Category Archives: Don’t get me started (uh-oh, you just did)

You don’t know anything.

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Took Peanut and Butter to a padded room last week, mostly because I wanted to put them in a padded room. But also because they play nicely together there, climbing and sliding and laughing and bouncing. The gym (my recent compromise on having no child care or breaks from the kids) has a climbing wall and bounce house and huge toxic foam climbing structures for our use, free (now that I’m paying for a gym membership), whenever we want.

When it’s time to go I give a five minute warning, and a “last chance to do something that’s important to you” warning. Then we go.

But last week Peanut would not leave. As is his wont, he ignored, ignored, ignored, then yelled, “No!”

I was calm, I was respectful, I was nicer than I should be. I wanted to throw him against a padded wall but went with:

Me: Yes. It’s time to go. We need to get home for dinner.”
P: No. Come on, Butter, let’s go over here.
M: Butterbean, come get your shoes! [He does, thankfully.] Peanut, we’re getting out shoes on and then we’re leaving.
P: I’m not going.
M: Oh. Well it’ll be hard to have dinner in a bounce house, but I wish you the best of luck.
P: I’m not coming.
M: I heard you. And I’m not compromising.
P: WHY?!?!?!!
M: Peanut, please use an inside voice. I’m not compromising because we came here for you to have fun and to bounce and climb. And you did have fun, bounce, and climb. So now it’s time to go home.
P: I did NOT have fun.
M: Mmmmmmkay. That’s a shame. Maybe next time, then. Come on.
P: No.
M: Okay.

He comes over to the child-keeping door and climbs the half wall instead of going through.

Me: Sweetie, that’s not safe. Please get down and come through the door.
Peanut: This is the only way I can find to get to you.
M: Honey, try the door.
P: No.
M: Peanut, get down. This is not a climbing wall. Come through the door.
P: No.
M: Yes.
P: I can’t.
M: Little boy, this is not working for me. Get down. Now. Because what you’re doing could hurt you.
P: But the door has a forcefield and I can’t go there.
M: I see. Here. I turned it off. Now come through.
P: NOOOOOOO! It’s invisible and you can’t see it.
M: And you can’t see my angries, inside me, but they are circling their wagons right now and getting ready to come out all over you if you don’t get down.
P: You don’t know anything.
[just a look. a really long, blinking, calmly enraged look.]
P: I’ll climb when I want and where I want.
M. [deep breath] You will take a deep breath right now and consider how you’re talking to me. And you will consider that coming here is optional and climbing is optional and bouncing is optional, but talking nicely to your mother is. not. optional.
P: FINE.
M: Peanut Full Name Naptime, that is not talking nicely. I will not ask you again. You will talk nicely or we will think of a consequence together.

At this point a deep breath didn’t help. A snake breath I read about in a Mothering Magazine article on Mama Rage did. Especially when Butter mimicked it and I started laughing.

I still snubbed Peanut for a while, even after the situation was defused. Because I’m petty and nasty and immature. And because I could *totally* see that forcefield. What does he think I am…old? Powerless? Unfun?

(I am so old and powerless and decidedly unfun lately. But how dare he notice? He doesn’t know anything.)

Open Letter to My Greys

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Dear Grey Hairs,

It’s nice to see you.

No, seriously. I’ve been waiting for you.

Most people express horror in meeting their pigment-free hairs. Not me. I’m excited. I’ve always felt like a fraud. A little kid sneaking into high school. A tween who tricked her way into college. A teenager posing as an adult in jobs. An adolescent playing house and pretending to be married.

A friend and I always joked that ordering furniture was the milestone after which you became a genuine grownup. I ordered an armchair, a rich purple velvet and gold brocade lounge-singer-y armchair in 1998.

Still no grownup.

Once I had children, though, I felt pretty damned grownup. Paying the bills wasn’t a ruse any more. We needed heat. Buying groceries wasn’t for fun. It’s really really seriously to feed small, growing, helpless creatures. And seriously, lactating feels pretty damned mature. (Let’s ignore for a moment that 13 year old girls can do this. Don’t interrupt my revery, grey hairs. This is for you.)

It was after having children that you, my sweet greys, arrived. I rejoiced. I even thought about having a potluck in your honor. You’re invited to a “Welcome to My Head, Expired Hair” Extravaganza. Please bring a side dish or salad.

Since you first appeared, you’ve been reproducing REALLY quickly lately.

Maybe it’s the sleeplessness.

Maybe it’s the constant struggle to stay patient in the face of such blatant illogical hysterics as those acted out by tiny people.

Maybe it’s the worry. Not just the “oh my word, please don’t fall down the stairs” worries, but also the “will the world be cruel; will he be bullied; will he follow the wrong crowd” worries. Even the “will he tell his therapist this” worries.

Maybe it’s the total lack of breaks. Maybe my hair pigment decided to go on vacation.

Whatever it is, dear greys, I honor you. I totally dig seeing more of you each time I look in the mirror. Sure, that’s about once a week on average, since I just don’t care rarely have time to check my appearance. But you are coming on fast and furious.

And I dig that about you, grey. To the point that I’m promising you I will not color you. I will not hide behind chemicals, greys. I can’t afford it, honestly. I respect you too much. So much, in in fact, that I’m willing to risk the British spelling in defiance of the American disdain for gray. For you, my rime, are the evidence of my adulthood.

Grey means I’m old. Grey means I’m free to stop trying to look young, act young, feel young. With grey hair I’m allowed to complain about my aching back, refuse to go out late because “I just can’t do this anymore!” With grey hair I can stop trying to keep up with technology and can adopt slightly antisocial behaviors. Because we have enough friends, don’t we, greys.

With you, grey hair, come all the possibilities for what I can do and be when I no longer focus on the nonsense I’m supposed to as an American woman. No longer caring about being “nice” and thin and measured and muted seems quite freeing. I can let go of the trying to look in favor of trying to be. I can finally nurture my eventual curmudgeon.

And I owe that release to you, my greys. You are the wind beneath my withheld flying fig newton.

Eeyore by necessity

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Sleep deprivation makes you cranky, fat, and dangerous.

It also makes you gloomy.

Take a look at this finding, reported in a New York Magazine feature that is, as far as I can tell, the same as the third chapter in Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman:

“Perhaps most fascinating, the emotional context of a memory affects where it gets processed. Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories get processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine.” (p. 3 in the NYM article linked and p. 35 in the book)

Great. Fat, grumpy, and incapable of retaining joy.

I can’t wait to hang out with me, ‘cuz that’s a winning combination.

(On a related note, how do I not have a category titled “Holy Guacamole, I Need Sleep!”? My first didn’t sleep through the night until he was over Three. The second is not exactly on the fast track to quiet nights, with or without ear infections, teething, and gobs of physical exertion. So I filed this under everything except Yoga. I’m too tired for yoga.)

(Also? Go read Nurture Shock. There are chapters on praise, sleep, race, lying, gifted programs, siblings, teenagers, self-control, social skills, and language; all compelling, well written, clear, thoroughly researched and revelatory.) I’ll leave the superlatives to the cover matter, but suffice it to say I will finish it before I finish The Pale King. That’s huge, given how little reading time I have and how much I want to read DFW’s final novel. Go get it. Library, local bookstore, friend…I don’t care. Read. This. Book.)

Bears repeating

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Peanut went to a birthday party this weekend while I stayed at home and cooked through Butter’s nap. Increasingly, I don’t have time to prep and cook meals so I do it all on the weekend to eat throughout the week.

Though I do this to save time and money, I also do it because I don’t trust most of the prepared foods at the store and in restaurants. Since the 1990s I’ve tried to be more and more aware of how food is made (and of which ingredients). I don’t like chemical tasting food and I tend to buy and prepare foods in their natural states. We try to eat whole, natural, organic foods grown by local, sustainable farms and businesses.

And since I had kids I’ve gotten much more annoying about how careful I am.

So I cook as much as I can. Local, fresh, organic, whole. And I fake it when I need to (we have almond butter sandwiches for dinner at least once a week, not because I’m an About Last Night fan but because we run out of leftovers and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna take my hour of free time during Butter’s nap every day to cook something that might or might not be eaten later.)

On the weekend I try to blend homemade sauces like tahini and hummus, slow cook some vegetarian chili, make lentils and couscous with veggies, pre-layer black bean quesadillas, overcook and mash white bean and sweet potatoes for homemade burgers, prep berry almond smoothies, slice goat cheese and polenta to grill later with marinara, and bake a homemade pizza. The boys will generally eat these things, I have two hands to prepare on the weekend, these dishes don’t take careful spicing or attentive cooking, and most of the items last well through the week. So I sacrifice an afternoon or two to the home cooking gods.

[A friend once joked that a real Top Chef quick fire challenge would be to create something edible in 45 minutes…when you have to leave the prep area every 5 minutes to break up a fight, and leave the cooking area every 3 minutes to remind people about the rules, and leave the food unattended for at least 10 minutes while you run after someone making very poor choices. I would watch that episode a dozen times, were they ever to get that real with their reality programming.]

But making good food for four people is increasingly wearing on me. I’m tired of the work, I’m tired of checking labels, I’m tired of the exorbitant cost, and I’m tired of being such an annoying stickler.

Plus, it’s a pain that my day generally falls into the pattern:
wake to crying…clean a bottom…prepare food…serve food…attend to crying…
clean a bottom…shuffle people into car…serve food…shuffle people into car…
clean up food…prepare food…serve food…attend to crying…clean a bottom…
clean up after food…serve food….clean up after food…attend to crying…
shuffle people into car…prepare food…serve food…clean a bottom…clean up after food…prepare food…fall asleep

I’m getting tired of cooking my own beans to avoid BPA and making my own marinara to avoid BPA and putting everything in washable bags to avoid phthalates and refusing to do disposable to avoid adding to the landfill and buying local and organic at three times the price to avoid pesticides and herbicides and petroleum and child labor.

Then Eric Schlosser goes and writes something new that reminds me why we do this. Pseudofood is killing the planet, killing people, and killing farmers. I want to rip out the backyard, plant a bigger edible garden, write letters to local and national government, run for political office, take on the restaurant and agriculture lobbies, and rebuild the FDA and USDA to serve consumers.

Because what we’re eating now is not food. And the more people who know that, the better the food we get will become. And the less often I will have my kid come home from a birthday party full of modern marvels labeled as food.

[Of this I’m enormously jealous, by the way. I want to go back to a time when a blue tongue was fun rather than a source of stress, and when sugar was fun not toxic. But that ship has sailed.]

Molehill, meet the mountain makers

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Ah, yes, well. J. Crew toenail story. Blah blah blah…marketing photo with Mom and young boy, whose toenails are pink. Both seem to be having fun. Blah blah blah…media makes it out to be erosion of society as we know it, popularization of gender dysphoria, and license to marginalization of pretty much every human on Earth.

What the hell, America? Seriously? This is the cataclysm about which you’re gonna get your panties in a twist?

[Just reading the implication that you wear panties made you question your masculinity? Time for purchase of a life, my ignorant and intolerant non-friend.]

Regular readers know my 5 year old paints his nails with his Dad every weekend. They vary color, they vary number of nails painted. But generally, Peanut paints all twenty digits and Spouse paints twelve (all toes plus thumbs). You also know I think this is a delightful bit of bonding that teaches both of them to do what they enjoy rather than what they’re supposed to do. Because there are enough supposed tos in life, it’s never too young to learn to ignore the lame rules.

And most rules are lame.

Or at least as arbitrary as gender clothing rules.

So now an allegedly large number of Americans are allegedly all frothy and twitching because painting nails gives one a severe case of gender dysphoria? Nails are somehow directly linked to your soul, and said soul can flipflop identity based on social expectation? What if that little boy’s soul happens to know that 60 years ago, boys were dressed in pink and girls were in blue because pink was deemed too strong a color for the allegedly weaker gender?

I don’t know. Seems as though The Daily Show has it covered. If not, I’m guessing Panderbear does.

But I still wonder: couldn’t we pay this much attention to banks and oil companies and food growers and food manufacturers and air traffic controllers instead? (Okay, maybe not the air traffic people. I’m a sleepy human and refuse to judge those who are forced to fight biorhythms for their jobs. Cuz I feel their pain, yo.)

On the record

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Okay, it’s official. I’m going to go way out on a limb and proclaim:

Fourteen hours a day (every single day) with small children is too much. But at least it’s not sixteen.

Five years of fourteen hours a day with small children (three of those years were actually sixteen hours a day, which is how I know fourteen is an improvement), with ten days total away (ten days of one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, which is 99.45% work days) is too much.

Four years of major sleep disruptions (waking at least every three hours, generally more) is too much.

Further, seared polenta topped with goat cheese and marinara, followed by sliced beets and goat cheese glazed with balsamic, followed by honey on goat cheese is too much.

But just as I wouldn’t change the reasons I have had only ten days off in five years and haven’t slept well and haven’t had a complete thought to myself in I can’t remember how long…just as I wouldn’t change those decisions, I wouldn’t change the cheese addiction, either. Given all the legal and illegal coping mechanisms out there, cheese is at least a decent source of protein.

Blog Avoidance Syndrome

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I’ve recently diagnosed myself with a mild case of Blog Avoidance Syndrome. The causes are many, the symptoms are simple, and the prognosis is unclear. Let me ‘splain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.

We just moved. We just had several birthday parties. For small people. Involving cupcakes with candy eyeballs. The unpacking is getting really old. I have pressing things to do, like finish an article to submit it a.freaking.sap to a journal before someone else writes it and publishes it and rides its genius all the way to fame and glory and a tenured position at a major University. And I have to rework the novel that is 98% there and has been submitted to decent responses from agents but that needs just a a couple of days of work. And I need to exercise for the first time since January. And I need to get a babysitter so I can go more than 10 minutes without losing my cool. And I really need to update my playlist. And make baby food. And get a parking permit. And overthink the kindergarten decision we’ve kind of sort of maybe made.And hang pictures and knit something and sew something else and find a cure for cancer and start baking my own bread.

So while ideas for blog posts flutter in and out of the corners of my mind, I can’t hold a thought ’til the end of the day, which is when I carve out time to blog. Nor can I seem to find the time to write and edit. Nor prioritize the lame-ass musings I offer herein for the 200+ awesome readers who visit semi-regularly. Because I have other things to do. And the longer I go without posting, the more I think that those other projects are better uses of my time.

So forgive me my blahs. I need to get my act in gear and put my energy where my priorities are. But I can’t until I find the box that has the stuff I need. You’d think it’d be labeled as such, but I’m down to “office stuff,” “hats and shoes,” and “wine glasses”. And we all know which of those gets priority.

What I don’t understand is how other people do this. A mom of five children who unschools with respect and creativity for all. A mom who is promoting her new book and managing a business and reading up a storm. Families move all the time and manage to hang on. Other moms have small children and projects put on hold for longer than they’d like. Other academics get swamped with work and don’t keep up in one field. They all catch up eventually. So why am I counting on not getting back to things, not fixing the imbalance, not ever finishing any of the dozens of things on my list?

How are you all working and exercising and parenting and reading and connecting and moisturizing and cooking and thinking and enjoying? How the hell do you do it? Because I’m not doing any of it, really. Please, do, tell me your secret.

Rose-colored hindsight

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There was a time that a headache would strike at 4pm and I’d go into the corporate bathroom, two doors between me and the bright, loud, engaged world. I’d sit, disengaged, and I’d close my eyes for up to two minutes. Dark, cool, quiet. And if the headache didn’t resolve I’d know that in two hours there’d be peace and quiet at home. Solitude. Food.

Now when a headache hits at 4pm there is no dark, cool, quiet. There aren’t two doors between me and anything. There is no closing my eyes. There is no solitude (and often no food). Because two small people will get hurt and sad if I close two doors and my eyes. Now there are at least four hours before bedtime separates me and the bright, loud, engaged workplace. And those four hours will not be easygoing or peaceful. Those four hours will be escalating screaming and demands and hot, frantic, noisy unceasing tasks.

No sitting for four hours. No breathing or relaxing or closing eyes. That’s a lot of unfettered headache time.

Dinner comes much later, quiet comes much later. Cool, dark, quiet long blinks come much later.

Working is not a picnic. It’s rare to find an ideal work environment, and even when I do there are hard days. There are annoying people or clients or computers or projects. But there are bathrooms. And doors. And closed eyes. And a way to separate at the end of the day.

For people who leave work and come home to small, needy, loud, helpless creatures, it’s a jarring transition. And there are several hours before bedtime for them, too, after a long day of sometimes awful colleagues and awful bosses and awful projects and awful clients.

There’s nothing for me to leave. No “gee, today one job seems easier than the other and I’m glad I have work/home on days like these”. No closing some doors or opening others; no transition except bedtime—that sometimes relaxed and delightful, but usually dramatic and daunting cataclysm.

So 4pm headaches seem as though they’re a much bigger deal than they used to be. And when corporate bathrooms seem a dreamy vacation spot from my current world, maybe I need to reevaluate a few things in my life.

Where’s your dark, cool, quiet, disengaged happen? Is it hourly or daily or weekly? Is your dark, cool, and quiet at the mercy of others? Do you have a room of your own? Do you sit and blink and eat and go to the bathroom as you see fit?

How do you do that?

Shell of the person she once was

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Everyone knows children change you. But in my case, I’m ruined. Ruined, I tell you!

Wanna know eight ways in which I am totally wrecked now that I have kids?

8. I can’t do just one thing at a time.
It’s simply not possible any more to just read or cook or go to the bathroom. I have to run over mental to-do lists and gauge how long I have before one of the children loses it while I try to read, and I must dodge in front of the baby to snatch whatever crumbs he finds while I try to cook food for the family plus several special requests for the older child. And the one time this week I went to the bathroom without holding someone, yelling at someone, listening carefully for someone, or preparing to go stop someone, I was done and washed in 30 seconds flat. I used to use the office restroom as my locked-door-where-nobody-can-see-me-close-my-eyes-and-breathe-for-ten-seconds haven. Now I hold my breath and rush through so often that force of habit made me miss this week’s only solo effort.

7. I can’t ignore bugs.
I’m not a bug person. I paid my brother to collect bugs for me when Biology class mandated a bug murder-and-display project. But now that I have children I can’t let a bug go by without stooping down to check it out, point out its details, and wonder about its diet. Sometimes Peanut asks about a bug, but more often I’m distracting one or both boys from all manner of childish b.s. and need to point them to something unusual. So critters who used to make me shudder are now members of my emergency “please-let-me-make-it-through-today-and-I’ll-give-money-to-local-entomologists” toolkit.

6. I have amazing biceps.
Two children with long-term separation anxiety issues equals 5 years of lifting heavy weights. They don’t fit with the rest of my body at all, so I’m freakishly distorted now (aside from the typical post-pregnancy distortions none of which have I escaped).

5. I can’t see a garbage truck without looking around excitedly for a child.
It doesn’t even matter if I’m away from my own children. When I see or hear a garbage truck I get all frenzied hoping I can make someone appreciate this amazing (huh?), unusual (what?), scintillating (who are you?) sight.

4. Slightly more embarrassing is my new, post-child reaction to fire engines.
I grin and wave and talk excitedly about the differences between a pumper, tiller rig, rear-mount aerial ladder, and snorkel truck. Last week I went for a walk without the boys and realized only when I saw the reactions from the firefighters that I was waving and smiling while completely alone.

3. Clients seem a lot more reasonable.
After negotiating cataclysms in which sandwiches were cut rather than left whole, adults removed shoes from a comfortably shod child, protein is poison and little bodies claim to need only sugar to survive, and waitstaff are tipped heavily for the mounds of food on the floor beneath high chairs, clients who want a quicker turnaround or want additional iterations seem downright fair even when they don’t say, “please.”

2. I can’t vacuum without warning the household, even if I’m alone.
Every child goes through vacuum issues. Mine adore the vacuum and fight over who gets to be held aloft to steer with me. If I ever turn on the vacuum without making sure its dance card is properly allocated, I don’t hear the end of it for days. So I warn the cat about the noise and ask who wants to help. Even if it’s 11:00pm and nobody around me cares.

Everything is different now, but the biggest change, the most significant reason I am ruined now that I’ve had children:

1. I cannot pass by even one festive decoration without stopping and grinning. I didn’t even know I had it in my heart that is two sizes too small, but I’m fascinated and entranced by twinkly lights. Glitter makes me giggle. Streamers lighten my day. And its all their fault. As infants they made me look up. As toddlers they made me explain why. And as adults, they’re gonna pay.

Because I’m wrecked. They’ve ruined me.

Making people into Santas

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I wrote two years ago about how Christmas is different in our house. We celebrate every December holiday we can think of: Hanukkah, Solstice, Nana’s birthday, Christmas…

And we try to temper the gift receiving with a lot of giving. When Peanut was almost two he focused on giving to animals at the shelter. When he was almost three he chose to give to the hungry and to animals at the shelter. At almost four we brought toiletries to the homeless, toys to shelter animals, and human toys for toy drives.

And this year he spent almost an hour with me at the Heifer International site, making people we love into Santas.

See, we’ve taught him that the myth of Santa is a story about a man who, a long time ago, gave a lot to people who need. (Yup, we’re the jerks whose kid told your kid that Santa is dead. Cuz he is, yo. His story of selflessness and charity is what’s important and if you’re still pretending that’s your business but I ain’t playing along.) We talk about how the pretend Santas around this time of year are roaming the scenes of capitalist excess to remind people to give to others. Our Solstice-tradition pine cone bird feeders give to animals who need food when it’s cold; and this year our gifts of animals and education to families all over the world make each of our loved ones feel that they can be part of the Santa myth of love, peace, and charity.

Because the more Peanut thinks Christmas is about giving, and the more he thinks about people who need, the better our holidays feel.

Happy Almost Nana’s Birthday, everyone!

Really? You’re gonna thank them?

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I’d like to thank the ants who came charging into the house today. Thank you for finding whatever it was you found in the silverware drawer. I’ve been meaning to take everything out and soak it in hot, soapy, vinegar water. You’ve given me a reason to do it today and for that I am thankful.

I’m also appreciative of the people who stop in parking lots and wait, desperately, for anyone walking by to identify one of the parked cars as theirs. Thank you for holding up the dozens of people behind you. Without you we might have been able to proceed with our days. But because you made parking take almost 30 minutes, I got to hear the wonderful tricks my 4 year old used to keep my screaming infant from blowing an artery. It’s a good thing you didn’t just drive normally until you found a parking space farther away. Then I wouldn’t know how resourceful my son is. I surely am grateful to you.

Thank you, terrible parent in front of me in line at the store today. Because you bought for your child every piece of crap he whined for, my son is starting to doubt our family’s system. Thank you for encouraging his critical thinking skills. Here I had him unquestioningly following the policy that we don’t buy things unless it’s already on our list; and that special purchases like toys have to be on a holiday list from which loved ones may choose to buy or not to buy. Thanks to you, Parent Making Interesting Choices, my son is interrogating our system and querying into our family’s stance on democracy. Lessons on thinking for himself and governing systems in one day. What a thanksgiving blessing. Thank you.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also thank the cat for waking me up almost every hour last night. If it weren’t for you, Cat One, I might have missed the beginning of the baby’s crying. All five times that he woke and raged about something or other. Of course, had you not been thumping around and yowling, the baby might not have woken. But then I wouldn’t be able to practice my catatonic calculations about which soothing technique to use on him. Thanks, kitty, for keeping me sharp. Except for the part where waking me every hour dulls my ability to function or think. That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, Cat One. That’s why you’ll be sleeping in the garage tonight. And for that I am thankful.

Step off. Now.

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At the deli counter of an outrageously overpriced foodie market, a snooty, overprocessed, and meticulously coiffed senior citizen looked at me in horror. Butter was strapped into his Moby Wrap, facing forward, and wiggling as though the beet salad in front of him were the best thing he’d ever seen.

[As always, I have no financial interest in mentioning a product I like. They have no idea who I am, I didn’t get a free product, I owned it before I began blogging, and I gain nothing from telling you Butter practically lives strapped to me in this wrap.]

She, the woman of the excessive care about her appearance, says, “Oh! He’s drooling” in the tone one might use to exclaim, “Oh! He’s seizing!” or “Oh! He’s choking and turning blue!”

Drooling.
Drooling. Small baby whose mouth never closes, whose teeth might or might not be razoring through his gums, and who genuinely thinks that at any moment he will be allowed to take the WHOLE world and stick it in his mouth, just to see if he can find any hidden nipples anywhere.

“Oh! He’s drooling,” she stammers. I believe she expects me to do something, like protect the market’s concrete floor from his sulfuric acid baby saliva.

“Yeah, he does that. He’s a baby,” I say with a blank look. I refuse the energy it takes to be polite, smile, or educate this idiot of leisure about how normal, unavoidable, and uneventful drooling is for a freaking four-month-old baby.

Today is not a screw-with-me kind of day. I know how to be polite. I just don’t want to. Because I’m tired of stupid people. Really, really, really I am. Of course he’s drooling, you dolt. And you just wasted one of the potentially delightful moments of my day. The choosing of brightly colored and tasty foodstuffs makes me happy. So shut your goat cheese hole and let me do my day.

On a brief walk, earlier the same day, a talkative nurse and her wheelchair-bound charge said hi to me, cooing at the delightful bundle sleeping on my chest. We talked a bit, and when I figured out that Jean, the seated neighbor, is blind, I took off Butter’s socks so she could feel his feet. And before that, talking with a Dad who’d had a rough morning with his children, I offered a sympathetic ear and some mildly amusing faux advice.

I’m not a nasty person by nature. I’m a big old softy. But I’m sick of stupid people.

“Oh,” she says the droolophobe. “How old?”
“Almost a year,” I answer, rounding up to a “shut the f— up” answer.
She looks shocked. I don’t care.

Screw her. She was probably ordering something with black truffle oil. And since she’s not sad or blind or cooing over my baby, she can suck it.

Next time, instead of organic hand santizer in a spray bottle, I’m carrying a vial of baby spit to atomize onto the world’s most daft.

Put That in Your Not a Pipe And Don’t Smoke It

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I only have five minutes, world, so you’re gonna take this without a candy coating…

If you em-effers don’t finish the em-effing 880/92 interchange by tomorrow, so help me Goddess I’m gonna freaking take a steam shovel to all that equipment and drop it into the Bay. It’s been more than 10 years, you effing dolts, and we have NOTHING to show for a thirty minute merge every freaking hour of every freaking day except more effing heavy equipment NOT DOING ANYTHING! Even my four year old today said it would be faster if you used shovels and a bucket to build whatever the effing hell you’ve been building for decades that had better em-effing be so awesome it rips a hole in the space-time continuum and restores the ozone layer, the regular temperature of the world, all the polar ice sheets, every species that has died out during our lifetimes AND Party of Five all in one blink of an eye. Because if this new freeway interchange bee-ess does not ROCK MY EM-EFFING WORLD when you finish it tomorrow (I was pretty clear, wasn’t I, that if it still shows no signs of progress for another decade you’re all gonna be forced to participate in a World’s Worst Tax-Wasting and Time-Wasting Construction Pride Parade before a crowd of World’s Most Angry Disestablishmentarians), then heads are gonna freaking roll.

Also? Lady who glared at me today? You really wanna go there, punk? Do I LOOK like I need to be messed with today? I just had a long talk with my kid about Fourth of July and how it was the end of bickering between two groups, the “Pay taxes and be quiet” group and the “we’re not paying until we get to vote” group because the latter group knew where to hide from the shooting long enough to shoot the former group. Do you think, after a conversation like that, the nuances of which lasted the whole 55 minute car ride and involved explanations of why tribal groups also got involved and what smallpox is, that I need you glaring at me? I will shoot YOU , lady, with the straw shooter or toilet paper shooter or construction paper shooters in the back if you freaking EVER look at me that way again.

Crappy food companies, quit pretending your crap is food. Crappy magazines, quit selling your crap by telling people that they are crap and you have the secret to being less crappy. Crappy people everywhere, quit your crap and get your crappy cars and crappy kids and crappy selves out of my freaking way. And crappy stores, if you sell your crappiest crap near the checkout counters I’m going to let me kid take it all off the shelf and FLING it all over your crappy store because it is some bull puckey that you put it there so my kid will whine at me to buy it. No way, no how; now I’m saving all the parents of the world by throwing this crap to my kid so he can shoot it at you with his pipe-cleaner bazooka.

Because I’ve been sitting at the 880/92 b.s. for nigh on ten years and any minute now I’m gonna go ragingly insane.

Just wondering

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How is the child abuse rate in this country not higher?

(Seriously, no depressing replies from my social worker friends and family or law enforcement readers on how desperately high even a 0.00000001% rate is. I know that. But the question does not value a higher rate. It marvels at the <100% rate.)

Why can I not watch a film, show, or commercial without composing a critical theory response that involves footnotes and dreams of a research grant? What the hell is wrong with me? Am I missing enjoyment centers in my brain or something?

Where is that box of books I labeled to be first on the shelf after the three moves of a year-plus ago? I need two of those books, man. Where are they?

How does, "you may cut paper and only paper" translate into "try to cut your shirt, the rug, your chin, a bracelet, and the baby toys while I’m right here watching“? Seriously. Taking the whole ‘looking for negative attention’ thing to a whole new level.

No wonder I’m pissed I have absolutely no time to write…the voices in my head are better companions than small children. Why does nobody say how completely not ideal the companionship of young children is?

1950s rap

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Toyota has a viral youtube campaign for their minivan that they think is ever so clever.

I think it’s painfully backward.

In the lengthy ads, a very white middle class heterosexual family expounds on how cool they are in their minivan, which Dad has dubbed the Swagger Wagon. In the most recent ad, the family sings a rap about said vehicle.

How delightful, no?

No.

In the song, Dad boasts how he participates and subverts gender stereotypes by having tea parties with his daughter and her dolls. Mom sings about how facile she is with jello and cupcakes, how she tends the kids’ wounds. While Dad mugs and poses in the van, Mom handles the lunch, the school play, and the song’s bridge—a potty break for their eldest.

Is this rap written for a 1950s audience? (The black and white images are a clue.) Why is Dad helping only with the tea party and nothing else? Why is Mom defined by her baking skills, her cheerleading costume, and her self definition as a former “college chick”?

One of the most difficult transitions for progressive couples who become parents is the reality of how even 50/50 marriages become 90/10 marriages when kids are thrown into the mix. The sheer volume of work mothers do, and the fact that it tends to be time sensitive, repetitive work (meals, tidying, errands, school) contrasts with the paucity of work inside the home most fathers do (and the fact that it tends to be ‘get to it when you can’ weekend, one-time, big project work). And the new division of labor causes marital strife.

Is that what you celebrate in your silly minivan ads? That families can fight in the front seat while the wee ones sit with headphones and DVD players in the back, oblivious to the real work of being a family…the day to day bickering over details, like the fact that I’ll be damned if I’m ever defined by how my baked goods perform at the school bake sale or refer to any of the years I busted my ass in higher ed as the days when I was a college chick.

Thanks for the stereotypes, Toyota. Sure makes me think less about your cars driving unintentionally into oncoming traffic.