Category Archives: Are you freaking kidding me?

Mother’s Day Hangover

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Have I told you that I hate Mother’s Day? Yes, yes I have. In last year, and the year before that, and probably the year before that, but I can’t find it.

Meh.

Several of my favorite people despise Mother’s Day, too. Absence of Alternatives has an annual rant against the holiday, and at least one friend calls annually to bemoan the day’s failure to meet expectations and the shame of what she actually expects (some time to herself).

I’m lucky enough to live near my mother and grandma. And I’m honored to be able to appreciate them on Mother’s Day. I like seeing them, cooking them their favorite foods, and finding them the perfect gift. I genuinely love being able to have Mother’s Day with my mom and grandma. So I’m not a complete jerk. In fact, I never hated the holiday we just choked down until I had a child.

And then reality hit.

Here’s the thing: the social myth is that your family will roll out the red carpet and honor you with gratitude and relaxation. Cue reels of breakfast in bed and luxurious lolling about in high-thread count sheets with precocious and adorable children who appreciate you. There are at least five things wrong with that sentence, including the fact that it only focuses on the minutes from 6:45-6:50 a.m.

What happens with the other 780 minutes of the day? A mythological and delightful dance of people throwing rose petals before you as they continually tell you to sit down so they can perform tasks both large and small for you?

Please. It’s the same day as every other day, but with an emailed discount coupon for pizza.

Pamper mom? Please. What’s my family going to do? Make a meal or two (or three), clean the house, manage their own fecal needs, let me read, and give me enough space for a run and a shower? No, Internet. They’re not. None of that.

Show mom you care? Maybe when they’re older. I don’t dare hope that they try to make the day feel special by offering sweet greetings or making precious presents and cards rather than bickering and screaming and ignoring me unless they want something. Bah. Humbug.

I’ve tried asking for what I need and I’ve tried moderating expectations. But this Mother’s Day was, as it has been for seven years, depressingly underwhelming. What I want is a break from the delightful, wonderful people who made me a mom. Because they are ALWAYS up in my space. Being cute and needy and snuggly and terrible and amazing and mean. Wanting a break for Mother’s Day sounds just terrible. Cruel and ungrateful. But what is also terrible is a day that looks absolutely indistinguishable from others, except that total strangers wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. Though that was actually quite nice.

So, out with it: I’m ungrateful. I don’t know how lucky I am. I don’t deserve the healthy, happy children and attenuating loveliness. I certainly don’t deserve a few minutes to breathe and think. What right have I? But, wait, the commercials say I do.

Mother’s Day makes me bipolar.

Thanks for all the meaningless signs at the supermarket and the freaking newsstand, Holiday Fabricated to Make Me Notice What Is Missing. I’ve let you leave me feeling disappointed, unworthy, unappreciated, and exhausted.

Can’t imagine why I don’t want to see you again next year when you raise your annoying, smarmy, fake smile-y face again.

Maybe if I spend the next 364 days appreciating my mom and grandma, I can sleep through Mother’s Day next year.

Please.

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I don’t have much power in this world, but I need something. I don’t have fame or fortune or a huge readership, and I don’t know what to do. I need help.

I need your hope. Because I need my friend to be okay.

He’s been through enough. He’s had a whole lot of shitty thrown his way, and each time he’s bested it. He’s finally with the woman absolutely meant for him. He has three amazing kids. He has hundreds of friends because he’s a miraculously good person. The type who gets a raw deal time and time again (and again and again) yet still smiles and makes people feel that they’re special. Makes us laugh and cry and appreciate being alive.

The motherfucking cancer that tried to kill him didn’t. And he had one blissful year after the torture of chemo and radiation and surgery.

And that stupid fucking no good cancer is back.

I don’t really have the power to do anything, and, of course, it’s not about me. Except I hurt just hearing that he’s in pain. That he’s scared. That his family is upside fucking down with fear.

So I want to get every single person I can thinking good thoughts. I can turn the Universe, right? Heartfelt pleas for good thoughts mean something, right?

Pray if you do. Hope if you will. Send him some good wishes if you please. I know there are lurkers amongst you, those who come out when it’s important.

He desperately needs something, and I want to give everything I can. So please. Send him a few thoughts or prayers or wishes. Type him a few words, would you, even though you don’t know him. Please.

The world needs him.

Nauseating

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I had no idea how stomach churning it would be to get a letter from the teacher saying my kid was being rough with another kid. Repeatedly. Playing the chase-and-grab game with someone who really didn’t like it.

Last week he told me about the game and said he tried it on this other child and decided to stop when she didn’t like it.

I just heard today it happened at least four other times. In the past two days.

Each day, when I pick him up, I let him get settled then ask, “what part of your day was fun,” and “what part of your day was sad,” and “what part of your day was exciting,” and “what part of your say was frustrating,” and “what part of your day was boring?” Today he told me there was something really fun that he couldn’t tell me. I asked if he couldn’t tell me because it was so good or because it was bad.

Bad.

But it was fun?

Yes.

Oh, dear child, are you a sociopath? Are you normal? Are you going to be a bully? Are you reacting to our bad parenting? Are you just a bad person out of the box? Are you going to learn when I tell you things that should be obvious but seem missing from the Child 1.0 programming? If you haven’t yet, when will you?

Where did we go wrong? And which, of those, was the worst? And is it reversible?

Little boy, no matter how a person says it, stop it means STOP IT! It doesn’t matter if you like someone; you have to respect them and listen to their words. Always. Not just because you expect that of other people. Because it’s the decent thing to do.

He wrote a sorry note. He drew a sorry picture. He promised.

And I’m sick to my stomach. I emailed the child’s parent and the teacher, explaining how I’m dealing with the issue and how I wish I could apologize for my child.

We can’t apologize for our children, world. It’s beginning to seem that all the modeling and talk are totally wasted…is this true for all kids or just mine?

Plan B

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Hold the phone.

After promising that science would “inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health,” President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services has overriden an FDA recommendation to allow over the counter sales of Plan-B, an emergency contraceptive quick access to which is necessary for efficacy.

Since when did we decide that setting a precedent of overruling the FDA was a good idea? Is that a power you want future Presidents to have, Secretary Sebelius and President Obama? Because believe me, the next Republican President will gladly take your idea and apply it to every FDA recommendation he doesn’t agree with. (Yes, I assume the next Republican President will be male, even if they don’t take the White House for 12 years. That was not a casual lack of gender awareness; that was an intentional choice of gendered pronoun.) Science and math are not something one can disagree with. To paraphrase Ira Flatow today on Talk of the Nation, “Pythagorean Theorum? I don’t believe it. It’s only a theory.”

Since when does politics get to trump science? Didn’t you state as a goal, President Obama, that you wanted:

“To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That is how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals — to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives.”

And didn’t you say this:

Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health…. The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions.

Sir, you are going to pay for this politically. Severely. You just ruined your relationship with liberal voters and women voters. Really, really dumb move.

Since when does the government get to tell women that they have to wait for the right pharmacist at the right pharmacy at the right time, else be forced to have an abortion? 72 hours is a tight window if you live in a small town and have to find a willing pharmacist during pharmacy hours when the people you can’t trust aren’t watching (for instance the husband who will beat you if he finds out, or the parents who will throw you out if they hear about your need for emergency contraception).

Hillary Clinton said that she believes “in the freedom of women to make their own decisions about the most personal and significant matters affecting their lives.” Once the FDA said Plan B should be sold over the counter, Secretary Clinton fought for three years to implement that recommendation.

Well, I hope she’s reading Obama the riot act tonight. I hope Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama are right this minute telling that man how reprehensible it is to let politics dictate science.

Politics, by the way, that the OTHER SIDE hold dear.

Your supporters, President Obama, DO NOT SUPPORT YOU IN THIS.

End of Rope Found

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Today was a day to go with the flow. I’m down to one client project, Butter has spent so long resisting nap that I just give up, and all the things I need to do are “wait until after bedtime” things. So I vowed to follow Butter and just be with him all day. No timing naps or tasks or emails. I don’t even pull out my phone for most of the day.

After we drop off Peanut at school, Butter asks to go see the construction site. Sure. It’s a block past the coffee I like and the cheese rolls we both like. So we grab a cuppa, a muffin, and a cheese roll and head to…oh, he wants to get down.

Sure.

He then proceeds to walk all over the neighborhood, closely supervised, touching every single rock and leaf and dog and flower and bee. (Yes, bee; he has this uncanny ability to pick them up and have them walk all over his arm and blow them off and they never sting him. Weird.) We traveled every inch of a one block radius several times. We used the bathroom in CheeseBoard Pizza five times. We got water from CheeseBoard seven times. We watched construction for what might have been two million years. He dug in the dirt and put rocks in his cup and carried them ten feet and dumped them out and started over. All unmolested but safe and loved. Awesome sauce.

For three hours. For the record, I started getting a little twitchy at two and a half.

He finally asked to be held and fell instantly asleep on my back. And I knew I couldn’t take him out or he’d refuse a nap. So I took him home and edited with him asleep on my back.

And when he woke just as Peanut got out of school, I willingly followed them both as they giggled off toward home.

It took two hours to travel one mile. I let them do their thing except for safety and kindness issues. For the first 90 minutes. And then I found my limit.

Children, I cannot go slower than 1/3 mile an hour. I can’t do it. I know I hurried you along a bit toward the end, and kept saying, “I know their yard looks fun but we have to go home.” I was cold. And tired. And Type A. Yes, we can sort through all these rocks and choose our favorites and compare them and leave them for the homeowners who paid for them. Yes, we can crunch through leaves. Yes, we can throw them and laugh and play and rake them all back in a pile with a big stick to start all over again. But we have to get moving after 30 minutes because…because…well, because I guess I just don’t love you enough. I know play is important. I know unfettered and undirected and spontaneous is great. I know adult pace isn’t right for kids.

But I will stab myself in the eye if I ever again spend 5 hours moving at tiny scientist pace.

So. Lesson learned. Never, ever, ever, ever spend more than four hours doing what the children want. Ever. Ever.

Never.

Ever.

Take one step back

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Oh, my word, Interwebs. To say this day sucked rocks would be like saying a deluge can be a bit damp.

Wake up at midnight to screaming baby. Comfort measures don’t work. Endure *hours* of baby flopping all over bed trying to get comfortable, a feat he seems to think can be achieved by pulling my hair, head butting me, and slapping me. Any attempts at comfort get a screamed “nah nah nah!” and a push in the face.

By morning I’m a wreck but he screams that he wants to get down. When I take off his diaper he rages that he wants it back on. I offer comfort which he refuses. He pees all over the floor then rages when I take off his wet pants. I offer comfort. He refuses. I offer new jammie bottoms. He refuses. I offer pants. He refuses. All refusals offered loudly.

The morning proceeds like this. Offer food, he screams at me. Offer dancing, he screams at me. Offer to help when something doesn’t work and he throws himself on the floor, more mad at my suggestion than at the rat bastard toy. Which he then throws across the room to express frustration. Then throws himself down again to express longing for the toy.

He screams the whole way to school, trying to leap out of the backpack carrier. My back does not appreciate 0.8 miles of sideways baby lurching around, but I try to figure out the problem. Want your hood on? NAH! Want your hood off? NAH! Do you like the rain? Dah. (beat) *scream*

He wants no playground, no home, no cafe, no music, no anything. He nurses as though it’s his 3-week growth spurt. And screams as though he’s auditioning for something very, very sad and angry.

He won’t nap. He won’t get in the stroller or the car or the sling or the mei tai or hiking backpack. At one point I leave him in the living room, crying, to go scream my head off in the kitchen. I scream so hard and loud that I actually wet myself. I’m not the only one, though. As with yesterday, the kid refuses to go in the bathroom. He pees his pants so much I almost run out of pants.

And he stays awake the whole walk to school, two hours past his naptime.

And when a friend greets him sweetly I tell her he doesn’t get any niceness today. He’s a b-a-d b-a-b-y, I say, so don’t talk to him. I’m only slightly kidding.

Brief discussion ensues. She mentions an asymptomatic UTI her toddler had around the same age. the treatment for which turned him back into a normal child. It’s Friday. I’m not going to put up with this all weekend or I will be homicidal.

Two hours later the doc finds two raging ear infections.

[brief note on second-time parents and gross stupidity: if the first one had been acting out of the ordinary, I would have assumed illness. It is evidence of the shell shock born of a really tough time with Peanut that made me jump right past “maybe he is in pain” to assume Butter had just turned the corner into his semi-long-term asshole phase. I plead exhaustion and end-of-my-rope-d-ness to excuse not seeing the signs. I also submit that he was clingy while sick and the refusing to be touch thing smacked of jerk rather than illness. Further, I offer that I used to be good at problem solving and am now good only at barely making it through the day.]

While the pharmacy mixes up some goo (don’t judge our easy use of antibiotics on this one; we’re a wait-and-see family and we’ve gone through nine ear infections with no antibiotics including one ruptured ear drum but this kid is not effing human today and I can’t let him or me go through another day of this) I take both boys to CheeseBoard for a treat. The eldest wants Peet’s instead. Fine. It was a long hour in the doctor’s office and you’re a tired, hungry kid. Muffin it is. Surely I can carry a miserable toddler and a pizza the one extra block.

Peanut gets a bran muffin, finds a table, and willingly shares with his baby brother without being asked. Things are looking up. All the little monster wants is a chair so he can sit next to the big guy. I ask a woman sitting alone at a two-person table if she needs the second chair.

She rolls her eyes and says, as sarcastically as she can muster, “Well, I guess not any more.”

I blink, unable to conjure all the replies she deserves, then walk away as she starts to point out a chair across the restaurant. Lady, I have two small children, one of whom is a Tasmanian Devil toddler who can open the door unassisted and who is currently roaming loose without supervision around strangers’ hot coffee. I’m not going to travel farther from him to get a chair.

“That’s okay. We’ll make do.”

I squat and offer the toddler my knee on which to perch. He throws himself on the floor screaming. I whisper, “Honey, sweet, I know it’s frustrating, but there’s only one chair.”

The condescending, poisonous, passive aggressive asshat says from three tables over, “Oh, geez. Just take the chair.”

Given one iota of energy and the guarantee that my children would be safe while I stepped away for a moment, I would have walked over and punched her square in the face, so help me Aphrodite.

Instead I lovingly scoop up the demonic presence inhabiting my youngest’s body and walk outside with him. I gently ask the beleaguered older brother to come with us. The wee one squirms out of my arms and almost knocks himself unconscious on the concrete. I help him stand and offer comfort and options. He pees all over the sidewalk. In his only pants. In the rain on a 45 degree Fall evening four blocks from the pharmacy.

And I actually don’t cry. Or bang on the window and curse at the fathermucking selfish c-word who couldn’t even admit that she needed the empty chair.

I put the screaming sadsack in the carrier and sing to him as we walk to the pharmacy. I pick up the goo while he screams. I pay while he screams. I walk him to the car while he screams. And sit down in the car with the five year old who willingly reads a book and eats his muffin. I want to cry but don’t. I nurse the baby, text Spouse a warning about my mood, and tell myself that if I can make it 10 hours into this day, I can do two more.

Look, I know sometimes you have a long day and want to sit alone in a cafe. I know sometimes you’re waiting for someone and need a second chair. I know sometimes the love of your life just occupied the chair across from you and you want to keep the essence of your bond alive by leaving the chair vacant. In that case, just say you need the other chair.

I’m not entitled to the chair. I am, however, entitled to some fracking human compassion. There are only two answers: Yes or No. Sarcasm and confusing condescension and weirdass nastiness should not be part of the equation.

I’ve been asked if I can spare a chair. I answer either, “Nope, it’s all yours,” or, “Actually I’m expecting someone, sorry.”

Isn’t that in the social contract somewhere?

Failure

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I don’t usually remember dreams, but I always remember nightmares.

My recurring nightmare since college finds me waking in my dorm room in a panic, realizing that I haven’t attended one of my classes all semester and that today is the final. My angst, though, is not that I haven’t studied for the test. In my version of sheer terror, I’m worried that I won’t find the classroom (haven’t been all semester, after all) and that I won’t do well enough on the final to offset a whole semester of homework and tests. The explaining as I walk in, really, dwarfs my realization that I don’t even have a passing familiarity with the name of the class, let alone the subject matter.

For the first time, that dream has changed.

Last night I dreamt I was a spy. Kickass, counter-terrorist, highly trained Superspy. And I was assigned a mission to go save a bunch of innocents by stopping evildoers. I probably even had the skin-tight yet highly flexible costume of all highly skilled and intelligent women, as mandated by mainstream (read: feminist) television and movies.

But I realize as the appointed hour arrives and I leave the weird government building (which seems a lot more ASPCA than Langley, VA) that I don’t know where to go to stop the bad guys. And that I have no bullets. None. Big ol’ gun that I’m sure I know how to dissemble and reassemble blindfolded in under 20 seconds, but no ammunition. And somehow I’m supposed to get in my rental hatchback (wtf? how am I supposed to spy with this tin can?) and drive to…somewhere…and stop a major plot with an empty gun.

I awoke as I was trying to figure out if, somehow on my way I could stop and break into a sporting good store (my assassination/rescue mission began in the wee hours, naturally) for bullets.

Stress I get. Fear of academic failure…sure. Concern that I’ll be at the wrong place at the wrong time…clearly a theme for me. But worried that I can’t save the world because I’m ill equipped? Come on subconscious. Now you’re just scaring me.

Blood and gore

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Good gravy. We’ve had my first real week of “Welcome to the World of Having Two Boys.”

I mean, we’ve had five and a half years of whirlwind that doesn’t stop and that plays only cackling, destructive games.

And we’ve had four years of banging things with sticks and picking gross stuff out of the street.

And two years of shooting at everything with imaginary guns.

And a year and a half of trucks and trucks and trucks. Good gawd with the trucks.

But this was the week of multiple calls to the doctor to ask “does this need stitches?”

The older one found a barnacled mollusk shell, put it on a board, stood in front of it, and stomped. Shell embedded for a moment, then fell off, leaving a one inch horizontal and one inch vertical cut in his forehead. Stitches? Probably needed it, but it was Saturday at 5pm, there’s no urgent care here, and I have iodine, skin glue, and butterfly bandages. No stitches.

The younger one climbed on a dining room chair after a long day with no nap (don’t blame me; I tried everything to get that boy to sleep). Fell off and bit through his lip. Two beautiful, hard-won teeth made two nasty cuts into his beautiful lower lip. Nasty. Deep. Blood everywhere. Stitches? Doc says we don’t stitch lips unless there’s a flap hanging or the hole on the inside of his mouth is so big food will get caught in it. I wiped away my tears, threw up in my mouth a little at the description of how it would heal, and agreed: no stitches.

So I guess, it was a good week? Oh, wait. It’s Tuesday. Gulp. Four days, four gashes, no stitches. Seems like I’m doing a good job? [Grins like the cat that threw a seashell at a canary then pushed it off a chair.]

And a bag of chips

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Things I learned while I was deathly ill last week:

9. I’m a very patient person.
Stop laughing and listen.
I didn’t think so either. I thought I was fair-to-middling in the patient parent category. But during the first 6 hours of the fever-and-puke-and-sore-throat-fest I like to call The Painful Beginning to Losing the Baby Fat, every time my kids balked about, whined about, or snapped at one of my requests, I burst into tears. It was eye-opening for all of us. And I have a new way to make them do stuff. Ask once, wait not at all, then fall down whimpering softly.
Try it. It works.

8. Hot showers were created for people with fevers. (Sorry, developing world. I’m sure blankets and herbal treatments are nice, too?) I used to think, thanks to an ex-boyfriend, that showers were invented for people in Boston who just couldn’t get warm in the winter. (Sorry, again, developing world and residents of steppes and deserts; we really do suck as a culture.) And hot showers are really, really good for restoring warm bloodedness to the chilled, it’s true. But those with multi-day fevers get stiff necks and headaches from muscle tension, and showers are muy bueno for melting muscle tension.

7. The false hope of recovery given by a shower lasts exactly 7 minutes when you have the early-October public school creeping crud.

6. Old people stay sick way longer than young people. Peanut had a one-day fever and a half-day recovery. I got the four-day version. He kept telling me it was a different germ. I kept looking at him, loopy with pain and disorientation, not caring whether I ever regained my will to form speech sounds but thinking something like, “Nuh-uh.”

5. Children are loud.

4. October in Northern California, with its 80 degree weeks, really sucks when you’re sick. Briiiiiiight. Hhhhhhhhhhot. Dryyyyyyy.

3. Children move very, very quickly. Like hyena.

2. Spouses who can leave work after their really important meetings and blow off their kind-of-important meetings to take over 100% for ailing parenting-partners are worth their weight in chocolate, syrah, or Ricola (pick your fever-poison). Spouses who do not even once ask you what to cook for the children or where to take the children while you writhe and whimper on the couch are worth their weight in quiet, solo vacation time.

1. And yet somehow I know this four days of decrepitude is going to count as a vacation in later debates when I trot out the old, “when was the last time I got a break?!”

That’s okay, I guess. He can win every debate for the next month at least.

Hope you’re all well, readers!

A Riddle

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Five year old gets sick, lies on couch watching movies and sipping from the cool beverages magically and lovingly brought to him.

Father gets sick, lies in bed watching movies and eating snacks magically and lovingly brought to him.

Baby gets sick, lies in sling and nurses constantly from magical beverages made lovingly for him.

Mama gets sick.

What happens next?

And now we have ants.

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Today? One for the baby book.

The ants go marching through our house, hurrah, hurrah
The eldest has some kind of flu, hurrah, hurrah
But I can’t stop to clean his hurls
Because his brother’s demon spawn in curls
And we all go marching
to bed, in their room
despite the claims of “too soon.”
[Next time please nap…]

The ants come marching from the rain, hurrah, hurrah.
The eldest’s head is in such pain, hurrah, hurrah.
But I can’t spend one second there
Because his brother’s climbed a chair
and is throwing all the trash
on the floor
scales the counter,
for some more.
[Just please get down…]

The ants come marching toward our food, hurrah, hurrah.
It’s easy given the toddler’s mood, hurrah, hurrah.
He throws his breakfast, lunch, and snack
His brother whimpers for some slack
As the mini-dude blows through
the whole place, scaling walls
like it’s space.
[Dear gawd the mess…]

The ants come marching in my house, hurrah, hurrah.
As a parent I feel like a louse, hurrah, hurrah.
Because the sick one needs me, sure,
But we had our first real tantrum here
And I now know that Two’s going
to be great for exactly
none of our fates.
[Run for your lives.]

Now even my spam is insulting me

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I post often about awesome spam, befuddling spam, and pathetic spam.

This is a new high in spamming. Behold, the (poorly written) smackdown spam:

“The following time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I imply, I know it was my choice to learn, but I really thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you would fix if you happen to werent too busy on the lookout for attention.”

I’m pretty sure, if I parse the terrible English properly, that said spammer just called me narcissistic, disappointing, incompetent, and whiny.

Hey, when did my ex and my relatives start writing spam?

I bow to you

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Ladies and Gentlemen: let me begin with a nod to all humans who do their best—child-free or parental, gainfully employed or working your bum off for free—I acknowledge your hard work. I know life’s not easy. But I have a special something to say to a few of you…

Dear Mothers with Three Children:
I bow to you. I have recently gone from just-barely-hanging-in-there Mother of Two to no-way-I’m-going-to-make-it Mother of Two plus an immobile Spouse who eats WAY more than a child, but uses his words and can be trusted not to damage any of the stuff in his room if left alone for extended periods of time. Which he isn’t, with the ice and the food and the meds and the requests for a change of Netflix streaming to “I don’t know…what is there?” Three children must be more work, but I don’t know how it’s possible to actually do all that work without losing a limb or a child or your sanity or something. And I therefore bow to you. Namaste.

Dear 24-hour-a-day Mothers of Three Children:
[I reject the stay-at-home designation because it’s code for “easy job” amongst the uninitiated, and because you don’t actually stay at home.] I bow to you and fall over with exhaustion now that I’ve glimpsed one iota of what you do. But three inept people 24-hours with no break and I would. Break. Especially if they were all under 7 or so. Email for a quote of how far back into my head my eyes roll thinking about how you can possibly still stand at the end of the day if your Three are either very young or teenagers.

Dear 24-hour-a-day Single Mothers of Three Children:
I hereby elect you President of the United States. Because being the sole source of everything for three inept creatures with no other adult support IS HANDS DOWN harder than being the leader of the free world. [If you have a chef and a housekeeper and a Cabinet like POTUS does, I disqualify you from this election. Cuz you know nothing about anything and I resent that you tricked me into bowing and then voting for you.]

So I suppose that this is my way of telling the rest of the world that there is a Bermuda Triangle whose delineating points are:
Three Dependent Dependents
plus
No Breaks
plus
No After-Bedtime Partner
that equals the trifecta of Everyone Should Repeatedly Bow to You and Give You Their Spare Chocolate.

And if you live in that Triangle for more than a week, your local bottler and brewer should sponsor your evenings right here, right now. I know the first three drinks are on me.

P.S. Full-time Mothers of Four or More Children: I just passed out from trying to imagine. I’d like to give you all a cyber-nap because without one I’m guessing you’re all dead right now.

P.P.S. Full-time care givers of both small children and an aging parent: I did not forget you, but your situation is not at all funny, and no matter how I wrote this I couldn’t make it funny and I’m sorry that all I can offer you is deep empathy and wishes for all the best. And chocolate. I wish you chocolate, too. But keep it quiet because the Moms of Three think they’re all deserving and whatnot, and who am I to burst their bubble at how easy their lives are, relatively, since I just told them they have me glimpsing how easy my normal life really is, relatively. “Really” and “relatively.” I’ll bet your life doesn’t even allow for words of that many syllables, simple thought they are.

P.P.P.S. I must now go weep that the best modifiers I can conjure are “really” and “relatively.” Seriously.

Flummoxed

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And wangdoodled. And flabbergasted.

Let me ‘splain.

Peanut had a playdate with a friend at the park. They promptly went to their “secret place,” a hedge behind which he and all his other friends hide to pretend they don’t have younger siblings or parents, but do have swords, moats, and dragons.

I kept my eye on them, and they were talking and spying on people.

Fine. So I take Butter down the slide a few times. I overhear something about “and no grownups” and I overhear something about “castles” and I overhear something about “soda.” I’m only concerned his fantasies involve soda, and only because it’s not on my list of approved play time topics.

Kidding.

Kind of.

So Butter and I plant ourselves in the sandbox a few yards from Peanut (okay, 20 yards, but he’s 5 and we can kind of see him). The friend’s mom is hailed by another woman we know, and she heads to the secret place.

And returns, laughing, holding a box. As she gets closer I see it’s a case of Budweiser.

“They found this and were opening the cans and squirting them all over and I tried to take it but Peanut told me it was his and he brought it from home.”

I frown a bit. “I usually give him a 24-pack early in the week, but I doubt he’d have that much left at this point. It’s probably not his.”

She’s amused that I’m playing along. I’m amused that I’m playing along, too. Because by the time she hands off the beer to the rec center staff, eight thoughts have occurred to me.

One, my kid found beer and opened it without my noticing.
Two, he is completely slipping away from me.
Three, it’s all kindergarten’s fault.
Four, it could have been a needle or broken glass or drugs or a gun.
Five, I can’t believe I didn’t check behind that bush before I let them play.
Six, oh my gawd he’s gonna be the kid who gets killed playing with another kid’s gun.
Seven, wow the teenagers around here are stupid.
Eight, and they have really crappy taste in beer.

Clearly, that day we had talks about not touching things you find. And about asking grownups if an unknown something is safe. And about not doing something just because your friends do.
And about what makes a beer worth drinking versus spraying all over the playground.

I am too old for this

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Here’s the short version, because you have places to be and I’m exhausted.

I tell Peanut in advance about dentist visit. He’s been a handful of times, always has easy cleanings. It’s never easy convincing him, though. Have I mentioned, maybe a thousand times before about his strong opinions and his desire to be in control and his spiritedness? Yes. Spirited. Highly. And it takes my every trick to get him to open up. For the four minutes it takes to gently clean a small person’s teeth.

So I tell him. Week before, day before, day of. Explain we have a full day and I need him to move past the “I’m not going” to get his clothes, get in the car, go into the dental office, sit down, open up, and let the nice, gentle people brush, count, and paint his teeth. (No sealants with BPA. Don’t worry, people of the interwebs.)

Drive thirty minutes to appointment. Toddler gets foreshortened nap. But it’s worth it, right, to not have any downtime and to have an overtired seventeen-month old, because Peanut will have clean teeth. But he clams up. I relay his pre-appointment-specified requests to hygienist: no bib, real names for tools not lame kid-friendly names, mix mint and chocolate flavored toothpastes. Fine.

Nope. Won’t do it. I’m gentle for a while, I allay his fears. This is quick, this is easy, this is gentle. You’ve done this before. Then I remind him the dentist present in the car is only for people with professionally cleaned teeth. Ditto the playdate later. These are not new threats/bribes. Though this is my first bribe attempt, I knew enough to set up the bribe earlier and keep the promise consistent throughout.

40 minutes in we say he’s running out of time. 45 minutes in he says okay but refuses to sit down. I take him home, and I’m pissed. I make a return appointment before storming out.

At one point I tel P that we’re going to go back in three days and if he doesn’t submit I’ll have them hold him down. It takes about one minute to realize how terrible that is, so I change it to we’ll go back every single day after school with no playgrounds and no playdates until your teeth get cleaned.

At home, later, I say that we have another appointment for Thursday. Will you do it? If I drive all that way and pay I want to know you’ll do it. I would rather let your teeth get holes and fall out later than waste my time, money, and energy now. I want you healthy, I want you able to eat, I want you to feel proud of all that brushing. I want you to like the dentist, damnit.

“Please. Will you let them do a cleaning?”

“Yes. They can sweep the floor.”

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he can just buy dentures with the money from his comedy career.