don’t spend much time there anyway. So I neglect it. Mark doesn’t care about it enough to warrant calling what he does ‘neglect.’

Somehow watering the lawn seems like the kind of thing balding men wearing Bermudas, black socks, and man sandals do. Which is clearly not me. Me? I neglect our lawn with gusto. I neglect our lawn with intention.

Except in the few weeks before Kate’s birthday party.

In those weeks I attempt to pack a year’s worth of loving, careful attention into the straw-like grass. It practically laughs at me as I spray the hose over it. But I am an optimist. If I water the lawn five consecutive times I expect a lush golf-course-like green carpet to spring right up. I feel like if I put my mind to it I can will that grass to grow.

Anyway, during our little happy hour I disparaged the lawn, and described how it would be transformed in less than one month’s time. Turns out my friend Zoe is a kindred Lawn Fairy spirit. Because just weeks before her daughter’s birthday (when they lived down in SoCal), she had some yard folk come in to make the nice-nice with the grass.

Trouble was, they spread manure along with the grass seed. Manure with a robust, shit-stinkin’ bouquet.

In the days approaching the party, Zoe said she’d walk into their yard and sniff neurotically. Did it still smell? Was that just the old smell she was smelling, and it had actually gone away? Would her guests be throwing up in their mouths a little as they attempted to eat birthday cake while ostensibly standing in an open-air sewer?

I LOVE so many things about that. I love hearing how other mamas go to silly extremes to make their kids’ birthday parties perfect. I love finding new reasons to admire old friends—bonding over a mutual disdain for yard work. I love knowing I’m not the only one who sometimes questions my ability to know if something is normal or not. (Is the shit smell still there but I just can’t smell it any more because I’m so used to smelling it?)

Kate’s party is Saturday. Mark returns from Down Under on Friday, just in time to nod off from jet lag during the pinata whacking portion of the day.

And sadly, all my optimism and last-minute watering have done nada in terms of transforming our lawn into a verdant grassy wonderland. It’s a bummer. I’d love for the yard to look fab, but I didn’t go so far as to call in a landscaper.

If there’s any poo smell at Kate’s party, I’m afraid it’ll be emanating from her fetid, possibly days-old undergarments. I’m doing my damnedest to get a clean pair o’ panties on the gal daily, but by the end of ten days of solo parenting it’s really hard to know what will happen.

20 Things I Learned after 20 Years in California

It’s been a big week for milestones ’round here.

Monday was Mark and my seven year wedding anniversary. Say what you will about this marital mile-marker, but we have thus far experienced no itchiness. Phew.

Yesterday was Kate’s first day of first grade. It was like some meta first-ness. Like first to the first power. But things like this don’t phase my unflappable girl. Within the first minute of being on the playground she was acting like the First Lady of Elementary School. By tomorrow she’ll have the kindergarteners handing over the cookies from their lunch boxes. Bless her heart.

And today is another biggie. Today marks 20 years to the day since I moved to California.

20 years!!! It’s totally unbelievable.

I’ve lived here longer than I lived in Lil’ Rhody. Which must mean that in another bat of an eyelash I’ll be wielding a walker with tennis ball wheels. I plan to have lots of flair on my walker by the way. In-n-Out Burger stickers, fuzzy clamp-on koala bears, and magenta bike handle streamers.

So there’s that to look forward to.

Anyway, in light of my 20 years as a Californian, I thought I’d share the top 20 things I’ve learned since living here.

1. To some people local artisan cheese is Kraft Singles. This is a good thing to think of when you are paying your astronomical rent or mortgage bill and feeling jealous of your friend’s McMansion in Sioux City. Compared to much of the rest of the country, the Bay Area offers many pains, but also many pleasures.

2. Redwood Trees are really tall.

3. Parallel parking is a Darwinian skill that one develops while living in SF. After driving around your neighborhood for 45 minutes on a parking spot quest, you can bet your pins-and-needles ass you’ll wedge your chippy-paint-bumpered Jetta into a space better suited to a Mini Cooper. On a 30% grade hill no less. After living in San Fran, going anywhere that has an actual parking lot makes you feel spoiled rotten.

3 1/2. (Turns out I had more than 20 things to say, so I’m trying to slip this one in here unnoticed.) You know how you go into an ice cream store and you ask the people who work there, “Wow, do you just eat ice cream all day?” and they just squirm and look uncomfortably annoyed because you’re the seventh person who’s asked them that in the past half-hour? You know that? Then they say, “Actually, no. When you work here eventually you get over it.” Well, I never REALLY believed them. Come ON. They’ve gotta be running in the back room stuffing themselves silly with Pralines and Cream, right? Well now that I live so close to Napa Valley I know exactly what those ice cream scoopers are talking about. Napa is stunning,  close by, and a world-renowned destination—oh, and it’s overflowing with wine, of course. Yet we don’t go there every weekend. We somehow also manage to not to always bring visitors there. It’s so close! It’s so fabulous! But I’m ashamed to say that we’ve grown to take it for granted. (Wait, you all don’t have hundreds of world-class wineries an hour’s drive from YOUR house?!)

4. Divorce West Coast style means that your father and his wife (who is younger than you) comes to your house for Thanksgiving with your mother and her girlfriend. And not only do they all talk to each other, they’re all best friends.

5. My scariest California rookie experience was ordering a burrito at a Mission taqueria. There’s a huge long counter behind which 15 or so women take orders from a constant stream of patrons. They sputter out questions like, “Black, pinto, or re-fried?” and you must use all your energy to ante up an answer—any answer—so as to keep pace with the next question they’re going to hurl your way. They move down the line two steps to the chicken and meat section where more un-decipherable questions are asked, and you whimper lightly and point. By then, sweating and disoriented you lose track of your burrito-maker, who is down by the salsas bellowing out “Hot or mild?” while a dozen other people are calling back to their nice burrito-making ladies a cacophony of “Pinto! No lettuce! Carnitas!” Then what happens is you start talking to The Wrong Woman. You lose your Burrito Maker and then suffer a sudden crushing white-girl shame because all the long-black-haired Mexican women look the same to you but you don’t want to accept that you really think that because that would be BAD and WRONG. Yet, uh, was that her? In the gray t-shirt? Or the one with the braids? And then suddenly she is back and in your face and yelling something and beckoning you down the long counter because you are creating a hungry human traffic jam so you wave an affirming that’s-great-thanks gesture her way so she’ll just stop asking you questions then you’re shunted to the cash register having no idea what it is that you ordered. And you have also not been handed your burrito. It’s been tossed in a pile with 8 other tin foil tubes that all have different letters scrawled on them. At the register they say things to you in questioning tones like “Super Veggie Burrito?,” or other phrases that include words like “Deluxe” which appear to be names for the kindsa burritos they make, but you have NO IDEA what it is that you got. Someone could offer to pay you $10,000 to tell them what is in your burrito and you’d just sit down and cry and say, “I don’t know! It all happened so fast! And she had an accent that I’m ashamed to say I really couldn’t understand!” But you manage to somehow buy something (that may or may not be yours) and don’t cry from the trauma of it all. And whatever the hell it is you eat it and decide that the holy terror you endured was SO worth it. Then eventually, 8 years or so later, after coming back about once a week, ordering a burrito becomes easier.

6. I sometimes feel un-cool for not being gay.

7. I’m more afraid that one of those Looney Toons anvils might somehow fall on my head than I am about earthquakes. When you live here, you don’t hang pictures framed with glass over your bed, and you don’t think much about earthquakes. Because really, not wanting one won’t prevent one from happening. Besides, we’re all too stoned out of our minds every day to worry about anything other than when the pizza is going to arrive. (See #12.)

8. You have not really gone out dancing until you’re the only woman in a gay club and by the end of the night you find yourself dancing in a black lace bra. (Just kidding, Dad! Well, as far as you know…)

9. It turns out Spanish would’ve been a more useful language to take than my 12 years of French. Who knew?

10. San Francisco Victorians are painfully cold in the winter and summer. They sure may look purdy, but most Turkish prison cells are more comfortable.

11. Everything Mark Twain ever said about San Francisco summers and witch’s tits is totally true.

12. Of my native-Calif friends, some scored pot from their parents with the same regularity and lack of big-dealness that I had hitting my parents for an allowance.

13. Whenever I was home sick from work in New York, I felt like I was the only one in my apartment building aside from the crazy old ladies who never threw out newspapers and bred cockroaches. EVERYONE else was at work. But in the Bay Area I think that people in offices feel like the outsiders. Cafes and coffee shops are thrumming with people hanging out (working? checking Match.com? betting on the ponies?) all day long. And a good drinking game, if you ever need one during the day, is doing a shot every time a man with a baby strapped to his chest walks down the sidewalk past your house. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

14. When it rains here it rains and when it doesn’t rain it doesn’t rain. These weather patterns are strictly relegated to seasons and they nearly always play by the rules. This seems odd to you at first, but later when you go on vacations outside of Northern California and after a sunny morning there’s a rain storm in the afternoon it freaks your shit right out.

15. There’s something warm and romantic—but also prone to knocking over your porch plants—called the Santa Anna winds that pass through the Bay Area every once and a while. It’s fun to say Santa Ana winds, and even funner to have an unusual weather pattern crop up that you’ve lived here long enough to recognize. “Oh yeah, those Santa Ana’s are blowin’!” you call out to your neighbor over the bluster while getting into your car some mornings. And you think you’re really cool.

16. Don’t be surprised if you are waiting at a stop light and a man wearing black leather pants, a black leather captain’s hat, and a “shirt” comprised of crisscrossing leather straps, is walking another man across the street who is on all fours, and on a leash. I don’t know what those wacky gay boys are up to, but it seems like good clean fun!

17. Speaking of leather pants, don’t wear those to the Rainbow Grocery cooperative. Really. Take my word on that.

18. And speaking of crossing the street, people in California actually stop for pedestrians in crosswalks! All that time on the East Coast I never knew what those lines on the street were for.

19. The Berkeley Public Library’s library cards look like they’re tie-dyed. Somebody had a great sense of branding (and humor).

20. There is a field of bison in Golden Gate Park and the first time you see them you will feel certain someone slipped you a hallucenogen.

Thank you, thank you, Mark, for a dazzling seven years of marriage, and for being the funniest, smartest, cutest, best-cookin’ husband a gal could ever have. I adore the ground you walk on, and could you pick Kate up from school today? Listen, I’ll just call you about that later.

And thanks to you California, for the wild, wonderful ride these past twenty years. I must have been having a good time, because man, that time FLEW. Here’s to the next twenty.

Unfinished Business

There was one thing my sister Ellen and I both wanted of my mother’s after she died. It wasn’t an Oriental carpet or a strand of pearls. It was a little piece of scratch paper Mom had pinned to a bulletin board. In her cramped, scrawly handwriting it said: “A well kept house is the sign of a misspent life.”

This, as it turns out, was my mother’s credo.

She wasn’t a total slob, but… how can I put this? She sometimes prioritized other things over cleaning.

I can imagine her glee stumbling across that quote one day, finding it the perfect validation for the dust bunnies under our beds and our sink full of dishes. Lesser, boring people would have their sink sparkling—but not her! She had better things to do.

I’m pretty sure that things like this skip a generation. My mother was an expert procrastinator. I grew up to be a militant project manager. She was a master of disorganization, always puttering around muttering things like, “I remember thinking I’d put that in a really good place. But where was it?” Me? I pride myself on an OCD-level of organization. And in terms of cleanliness and clutter, let’s put it this way—before I ever leave the house, I tidy up and wipe everything down as if I’ll bump into the Queen at Safeway and invite her straight home for a cup of tea.

Yes, I am NOT my mother’s daughter when it comes to housekeeping. But man, I still wanted that little hand-written note of hers. Precisely because it was so her. (Turns out, my sister kept the original and gave me a xerox copy. Which was just fine by me.)

God knows some of my less stellar parenting moments have erupted in those times of frantic leaving-the-house cleaning. I’ll have just finished picking up Cinderella playing cards littered all the way down the hall, and will walk into the living room to see that Paige has pulled every DVD off the shelf, opened the boxes, and is flinging the discs around like Frisbees. It’s that hair-pulling one step forward, two steps back thing. You finally think you’re ready to leave the house, and the baby poops. It’s inevitable.

Of course, all these leads me to the conclusion that my girls will grow up to keep towering piles of magazines around like my mother did. It will be their rebellion for having weathered my uptight neat-freakishness.

And really, if that’s the case it’d be fine by me. (As long as they let me clean when I go to their houses.) If they come by some bad habits on their own, I’m fine with that. We’re all human. But if they’re bad at something because I am? Well, that’s a different matter altogether. As a parent I want to try to breed the bad parts of me out of them.

Which is why I’ve been serving up a lot of Parental Lecture #239 lately. Which is to say, “Finish what you start.”

The thing is, I’ve been finding scores of inch-long, unfinished friendship bracelets all over the house. Someone comes to visit, Kate interrogates them about their favorite colors, and furiously starts knotting and braiding away. But inevitably something else catches her attention. She’s off with the sidewalk chalk or reading to her dolls in a fort, and that orange, black, and gray bracelet that was our friend Mike’s personal palette, is left unfinished.

She’ll start making a birthday card, then wander into the kitchen to find a snack. She’s excited about a new library book, but after two nights and two chapters, would rather we “please please pleeeez” read Ivy & Bean instead.

Now, you may be thinking that the girl is only five years old. (Or perhaps you’re wondering how old she is. Better yet, you may not give a rat’s ass.) Whatever the case, she turns six next month. So really, this kind of behavior is pretty typical kid stuff. And I get that. I certainly don’t want her goose-stepping around the house, finishing each drawing/game/activity with clinical precision, then hitting a stop watch and logging it into a book. But I do want her to understand the benefit of sticking with something. I want her to feel the satisfaction of hard work paying off. And I don’t want her to grow up to be someone who starts things and never finishes them. Like, uh… like sometimes I do.

Because, I don’t know about you, but I have a kinda mental list of all the things I’ve taken on that somehow never got off the ground. Things that excited me and inspired me and I’d even told my friends about when they asked me, “What’s new?”

And what’s funny is, I’m the last person you’d think of as a slacker. In the Enneagram—this interesting personality-mapping system that you should really buy a book about the next time you go to a ski house for a weekend with some friends—I’m a #3. The Achiever. Still somehow, I house this mild frustration within myself about all the projects I bailed on. And I guess if this is something fixable—something I can somehow deter my kids from doing—then, by gum, I’m going to try.

On New Year’s Day last year our Oakland posse came over for brunch. And we did this thing where we took the things about the prior year that we wanted to forget, or not carry into the new year, or just get over, and we wrote them on little scraps of paper. (Aren’t we SO California groovy? You probably just ate egg casserole and drank off your hang-over at your New Year’s brunch.)  Initially we stuck the papers in a little plastic doll potty I found in one of the girls’ rooms. It seemed like a good metaphor to flush those things away. But later in the day, once we had a fire in the fireplace—and a few mimosas in our systems—we started reading them aloud and tossing them into the flames.

It was good therapy. (Though I still sometimes do lose my temper with the kids.)

Anyway I wonder if, in the same vein, I can list the unfinished projects that gnaw at me here. And by virtue of enumerating and accepting them perhaps I can exorcise them from my mind.

Hell, I figure it’s worth a try.

Things I Started and Never Finished:

• Scrapbooking. I spent HUNDREDS of dollars on papers, stickers, scalloped scissors, and flower-shaped hole punchers. I painstakingly produced a few pages–maybe six—and found I was psychotically hell-bent on making each one a creative masterpiece worthy of the Scrapbook Hall of Fame (which I think is in Cleveland somewhere near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). I got through Kate’s first five weeks of life then quit, utterly spent. Continuing at that rate would have been a 90-plus hour a week job. And that was before Paige with all her scrap-worthy moments was even born.
• Compiling photo albums—actual book ones with pages you can turn. I can’t help but think that by the time my kids are adults the internet will be like an 8-track tape. “Photos of your first birthday? I have them right here! Don’t you worry, we just need to spark up the old internet to get them. Stand back now! This can get loud—and smokey!”
• Hell, I’d be happy to have up-to-date photos on our Fickr account posted. Or even just downloaded onto my computer. Our digital camera is like 20 old rolls of film that have never been dropped off at MotoPhoto.
• The marathon I attended an inspirational Team in Training meeting for 9 years ago, then gave up on after my knee got jenky after just two training runs.

• The needlepoint of a bunny (what was I thinking?) that I worked on during endless doctor appointments, and chemo and radiation sessions with my mother. I would get SO engrossed in it, that after sitting in a stiff gray waiting room chair for an entire day, my mother would finally be ready to go and I’d beg, “Can we just stay a little longer so I can finish all the red flower petals?”

• And that damn needlepoint reminds me of the owl hook rug I started as a kid. I had big plans for that acrylic throw rug. Big plans. I think my mom kept that unfinished masterpiece in the attic for decades after I’d abandoned it. She apparently had faith in my ability to some day complete that project. The fool.
• There’s that book about the orchid thief, and one about a Parisian piano shop, and many many other books I started and never finished even though I always claim to be someone who “can’t start a new book ’til I finish the one I’m reading, even if I hate it.” If I ever use that line on you, know that it’s a lie. (Even though I still like to think it’s true.)

• And of course, the biggest ugliest most brutal unfinished project—my book. Yes, my book idea that I was so impassioned and inspired and determined about, the research material for which is now sitting pitifully in a box on our basement floor. I’m not sure if my energy for it petered out because I stopped believing in my idea, or if I stopped believing in my idea because I never put enough energy into getting it rolling. If I could only get back the money I spent on childcare while trying to finish that damn proposal. It’d probably amount to the proceeds I’d have made on the book if I ever got it published.

Oh, I’m sure there are more more more things on this list. I have boxes of fabric and pillow stuffing and yarn—the vestiges of  creative undertakings that died on the vine. I have vintage buttons I planned to sew on cardigans. Growth charts for both girls devoid of hash marks for each year’s passage.

Some of this is maybe just life—you’re bound to find yourself in the not-yet-completed part of some undertaking. But at times, in the middle of the night, these things can weigh on me. My Achiever personality frets over what I’ve failed to do, instead of reveling in my accomplishments.

Last summer we vacationed with friends who have four boys. If her offspring wasn’t time-sucking enough, in her off-mama hours the woman is an E.R. doc. And a triathlete. Her husband commandeers a fairly new, wildly successful craft brewery which struggles to keep pace with the demand for their product. They’ve got one of those big white boards in their kitchen that outlines everyone’s schedule for the week. Take it from me, these people are BUSY.

But I was blown away but how thoughtfully they manage their lives on a minute by minute basis. Like how, whenever one of the boys pulls on the mom’s arm and asks, “Can you read to me? Can we play Zingo? Do you want to play freeze tag?” More often than not, her answer is Yes.

It made me realize how often my answer is No. I can’t read because I’m cooking dinner. I can’t pretend I’m your baby, I’m sending a work email. No, no no. When really, doing any of these things takes just a few minutes. (Except, of course, a hellishly endless game of Chutes and Ladders.)

But really, will the world fall apart if I play a couple hot rounds of Go Fish, instead of emptying the dishwasher right away?

When the girls want to know some day why they don’t have baby books—why I can’t remember the exact date they took their first steps, or can’t put my fingers on a photo of their kindergarten play—I hope I’ll be able to remind them of that huge hopscotch we drew along the length of our block’s sidewalk. And I hope that that will somehow be enough.

As for that book proposal? I think I just need to get off my ass.

What have you started that you never finished?

Summer Camp Blues

True confession: I never went to summer camp.

Go ahead, take your pot shots. I know, I’m a freak. As if it’s not bad enough that I’ve never seen Star Wars, I also lack any nostalgia about or understanding of camp culture. I know no campfire songs. I can’t make a lanyard. I’ve never short-sheeted a bed, dipped a sleeping friend’s hand in warm water to make her pee, or snuck out of a cabin late-night to to meet a boy.

But don’t you worry. I’ll be fine.

This void in my childhood experience was great comic fodder for my college friends. I’d be standing at a bar with a new boyfriend and they’d come up to us and say, “Hey, so what say we sing some campfire songs?” Then with dramatic mock dismay they’d say, “Ooooh, yeah… That’s right. Kristen never went to camp.”

Who am I kidding? I never had an actual boyfriend in college.

Anyway, my daughter Kate is like the Patron Saint of Summer Camp. At the tender age of five, no less. She’s gone to so many different camps this summer—adventure camp, costume-making camp, famous artist camp, discovery camp, cooking camp, animation camp—and all in seven weeks’ time.

I can’t imagine what else she’d have done if we hadn’t spent most of July in Rhode Island. Car repair camp? Hair braiding camp? Drum circle camp?

Thankfully Kate’s a super duper trooper when it comes to transitions. The girl is devoid of first-day jitters. She plunges into social settings without knowing a soul, and never considers that that could be awkward.

When I picked her up from the first day of animation camp, a sea of boys poured out of the room before her.

“Wow, I said looking back at the little guys running up to their mothers. “A lot of boys in your camp, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m the only girl,” she said, un-phased. Then she took my hand and led me toward the door.

I had my mouth open to pour out a stream of neurotic questions and maternal concern, but she looked up at me all excited and said, “I used Paigey’s Plum Pudding doll to do stop motion animation today!”

So I closed my mouth, pushed the door open, and heard all about how they took “like 100 pictures of the doll” then made it into a movie.

Katie’s had a blast at all her camps this summer—gathering t-shirts, friendship bracelets, and mad lanyard skillz. But I can’t bear the thought of sticking her into another new environment again. So I’m taking next week off of work, and having some quality time with the girls before school starts.

Perky teen counselors will have nuthin’ on Camp Mama. I plan to make pancakes for breakfast, let us linger in our PJs, then have outings to the beach or the zoo, and go out for gelato. If the weather’s bad I’ll take them to that Winnie the Pooh movie I promised Paige after I traumatized her at Kung Fu Panda 2. (She’s been asking if we can go back to “that big-TV place” but see “something not scary.”)

Hell, we’ll maybe even whip up some friendship bracelets for each other. And of course, there will be LOTS of singing. Every time Kate’s been in the car this summer she’s busted out some new ditty she learned at camp. Her capacity to memorize lyrics astounds me. And she’s got Page trained on the “repeat after me songs” (a genre, I must admit, that was all new to me).

So if you see us driving around Oakland next week, don’t be surprised if the windows are down and we’re happily belting out “Percy the Pale-Faced Polar Bear” or “The Button Factory.” Yes, at age 44, I have finally, blessedly learned some campfire songs.

And I’ve gotta tell you, I love them.

Just in case you too have been denied this pleasure, I’ll share one of our faves. Best sung while eating s’mores or signing your friend’s camp t-shirt.

Well I ran around the corner and I ran around the block,
And I ran right into the donut shop.
And I picked up a donut right out of the grease,
And I handed the lady my five cent piece.

Well she looked at the nickel and she looked at me.
And she said, This nickel is no good you see.
There’s a hole in the middle in and it runs right through.
Said I, There’s a hole in the donut too!

Thanks for the donut. Bye-bye!

Have fun, campers! See you next summer.

Polka Dotted Panties

I’m planning to take an axe to Paige’s diaper pail.

Or maybe I’ll back over it with the car. Or set it on fire like some stinky, suburban Burning Man. We can get the neighbors to wear strange provocative costumes, do psychedelic drugs, and ride their bikes around our back yard as they watch it go up in flames. (Never let it be said I don’t keep the community’s entertainment needs in mind.)

Or maybe this is the wrong approach entirely, and I should do something to honor and preserve that damn diaper trapper for its many long years of service. Like, maybe I could mail it off to one of those places that covers baby shoes in bronze. We can set it in the corner of the living room—under a little art spotlight—like some masterpiece that everyone would be too disturbed by it to do anything other than compliment it. It could be our awkwardly large tribute to our kid’s babyhoods, like some freakishly over-sized charm bracelet souvenir.

Oh, the possibilities are endless, really!

Yes, it’s a thrilling time of unbridled celebration here at Chez McClusky. For the first time in nearly six years, we don’t have any children in diapers. (And we only have TWO kids. I shudder to think how long The Diaper Phase endures for more prolific breeders.)

Yes, we have no diapers to change. We have no diapers to buy. We have no diapers to carry with us in unattractive, unwieldy padded diaper bags. And we’ll hopefully never again be part of one of those weird half-drunk conversations where you find yourself arguing with other parents about whether it’s harder to clean poop off of boy parts or girl parts. (Everyone seems to think the gender they don’t have to deal with is worse. Which has gotta be some kind of Darwinian survival instinct.)

Whatever the case, Paige proclaimed recently, “Girls have vaginas and penises. And boys have nothing!”

In Paige’s world it’d be easier to change boy diapers without a doubt. I imagine they’d just be like dolls down there.

At any rate, it’s too soon to put our poop-talkin’ days totally behind us (no pun intended). As a new potty indoctrinate Paige is still in the exuberant bodily-function announcement mode. Which is to say, the moment everyone is seated at the table, hands washed, milk cups filled, and you lean over to take your first hungry bite of roast chicken, Paige will inevitably announce, “I have to go poop! I have a thousand big big poops to do!!”

Oh, how… cute.

At least, for the weight conscious among us, it‘s an effective appetite suppressant.

Of course, the dark side to all this grown-up behavior is that we’re closing the door on yet another phase of parenting—even if it does mean less direct contact with feces. I lamented the last time I breastfed. I was heartbroken packing away all those tiny newborn shirts, booties, and receiving blankets. And despite myself, I was a weeper on Paigey’s first day of preschool.

Whether it’s good or bad, when the girls move past something, I feel a twinge of nostalgia about it. I mean, if I have time to.

But I’m over thinking that having a third baby is the solution to avoiding the bittersweet passage of time. I’ve come around to accepting that parenting throws plenty of weepish moments your way. So even though I don’t get to chomp on Paigey’s  ham hock thighs when I change her diapers any more, there are new excellent things that she does now—like pontificate about how panties with polka dots are really the best panties there are. And deliver spontaneous anatomy lessons on gender and genitalia.

Before our East Coast foray this summer Kate went to a fabulous summer camp. One of those old school outdoorsy places where she canoed, rode horses, swam, did archery (ha!), and had her first overnight away-from-the-family camp out. Oh, and made lanyards. In fact, she could now open an Etsy shop called Lanyard-palooza.

At the end of the first week the camp put on a lip synch performance. Each of the groups of campers did a little performance to a song, all the parents lucky enough to not work came to watch, and it was a lot of good clean fun.

I mean, “clean” if you didn’t listen too hard to the lyrics. Like for one of the songs, Katy Perry’s “Extra Terrestrial,” a stage full of nine-year-old girls jumped around waggling their fingers on their heads like antennae, while mouthing,  “Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me. Infect me with your love and fill me with your poison.”

I don’t mean to be prude, but sheesh.

Kate’s group sang a Justin Bieber song, for which she practiced around the house (seemingly endlessly) by jutting her hips out to one side and singing with the synthetic soulfulness that only a five-year-old can muster, “Bay-buh, bay-buh, bay-buh, oh!”

At least no one was purporting to be filled up with someone else’s “poison.”

But still I felt that sneaking, sinking they’re-growing-up feeling. Too fast.

One of the other moms called me the night before the performance. All the other girls were wearing Justin Bieber t-shirts for the show. Did Kate have one? Her daughter did not, and she had no intention of changing that. As long as our girls would be outsiders together, it’d be fine. We agreed they’d wear special sundresses—an attempt to make them feel gussied up, without giving into some Tiger Beat-like peer pressure at age five.

As it turned out, none of the other kids wore JB shirts the next day. More proof that you can’t always trust what your five-year-old tells you. And a reassuring indication that kindergarteners through the tunnel—in the suburban town where the camp was—were the same as our kindergarteners. Or at least, they weren’t yet acting like tweens.

On the last day of camp there was a talent show. The auditorium was packed with kids of all ages and parents wielding video cameras, digital cameras, and iPhones. Rest assured, this event would be captured.

The show was made up of older girls singing pop songs alone and in groups, boys doing kicks and karate chops to “Kung Fu Fighting,” and one twerpy kid who sang some teddy bear song that had the crowd howling as the seemingly endless lyrics went on and on and on.

Kate had talked about wanting to do something, but I wasn’t sure if she’d muster the gumption. Almost no kids her age had.

Then the M.C. called to her to go back-stage to be “on deck” as the next performer.

When she stepped onto the stage, she was clutching a mic and standing ramrod straight, wide-eyed looking out at the crowd. Then, without any musical accompaniment, with a weak uncertain voice she started singing, “Doe a deer, a female deer…”

I noticed a few mamas in the audience reach out to touch each others’ arms.

My chest swelled with love—or pride, or sympathetic stage fright—or all of those, and I held my fingers up to my mouth as I listened to her. I telepathically egged her on. I hoped some people knew she was my kid.

My little Kate, on her own volition, picked an adorably sweet wonderful song, blissfully devoid of semen-shooting metaphors. (Sung by a nun no less!) She’d ponied up to perform, though few other kids her age had. And she was KILLING on stage.

Maybe in response to the smiling audience (or my telepathic encouragement), her confidence kicked in, and she started singing more steadily, even swaying a bit less stiffly than her initial robotic stance. She finished to a resounding room of applause. (But really, the crowd clapped a lot for everyone.)

My girls might be growing up fast, but somehow—for now—they seem to be doing a damn good job of it.

Bravo to you, Katie! You are a rock star indeed. At least in your mama’s eyes.

And Paige, Daddy and I could not be prouder of you and your big girl panties.

Carry on, girls! Carry on.