Category Archives: Can’t decide on a category

I blame Costco

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To Peanut: I’m glad you got a sleepover with grandma and with it the alone time you crave. You really did not have to spend 24 hours back in three-year-old tantrum land to prove to me that re-entry is so hard. I get it; I’m supportive and understanding. Knock it off.

To Costco: when you say, “Come in; we have nine tires to replace the one you just blew and the three that will soon,” and I come in, then go home for my checkbook because you have a sweetheart deal with KILLING ME  that card I only use in emergencies, and *then* when I come back you tell me you can only find three tires? You lose a customer for life.

To tire dealerships within a 20 mile radius: Seriously? I have the most popular car in the area. Surely you knew you’d need four of this size soon. A pox on your auto-service establishments. All seven of them I called.

To my children: I could kiss you on the faces for being patient at the tire store and the other tire store and the mechanic and the knee doctor and the grocery store. Considering the fact that you’re six and two, you were rockstars*. You’re the only group in the whole lot that gets a customer for life.

*Except for Peanut’s 24 hours of age-inappropriate tantrums. And Butter blindsiding me twice in my bad knee while playing a game of “run away from nothing.” Not cool, guys. Not cool. I will forgive you because the tires are on, the knee is healing, and the kitchen is full. And because I have way too much invested in our brand to ditch you now.

Best money I’ve ever spent

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1. Online coupon for Scrivener completely overhauls my novel editing process.
Cost: $32 (tax-deductible)
Benefit: New lease on creativity, productivity, and immortality. Joyful hours in which I imported 310 pages of fiction into hundreds of scenes and move them around the way I’ve wanted to since a brilliant friend recommended I buy a giant cork board to index card my scenes. Complete revolution to my writing and editing. Giddy eagerness to tackle an otherwise daunting project. Elated moments of productivity even in the wee hours when I’m usually at diminished capacity.
Thank you Literature and Latte for knowing what writers need and for coding it all into little computer goblins who move words around at my behest.

2. Local grocer has a bottle of organic lemonade on sale. I buy one, freeze into popsicles. My kids, who are used to homemade yogurt and orange juice pops go nuts, sit sweetly together in the shade and eat two popsicles each.
Cost: $0.16 per child (calculated just the juice by the ounce and figured freezer costs negligible since the freezer would be running, anyway.)
Benefit: 30 minutes in which I stripped and washed the car seat covers, vacuumed the car seats (ew), vacuumed the living room, and ripped four CDs.
Thank you Santa Cruz Organic for the $0.64/hour babysitting. I plan to recreate with our overburdened lemon tree and newly minted, knife-accomplished sous-chef six-year-old for improved cost effectiveness.

3. NPR interviews Daniel Pink, and a year later I finally remember to buy his book Drive at a local bookstore.
Cost: $8 something.
Benefit: Interesting research, good writing, and highly useful appendices get me on track for several professional goals.

Go buy his book. Read it. Work through the appendices. Change your work, your life, your family, your employees, your children, your world.

That’s money well spent.

She needs psychological help

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Oh, boy do I have problems.

I add to my list of Things I Simply Must Do Right Now just about anything that sounds like something I should be doing.

Note that I don’t add things that sound like fun. Or that could save time, money, or energy. I add obligations. Avoid fun and profit; do what sounds like something you should do.

Today when a friend talked about going back to school for a second Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, I thought fondly of my days in the lab and mentally added a Chem BS to my list of things to finish. This year.

When a friend at a group outing last week mentioned that his kids eat more sandwiches when he uses his homemade peanut butter, I vowed to start making my own. (Food processor, he said, not blender. Add cashews to make it more spreadable, someone else said. Done and done. Or, rather, on the list and on the list.)

Except I’m not going to get a degree in Chemistry or make peanut butter. I’m just adding them to my list so I can promise myself that I’ll never get bored or stop striving or learning. Just in case, says my list of 4,128 things. Just in case.

That all stops now.

I hereby declare to you, publicly, that I will not. I won’t. I refuse.

I will not make my own peanut butter.
I will not learn to cross stitch.
I will not start my first quilting project this summer.
I will not break our chipped plates to make mosaic picture frames for a delightful hallway mirror.
I will not say yes to every playdate that comes along.
I will not take a job just because someone asks me to.

Know what else?
I’m never cooking potatoes again. They’re too much damned work.
I refuse to fold the laundry. Cramming it into drawers is basically the same, and nobody yet has said to any of us “Wow, you are one disheveled family!” If they do, I have some green, gnarled, raw potatoes to throw at them.
I won’t clean up after the boys anymore. They usually do their own tidying (regretfully, it’s sometimes on threat of throwing away anything left on the floor) but I often finish each night. Nope. No more. I’d rather step on it in the dark or stub my toe than bend over one more doggone time.
I will not water the stupid patch of weeds near the trash cans. I don’t care that the landlord calls it grass.
I’m also not planting food any more. We have a farmer’s market full of food grown by local organic farmers. I don’t have the energy to water and tend and protect and nurture any more goddamned creatures right now.

Because I’m tired of adding “should” to my long list of righteous obligations. I’m still going to purchase food, prepare food, cook food, serve food, clean up food, mow the lawn, pull weeds, clean the house, sort laundry, write books, edit other books, make playdough, tell my kids to be kind, play with my kids, clean up the feces, monitor the handwashing, manage the bathing, direct the shoeing, load the bikes and scooters, drive the people, maintain the car, pay bills, answer the mail, schedule appointments, plan trips, arrange playdates, send invoices, market services, and run.

And starting today, I’m going to shower whenever I feel like it.

Take that, peanut butter guy and chemistry lady. My big plans are to be zestfully clean.

Choose your story’s ringtone

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Friday 8:45 a.m. Run to school trying to keep up with six-year-old on bike and two-year-old on scooter. Thank my lucky stars they stop at street corners; vow to wear a sports bra every day, forever.

Friday 9:15 a.m. Realize phone is not in the pocket it should be. Conduct embarrassing public TSA-style pat-down of self and admit phone is gone.

Friday 11:00 a.m. Receive email saying stranger found phone. Reply with effusive gratitude, offer to meet to retrieve.

Friday 11:00 p.m. Email again reiterating thanks and offer to meet anywhere, any time. Start insurance claim to replace lost phone, stop when $130 deductible demanded.

Saturday 11:00 p.m. Email again with well wishes for stranger’s weekend and mention of wide open schedule.

Monday 11:00 a.m. Receive email with request for address, apologies and explanation for weekend silence. Reply with casual understanding, address information, and repeated offer to meet.

Tuesday 11:00 a.m. Find phone in mailbox with broken back piece. Try to charge but realize shell is too damaged. Check email and see a long message apologizing for the phone that probably doesn’t work, with explanation of a non-profit rescue at sea of two children involving an overloaded dingy, erroneous captain assurances, and bailing out. Email includes apology for the phone’s probable demise in the salt water that soaked everyone on the boat and a reminder that the stranger’s heart was in the right place.

Tuesday 3:00 pm complete payment on insurance deductible and await new phone on the morrow.

Choose your own ending:
If you want to steal that random and implausible story for your novel, go to page 9. There you will be reminded of copyright and my ownership of that thread of crazy.

If you want to remember never to put your phone in your pocket again, go to page 14. There you will hear a sing-song “I told you so” from several members of my family.

If you want to forbid your children from using wheeled transport to school ever again, turn to page 37. There you will be reminded of how long it takes to get to school if they drag their feet and smell the flowers the whole way.

If you want to vow never to drop your phone where I did, go to page 82. You’ll be taken to a map of the more reasonable and upstanding members of your ‘hood.

If you want to be grateful you have your sim card and storage disk and hope against hope they work in the new phone, turn to page 25. You’ll be given a medal for perspective and general human goodness.
If you want to write a different ending than those offered here, please do.

Well, that’s saying something

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Today’s successes:

Both my children are still alive.
Neither of my children was emotionally wounded today (unless you count resentment over having a light saber taken away when it was used in ways contrary to house rules, or being denied cookies as a primary meal).
I am not Donald Trump.
I am not John Edwards.
I made and frosted four cakes for the school fundraiser tomorrow.
I did not eat any of them.

Not. Too. Bad.

Blah blah words words

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For you, today, a post to mean anything at all that you need to hear. Because I’m here for you.

Pskjdf idi spq slsl jkshdflkn vmrgjcv lfdv, mn cvadvlk vm adflkjgm, vkdfglkjtm, w aljdm, nmer vlkasilwer. dfklj amnenv ieri jjvnklfn ioeifn idnmg fodoivn eoifcmv dkek mkldo; lwpw v lpobnmen vlow. A dkbkki ieifn ojofvjinm…you.

Shall I go on? No? That took care of it? So glad I could help.

Have a wonderful week, now that I’ve solved/addressed/decided/defused/praised/deflated/congratulated that issue you were worried/thinking/concerned/happy/angry/tense/hopeful about.

Do let everyone know, if you feel like it, what you think the above says to you. Or tell us what the Magic Eight Ball said to you this morning. Either. Both equally as skilled and prescient…

Is it a technique thing?

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Okay, I seriously don’t understand how to do dinner prep with small children. Many of you have similar creatures, and many of you seem to be functioning at more than a basic level. So please: share your secrets.

Mine are young enough that without near-constant parenting, they make really poor (often dangerous) choices. There is always screaming if I’m out of the room for more than one minute. So I need to parent. I need to offer eyerollingly frequent reminders that “use your words so he understands” and “hands are not for hitting” and “you may do what you want with your own penis but you may not do that to his” and “no bumper scooters” and “tell him he can have it when you’re done” and “we don’t call names” and “get your penis off the toys” and “stop it or I’ll gouge out my eyes.”

My spawn are also young enough that they need a regular infusion of calories. Without food, decisions get worse, and the frequency and pitch of their screaming increases. So do my threats to gouge out my eyes.

So I need to make meals. Until there is a viable living room version of the Easy Bake Oven, I have to leave the room to make meals. Often I cook the night before and just reheat. I resent this, for after bedtime is my time and I’d like to read, write, exercise, or stare at a freaking wall without admitting that this job is a 24-hour-a-day kind of thing.

But even stepping away to scoop and reheat leaves small people screaming and hitting and grabbing and knifing (okay, not the last one, but it seems as though). If, heaven forbid, I try to wash a bit of produce, cut it, throw something in a pot or pan, and plate it when it’s all ready, my children are bloody, bedraggled, and writhing in a pile of all the belongings I used to hold dear. I don’t make nine-veggie quiche or anything. I’m not segmenting oranges and candying the peel. I crock-pot a chili or soup or I bake a casserole or I cook carb/protein/fiber in separate pots and just throw it all on a plate.

And yet within five minutes someone squirts someone else with a hose and someone screams and exacts revenge, and someone climbs on my desk and throws off all the tax papers and the carefully stacked scholarly articles (yes, I print them…sue me), and someone asks to make lemonade and rips two million lemons from the tree and gets juice on the floor and demands agave and then spills the whole lot, and someone pees on the floor, and someone rams a scooter into my ankle, and someone begs for popcorn, and someone tracks mud through the house, and someone torments the cat, and someone starts throwing LEGOs, and someone goes outside to get the mail but leaves the door open for another someone to wander out…

In five minutes.

I’m not kidding. That all happened tonight while I tried to make stir-fry and rice.

Someone once told me (demand credit in the comments if this was you) they’d like to see an episode of Top Chef where the quickfire challenge was to create a delicious meal from what was in the fridge in ten minutes WHILE having to stop every 30 seconds to break up a fight, being away from the stove for an unpredictable number of minutes, and stopping at the midway point to wipe someone’s ass. And the wall they poop-painted trying to “help”.

How do you make a meal when your children are young? I have no earthly idea how people do this. Do other people have a partner or a helper or a prison guard in the half hour before dinner? Do you serve crackers and cheese every night? Do you tie the children to various doorknobs through the house and tell them the last one to free herself get a pony?

Do I need to bribe? Threaten? Order takeout?

HOW do you do it?

Quick: do something!

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I keep myself up into the wee hours of the night “because I haven’t *done* anything today.” Every day.

So tonight, in the interest of getting to bed at a decent hour, I offer the following:

I finished our taxes.

And finished my reading for the Gravity’s Rainbow group read at Infinite Zombies.

And finished tossing/donating/selling 200 things and am well on my way to the third 100. Yes, I counted each thing, including each diaper in a box of cloth diapers going to a friend. So what? I can walk through the garage now.

I got started on a follow-up project for a client.

And cleaned and oiled the annoying butcher block countertops our landlord holds so dear.

And have maybe actually found a regular babysitter after three years five months of intense searching.

And paid the bills.

And stocked the fridge with fruits and veggies to get serious about my resolution to treat my body better.

And ran four miles.

And finally started doing yoga again.

That leaves 1,746 things to do tomorrow. Better stay up late to get at least those pesky six done so I start with a round number in the morning…

Slapdash

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Keep meaning to dash off a note to you delightful readers to say:
I’m losing my mind;
I’m having more than a little fun;
I’m not getting nearly enough accomplished;
I’m worried about the state of the Union, the world, and the Universe;
and I can’t decide if the days slipping away without any of my major projects getting even one iota closer to completion is a) to be expected, given circumstances and whatnot, b) pathetic, c) depressing, or d) all of the above.

But since those states of affairs all sound petty and selfish given the realities most people are living with, I’ll just button my fingers and post when something of note happens. Or doesn’t. Again.

Very interesting

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I’m not going to judge, blogo-world. I’m not going to label or name or do a Michel Foucault Order of Things kind of categorization. I’m just noting a few things. For your information or enjoyment. Or blackmail, later.

1. Toddlers who don’t sit down, ever, do not do well on airplanes.

2. Toddlers who like to scream “No!” at everything do not go over well with strangers. On airplanes.

3. Rescue Remedy pastilles work Every. Single. Time. Even if it takes half a tin to calm a Screaming Toddler on a Plane. And even if I don’t remember them until hour 4 of Screaming Toddler on a Plane.

4. There are things way more scary than Snakes on a Plane. See #3.

5. Toddlers who like to scream “No!” are particularly amusing when they bellow at the ocean. “No!” does not seem to keep toddler-piled dry sand safe from waves.

6. My six-year-old is really fun to be with.

7. It has been a long time since I was alone, playing, in the silence, with my six-year-old.

8. My toddler is really fun to be with.

9. It has been a long time since I was alone, playing, in the silence, with my toddler.

10. Aforementioned bouts of silent play, at least one hour with each child, brought to us by LEGO.

11. I will now buy stock in LEGO, despite my anger about their gender-ghetto pink and purple manicure salon and beach-lounging LEGO sets.

12. Kids do believe several servings of ice cream per day is just right.

13. Children kept to very regular sleep schedules at home are wildly wakeful on vacation.

14. Your own kids playing in the pool are the cutest thing ever.

15. Other people’s children playing in the pool are not cute. Ever.

16. Every kid playing in the ocean is adorable.

17. In public, women tend to look at children, especially babies as they go by. And often smile. Men almost never look, no matter how adorable the children or behavior are.

18. All of the above still shock me.

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.

Cuteness currency

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Oh, what adorableness will buy these days.

After we dropped off Peanut at kindergarten, Butter and I wandered the streets of our delightful town. About half a block from the school, a woman was leaning toward a car and talking and laughing with someone inside. She walked away laughing heartily. Presumably, someone she knew and liked was inside the car. As we got close, Butter walked right over to the car window and peered in.

A man looked up from his phone and smiled. “Why, hi there! I’m Jeff. Who are you?”

I answered for the almost-two-year-old and smiled. Jeff pretended to have a conversation with Butter for a few lines, asking him about the weather and his day. And Butter waved and said, “bye bye.” Then, just as the woman did, he walked away from the window laughing. A big, hearty, fake laugh. I waved to Jeff, beaming because he was so tolerant of a toddler’s curiosity–behavior that Jeff would not have enjoyed from someone older.

Later, we walked past a florist’s cart. Butter stopped to look at the flowers. The florist, who always watches him as we walk by, swooped over with a rose. “This is for you,” she bowed to my tiny son. He smelled it. It was a gorgeous, thickly petaled red rose, the kind where the petals’ backsides are meaty and creased, and their faces are glowing velvet. I’m guessing the stem had broken and the florist kept it despite its obvious unsaleability.

Butter sat down with his flower, right near her cart, and ripped every single petal from the flower’s head. He studied the remaining stem, stamina, and carpels. He tossed these aside, gathered the petals into his empty water cup, and left his generous friend without a second glance. I offered her a thank you and an explanation that Butterbean likes rose petals in his bath, but she didn’t care what I had to say. She had eyes only for him, forgiving him instantly for behavior that would seem horrifying out of a school-age child.

Both of these incidents had me thinking, “you sure get away with a lot because you’re cute.” Humans, in general, are willing to cut small people some serious slack on the whole Social Expectations thing. When Butter lies down in people’s driveways to feel gravel on his face (swear to Penelope it’s one of his favorite things to do), nobody calls the cops. When he twirls around parking meters and signposts, people smile rather than shying away. His behavior in and adult would portend serious mental issues.

But when my toddler screams bloody murder because he can’t figure out how to open a bag, passersby just smile at me, knowing full well I’m doing my best and Butter is, too. Kind of makes up for all the difficult things about being a toddler, doesn’t it, Butterbug?

They treat him, in short, like a guest to our planet. And their largesse makes me reciprocate to other adults, because I would have much more fun on our planet if we all treated each other like guests.

Conundrum

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A post in which I tell the story of 2012: prioritize, realign, whine, pout, self-chasten, turn to gratitude journaling, feel grateful *and* defeated.

***

December was a month in which I made list upon list of priorities and goals and dreams so that I could begin 2012 realigned, making choices I could fee good about and avoiding the detritus I had been mired in for too long.

Because I chose to stay home to raise my kids, my life got shoved into a closet, where it sat unused, unexamined, and devalued. Each time we moved, my hopes, dreams, goals, and interests got pushed further and further into the dark, cobwebby spots of our lives. Any time the old me called out from the dank recesses of the attic, the utilitarian me shouted her down.

“QUIET back there! You have no right to raise your voice to me! You chose this, so you have to do it really, really well 100% of the time!”

I wasn’t allowing myself time or space for my mind or body because I harbored this secret belief that, if I decided to do my best to raise my kids, there was absolutely no room for doing what I wanted. My job, 24 hours a day, is my little boys. Putting myself first, even for an hour, meant compromising and giving them less.

And it was driving me mad. Seriously. Both the insane and angry connotations applied. I have been losing it and just barely hanging on for almost six years. But this winter has been hard core. I’ve been climbing out of my skin, wasting time berating myself for every poor decision I made pre-kids because now I have nothing to show for my life. Oh, sure, those, but they’ll leave me and hate me and tell their therapist about how I was an empty shell of a zombie Mom. Or, rather, and empty shell of a zombie Mom who’s trying strenuously hard yet seemed to be failing miserably at just about everything, from personhood to motherhood.

So I reevaluated. I decided to find a sitter for the toddler a few hours a week so I could blink. I finished some client work and turned down new projects to focus on my own work. I convinced Spouse to be with the kids at 6am so I could start running again. I made manageable lists of short and long term goals with small steps to get to each one. I put one foot in front of the other. And I ditched facebook.

So far so good. On paper.

But I didn’t find the sitter. I checked out a few home-based daycare centers and read ads for sitters and remembered why we didn’t have anyone stay with Peanut (except my parents, and only a few times a year) until he was 4: I don’t want someone else raising my children. Until the boys can speak for themselves and express their needs and feelings, I don’t think someone else can do the best job with my itty bitty people. That’s just me, but it’s how I feel. Yes, I want to be with them because I want to see and hear everything in their day. Yes, I don’t always sound as though I do want to be with them. Yes, I think being a full time parent is important but I also feel it’s necessary to prove I’m not a freeloader absconding from my other jobs to do this job. I’ve already mentioned, I believe, my borderline insanity and obvious tendencies toward perfectionism that are ill-suited to my current role as Court Jester of Chaos, right? Okay then. Now I can mention that I don’t think I deserve to hire help when this is my job. The battle of the boxed goals and the utilitarian judgement are at it again, deeming who is worthy and who doesn’t deserve.

Good times.

So I’ve been whining about how hard it is to have a toddler and a kindergartener and a Spouse who works long hours. How very, very difficult it is to not blink for 13 hours straight. Boo hoo, big deal, people seem to parent with debilitating diseases and in the midst of trauma and major depressions, so I can take my withering hopes and dreams and shove them up my unfulfilled goals, right?

And someone offered to help me. Sweet Mary, Mother of my Cousins, someone offered to help me.

Normal people might sigh with relief and take a friend up on a sweet offer of help.

Ah, but I’m not normal. Instead, I felt chagrined that I’d complained so loudly. I vowed to start a gratitude journal and practice saying thank you for all the great things in my life. I promised myself I would focus on hopes and dreams and goals in my spare time but would refocus on my current, unpaid, disrespected, thankless, maddening, amazing, exhausting, important job.

And I heard this interview on KQED’s Forum, in which Chip Conley explained that more important than having what you want (oh, how I want and want and want) is wanting what you have. Appreciating all that is rather than longing for what might be.

So I spent the day being present and mindful and grateful. And by 7 p.m. I was in tears because I still don’t like being with my kids all day every day forever and ever amen without cease or break or freaking showers. I don’t want to make or serve or clean up food ever again. Ever. Ever ever ever again.

So I’m torn. I want to be happy with what I have. But I need. I have hopes and dreams and goals that are not well suited to tightly wrapped boxes in the back of the closet.

How do you balance being grateful for your life and still want desperately to change at least 12 things right now?

Blerg.

http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf