Bad Hostess

I think I forgot how to write. But maybe if I just start doing it again it’ll all come back to me.

You see, for a while—this fall and winter—I had a freelance job that paid me money. Like a big girl! And I showered every day and drove on highways during the trafficky times and went to lots of meetings. One day I was even the last parent to pick up my kid from preschool. (Although, blessedly, she said, “Don’t worry, Mom. I think it’s cool.”)

I had forgotten so much of this life. When two parents are working and there’s milk in the refrigerator it’s a freaking MIRACLE. Wheat Thins can become the main course in a working parents’ family dinner because, hey, they’re wheat. And one can quickly adopt a European “wear it twice before washing” attitude about laundry.

My circadian rhythms were out of whack too. I started using an alarm clock again—sometimes even waking up BEFORE THE CHILDREN. And I don’t want to brag here, but a few times at the end of a long work day I managed to stay up past 8:30. That’s a solid 30 minutes of Me Time after the kids went to sleep.

I did NOT however maintain my consistent workout and daily green-juice-drinkin’ routine. But I did replace that with a rigorous I’m-stressed-so-I’ll-treat-myself diet that included the M&Ms, potato chips, and candy-like granola bars that the agency I was working at kept on hand. In my three months of office work if my FitBit could’ve talked to me I’m sure it would’ve just laughed.

The thing is, my gig wasn’t even full time. I was cruising in mid-morning after dropping the kids at school and darting out early some days to chauffeur them to ballet and the horse ranch. Then we’d swing by the grocery store at 6PM in a mad dash to forage for food. So I guess when I think of it that way it was really more like I was doing two jobs (but only getting paid for one).

And let it be known my volunteer commitments didn’t lag. I still ran the school’s monthly coffee party (vintage tablecloths, home-baked muffins, ‘n all), kept Room One’s parents abreast of upcoming field trips, and hit up unsuspecting families to donate to the school—all while typing emails on my phone and taking conference calls in the short-stalled girls’ bathroom.

I spent plenty of time at my office too. I perfected the art of tossing carseats on our front porch on days that I knew might go sideways. If I sensed a meeting would run late I’d text a slew of sitters in the hopes that one was free to zip by our house, grab the boosters, and careen over to the kids’ two schools in time to lay claim to them before after-care ended and CPS was called.

It was like playing with fire—not knowing if my client presentation would sink or swim, while concurrently wondering whether my girls would be busking on the sidewalk for dinner money by the time I got over the bridge to fetch them.

If this sounds like a stressful, miserable existence, you might surprised to hear—now that the project I was on is over—how desperately I miss it. How muchly much muchly I was energized by every over-scheduled minute.  And how, dare I say it, during that time I appreciated every moment with my children and engaged with them wholeheartedly, unlike these days when I sometimes go to the bathroom just to hide from them.

Here’s a shout out to the Grass Is Always Greener Working Mother Club. I’m here to tell you how incredibly boring it is to have a fully-stocked pantry and fridge. Clothing that’s clean—and folded—and put away—for the whole family. And a fresh filter in the water purifer. My typical tower of store returns—various things we didn’t need, that didn’t fit, or were found to be faulty or broken—is non-existent now, which I tragically see as distressing since it means that I have no errands to run.

I mean this is how bad it’s gotten: We don’t have A SINGLE OVERDUE LIBRARY BOOK.

I think what I miss is the stress of having something challenging in front of me, and having to think, hustle, work away at it and finally conquer it. Try as I do I’m not getting deep satisfaction from having discovered new lunch items Paige is willing to eat at school. (Sliced turkey is a contender over the poppy seed bagels we used to pack every day. Huzzah!) Nor am I smug with satisfaction because I’ve read several novels, gotten back on the elliptical regularly, joined the coconut water craze, or finally tended to our front porch ferns that had experienced a savage two-month drought that I’d cruelly imposed upon them.

They are, unsurprisingly, not springing back to life. Yet.

And to show you just how freaking bored and on top of the homefront shit I am, I even pulled out my scrapbooking box. Kill me now! I have made a total of nine—count ‘em NINE—scrapbook pages in my life. (All frickin’ works of art, mind you.) They include me pregnant, Kate as a newborn, Kate’s first Christmas, and a road trip we took when she was like 5 months old. Someday when we are decrepit and infirmed, Mark and I will reflect on those four events, without so much as one photo of Paige to jolt our addled Alzheimer’s brains into remembering that we did in fact have a second child.

Despite how very little attention I’ve given to the housewifely art of scrapbooking (far less than I’ve ever bestowed upon our ferns) I appear at one point to have spent roughly $2,000 on every possible scalloped-edged photo cutter, colorful adhesive-backed letter, patterned background paper, and floral sticker. Really, I could pay for two semesters at Harvard with the money I spent on that crafty crap.

Anyway, because she was home sick but wasn’t really sick (long story) I got Kate to make two scrapbook pages. Then I tucked it all away for another six years. With enough neglect, all that stuff will start looking vintage. Maybe then I’ll think it’s cool and want to do something with it.

In the meantime I’m trying to remember what I used to do before my freelance project left me so stressfully, blissfully over-occupied. And I think the answer was: blog.

So here I am. I’m back.

I feel kinda like I left my own party to go to a movie or something. And now I’m sneaking back in, shamefacedly trying to hide my Raisinets. I have no idea if anyone’s even still here. And if there are people here they’re either mad at me for being such a crappy host, or are expecting me to do something really dazzling and entertaining to make up for my absence.

Trust me, if I could find that thing, I’d be doing it right now.

Control Freak Mom

I admit it. I had three different costumes this Halloween. And I’m not including the ones I made for the kids. I personally had three. There was the Mrs. Claus, the Preppie, and the Haunted Housewife.

I mean, it’s not like I spent gadzooks of time on the last two—those were sort of quick throw-togethers when I got sick of the unwieldy, uncomfortable Santa dress. Let’s just say the fur-cuffed fashion from the North Pole is a bit toasty given the Bay Area’s balmy fall temps.

But the fact is that no matter which of the costumes I wore this Halloween, it was the Control Freak Mom that I was really rocking. On the inside at least. And you can’t blame me. It’s not like I like being Control Freak Mom, it’s more that my judgment-challenged children force me into the role.

Though I did do what I’d call an impressive job of shoving Control Freak Mom down down down and outta sight. I guess you could say I managed to control my inner control freak.

Man, I’d be soooo good at therapy.

Anyway, take the pumpkin patch preschool field trip. (God help me.) Of all ten kazillion pumpkins at her disposal my darling Paige lovingly picked a dented, scratched-up little number with no stem. No freakin’ stem AT ALL.

And I’m telling you, someone would be hard pressed to find a crappy looking pumpkin amidst all the perfectly round, fresh-skinned gourds in the place. They’re genetically engineering pristine pumpkins these days. They practically have those carving kit stencil cut-lines already on them.  Paige had to look long and hard to find THE WORST pumpkin in that epic field of pumpkin perfection.

She hugged that thing fiercely like she’d found a Cartier tank watch in a hay bale. And instead of asking her why the hell she wasn’t going to pick a GOOD pumpkin, I just smiled weakly and took her picture.

SEE what a good mother I can be?

With the girls’ costumes I also had to suppress the Perfectionist Creative Director Control Freak in me. Though Kate did well deciding to be an Olympic gold medal runner. As a veteran of the newsy-timely costume myself, I thought her choice was a strong one. (Clearly something I passed along in the genes.) She had the running shoes, the little track skirt, a race number, and of COURSE a medal. But she needed the U.S. flag around her shoulders—right?! THAT makes it the perfect costume.

She was willing to drape the thing there briefly so her Obsessive About Photo Documentation Mother could take some pics. But after our extensive shoot (which DIDN’T make us late for the Halloween parade this year, thankyouverymuch) she tossed the flag aside and said breezily, “Yeah, I’m not taking that.”

WHAT?!? It is ALL ABOUT the flag with that costume.

But you know, I just folded that damn flag up all nice and popped it back in the bag to return to Target. Bless their flexible return policies.

Paigey was a mail carrier. Though it took several semantic attempts for her to settle on that term. When asked what she was going to be she knew Mail Man was all wrong. This is a gal who freaks out when you compliment her cowboy boots. “They are cow GIRL boots,” she’ll correct. So she told folks she was being a “mail girl.” This had gender-bendy San Franciscans thinking, “A male girl? Oh, nice idea, honey.”

She had the pith helmet, the blue shorts with the marching-band-like stripe down the leg, the U.S. Postal Service light blue shirt. I even bought her a pocket chain for her mail box keys and geeky black knee socks that totally rocked. But every time Kate and I suggested she have a stuffed dog biting her in the butt Paige started to cry.

Why you would ever CRY at such a brilliant suggestion is beyond me. It’s like sometimes I don’t even think the children find obsessively perfecting their costumes the highest calling in their lives. And yet, they expect me to be seen trick-or-treating with them.

Life can be so unfair. But you know what? Since I didn’t think a crying mail girl with a stuffed dog on her ass would be very in-character, I dropped the whole matter.

Let them pick crappy pumpkins! Let them have their costumes the way THEY want them to look. Whatever.

I don’t know, maybe if my kids and I were from the same generation they’d understand me better. Of course, I realize that by nature of the fact that I’m their mother this same-generation concept is an impossible dream. I mean, I’m not an idiot.

But at Kate’s school parade this notion really hit me. I was in my Haunted Housewife costume. You know—June Cleaver wig, gingham dress, tray of cookies right out of the oven, fake blood dripping from my mouth and eye sockets.

A girl tugged on my arm and asked me, “Kate’s mom, what are you supposed to be?”

I smiled lovingly at the little dear, leaned down and cooed in my best smooth mama voice, “A haunted housewife, honey.”

“Oh,” she said thinking. “Like, you mean, a haunted-house wife? Like… the wife of a haunted house?”

The poor lamb had never heard the term housewife. Which made me assume that “homemaker” would also be lost on her. She’d probably construe that to be some kind of residential architect.

Which wouldn’t be all that bad really, but of course I’d need to be carrying some AutoCAD drawings for that costume. Duh.

Not Feelin’ It

Halloween is like black licorice. You either love it or hate it.

Me? I loooooooove Halloween. It’s the attention-seeker’s favorite holiday. The one time of year when you can unapologetically dress to elicit attention. You get to be creative. Plus there’s candy. And jack-o-lanterns. And cinnamony, nutmeggy, pumpkiny foods.

And did I mention the attention part?

Junior year in college I lived with a family in France. The mother was in her forties. Super young-looking, fashionable, and pretty. And she was a maniac extrovert. When my friends would come over she’d run around opening wine (as if we needed encouragement), cranking music, and dragging the furniture to the side of the room to get us dancing.

Her teen-aged daughter would be cowering in the corner. She was painfully, hideously shy.

Our parenting days were light years away, but my friends said, “That is SO going to be you and your kid some day, Kristen.” (They called this up to me while I was dancing on the couch.)

Weirdly, neither of my girls has retreated like a threatened snail in the wake of their mother’s extroversion. In fact, Miss Kate, my oldest, holds her own quite well. She’s one of the youngest in her class, but as other parents have commented, “You’d never know it.” I think that’s code for, “She’s all  in your grill with the sass and spunk you’d expect from a much older kid.”

Or maybe they’re just referring to her mad reading skillz.

Anyway, it turns that I’m worried about Little Miss Self Esteem. On the one hand she’s so socially bulletproof. She went from camp to camp one summer without knowing a soul, and without batting an eyelash. She was the only girl in an animation class with 19 boys. And she was totally un-phased.

She’ll happily let anyone babysit for her. (I should take advantage of that and work a deal with some homeless folks.) She’s independent, confident, funny, and a good big sister—90% of the time.

She blew away her preschool teachers by asking if she could lead Circle Time. Apparently no kid’s ever done that, and her teachers ended up handing her the Circle Time reigns a bunch. (“Today,” she’d report, “I led the kids in some yoga poses and we sang a song about snowflakes.”)

These days as a big second-grader she volunteers at Paige’s preschool reading to the children and leading art projects that she comes up with on her own.

My Kate is the future Most Likely to Succeed.

And yet I’m fretting about all the things she isn’t doing. It’s not that I want her to do more. It’s not that she’s disappointing me in any way. It’s that there are things that I know she wants to do that she isn’t doing.

And it’s all because of clothes.

You may’ve seen me write about this here before. Kate hates clothes. She’s not a nudist, just a super-sensitive kid who can’t stand the feel of seams, stiff fabric, sewn-on decals, and zippers.

We’ve gone through phases with this. As a baby it seemed non-existent, but somewhere along the way she forsook pants for dresses. She whittled her wardrobe down to a handful of acceptable well-washed, worn out, super-soft cotton clothes.

She saw an OT a couple years ago and we brushed her and did some other exercises to desensitize her skin. It seemed to work. A bit, I mean. Even just learning other kids have this problem helped us all.

But it’s far from behind her. I’ll nearly forget about it, then she’ll need new shoes and I’ll realize how not-normal this behavior is that we’ve become so accustomed to.

So we started with another OT this fall. A well-respected woman who’s in walking distance of our house. She gave us some new insights and exercises, and already Kate seems to feel some things are easier. She recently wore a long-rejected shirt that Mark had bought her on a business trip. We nearly fainted when she walked into the kitchen with it on.

At school the other day I caught the end of her P.E. class. She was wearing a red vest along with her teammates. I was thrilled. We went shoe shopping a few days later and to my shock she picked out a pair of tall leather boots.

Things like these are victories. Totally unprecedented stuff.

So, what’s the problem? What I’m worried about is all the things she doesn’t want to do because of an outfit or uniform or some kind of gear.

She used to love ballet. Everyone else wore tutus and tights and slippers. Katie was in a baggy cotton dress, barefoot. This was fine with her teacher, but somewhere along the line from toddler to first-grader Kate decided ballet wasn’t her thing.

She adored choir until the performances last spring where I had to coax her into her uniform while drugging her with TV. This year she quit choir after one rehearsal.

She still has training wheels on her bike since she can’t tolerate a helmet.

And she’s expressed interest in horseback riding and theater, but admitted that the required clothes or costumes made those things a no-go.

I also think she’d love Halloween, but—in my mama brain at least—she sees it as a day when she’ll have to wear something other than her four soft-and-cozy skirts or her three approved cotton shirts. Dressing up is anxiety-provoking. What’s fun about that?

A few weeks ago I’d just about decided that we’d put her in therapy. In addition to the OT, I mean. Might as well come at this from every angle, right? My dad and I had a long phone conversation about this and he agreed it was a good idea. Let’s hit this thing with a hammer.

But a chat with her pediatrician later that day had me reconsidering.

“Is she doing okay socially?” he asked.

“Yeah, totally,” I said. No-brainer to that.

You’ll go through two or three years when she’ll say no to things, the doc said. But you have to trust that she’ll pull out of it. Eventually there’ll be something she wants to do badly enough that she’ll be willing to wear whatever she has to for it.

Putting her in therapy, he contended, will just solidify this as a big issue in her mind. It could make it even harder to shake.

I called my dad to discuss this new perspective. And we agreed that it made sense too.

Oy! What to do?

It’s hard to resist that modern-day reflex to throw as many resources and specialists at a problem as possible. Especially when that problem relates to your sweet young child. Isn’t being a good parent about removing whatever roadblocks prevent your kid from being their best selves?

I said that to a friend the other day who replied, “Or maybe it’s about letting them remove those barriers themselves.”

For now at least I’m back-burnering the therapy idea. Mark agrees. Let’s focus on OT now and see what comes of that.

So then, time to hone my maternal patience skills. Time to sit on my hands when I see Kate yearn to do something that she ultimately decides against because some part of it won’t feel good. Time to sit back and appreciate all the dazzling things that Kate IS doing, instead of fretting over what she’s not.

And time to go put the finishing touches on my own Halloween costume.

Happy Halloween, y’all.

A friend emailed me a link to this excellent short video. (Thank you, Melanie!)
My husband and I related to so so much of it. In fact, Mark said it made him cry.
Check it out, yo.

The Emperor’s New Onesie from Hillary Frank on Vimeo.

Choir Quitter

Kate quit choir. (Try saying that five times fast.)

She’d joined a community youth choir last spring—a pretty well-known group where the older kids get to travel once a year and have cross-cultural experiences with singer nerds from other countries. Aside from voice training, she was learning how to read music and studying something called “music theory,” whatever that is.

Growing up my family prided itself on its deeply-rooted musical ineptitude. Mark, on the other hand, can play several instruments and was also a choir geek back in the day. He hauled out some old cassette tapes when Kate started last year and filled the house at high decibels with crackling recordings of his past performances. Kate would run home from rehearsals to sing him the new songs she’d learned and show off the sheet music in her binder.

It all seemed like such good clean fun.

But aside from all the “it’s good for you like broccoli” reasons for Kate to be in choir, Mark and I just wanted her to have a special thing that she’d get good at and stick with. Whatever that was.

My friend Sydney was a figure skater when we were kids. She went to a rink out on Route 6 for private lessons.  It wasn’t some after-school elective our other friends did. This was her own thing. She even had performances where she got to wear bee-yoo-tiful pastel outfits—and make-up. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was jealous that Sydney had a weird special talent. Something that was just hers, that she was good at.

So, Kate quitting choir sent Mark and me into a tailspin.

Now, I don’t shy away from parental challenges. I was happy to strong-arm Kate into continuing. I figured that if I did it could well be something she’d thank me for some day. It’s not first-nature to me, but I guess I’m a Wanna-be Tiger Mom. Or at the very least, I like to direct the course of my children’s activities (that’s a euphemism for being a control freak). And having my twerpy seven-year-old resist my well-laid plans rubbed me the wrong way.

But how do you drag a crying second grader out of a car, thrust her into a building, and make her sing? The day of her second rehearsal this fall she decided she was just not going. The conductor this year was strict. She didn’t like the songs. She was tired from her longer school days. And, she proclaimed, she was not going to get out of the car.

She’d promised us she’d go to try it out at least three times this year. We figured she just needed to get back in the groove. But it turned out she only made it there once.

So we had a family meeting. Or Mark and I at least tried to be all Brady Bunch formal about the somber-toned, sitting-on-the-couch discussion we had with her. Oh we were disappointed. Oh she had not held up her end of the deal. But here’s the thing—we were going to let her pick something else. Something she was interested in. Something she could stick with.

That, by the way, was Mark’s idea. My inner “course-director” was not keen on giving her free reign. I wanted to point her towards some classically character-enriching activity so she could, you know, perform for our dinner party guests. At least in my alternate fantasy life.

But I also thought about those kids who have some weird fondness for, like, the tuba. Perhaps there was something she cottoned to and would want to pursue without any urging from us. I do not need to repeat that parking lot meltdown any time soon.

We gave her some time to think, and a couple days later she came to me and simply said, “Horses.” Not “I want to learn how to ride,” just “horses.” Whatever the hell that meant.

I confess. I was ready to dismiss the idea summarily. I know the horse-hugger girl type, but that was never me as a kid. And I guess I can’t easily rally behind something I don’t really get. But I resisted putting the kibosh on it. If Mark’s plan to let Kate pick something was going to work, I needed to kick aside my inner control freak.

So I checked with some mama friends who’d sent their kids to camp at a local horse ranch. And get this: It turns out the place has a class called Fun with Horses. It’s not riding—it’s learning about things like how to teach horses tricks, what they like to eat, how to brush and care for the beasts. The kids even get to braid the horses’ manes, which did sound like some form of crack for Kate.

This is why I love the Bay Area. Your kid wants to take “horses” and it turns out there actually is such a class.

She starts in two weeks. After that we’ll consider whether she wants to move onto riding lessons, although Kate’s clothing sensitivities have her currently unenthusiastic about that. Suffice it to say that the kid who can only tolerate wearing a handful of old, well-worn cotton clothes is not keen on the idea of tight, seam-laden jodhpurs, stiff tall boots, and a helmet.

And unless we win the lottery, that’s frankly okay with me. I’ve had several parents look at me wild-eyed when I mentioned Kate’s interest in horses. “The cost!” they bellowed. “The time commitment! The travel! The begging for a horse of their own!”

Oh, and did they mention the cost?!

Maybe the thing Kate’s about to stick with and get good at isn’t gymnastics, or singing, or even horseback riding. Maybe it’ll be mucking stalls and horse hair-dos. And unless I want to drag her screaming from the car into some class she isn’t keen on, until her fascination with the clarinet naturally emerges I guess I’ll just have to make peace with that.

Have you wrangled with your kid’s extracurricular activities?  (Please tell me I’m not alone.) What’s your take on it all?

Lucky Number Seven

I used to have a flat stomach. I even got cat-called about it once. I was on a beach in Cancun and some dude walked by and shouted something at me in Spanish. My sister told me that plano meant flat, and explained he was referring to my midsection.

I honestly haven’t thought much about that incident—though I realize that mentioning it now, years later, does seem somewhat tragic. These days someone would be more likely to use the word plano to describe my nursed-two-babies boobies.

Anyway, seven years ago I gave up that tidbit of flat-stomach glory when I grew a little human in my body. When it came out we named it Kate. And even though I can’t rock a bikini like I used to, she was totally worth it.

At least most days I think so.

Every once and I while I see the full length of that girl in the bathtub and realize how damn big she’s gotten since that day they plunked her on the hospital scale like she was a quarter-pound of Black Forest ham I was buying at the deli counter at Safeway.

She’s grown in other ways too. Much of this Big Girl maturity has taken place this year. Like, ask her a question about school, and she gets this pursed-lip smile and tucks her hair behind her ears. Then she does that wretched California-girl up-speaking thing, where everything she says sounds like a question.

“My teacher? His name is Rick? And he’s soooo great. He’s got this pug? Named Nadia? And he takes it on field trips with us! Nadia. Is. So. Cute.”

At Kate’s sixth birthday we had a backyard bash with a magician who looked like Magnum P.I. He did tricks with silk scarves and colored balls and a big stunt hairbrush that made the kids giggle. He pretended to botch his routine which slayed the kids.

This year Kate restricted the guest list to her besties—three girls. Using pink netting, rugs, and overstuffed chairs we set up an outdoor nail spa where they mani-pedied each other. They drank sparkling cider from plastic champagne flutes and nibbled chocolate-dipped strawberries.

No scarves were stuffed in tubes and turned into stuffed animals. The word pinata was never uttered.

For her family celebration we went to an old timey ice cream shop for burgers and sundaes. Another twerp had a birthday there that night too. When the wait staff gathered around him, rang a cow bell, then bellowed to the place to sing “Happy Birthday,” my seven-year-old super-extrovert slunk deep in her chair.

“DO NOT,” she said clutching my arm, “let them do that to me.”

It seems that someone is becoming a bit self-conscious. Or just more self-aware.

Of course, she’s still happy to strip down at the beach to put on her swimsuit. (And would happily stay naked if I let her.) She’s still doll-crazy, throws tantrums, happily holds hands with her parents, and has to sleep with certain stuffed animals every night.

But she’s also fascinated by make-up, has a crush on her classmate Nathan (who IS quite cute), and is begging desperately to get her ears pierced.

I’m in no hurry for my little girl to grow up, but like it or not, she IS taking up more space in the bathtub as the years go by. I can’t wait to see where this lucky seventh year will take her.

In keeping with tradition, I interviewed Kate on her birthday. Unlike last year, I even did it pretty close to the actual day.

Here’s that chat:

Me: Do you feel different now that you’re seven?
Kate: No. I don’t feel different.

Me: What is the biggest difference between first and second grade?
Kate: Second grade you get homework. And you have to be picked up later.

Me: What do you like most about school?
Kate: I think I like… P.E.
Me: Why?
Kate: Our coach. He’s very silly and loves to play around like I do.

Me: What do you like to do most when you aren’t in school?
Kate: I like to work in my science lab.
Me: What do you do there?
Kate: I am working on making paint without chemicals in it. [She IS?! This is excellent news. Mark: Retire now. WE'RE RICH!]

Me: If a genie could grant you only one wish, what would it be?
Kate: To have an American Girl mansion.

Me: Where do you think you’ll live when you grown up?
Kate: I think I’ll live in this exact house because I love it so much.

Me: Who do you think you will live with?
Kate: I don’t know. Oh—a dog!

Me: Do you think you will want to have children?
Kate: Yeah. But I don’t want to go to college. Wait, don’t write that down. I just don’t want you to write that down. [Sorry I couldn't help it. She didn't say anything about it being "off the record." I'm running out right now to spend our college savings on shoes.]

Me: Who is your best friend and why do you like them?
Kate: My beset friend’s Lily because she’s really nice.

Me: What do you think are the biggest problems in the world today?
Kate: I don’t know. Maybe homework because it’s my first day today.
Me: Your first day of homework?
Kate: Yeah, it could be super hard.

Me: What do you think you are an expert on?
Kate: Um… I think making little perfumes. Actually I think–ART! Yesterday I made some really—we were using air-dry clay in art and I made a really beautiful face and gave it to the teacher.

Me: What do you want to learn more about?
Kate: I want to learn more about how all the oak trees came here in Oakland and who ate the first avocado. Me and Alden both want to learn who ate the first avocado.

Me: What have you done that you’re really proud of?
Kate: Well, I think helping a third grader read a word.
Me: Do you remember what the word was?
Kate: It was “exasperating.”

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Kate: I want to be [long pause] a guitarist.
Me: Tell me about that.
Kate: I just think it would be fun because my dad was a guitarist when he was younger and at school I asked [my teacher] Paula what she wanted to be when she was younger and she said she wanted to be a teacher like her parents. And her parents really helped her to get along in the world if she copied them.

Me: What is your favorite thing about yourself?
Kate: [smiling, pauses] I don’t know. I’m good at a lot of things but I don’t know…

Me: What songs are special to you?
Kate: Songs that I’ve performed in plays. Like “Sounds a Little Fishy to Me” and “The Great Kapok Tree.”

Me: What books are special to you?
Kate: Ramona.

Me: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Kate: Mexico. Actually… Australia.
Me: Why?
Kate: It just sounds like an interesting place to visit.

Me: If you could have any super power what would it be?
Kate: Being a friend to animals.

Me: What are you most afraid of?
Kate: Black Widows.

Me: What makes you happiest?
Kate: When I spend time with my friends.

Me: Is there anything else I should be asking you for this interview?
Kate: When I was four you asked me if I thought I would have a boyfriend which was really freaky to me.
Me: Yeah, I took that question out this year.

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Bright Ideas (and Some Lakes)

I’m considering changing the name of this blog to vactionload. Although that really doesn’t mean anything. It might actually be an even worse name than motherload.

Besides, someone from The New York Times is probably already using that name.

We got back from The Land of 10,000 Lakes earlier this week, not to be confused with The Land of 10,000 Latkes which I’m not sure but I think is in New York somewhere. Or maybe Florida. Anyway, Mark went to college there (I know what you’re thinking: Harvard isn’t in Minnesota. He actually went to Princeton. Okay, so not really, but the school he went to did end in -ton. And for that reason alone it should be in the Ivy League, don’t you think?)

Turns out that Mark’s college chums who we see on this trip both are brewers. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT? It’s like finding out that you have to go see your friend’s band, but then learning that there will be free money given away there that night. Except that Mark’s friends aren’t in a band. And the whole “friend’s band” thing implies it’s a band you’d never really want to listen to. (Special message to my friends in bands: I am so not talking about YOUR bands.) Anyway, the lucky thing is that Mark’s non-band friends not only don’t sing bad loud songs they wrote themselves that you have to pretend you like, but they’re also actually quite lovely to spend time with.

And guess what else? FREE BEER.

And they made delicioso chilaquiles for breakfast. With homemade salsa. And homemade TORTILLA CHIPS. I mean, that is if you like that kinda thing.

When you spend a lot of time with free beer—I mean people who are in the malted beverage business—it’s amazing how many really terrific ideas you come up with. And how often you have to pee.

And since so many brilliant ideas came to me this weekend I just couldn’t keep them pent up.

Brilliant idea #1: Make a beer that doesn’t make you have to pee. I know what you’re thinking–I’m a FREAKING GENIUS.  And, you know, you’re right. I mean, even if the beer just wells up inside your belly and sloshes around, wouldn’t that be the best? Like, if there could be some kinda time-release pee chemical that allows you to not have to relieve yourself of your night’s-worth (or day’s-worth, or day-and-night’s-worth) of drinking until the next morning, HOW GOOD WOULD THAT BE? Don’t get me wrong, that would be one loooong tinkle sesh. But think of all the time saved stumbling around in a bathroom when you’d really rather be with your friends burping the alphabet or having a long-distance gleeking competition. (Note to Budweiser: You’d better not steal this idea. The seven readers of this blog will testify in court that I had it first.)

ANOTHER million-dollar idea. Our friend Gary works at a brewery called Bell’s. (Even though Bell is someone’s name I think, their logo has three bells on it, but whenever I look at it I just see Pilgrim hats. Am I normal? Am I drunk? Quite possibly.) Anyway, because I’m such a giver I’ve come up with the name for their next best-selling, brilliantly-branded beer: Bell’s Palsy. You love it, right? I’m still working on the jingle, but I think it’s something like, “Finally, a beer with long-term neurological side-effects.”

I lost my fishing virginity. Guess what? This old 40-something gal just popped her fishing cherry! That’s what fisher-folk call it, right? And what’s weird is for something so dumb and boring fishing is SO MUCH FUN. I had absolutely no skill, luck, or natural talent for this “sport” and didn’t catch a single fish all weekend. But it’s clearly an optimist’s sport. I just kept casting.

I got carded. As in, a waitress asked to see my I.D. before serving me alcohol in a restaurant. And might I add she did not ask if I had a brail version of my driver’s license. It was so unusual as to be terrifying. If a gal my age could be confused with someone under 21 I can only conclude that the women of Minnesota are experiencing severe and horrific accelerated-aging issues brought on by exposure to cold weather. And lutefisk. I’m currently drafting a business plan to develop a vast network of free plastic surgery clinics throughout the state (this is Brilliant Idea #3 for those keeping count). I’m coming, gals! You just hold tight.

Families should always pack a non-parent. THANK GOD our dear friend Gary, “Uncle Gary” to our girls, hasn’t come to his senses and refused to take part in this annual vacation. Being with a sweet, kind-hearted person who isn’t in the daily parenting trenches means when your kid whines for someone to read to them, SOMEONE WILL. It means when your kid tangles their fishing line for the gumpzillionth time, he will be patient enough to untangle it. And did I mention he makes delicious life-affirming beer? What parent doesn’t need one of those in the morning?

Airport sinks don’t see me. You know those magical sinks in airport bathrooms that are supposed to turn on when you walk up to them? They never, EVER work for me. Truly, if I want any hopes of clean hands I have to have my kids stand in front of them for me. When I’ve traveled alone and stood in front of those sinks with a glop of pink liquid soap in my hands and a tauntingly bone-dry faucet staring back at me, strangers have stepped in to help me with this. People who maybe were about to miss their flights but were moved by my pathetic Invisible to Sinks Syndrome. Although I do appear in photographs, I have considered the fact that I’m some kind of ghost. It’s just hard to know who to go to for verification on that. I’m not sure I’ll ever know why this happens so I’ll just assume it means that I’m very very pretty. And smart.

After reading all this blather you might wonder—or more likely you don’t give a rat’s ass—whether this string of unrelated musings and occurrences in sum total equaled a swell all-around vacation. To that I say in the words of many a Minnesotan, you betcha.

Things Dads Do

The other day The Husband delightedly informed me that he’d taught our six-year-old how to pee in the shower.

I was so proud.

I mean, this from the man who (until I set him straight) believed you shouldn’t flush Kleenex down the toilet because it’s somehow different from toilet paper. And here I’d always thought sending pee down the shower pipe was verboten. There’s so much we can learn from each other.

Having Mark coach our sweet six-year-old on such a great time-saving tip made me think of all the other gaps I’d leave in our children’s knowledge base if I didn’t have him around. This thought was underscored by the fact that I’m on Day 13 of solo parenting. (Not that I’m counting.) That’s because Mark had to touch base at his San Francisco office before jaunting off to cover the Olympics in London. All the while I’ve remained on vacation on the East Coast with the girls, clinging to my charming hometown like a rabid koala.

All together, I’ll be tending to the child-folk for a sum total of 31 nights (32 days). But again, who’s counting?

Anyway, I started thinking about the other things that Daddy does that the kids will miss out on while he’s gone.

Changing batteries: This is something that I really never even CONSIDER doing. Paige could be ecstatically interacting with a toy that suddenly craps out and I’ll report through her tears, “Well, Dad will be home in seven hours, and he can change the batteries then.” I can’t imagine what I’d do about this if I were a single parent. I’m somehow trapped in some ivory tower were battery changing is just not done. Without Mark I can imagine the smoke detectors in the house starting to beep. I’d have to take them off the wall and silence them with a hammer. If any of the kids’ toys ever ran out of juice we’d have to just toss them in the give-away pile.

Gluing stuff: Not far from The Husband’s “Needs new batteries” pile I’ve amassed a small “Needs gluing” pile. This includes the shattered legs of a porcelain doll Kate insisted on taking to a taqueria for dinner and promptly dropped on the sidewalk. (She may never walk again.) It also includes a tea-set teapot handle, and distressingly, the head of a Cinderella piggy bank. Gluing is man’s work. Mark reinforces this in my mind when he informs the children of the special types of glue that he needs for various broken items. Though that could just be his way of staving off having to deal with this chore. That Cinderella head has been unhinged for some time now. Whatever the case, the whole glue scene is Greek to me. If something breaks while Daddy is away, maybe all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can swing by to help me out—though I hear their track record isn’t so good.

Making pancakes: Do you know of any mother who makes pancakes for her kids on the weekends? NO. This is what father’s are uniquely wired to do. Sometimes my kids ask me to make them pancakes, and I just laugh. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how two-mom households ever enjoy homemade pancake breakfasts. I will have to ask around about this and get back to you.

Teaching driving: This is blessedly not something I’ll have to concern myself with while Mark is away. Unless they suddenly lower the legal driving age by ten years. But when the time comes this SO seems like a Dad-will-do-it kinda thing. I know I bucked and jolted and skidded across the Newport Creamery parking lot when my dad endeavored to instruct me on driving a stick shift. All that tension and repeated bellowing of “EASE UP on the clutch–EASE UP ON IT!” seems to clearly be father’s work. (See also: Teaching Skiing.)

In our house Mark also does a bunch of things I realize many other dads probably don’t. And for that I’m grateful. Anything remotely technical, gadget-y or computerish, of course, falls to him. As does the assembly of any toys more complicated than putting a tube top on a Polly Pocket. (Although I did assemble a high chair once, and I’m proud to report that no children were ever injured sitting in that chair.)

The Husband is also the primary kid bather in our division of labor, and as a subset of those responsibilities he most often clips the children’s nails.

He performs all the small surgeries in the house too–removing splinters, trimming hangnails, washing dirt out of skinned knees, and doing whatever is needed to blisters, burns, and boil-like things (which I’d really rather not know about). After these episodes Kate invariably staggers from the bathroom brandishing big bandages or tourniquets and proclaiming, “Daddy is just like a doctor.”

When the time comes for me to contemplate cosmetic surgery, I’m considering just having Mark do it to defray costs. But hopefully, in the month that he’s away the toll of taking on parenting without my dear husband won’t be so great I’ll need to accelerate the scheduling of any anti-aging surgeries. Which is a good thing since as soon as he walks in the door I imagine there will be a lot of gluing and battery-changing that he’ll have to catch up on.

*  *  *

By the way, you can follow Mark’s excellent coverage of the Olympics for Wired at Wired Playbook.

Little Miss Death

While your daughters’ minds are filled with unicorns, rainbows, and kitty cats, my kid’s current obsession is death. And I only wish I was kidding.

We’re in Rhode Island for our epic summer visit. Apparently the humidity has clouded my writing brain. Or maybe it’s the gin. At any rate, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. To make up for it I’ve been putting on fireworks shows around the country to keep you entertained. Hope you’ve been enjoying them.

But Paigey’s fascination with death started in California. It’s been several weeks now. She asks me things like, “Who is the first person what died?” and “When you die where do your thinkings go?” These are all excellent questions that make me certain she’s the next Nietzsche.

I never know what to say to her other than, “That’s a good question, Paige.” Because really, who WAS the first person to die? And how much did that have to freak out his roommate?

Of course, as with most of the embarrassing things kids do, Paige likes to broadcast her perverse interest to others. On a recent playdate she walked into the kitchen to inform her friend’s mom, “You’re going to die some day. Everyone dies some day.” Then, “Can I have some milk—in a sippy cup?”

And if her big sister ever gives her a marble, a dried-up Chapstick, or some other worthless trinket, Paige invariably will ask, “Can I keep this? For real? Until I die?”

At the rate all this to-her-grave crap collecting is going, Paige will be on Hoarders by age seven.

At least Little Miss Goth tends to be more easy-breezy than macabre. So I haven’t been speed-dialing therapists (yet). Like, a few weeks ago, while sitting in traffic in Berkeley she looked out the window from her car seat and softly crooned, “Puppies die… Kitty cats die…” I can’t remember the other lyrics, but all in all for a spontaneously generated song it wasn’t half bad. Kinda Joan Baez meets Joy Division.

When I do worry is when she says something like, “I wish I was a baby. That way I would have a long long time until I die.” Those comments make me panic. I don’t want anyone in my family thinking about returning to the diaper-wearing days. We are PAST that, kid. Okay?

Friends recently visited us in Oakland from Chicago. By day we wrangled our girls around town and by night we wrangled cocktails on our front porch. At one point, as I delivered a tray of whiskey sours, it struck me that the woman from the couple is a preschool teacher. So I inquired about our Mini Morticia. Should we be concerned?

Turns out our friend—a child development expert, no less—said P’s morbid mania is actually age-appropriate behavior. (She’s four.) At least, after a glass of wine, one gin and tonic, and half a whiskey sour, that’s what she said. And I’m choosing to believe it.

Especially since the girl isn’t ALL hell and brimstone. She’s a smiley little thing, and friendly as a puppy. Paige has other interests besides death, like orphans, hats, homeless people, the San Francisco Giants, and the blue-eyed boy Jonathan from her preschool. She’s a surprisingly well-rounded little weirdo.

The other day Paigey circled my desk like a shark as I checked email. “What’s the sick you can die from?” she asked while combing the ends of my hair with a small pink My Pretty Pony brush.

Me, distracted. “Cancer?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. And a minute or so later, “How do you make a C again?”

I tore my eyes from my screen and outlined a C on a pile of papers with my finger.

Paige took the handle end of her plastic brush and traced a C on my upper arm.

“What’s the next letter?” she asked.

Me, engrossed in the contents of my computer: “The next letter in what, honey?”

“In cancer!” she yelped, with the handle of her brush poised intently near my arm.

I snapped my attention away from my screen and looked at Paige. “Whaaat? Please don’t write cancer on me, Paigey. Even if it’s not with a real pen.”

Her eyes grew wide, “No, Mama!” she wailed. “NOT to have! I make for you not to have!”

The girl was administering some shamanistic death immunization with a My Pretty Pony hairbrush. And given all she knows about the subject, I probably should have let her finish.

Instead I closed the lid of my laptop and said, “How ’bout we get some ice cream?”

School Pride

A few weeks ago some moms and I took our kids to the local old-timey ice cream parlor after school. While the wee ones ran around outside licking each others’ cones and tossing pennies in the fountain, the mom folk got to talkin’.

Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

Monica: “So we’re still not sure what team Hank is playing on.”

Lynn: “Really? Wow….”

Monica: “Yeah, sometimes I’m totally convinced that he’s gay. Other times? Not so sure.”

Jenny: “Well, he’s still super young. All in due time, right?”

Fran: “Sure, but if he IS, wouldn’t that be SO AWESOME?”

All of us: “Yessssss!”

Indeed. In many parts of the world a parent might be dismayed at the thought of their child being gay—horrified even. Here in the Bay Area we are downright thrilled by the prospect. It’s just one of the many reasons I love living here.

I consider myself a pretty liberal, open-minded person. I don’t care who you pray to, what you look like, or what foods you eat or abstain from. Gay, straight, whatEVER, that is your choice and good on ya. And I hope that I’m raising my kids to feel the same way.

Which is why I was shocked by my reaction to an event at my daughter’s school recently.

It was a few weeks ago. My mother-in-law was in town from Ohio, so I took her to the Tuesday morning assembly. It’s fifteen minutes of feel-good singing, storytelling, music, and announcements that never fails to deliver a mega-dose of warm fuzzies.

Even though San Francisco’s huge Gay Pride parade is this weekend, they were having a special assembly about it since school wouldn’t be in session near the actual event.

Each classroom was given a color to wear, and that morning instead of sitting in the auditorium wherever they wanted, the hundred or so children were arranged in the shape of a rainbow. The rainbow flag being the symbol of gay pride, and all.

It was adorable. Nearly as cute as my rainbow fruit salad (which happens to have no affiliation to the gay community). Parents were snapping photos and taking videos. The kids were clearly into it too. Typical Tuesday morning love-fest.

Some teachers came to the front of the auditorium and started explaining what Pride Week was all about. And then the slide show started. And no, no, there weren’t any photos of men in leather chaps with their butt cheeks showing. Though, honestly, that wouldn’t have bothered me. (They’re always so toned, those boys!) It was the words that got me.

A list came up on the screen. Essentially the message was that you should be proud to be:
Lesbian
Gay
Bisexual
Heterosexual
Transgender
Queer
Questioning
Intersex
Ally

To which I thought, INTERsex? What the hell is that?

I also wasn’t quite sure what “Ally” referred to.

I felt kinda like I did when that Ann Landers sex quiz went around my school in ninth grade. When you answered the questions and tallied your score you’d find out how experienced you were. I’m not sure why I even took the quiz. I was fully aware that my rating would be “pure as the driven snow” or maybe “still has that new car smell.” But what really intrigued me—and my friends—about the quiz was the sex acts that were listed that we’d never even heard of, forget done.

Without having the Internet at our disposal (I’m OLD, people) we still managed to find out what “fisting” and “rimming” meant. Then we wished we’d never asked.

Anyway, the school Pride presentation went on to take each of the terms and break them down. A couple teachers narrated each slide that popped onto the screen. For “Gay” there was a collage of photos that included two daddies sitting on a couch with their children. For “Lesbian” I think there was an image of two women getting married, some two mom families, and two women holding hands. The teachers said things like, “Men who love other men are gay.”

I was totally down with it.

They even slipped a “Heterosexual” slide in there with a picture of the Obamas. (Refreshing to see them labeled not as ‘black’ for a change, but as ‘straight.’)

But really, I was just wondering when the hell they were going to get to “Intersex” so A) I’d find out what it meant, and B) I’d see how they were going to handle that photo collage.

I was also curious about what were they going to say about Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning. This crowd included kids from kindergarten to fifth grade. What was the lowest common denominator of age-appropriate info they were going to share?

And of course I couldn’t help but see all this through my mother-in-law’s eyes. Of all the sweet kids-playing-piano assemblies we’ve had, she had to be in town for this one. I mean, I don’t think that this kinda presentation is standard fare for the public schools in Ohio. It all seemed very California.

Interestingly they didn’t end up having a slide for each term. At least, as far as I can remember. And there was one for “Intersex,” but there was just one image, not a collage. It was a photo of a husky woman on a hiking trail, and one of the female teachers presenting said, “This is Leslie, a friend of mine from college. She is intersex.”

Wait—whaaaat? It felt like I’d been shown a photo of Pat from that SNL skit. And I still didn’t know what Intersex meant.

There was a coffee gathering for parents after the assembly. Being unabashedly outspoken as I am, I mentioned to a couple mamas that I was a bit surprised by the presentation. And moreover I was shocked by my own reaction to it. Usually I’m totally down with whatever that school does.

“The gay and lesbian thing—no brainer. No issue there,” I whispered to some gals by the coffee urn. “I guess I just wonder if they needed to get so technical and label-y about it all.”

A couple women nodded their heads. Another one quietly said, “Yeah… What’s Intersex?”

Exactly.

Call me square, but I’d rather not have my child wondering about the finer points of various sexual orientations until she naturally starts to think about them herself. I always thought Mark and I would decide when and how we’d to talk to our kids about that stuff. I was kinda surprised that the school took the liberty to delve into it on our behalf.

And I guess what really struck me was how freakin’ comprehensive they were. Couldn’t they have just stuck to a high level “accept everyone” kinda message?

“I feel really weird admitting this,” I mumbled to the mamas, “But if my five-year-old came home and started asking me about the terms they were talking about this morning? I’d be kinda annoyed.”

One mom put her hand on my arm and said, “What they couldn’t grasp probably just floated right over their heads.” And as I grabbed another slab of coffee cake, I agreed and hoped that was true.

That night at dinner Mark asked the girls how their days were. Kate piped up, “At assembly today we all looked like a rainbow!”

And that was that.

Party Tricks

Everyone needs a good party trick. Something that’ll wow the crowd you roll with, whoever they are.

And if you’ve got school-aged kids, I’m guessing you’ve been in the eye of the party storm recently. Right now there’s probably some finger food (“healthy, please”) you have to whip up for an end-of-school picnic, or a snack (for 35) for a piano recital. You’re having to remember that Thursday is Crazy Hair Day and Friday’s just a half-day and Saturday the soccer players are each contributing $5 for a gift for the coach.

This time of year for moms is like April for accountants. Our busy season. Teacher gifts, gymnastics performances, field days, staff appreciation lunches. Getting to the end of the school year seems like an endless process.

My mother had a “quality not quantity” philosophy about most things. I see that reflected in how my sisters and I cook. We have a limited repertoire of offerings, but what we do we do well. There are certain dishes—Chicken Marbella, goat cheese and sun-dried tomato spread, sherry poppy seed cake—that may not be on Food and Wine’s latest cover, but are consistent crowd-pleasers. There’s comfort in the classics.

But it’s nice to add something new to the mix, no matter how humble.

That’s why I was thrilled when my former roomie Tanya posted a picture on Facebook last year of a rainbow fruit salad she made for some Girl Scout gathering. It was adorable. And easy. And healthy, damn it.

The next day I took one to a ballet potluck to rave reviews. Teens were taking pictures of it with their cell phones—no lie! The ratio of effort to gushing praise was unbeatable. It’s been my suburban mom party trick ever since.

Here’s one that I made last week:

Cute, right?

If you’ve still got some end-of-the-year events on your calendar, try this out and report back on the accolades you get. I require no credit, but will happily receive royalty payments via PayPal.

At this rate I’ll be bringing this fruit salad to my kids’ college graduations. (Thank you, Tanya.)

Of course, there was a time when my idea of a good party trick didn’t involve a platter of fruit labeled with masking tape with my name on it.

I mean, I’ve never seen anyone chug a goldfish, but I’ve known people who opened beer bottles with their teeth, or knotted cherry stems with their tongues. I’ve seen people ride bikes down stairs, light  farts on fire, and do The Worm. I’ve witnessed folks climb up roofs, jump out windows, turn their eyelids inside out, and shave their heads.

Ah, youth. Such foolish acts of bravado. Makes me question sending the girls to college some day.

Some party tricks involve skill. I was proud to see my brother-in-law in action at a family wedding a few years back. It was a late-night karaoke after party—no elderly grandmas around—and he performed the 90′s hit The Humpty Dance. It’s his go-to song, and with good reason. He totally rocked it, had the crowd loving him, and then at the end he dropped to floor in a full split, then pulled himself up and did a spin. It brought the house down.

I was standing and clapping and howling like some studio-audience mom who just watched her son win big on Jeopardy.

I’d keep saving for college for the girls if they could pull off something like that.

My sister Judy and my dad used to have a trick they’d do via phone. She’d ask someone to pick a card from a deck. Then she’d call to “The Wizard” and ask “Could you please tell this person what card they’re holding?” She’d hand the phone over and my dad—I mean, The Wizard—would reveal the card.

Apparently this trick wowed many a drunk at my sister’s college. And gave my father the gratification of being part of a good party stunt. Dad still maintains you can call him any time of day or night to do this. The Wizard, apparently, is always in.

I’d reveal how it’s done but I’ve probably said too much already. And I’d like to stay in the will.

Anyway, the other day we were at a picnic and my friend David offered to open my beer. He took out his iPhone, pushed against the back of the case, and a flat bottle opener slid out. From his phone. It was SO COOL.

Turns out it’s marketing schwag with his company’s logo on it. I begged and whined and pleaded for him to get me one.  And last week he did. [Thrill!]

So I think I’m pretty cool now.

I mean, sure, I’ve got the rainbow fruit salad up my sleeve, should I ever need to bust one out. But now this suburban mama’s got a party trick that has nothing to do with kids, thankyouverymuch.

And I don’t even have to wake up The Wizard to do it.

What’s your party trick?