Perspective Required

It's Showtime...

2011-03-11T09:35:00.002-05:00

Wow. It's been a long time since I've had the chance to sit down and blog. My days (and evenings) have been filled with drama rehearsals and yet another long-term sub job. The drama job has finally boiled down to this weekend: Maine Regional One-Act Competition.

Today we'll be loading our (huge) set onto a school bus in the pouring rain, then driving an hour and a half away to compete against other mid-Maine schools. The kids are psyched, I have three Tupperware containers of paint in my briefcase (for emergency set touch-ups), and migraine meds in my purse. I am inexplicably wearing a bright green t-shirt with a gnome on it (team spirit trumps fashion sense for the day).

I even baked cookies to take, so the drama kids will have a quick snack to grab if they need it. I'm a mom. I feed people.

I have a bag filled with duct tape, staple gun, extra staples, scissors, Ziploc bags, paint brush, flashlight, band-aids, pencils, paper towels, tape, and Tic-Tacs. I figure that variety should cover nearly anything that crops up.

We are ready to break a leg.

Hopefully, not literally. At our community performance, one kid managed to fall off the stage.

Fingers crossed.

Be Careful What You Minor In

2011-01-10T17:26:00.004-05:00

My name is Jenn, and it's been two months and eight days since my last post. But I have a REALLY good excuse.

It all started back when I took that drama position, directing the high school's one-act play for competition. Well, technically it started before that when I signed up to sub in the local school district. But the key thing is that when I went to interview for the drama position, I took along a copy of my resume (nattily transported in my leather portfolio) to give the principal, as part of my Oh Look, I'm All Professional and Not Just a Stay-at-Home Mom persona.

Two hours after being hired for the drama position, I got an email from the principal:

I see on your resume that you have a teaching minor in French. Our French teacher is moving out of state next month. Do you have any interest in applying?

I zipped back an instant reply of:

No way, man. I last spoke French fifteen years ago and have retained only the amount necessary for ordering in restaurants and cursing at fellow drivers in a creatively Gallic way.

I may have worded it slightly more professionally than that. I closed politely with:

However, I'm happy to fill in as a sub if you need someone to cover the gap between the current teacher leaving and the new one starting.

Weeks went by, and I heard nothing more, so I assumed that a new French teacher was hired. Then one day my phone rang and the high school secretary called to offer me a long-term sub position in French. The teacher they planned to hire turned it down at the last second. I would start in a week. With no lesson plans, no full-time French teacher in sight, and a back pocketful of scattered French profanities. Merde. Beaucoup de merde.

I should mention that no one in the school could seem to locate a copy of the district curriculum for French. Which would have been really freaking helpful.

I yanked out dusty college textbooks, frantically Googled things like "How to teach high school French", and made my husband quiz me on verb tenses. For just shy of a month, I taught five levels of high school French and learned that there was more French squirreled away in dusty corners of my brain than I had realized. Thank God, because three of the classes were reading novels in French. Don't get me wrong - I ordered the English translations and ready them side-by-side to check my accuracy. Still, I did better than I would have expected, especially when you consider that these were books by authors like Camus and de Beauvoir. (Bonus: I learned the French word for "pimp", which I had not previously known. "Souteneur", FYI).

By 8:00 pm each night, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. And at 5:00 am each morning, the alarm clock beeped me back into bleary consciousness.

When they finally found a full-time French teacher, I had a four days off then was right back into another long-term sub job for an English teacher. That took me right up until Christmas and the brink of a nervous breakdown because five days before Christmas I had still not baked, mailed cards, or finished wrapping presents.

Takeaway lessons from my experience:

1. Subbing is a really good way to justify buying new clothes and pretty shoes.

2. Teenagers are wacky little critters, but strangely endearing.

3. For God's sake, be careful what you minor in.

Occupational Whiplash

2010-11-02T08:18:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time in a land far away, a land of cacti, scorpions, and summers of scorching heat, I was a high school drama and English teacher. I loved my job, and I loved the students, but mostly I enjoyed the hell out of my drama students. They were a whip-smart, funny, talented bunch of kids, and working with them felt a lot more like fun than a job. Sure there were evening rehearsals that resulted in 7:00 am - 9:00 pm workdays, and there were long Saturdays spent building sets. I dragged my brand-new husband along on the Saturdays, and he went happily to work hanging flats and building platforms alongside me.

It all went swimmingly until I got pregnant after my fourth year teaching. I didn't see that one coming, although two bottles of red wine on my first anniversary says that I probably should have.

In a whirlwind of pregnancy complications, bed rest, and the sudden, intense maternal drive to be a stay-at-home mom to this unborn baby, I left that teaching job. Left it and moved two hundred miles away - to a land of soaring mountains, pine trees, and snowy winters that had the added bonus of having this place willing to hire my husband and give us the paycheck needed to allow me to be a stay-at-home mom.

I never looked back, although there was a certain nostalgic pang every fall when the stores were festooned with "Back to School!" signs. I was a mommy, and this new life left no room for late-night rehearsals or Saturdays spent with power saws and paint brushes. Especially after our second baby girl was born three years later.

A year after that we moved two thousand more miles away, to a land of moose, brilliantly-colored autumns, and frigid winters that lasted till April. I cooked healthy meals, hosted playdates, baked cookies, volunteered at schools, and chauffered my kids around in a minivan. Immersed in the day-to-day (and occasionally minute-to-minute) tasks of mommyhood, I assumed that I would be doing this forever. It certainly felt that way when I was up at 2:30 a.m. with a vomiting toddler, anyway. I couldn't imagine my life any different and really didn't want to.

And then ... this is the weird part. Then fourteen years went by.

And one night, I found myself sitting at a Fine Arts Boosters' meeting at my elder daughter's school. I offered a fund-raising suggestion involving the program for the school play, and by way of explanation told the group that I used to teach drama.

There was a silence.

One woman spoke up, "You know, there's a coaching position open at the high school for the one-act play competition. They can't find anyone to do it. The kids are so disappointed." She fixed me with a hopeful gaze.

I hemmed and hawed. Stay-at-home mom. Busy, busy, busy. Starting to sub! Full plate, etc.

I went home and thought about it. Truth is, I'm not THAT busy. My kids are fifth grade and eighth grade. And then, what really niggled at me, was the thought of these drama kids at the high school wanting to do a play and not being able to find a coach. Drama kids are my people.

Long story short, the principal called me and asked if I'd come in to hear about the position. (And probably also wanted to clap eyeballs on me to make sure I wasn't a total freakshow).

And now I'm a drama coach again, y'all.

What just happened??

It's Like She's Trying To Tell Us Something...

2010-10-18T08:54:00.003-04:00

1. Sign That Appeared on Bug's Door:

Bug's Room

PLEASE KNOCK!!!

(except in emergency)

Sign here to show you have read this:

_______________

Thank you.

Bug

2. Then in the car on the way to the Fryeburg Fair, she announced that she'd written a short story, and she wanted to read it to us.

Clearing her throat, she began, "I open my eyes and wonder where I am. Then I remember, and I'm not happy anymore. I live with my grandparents because when I was three, my mother ran away. Why? I don't know. Since my mother left, I've been wondering who my dad is. I know it's crazy, but my mom was always scared to tell me. Maybe he's the hobo down the street ... no, I doubt it.

I grab the elastic next to my bed and put my hair up, then I clomp downstairs in my fuzzy red slippers. It's hard living with grandparents. They just don't understand the privacy kids need. That's why there are so many "KNOCK FIRST" signs on my door. It doesn't help much, though. I think when I grow up, I'll let my children have locks on their doors, but that's not important right now."

**************************************

Subtle, isn't she?

Tom, Bear, and I all duly signed her bedroom door proclamation. Tom and I always knock when the kids' doors are closed. I believe in privacy and that everyone should have a space that is purely their own. However, I'm also clear to the kids that I knock to announce myself out of courtesy, but I'm a-comin' in. We pay the mortgage, after all.

Bear, however, is notorious for barging into her sister's room without knocking but freaking if Bug comes into hers unannounced. We're seeking the delicate balance between anarchy and full-blown turf war.

That said, I'm wondering what a shrink would say about Bug writing a story wherein the mother runs away and her father is a hobo? Hmmm.

Application

2010-10-13T11:19:00.004-04:00

In the course of applying to be a sub in my kids' school district, I had to get fingerprinted. It made me wonder: how many prospective school employees make it to that point in the application process, willingly give their prints, and get found out as being a wanted felon? These are the kinds of questions that bother me, that but I couldn't exactly ask without it seeming damn suspicious.

Speaking of which, there's something nerve-wracking about being fingerprinted by cops, even when I know it's for an innocuous reason. It certainly didn't help that the three cops running the Department of Education Fingerprinting Workshop looked like something directly out of a 1955 episode of Dragnet. All three were middle-aged, sported short-sleeved button down shirts, close-cropped hair, and professionally blank expressions. I felt like they knew something about me that I didn't know. Like, maybe I'd had a crime spree several years ago that I'd forgotten. I mean, sometimes (fine, usually) I forget where I've parked my minivan at the grocery store. Who's to say I haven't committed multiple burglaries over the years and had them just slip my mind, much like the eye appointment I keep meaning to make but continually forgetting until 5:30 pm on a Friday?

Cop #1 certainly scrutinized my application form carefully enough like he thought I could be a felon. I found this slightly offensive, since I'd put great thought into the outfit I wore that morning, selecting what I thought was the least felon-like ensemble in my wardrobe (trouser jeans, black heels, black tee, and purple cardigan with pink pearls). Or is that what he was expecting me to do? Should I have gone for the not-even-making-an-effort-because-I-have-nothing-to-hide look of yoga pants, sweatshirt, and baseball cap? Shit.

"Right over here, please," he said crisply, waving me toward the table set up with inkpads.

I held out my hand, trying not to let it tremble (don't want to look like I'm worried) but also not wanting to look like I've done this before. He separated my pointer finger from the others, rolled it on the ink pad, and then gently pressed it onto the print card.

He paused and frowned. OMG, my prints must exactly match those of a wanted serial killer. It would be totally my luck to be the first person on earth not to have unique prints. Shitshitshit.

"You should have moisturized," he said to me.

"Excuse me?" I asked, thinking I'd misheard.

"I can't get a clear print. Your hands are too dry," he told me.

"Heh, heh. I guess I missed my chance for a life of crime!" I joked without thinking. Nice. Jenn. You shouldn't crack jokes about crime while you're being fingerprinted. It's like saying "bomb" at an airport.

He frowned again and reached for a water bottle, "Let's wet your hand a little and see if that helps."

I let him spritz my hand, blot it off, and try taking prints again. "We'll have to see if that can be read or not," he said doubtfully.

"What happens if it can't?" I asked nervously.

"Well, then we'll have to amputate your finger," he said with a perfectly straight face.

A Fair Day (pronounce "fayuh" for Maine authenticity)

2010-10-12T12:51:00.016-04:00

I've wanted to go to the Fryeburg Fair ever since we moved to Maine nine years ago. It's the latest fair in Maine, falling on the second week of October, and it's one of the oldest. This year, the kids happened to have a teacher in-service day during the fair's run, so Tom took the day off work and we struck out for western Maine.

A word about Maine roads: while there is a lovely, modern, multi-lane north-south running highway (Yes, a . We have only one interstate here in Maine.), there is no east-west highway. Sure, there are roads that they call "highways" laced all over the place, but they are two-lane (and often with no shoulder to speak of), densely wooded, twisty little roads with houses sprinkled along them every few miles. It gives you a taste of what America was like before the interstate highway system.

We were heading mostly west, so it was twisty little backroads for two hours. The leaves are stunning right now, the lakes the deep rich blue of fall, and the sun was shining. On the other hand, I had two girls prone to carsickness (one of whom is also terrified of twisty little roads) in the backseat. I passed out the Dramamine and sneaked occasional surreptitious glances back at them as we drove, checking for imminent puking. It was a gorgeous, yet harrowing - and thankfully, uneventful ride.

The fair was everything a fair should be: gaudy, noisy, overpriced and lightly perfumed by onion rings, fries, and caramel. Plus, there were flush toilets, which pleased me immensely. One reaches a certain age in life where one feels one has reached one's quota of Port-o-John usage.

There were many darling farm animals to coo over, like these two goats cuddled up together.

This alpaca was practically Disneyesque in his adorableness.

The oxen fell less in the "cute" and more in the "formidable" category. I declined to walk through their building with Tom and the girls. Dudes, they were about eight feet tall and loosely tethered in open stalls. I wasn't about to walk two feet behind them. Instead, I loitered outside and watched a woman blow-drying a calf in preparation for judging. Then this gargantuan steer and I eyeballed each other. I was pretty glad when Tom and the girls emerged from the barn untrampled.

We watched oxen pulling because Tom wanted to. In terms of entertainment, I rank it somewhere between watching my breakfast cereal get soggy and attending a tax seminar.

We rambled through exhibition halls, while the kids asked repeatedly when we could go back to the midway.

We ate some surprisingly decent Filipino food and passed around one $3 water bottle.

We shuffled through the craft hall, while the kids asked repeatedly when we could go back to the midway.

We walked through barns full of livestock, while the kids began to make passionate cases for purchasing some ducks, or perhaps just one chicken. I offered to take them to the midway.

Speaking of fair animals, have any of you every seen an adult male boar? In person? I guess I hadn't because when we sat in the packed grandstand to watch a little livestock judging and they trotted out some boars, I about fell off my bench. First of all? HUGE. Like, six feet long with their heads close to waist-high on a man. Second of all? HUUUUUUGE. Their, um, scrotums.

They looked like two partially deflated basketballs. I mean, that big. Seriously. Bug perused the judging for a couple of minutes, then asked in a clear, ringing tone,

"WHAT is that THING hanging off the pig's butt?"

Bear shot me a panicked look of embarrassement, a clear please, please shut her up message in her eyes.

Tom, sitting next to Bug, murmured something about "discussing it later."

She sat quietly for a minute or so, then asked loudly over the murmur of the crowd, "No, seriously, I have to know. WHAT IS THAT THING HANGING OFF THE PIG'S BUTT??"

Tom leaned down hastily and spoke at length into her ear. I watched her expression slide quickly from curious to horrified. Bear tried to cover her face with her hair and slid microscopically further away from her sister.

We left soon after that and decided to break for a snack. We girls all have our particular fair food weaknesses.

No fair experience is complete without hitting the midway, although neither of my kids are fans of fast rides. As a mom who has watched several hidden-camera 20/20 shows about the (un) safety of fair rides, I was OK at giving the rides a pass.

The girls were gung-ho to try some of the midway games. I was very clear with them before we got to the fair that we would pay for them to play two games, but they'd have to cough up their squirreled-away allowances if they wanted to play any more. One glance at the luridly colored stuffed animals dangling enticingly from the booths, and they happily plunked down their dollars. (I only let them bring a specific amount, or I'm sure they'd have each burned through $50 in pursuit of prizes).

They were steely-eyed with concentration as they threw darts at a balloon, tossed rings around bottles, or threw baseballs at piles of cans. Tom rolled his eyes elaborately but wisely said nothing. Blowing a wad of cash at a fair midway is a childhood rite of passage.

They were divinely happy with their armloads of junky prizes. And broke.

It was a great family outing and a beautiful fall day. We often talk about going places for a day trip, but don't always make the effort to make it happen. It's all too easy to get caught up in mowing the grass, painting the garage, and the myriad of other things that need to get done. There are always things waiting to get done. Sometimes it just feels right to set aside time for fun. I'm so glad we did.

Rumors of My Death Are Mostly Exaggerated

2010-10-03T16:43:00.005-04:00

At some point during the last almost month of blog silence (Huh. Didn't feel that long.), I did have this monster of a migraine where I briefly wished I was dead, but only until I thought about how I really wanted to lost twenty pounds or so before anyone saw me in a casket. At the time, amidst the blinding pain, the flashing lights in my peripheral vision, and the extreme sensitivity to sound, this is what I came up for as a reason to live. I am nothing if not shockingly shallow.

Frankly, I don't know how this many days have gone by since my last post. Stuff has happened, photos have been taken, and several blog posts half-written in my head. Somewhere between the thought and the keyboard, life got in the way. Then, the longer I went without posting, the more whiz-bang amazing it seemed like the next post had to be. And that threw me into a prolonged state of writer's block, which I attempted to self-medicate by shoe shopping. (Didn't work, but I have the cutest new black heels. Sorry. Again with the shallow).

We've settled back into the routine of the school year and the after-school activities schedule. Tom and I sat down the first week of school to take a good hard look at our budget (not recommended as a mood enhancer unless you are Bill Gates). After listing all of our normal monthly expenditures, our exorbitantly expensive health insurance (the joys of self-employment), and the fees for the girls' extracurricular activities, we totaled the whole mess up and compared it to Tom's monthly net salary. We squinted at the numbers, re-totaled, and discussed.

Bottom line: after fourteen years of being out of the classroom, I'm heading back - this time as a substitute teacher. It's something I said I'd never do. Funny how that always comes back to bite you in the ass, isn't it?

"I'd never want to be a sub! What a terrible job!" I've been known to say airily. And it is terrible (the pay is laughable - transients probably make more money washing windshields at intersections for one hour than a sub does in a day). But it also dovetails with my kids' schooldays, it brings in more money than I'm currently earning (which would be $0 per year), I have the luxury of not subbing if my kids are sick, and it puts me back in the classroom with kids. Even though I came to the decision by necessity, I find that I'm really looking forward to it. Teenagers may be moody, hormonal, and prone to questioning authority, but I've missed the little buggers.

Also! I got to go clothes shopping. I assume that they don't want subs in yoga pants and hoodies, which has been my uniform since 1996. I also have a festive array of baseball caps and flip-flops, which I switch out for sneakers in the cold seasons. I picked up some dress pants, skirts, blouses, and cardigans. Tom, of course, grumps about how many subbing days I've already "spent" with my wardrobe enhancement, but he is a big fan of the pencil skirts and high heels.

Can you imagine the blog fodder this could generate? It's a win-win all around.

Elevating the Phrase "Sucky Day" to a Whole New Level

2010-09-15T15:51:00.010-04:00

I had a crappy day yesterday. The day dawned gray and gloomy, I was stressed about bills, feeling guilty for not exercising, making bad food choices, and doing laundry - the morning was not what you'd call rewarding.

The afternoon picked up the theme of the day (sucktastic) and ran with it. I picked up two cranky kids from school and rushed them through homework and The World's Most Random All-Leftover Dinner, so I could get Bug to the sitter's, Bear to her dance class, and meet Tom at the junior high's open house. Then the whole thing in reverse: grabbing Bug from the sitter and Bear from dance. Everybody got to bed late, promising me an fun-filled time trying to get them up for school the next morning.

By the time I flopped into bed, I was mostly at peace with the fact that this had been an irredeemable day. Other than fifteen minutes spent with a perfectly delightful cup of pumpkin spice coffee, it had been a total loss. But at least it was over.

Or so I thought. (Ominous music)

I cracked the window above the bed to let in a trickle of deliciously cool night air and snuggled under my favorite quilt. My pillow was perfectly plump and cool under my cheek. Things were looking up.

I closed my eyes and savored the quiet house. Breathing deeply, I felt the weight of the day lifting off of me.

Except ... well, I actually couldn't breathe that deeply. I tried to relax my body and concentrate on breathing slowly and evenly. No, darn it, there was definite wheezing. Stupid asthma.

Without rolling over, I flopped one arm over to the nightstand and fumbled around for my inhaler. With a practiced gesture, I flipped the cap off and took a quick hit off of it. As I sucked in, I felt something hit my tongue.

Weird. It feels almost like ... lettuce ... or wet tissue. What on earth?

I spat the something into my hand and turned on the light. Without my glasses, all I could tell was that the thing on my hand was brown and felt limp. What the hell?

Curious now and with a definite sense of foreboding, I put the thing on a tissue and found my glasses.

Care to know what I saw? I mean, you could click away now and live a happy, fulfilling life. I wouldn't blame you because this is not something you're going to forget.

You've been warned.

Here's what was on the tissue. And what had previously been in my mouth.

(photo courtesy of Google Images ... I certainly did not

have the presence of mind to take a photograph)

I gaped at the nasty little thing for a solid minute, my brain not willing to accept what I was seeing.

"Tom?" I called to the closed bathroom door, "I'm going to need you to come out here."

"Uh, I'm kind of busy in here," he said.

"No. No. I really, really need you to come out and see this," I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the horror on the Kleenex. And unless I was mistaken ... yes, it was starting to wave its little legs around. It was alive. And had been in my mouth.

Tom was gratifyingly appalled when I told him what had happened and showed him the evidence. I ran into the bathroom to gargle extensively, scrape my tongue , brush my teeth, and start again with the gargling, trying to get rid of the sensation of bug in my mouth holy shit buginmymouth there was a BUG in my aaargg MOUTH arrrggg!

I heard the front door open and close while I was systematically gargling my way through a quart of Listerine. When Tom came back into the bedroom, I asked him wildly, "Did you just go outside and SET IT FREE?"

"No," he said grimly, "No, I burned it. It was that horrifying."

"Oh," I said and thought about that. "That actually makes me feel a little better. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Whoever said chivalry is dead?

Sidenote: This has officially taken the top spot in My Personal Brushes with Grossness. Previously, that spot had been occupied by the time I was sitting eating a Healthy Choice vanilla pudding cup by the light of the TV. One minute, creamy deliciousness. Next minute? Something large and bulky and WRONG in my mouth. Something that turned out to be a random broccoli spear. It was revolting, but seems positively tame now compared to buginmymouth.

First Day(s) of School

2010-09-06T11:06:00.007-04:00

The girls went back to school last week. The elementary school started on Tuesday, and the junior high on Wednesday, which I initially thought was just plain whack. I was surprised to find that I actually quite enjoyed it. When I picked them up, they were each able to tell me about their first day of school without the other one interrupting to tell about her first day of school. Plus, I only had one set of emergency contact/no, we're still not migrant workers/yes, we're still Maine residents/field trip permission slip packets to fill out each evening. So, definite pluses to the staggered first days.

And why has it taken me nearly a week to post the first day of school pictures, with nary a blogged word all week? Well, in a word, it's been HOT around here. We had temperatures in the high nineties all last week in Maine.

Are you people in Arizona/California/The South done chuckling patronizingly yet? I realize that to some of you that's not really that hot. But I want you to bear this in mind: Mainers don't have air conditioning. When it's 97 degrees outside, it's 97 degrees inside - give or take a piddly degree.

I'm proud to identify as a Mainer in most circumstances, but on the topic of climate control, I stand firmly amongst the air-conditioned. After spending our first summer in a sweltering rental apartment while we house-hunted (that's a whole blog post in itself), I determined never to spend another summer without air conditioning. And although it's impossible to buy a house in Maine with central air conditioning (I know. I tried.), we have a BIG window unit in our living room and smaller ones in all the bedrooms. It does the job.

Unfortunately for the girls, the school system stands on the other side of the air conditioning topic. They spent their first week in 90 degree classrooms. I packed water bottles, grapes, Gatorade, pudding, and anything cool and refreshing I could think to stuff in their lunch boxes. Wednesday, I picked them up at school with an ice-chest full of Popsicles. Thursday, we headed straight to a friend's pool after school.

Bug, first day of school:

Bear, first day of school:

Friday night, the remnants of Hurricane Earl passed through and behind him came some beautifully cool and crisp fall air. Yesterday felt so downright autumnal that I baked pumpkin bread and dragged out my knitting.

The beauty of Maine (for those of us with short attention spans) is that as soon as you get tired of one season, another one comes rolling along.

As Promised ... The Outtakes

2010-08-30T09:18:00.016-04:00

Thank you, THANK YOU, all who voted! You made two end-of-the-summer, bored and cranky sisters happy and excited. Except for one small kerfluffle when Bug "accidentally" marked down one of Bear's votes instead of Bear doing it herself (the problem? Bear claims that Bug's tick marks are too thick to be aesthetically pleasing ... sigh), it has been a peaceful last weekend of summer.

So, here, in gratitude are the outtakes of that photo shoot. And, just to be crystal clear, 96% of the photos were outtakes, with a few good ones sprinkled throughout with the scarcity of chocolate chips in store-brand ice cream.

It is with no real regret that I come to terms with the fact that neither of my children have what it takes to be a supermodel. Although the $10,000/hour paycheck would come in darn handy when it comes time to pay college tuition, it's not a lifestyle I'd wish on a kid. I'm sure you'll agree once you see these photos, they just don't have what it takes.

Unless there's a niche market for modelling superhero costumes? Bear seems to have a certain panache that would lend itself to that:Although I'm guessing that most supermodels don't spontaneously adjust their orthodonture while the camera is clicking away:

Or quiz the photographer mercilessly about what's for lunch:

Lucky for me, what they lack in professionalism, they make up for in distractibility.

Bug (as I'm snapping away): Hey, when does this bush flower? Doesn't it get berries?Bear (mid-shot suddenly spins to open the playhouse window): Is our old kitchen play set still in here?
Most supermodels don't openly express disdain for the photographer's camera angles:

Or force the photographer to take a shot of their shoes because "they're really cute, and I can tell you're not getting them in the picture."
Or supply this gem of an expression when asked to "look pleasant":

Or choose a Billy Bob Thornton circa Slingblade expression when told to "smile naturally":

Or have to be told, "Stop looking at the frogs instead of the camera!" And especially not to have to be told that more than twice in a five minute span.

And this? I don't even know what this is, but I can guarantee you that supermodels don't do this in the middle of a shoot:

I'm also pretty sure that fashion photographers don't have to make lunch for their models after the shoot, only to be told that "These aren't the kind of chicken nuggets we like, and the grapes are starting to get soft."

Back-To-School Fashion Shoot 2010

2010-08-26T17:57:00.018-04:00

It's Back to School for both Bear and Bug this week (and, not incidentally, Back to Routine and Sanity for yours truly). Our summertime disregard for regular bedtimes and waking times around here has led to certain personality malfunctions in my children. As the summer wears on, my tolerance for playing mediator for cranky short people is wearing thiiiiiiin. Like, if I won the lottery and was offered the choice between the cash prize or one day of silence, I'd have to think about it for awhile.

However, a bright spot in the last week has been our Annual Back-to-School Fashion Shoot. The girls have been anxiously reminding me that we're running out of time as the first day of school creeps nearer, and they've been assembling outfits and accessories all week in preparation. Today we finally got around to shooting the pictures.

Here's how it works: The girls have each chosen their six favorite new school outfits to show you. Please vote for your favorite outfit for each kid in the comments. I can guarantee you that they will be hounding me to check my comments every five minutes tomorrow, and tallying votes will be way more entertaining than fighting with each other over who is breathing too loudly. PLEASE VOTE. Do it for me and my ever-dwindling sanity.

Bear, Eighth Grader

#1. Bear: a plaid shirt open over layered camis, worn with accent necklace and jeans.

#2. Bear: a casual graphic tee paired with gray skinny jeans.

#3 Bear: posing with her favorite accessory, her cellphone (Lewis, because naturally she named it) and wearing an aqua tie-dyed babydoll shirt over a white tee with jeans.

#4 Bear: wearing her souvenir t-shirt from band camp, gray skinny jeans, and holding her new backpack.

#5 Bear: charcoal and pink babydoll top over a white tee with dark-rinse jeans.

#6 Bear: a tiered, ruffled orange and white top over a tank, paired with jeans.

Bug, Fifth Grader

#1 Bug: floral tee with sleeveless gray vest, paired with jeans and her spiffy new backpack.

#2 Bug: gray dancer t-shirt worn with flower necklace and jeans.

#3 Bug: hot pink babydoll shirt worn over a white tee with jeans and plaid flats.

#4 Bug: green and pink graphic tee worn with a pink ribbon necklace and jeans.

#5 Bug: gray striped sharkbite tank worn over a lime tee with jeans.

#6 Bug: gray and yellow striped cardigan worn with a coral cami and jeans.

Bonus Enticement for Voting! If the kids manage to accrue a respectable number of votes (i.e., enough to keep them from bickering), I plan to post the outtakes from this photo shoot early next week. And, trust me, these outtakes are not to be missed.

No, You Can't Have a Live Koala as a Pet. Or a Manatee.

2010-08-24T11:19:00.015-04:00

On the last day of our Ohio visit, my parents took us all to The Columbus Zoo. Jack Hanna (of Tonight Show fame) is the director of this zoo, and it is fantastic.

I learned something valuable that day, and I'd like to pass it on to you as life advice, which you should probably write in permanent ink on your hand. It's that important.

Here it is: If you go to the zoo on the hottest day of a Midwestern summer, just go ahead and skip the rhino enclosure. Particularly if you have a fairly hair-trigger gag reflex.

Holy STENCH. There are no words. I'll just say that no Port-a-Potty I've ever encountered could come within 1/1000 of the odor of that enclosure. They must outfit the trainers with gas masks or something. Not only did I not pause to admire the mighty rhino, I picked up my sedate pace to something approximating a quick trot until I was well upwind.

The brown bears just sat around looking big, dumb, and goofy, trying to convince us that they wouldn't mind at all if we climbed over the fence and cuddled them like big fluffy teddy bears. Unfortunately for them, I've read this book, and it was so completely terrifying that I will never, ever be tempted to walk up to a bear. The quote I remember from that book, which is a true account of people who have been attacked by bears, is one from a man who was dragged out of his tent by a grizzly. His friends reported hearing him scream, "Oh God, it's got my leg off!" as he was being mauled to death.

Nice try on the cute act, bears. I saw those teeth when you yawned, and I'm not falling for it.

The newest exhibit was the polar bears. They had a beautiful enclosure complete with a moat full of rainbow trout with a viewing deck both from above-ground and underwater. The polar bears are twin sisters, rescued as orphaned cubs near Alaska.

They are also rude and inconsiderate.

How, you ask, can polar bears be rude?
Well, keep in mind that it was HOT that day. Like, jungle hot. Not a cloud in the sky. High humidity. Scorching sun. Sweat dribbled constantly from my scalp down into my eyes, and even my purse felt cloyingly hot pressed against my side.

Meanwhile, the polar bears, rudely did THIS the entire time we were on the observation deck. Over and over again with palpable glee. Almost like they knew we were about to pass out from heat exhaustion as we stood, pressed against the glass watching.

Then this. As if they were filming a goddamn Mountain Dew commercial or something. Jerks.

At least this guy was gracious enough to look as hot and uncomfortable as the zoo guests. He laid on his shaded platform with his harem the entire time we stood watching, raised his head for precisely one second while I snapped his picture, then flopped back down to wait for the cool breezes of evening.

That's manners.

I was bizarrely taken with the flying foxes, which were bat-like enough in appearance to horrify my mother. She has an iron-clad "no bat" policy, which was severely tested last summer when one decided to take up residence in their patio table umbrella. He was, to put it mildly, dispatched.

I thought the flying foxes were fantastic, although I concede that they have extremely creepy feet. They reminded me of tiny, elderly British gentlemen, with their raincoats tucked securely around them. They just need little derby-style hats, and the image would be perfect. I

considered writing "Please supply the flying foxes with little hats" and submitting it in the suggestion box, but they'd probably have to staple them to their heads because of the whole hanging upside-down thing. And that would be wrong, so I let it go. Reluctantly, because it really would be fabulous.

Manatees eating lettuce. I'm putting this shot on my fridge as substantiation for my theory that eating salad can so make you fat, so really, why not just focus on cheesecake?Snoozing koala. Adorable. My girls want one as a pet. Me too, but I couldn't find any zoo personnel who could confirm if they could be litter box trained.
The girls were as excited as preschoolers to find a misting station on that hot afternoon. Even Papa joined them under the cooling mist.

It looked tempting, but I believe I've already established on this blog the effects of humidity on my hair? I was afraid that the misting system, combined with the day's heat, would lead to me poking out some hapless tourist's eye with an errant frizzy curl. (Also, I knew there was a decent chance that I'd wind up being in a photograph later that day, and then I'd have to explain the 'do to future generations looking through my photo albums. Much better to appear red-faced and sweaty than with The Frizzy Helmet of Shame).

I Think It's Time For School To Start Back Up Again

2010-08-19T16:37:00.002-04:00

Bear (hollers from the living room): Mom, are we allowed to be on the computer?

Me: No, I think you've had enough computer time for today. Go get a book and read.

Bear (happy to be the informant): Well, Bug's on the computer. (to her sister) Buuuug, you have to get offfffff.

Bug: Mom, can I just listen to music on the computer while I read?

Me (opening mouth to reply):

Bear (snotty): Um, there's this thing? It's called an iPod?

Bug (right back atcha snotty): Yeah, and there's this other thing? Called a sister? And it's ANNOYING ME.

Bear (hollers from living room): Moooooom, Bug just told me I'm annoying!

***********************

Yesterday, for similar mutual heckling that culminated in shrieking and thrown puzzle pieces, they both wound up spending the hour before dinner in solitary (in bedroom, no iPod or phone). Anyone care to lay bets that they won't find themselves in solitary again today?

It's that time of the summer - two weeks to go until school starts - when sibling rivalry and boredom has come to a head. They're tired of swimming, playing outside, and all the standard summer activities, and in their boredom they've turned to the only remotely entertaining activity around: annoying the shit out of your sister. It doesn't help that they both happen to excel at this activity (what can I say - they're gifted), and one carefully chosen remark is all it takes to send the other one in a stompy, door-slamming maelstrom of sisterly fury.

Right now they're both sullenly folding laundry with cheerful Mary Poppins-y assurances from me that there's plenty more where that came from should they care to bicker while folding. Is it wrong that I secretly hope they'll get into it, so I can make them Swiffer the floors, too?

Back From Vacation, part 2

2010-08-18T08:03:00.004-04:00

An added bonus to our Ohio trip was that my aunt and uncle from California were there for the first two days of our visit. We hadn't seen them in seven years. Seven! How that much time slipped by I couldn't possibly tell you.

Joe and Donna were The Cool Aunt and Uncle of my childhood. You know the kind? They were the anti-parents of my childhood, and every kid should have at least one. My parents' house was loving and fun, but with a definite overlay of rules and structure. Staying at Joe and Donna's meant a much looser regime. I remember once being scandalized out of my young mind to discover that my older male cousins wore only boxer shorts to bed. Mine was a pajama-wearing household, and it had never occurred to me that every single other human being on Earth didn't also wear pajamas to bed.

I once spent an entire week at their house when I was around seven. Donna took me to the base swimming pool every single day that week without complaint, let me brush her long hair endlessly, and bought me an ice-cream sundae one day for lunch. Joe called me "lady" and engaged in long, serious conversations with me about the Betsy-Tacy books I was reading. I was even allowed to sniff his after-dinner crème de menthe glass, which felt very glamorous at the time.

When I mentioned at the grocery store how pretty the multicolored mini marshmallows were, Donna tossed a sack into the cart. That evening, as a special treat for my parents' arrival to pick me up the next day, we crafted a God-awful, sickeningly sweet pie out of pudding, mini-marshmallows, and whipped cream. My 12-year-old cousin and I smashed the graham crackers for the crust using a ball peen hammer. I was divinely happy.

I was so glad that Bear and Bug got to spend some time with them on this trip. They were only three and six the last time we saw Joe and Donna.

The main enticement for making this trip to Ohio when we did was that Joe and Donna brought with them from California my 92-year-old Mamaw. By far my closest grandparent, she and I have evolved from sleepovers (chocolate pudding for dessert, pancakes for breakfast) when I was tiny, to writing letters when my father joined the Air Force and we moved away from Pittsburgh, to phone calls in more recent years as my life became busy with marriage and children and her handwriting became shaky.

It was wonderful and difficult to see her. She is losing her memory, repeating things often, and easily confused. She seemed fragile to me, no longer the invincible and independent grandmother of my childhood. Widowed in her early fifties, she never remarried. She put herself through nursing school after my grandfather died, and eventually opened her own business (a wallpaper and paint store that she ran for many years). She has always been supremely independent, and I can tell how frustrated it makes her to have to ask for help.

Despite knowing that she was staying for a week at my parents' house while Joe and Donna went to his high school reunion in Pennsylvania, she woke up and stripped the sheets from her bed three mornings - convinced that she was leaving that day. When my mother helped her to unpack her suitcase and put her clothes in a chest of drawer, she was puzzled and upset to find her suitcase empty the next morning, thinking she'd run out of clean clothes.

The old stories she remembers faultlessly, and I never tire of hearing them. Growing up as one of three sisters (and two brothers), she told me how each of the girls were allowed to receive their beaux in a different room of the downstairs. Mamaw in the kitchen, Edith in the living room, and LaRay in the dining room. At the end of the evening, as a signal that it was time for the young men to leave, her father would start harrumphing and scuffing his feet upstairs. If they didn't heed the signal, a few minutes later he would come marching down the stairs in his red one-piece long underwear. "My, those boys would run out then!" she told me, "One of LaRay's suitors tried to leap over the front porch rail and wound up in the rosebushes with a broken leg."

On the morning Uncle Joe and Mamaw were leaving for the airport, we all got up early to say good-bye to them. Last thing, after we'd hugged and Mamaw was walking out the front door, she turned back and caught my hand, "Be sure to bring the girls to visit me. I just know they'd love Kennywood."

Kennywood is the amusement park in Pennsylvania where my father worked as a teenager. The amusement park that Mamaw has lived three thousand miles away from for more than twenty-five years. My heart snagged, but I smiled and told her I was sure the girls would love it, too.

Back From Vacation, part 1

2010-08-16T20:50:00.011-04:00

These past two weeks, I've been off-grid vacationing. While I realize that to most of you, this probably conjures images of camping in the Yukon, climbing a distant Tibetan peak, or perhaps a safari in the wilds of Africa. For me, "off-grid vacationing" loosely translates to "lounging around in my parents' house in suburban Ohio while eating my weight in delicious food, making me too damn lazy to crack open my laptop."

Look! Proof! The night we rolled in, my brother and sister-in-law hired a Spanish chef to prepare the following:

There was tapas. And bronzino (fish! not self-tanner as one [me] might initially think). There was a garlic-saffron aioli that I would like to carry in my purse for condiment emergencies.

Sure, I posted a few desultory updates on Facebook, but the bulk of my trip can be summed up in two words: Food Coma.

The girls, on the other hand, basked in the ten kasquillion candlepower glow of being the only grandchildren AND only nieces (no nephews either, for that matter). They are the sum total of the next generation, and MAN did they reap the rewards. From shopping for school clothes with Nana, to bookstore spending sprees with Papa...

To rides in Uncle Awesome's convertible...

To Aunt Fabulous teaching them to bathe the puppy while wearing a dress and heels...

This was a lifestyle to which Bear and Bug would LOVE the chance to become accustomed. They became un peu insufferable and slightly wired at all times. To wit:

They are currently undergoing Spoiling Detox back in the cold, harsh reality of life in Maine with their parents. A life in which their mother, instead of allowing them to eat Junior Mints before lunch, will say, "What ... are you kidding me? Hey, since you're in the kitchen, unload the dishwasher." and then chuckle maliciously when their expectant little faces fall.

And Now I'm Too Tired To Go On Vacation

2010-07-30T12:29:00.002-04:00

Much like you never realize as a kid all the labor your mother goes through to make the holidays happen, you also do not realize that leaving on vacation takes WORK. We're leaving for Ohio tomorrow to hang with my family for awhile, then detouring to Niagara Falls on our way home.

Yeah, that's a 1000 mile road trip. Each way. With kids. One of whom is prone to car sickness. It's going to be a par-TAY.

We had a narrowly averted crisis this morning, when we realized that Tom's laptop has no DVD drive, and mine has no working headphone jack. I.e.: no movies in the car to help the kids pass the time and prevent them from killing each other with fast-food sporks out of boredom. Believe me, I was as upset as they were. Then, in what I can only attribute to a Christmas (in July) miracle, with the kids pleading for me to try the headphone jack one more time, the damn thing suddenly worked. Uncle Awesome swooped in with updated DVD-running software (this probably has a more accurate name), and WE'RE A GO FOR MOVIES IN THE CAR. Yay!

This morning, I've:

-mowed the lawn one last time

-baked road trip cookies (which I realize some of you may consider optional, but I do not)

-baked road trip muffins (see above)

-packed toiletries and medicines

-double-checked the kids' suitcases (so as to ensure that we don't arrive in Ohio only to realize that Child #1 has no underwear and Child #2 has 25 shirts, but only one pair of shorts).

-cleaned the ice-chest in preparation for stocking it with drinks tomorrow

Now I'm actually thinking I might have time to pack my own suitcase, although I'm going to have to evacuate the cat first, who has decided that my suitcase makes the ideal napping spot. Then I'll have to vacuum the cat hair out of it. At which point, I'll probably need to stop and have a cup of coffee.

We leave at 6:00 a.m. We are not morning people. This promises to be just all kinds of fun.

Shamefaced

2010-07-28T10:07:00.004-04:00

So, uh, the horrific insomnia I wrote about a couple of posts back? That's been keeping me awake, wandering my house and eating pudding cups after midnight for nearly a month now? You know what else has been going on for nearly a month now?

*dying of shame*

I've ... um ... kind of been drinking iced tea by the bucketful. Like almost a pitcher a day.

And I understand that for most of you, this would be a no-brainer connection. Tom had even asked me at one point, as I sat sipping an enormous frosty cup of iced tea at 7:30 pm, if it had caffeine.

"No," I assured him happily, "It's Lipton. All Lipton tea is decaffeinated."

Right? Right? Tell me I'm not alone on this (wrong) assumption. Wasn't their slogan something like "naturally decaffeinated" a few years back?

*crickets*

Well, fine. Suffice it to say that the lack of sleep had become dire enough that I was wracking my brain (and the internet) to figure out what had been keeping me awake at night.

TOP DIAGNOSIS CONTENDERS:

1. Perimenopause/shifting hormonal levels (self diagnosed!)

2. Brain tumor (always a favorite contender)

3. Tom and his creaky C-PAP mask that he wears to sleep (hey, what good is being married if you can't blame random crap on your spouse?)

I don't even know what led me to the cupboard where I keep the tea bags, but as I turned the box over and over in my hands, I do recall thinking You'd think if this stuff was decaffeinated that they would advertise that somewhere on the box. No proudly emblazoned "naturally decaffeinated." Suspicious.

And, oh! There on the back by the nutritional information were the words "This product contains 10 mg. caffeine per 8 fl. oz. serving." I stood there stunned. I felt personally betrayed.

That was three days ago. I've had two really good night sleep since.

NEW POSSIBLE DIAGNOSIS CONTENDERS:

1. Early Alzheimer's (what company used to say "naturally decaffeinated"??)

2. Brain Tumor (I don't want to jinx myself by taking it out of the running).

Culture Month (But Pronounced "Culchah" Because It Amuses Me)

2010-07-26T09:33:00.007-04:00

A month or so ago, Tom and I had one of those heart-to-heart "State of the Union" marriage talks, where we ramble indiscriminately, but without rancor, about any and all aspects of our married lives.

For example:

Him: What's up with the new weeding style?

Me: Hmm?

Him: The one where you rip them out and leave them in little piles all over the grass and I eventually pick them up a week or two later when they turn brown...?

Me: Ah. I figured I would eventually mow over them with the tractor and mulch 'em up. Sort of like fertilizing the grass but without chemicals.

Him: Please don't.

Me: Noted. Can we address the energetic sucking of breath mints?

Him: They taste better when you oxygenate them during the dissolving process.

Me: By sucking them like an old person sucking on their dentures?

Him: Oh. OK, then. I'll work on it.

Me: Appreciated.

***************************

The one thing we both agreed on is that we both miss the cultural activities we used to attend when we lived in bigger towns. It's not that those opportunities don't exist in Maine, but you have to be a little more assertive in searching them out. We decided to make that a new priority.

In the past two weeks, we've attended:

*2 end-of-session concerts at Bear's band camp (obviously we would have gone to these anyway, but they were really amazingly good and deserve mention)

*three classical concerts at a nearby college

*"Chicago" at the Maine State Music Theatre

And we're looking into tickets to see the Broadway touring company of "Spamalot" when they come through this fall.

Surprise Side Effects of OPERATION CULCHAH:

1. Bug is now obsessed with taking cello lessons. When we sat down at one of the concerts, she popped right back up out of her seat and demanded that I switch seats with her because she "couldn't see the cello." We're looking into lessons.

2. Bear, three year adherent of the jeans/shorts and t-shirt dress code, is suddenly passionately into dresses.

3. Bug spent Saturday uploading 306 classical pieces onto her iPod. After playing them in her room for several hours, she reports that classical music "calms the cats."

4. I got to buy new shoes. Score.

Frogtography

2010-07-22T13:38:00.006-04:00

Yeah, I'm still yammering on about the pond. People, I LOVES IT. Like, ridiculously so. I like the way it looks, like buying cute little water plants to float in it, like sitting on the porch listening to the waterfall, like arranging rocks around it. It completes me. For now, anyway. Until I think up a new project/obsession.

You can imagine my delight when I discovered that the pond had acquired its first voluntary resident the other day. I'm not counting the minnows we caught and dumped in. For all I know, it's like Guantanomo Pond to them. This little guy came on purpose.

Meet Leonard:

Leonard's about two inches long and already has staked out a favorite spot right by the waterfall. We think he's ridiculously cool, and even Tom has been delightedly spouting things like," If you build it, they will come." We're easily amused around here.

Yesterday, Bug and I went out to toss some fish food into the pond and see if we could spot Leonard, when she said, "Look! There's another one." The dark blob on one of my water plants that I'd dismissed as a leaf turned out to be another frog.

His name is Emmett, and at four inches long, he could absolutely take Leonard in a frog fight.

People! I MADE AN ECOSYSTEM!

Frogparazzi: Bear was mid-facial, but rushed outside to meet our new resident anyway.

We don't get out much.

Insomnia

2010-07-19T05:00:00.000-04:00

I have always been a champion sleeper. I excel at:

-Falling Asleep Instantly

-Sleeping Regardless of Actually Laying Down

-Ability to Stay Asleep for Ten Hours (Unless Prodded by Offspring to Make Breakfast)

No, I'm not narcileptic, which, inconvenience aside, would be a cool and obscure diagnosis I could use to impress people. Rats.

On a typical night, I tend to wake up several times a night, listen for restless children or serial killers who may have wandered into the house, then roll over and fall instantly back asleep. Lately? Not so much with the falling back asleep part. I've been going to bed, falling asleep with my usual élan, only to awake an hour and a half later in a state of what I can only describe as WIDETHEFUCKAWAKE. (Apologies to those of you with delicate sensibilities; there is simply no other description which conveys the exact shade of wakefulness I experience).

After a night or two laying in bed watching the minutes, then hours tick away without a hint of drowsiness., I began to wonder if this was no fluke, but the new normal. If so, the new normal sucks.

The third night, I began to wonder What do people do to make themselves sleepy? Warm milk, it occurred to me. Then, ew. Being one who prefers one's milky beverages of the icy cold variety, just the thought of warm milk skeeves me out. I doubted it would result in sleep. Vomiting, possibly. Sleep, no.

Which is why, at 12:20 a.m., I was seated on my kitchen floor, back against the refrigerator door, eating a pudding cup. What? Pudding is made with milk. Also: yummy. It just didn't make me sleepy.

I wander to the living room and do pretend yoga, which is mostly just stretching and assuming poses that are vaguely "yoga-esque" because I don't actually know any yoga poses. I now feel stretchier, but not the tiniest bit sleepy. I lay on my back on the floor for awhile and think about how not sleepy I feel. 12:58 a.m.

I open my laptop and squint at Facebook and email for awhile. Getting my glasses from the bedroom would enable me to actually read FB and email, but I don't want to wake up Tom by rummaging around on my dresser. Plus, reading my friends' Facebook status updates while having to guess at about every other word is pretty entertaining. For about four and a half minutes. 1:05 a.m.

1:06 a.m. I eat another pudding cup.

1:12 a.m. I go sit on the front porch. Too hot. Too dark (is that a bear lurking behind the hydrangea bush?). Still humid. I go back inside.

I rummage oh-so-quietly on my dresser and retrieve my glasses. In the guest room, I read an entire library book of Bear's. This kills about an hour and a half. 2:52 a.m.

I go back to bed. Surely, surely now I will fall asleep. I lay on my right side for awhile, then flip to my left. Tom is maddeningly asleep. I ask softly, "Hey, does the air conditioner sound weird to you?" He doesn't answer. I flip back to my right side and think That's it! No more tossing and turning. I will just lay here very still and eventually I will have to fall asleep.

3: 05. Except... I keep remembering how much better my left side felt. I feel like if I could just flip back to my left side, I would finally fall asleep. My right side sucks. My hip aches, and my feet feel twitchy. I tell myself sternly that I'm not allowed to change position.

Twenty seconds later I cave and turn to my left side. Damn. The right side was better.

It's 3:28 am. I'm never going to sleep again, I think. I probably have a brain tumor, and it's pressing on the brain thingy that makes you sleepy. I consider Googling what part of the brain makes you sleep, but don't.

Finally, at 3:40 a.m., mostly because I can't think of a single other thing to do (interesting how productive things like cleaning never occur to me when I can't sleep), I take a shower. I stretch it out by using every single shower product I own. I rinse and repeat. I exfoliate. I shave. I loofah.

And finally, at 4:03 a.m., I sleep.

Until 7:00, when Bug wanders in to ask if it can be a pancakes for breakfast day.

Here's the phone call you don't want to receive while your kid's at camp:

2010-07-15T09:01:00.003-04:00

Bear: Hi, Mommy.

Me: Hi, kiddo!

Bear: So did you hear what's happening up here?

Me: What do you mean?

Bear (very matter of fact): There was an armed robbery at a bank near the university, so they put the whole campus on lockdown.

Me: What?

Bear: The guy escaped, and they haven't found him yet.

Me: Where are you?

Bear: We had to go to the basement of the dorm. They just now let us go up to our rooms, but we can't leave the building.

Me (frantically logging on to the computer to find a news update): OK, honey. Are you all right?

Bear (sounding distracted): Yeah. Hey, I think they might get us pizza for dinner!

Now I tend to be pretty good at thinking up potential random disaster scenarios in my head, and I had already worried about Bear having a nut allergy reaction at camp, developing appendicitis, dorm fires, and whether there would be a lifeguard when they went swimming. I confess that armed robbery had not occurred to me. I guess I need to start thinking bigger in my paranoia.

All's well that ends well, and they ended the lockdown an hour or so later in time for the kids to go to the dining hall for dinner. Bear was mostly bummed that they didn't get to order pizza.

Lake Days

2010-07-13T11:23:00.007-04:00

We've actually been having summer weather this summer in Maine, something many of you, no doubt, take for granted where you live. If you were reading my blog last summer, you'll remember that 2009 was The Summer That Wasn't in Maine. Rain, rain, rain, followed by very cloudy cool day, followed by rain. June through mid-August. Every damned day. In mid-August we had precisely five summery days, and then it began to cool into fall-like weather. I'm still waiting for my refund check.

2010 has decided to make up for 2009 with a cavalcade of heat and humidity. I walk out my front door and am instantly drenched in sweat. Sitting perfectly still in the shade? Full-body sweat. My best friend has coined a new word: "swass" to describe the lovely combination of sweat trickling down your *ahem* heinie, such that when you stand up you appear to have wet your pants. This is usually accompanied by "swoobs", which I'm betting you can figure out on your own, and I will only hint delicately at by saying that it usually results in having to wring out your bra.

My favorite coping mechanism for the heat is to sit inside in the air conditioning with a glass of iced tea and my Kindle. When my mothering guilt kicks in, I load up the kids and head for the lake.

This is our go-to lake, about 20 minutes north of us. It's kid-friendly (sand beach and a gradually sloping lake bed that provides a huge swimming area that's not scary-deep). It's also mom-friendly (clean bathrooms with FLUSH toilets!). Win-win, except for the having to wear a bathing suit in public part. I just got a cute new one, though, so even that isn't too big of a deal this year.

The girls each brought a friend:

Which didn't stop them from engaging in some light sibling warfare:

The older girls discovered the ruins of an old stone wall way out in the lake, where the water was about eight feet deep. They dove down wearing goggles to examine it and check out the fish swimming amongst the rocks. The younger two, of course, were dying to check it out, but because I have this secret paranoia of someone else's kid drowning on my watch (I've never been the same since reading "Map of the World", an Oprah book from years ago, where a little girl drowns while her mother's friend is watching her), I made them each take a noodle out with them and buddy up with one of the big girls. I kept an eagle eye on them while pretending to read a book.

I am totally unfair and don't trust them, I've been informed. I can live with that.

Side note: do you see how crazy-tan my girls are? This after diligently slathering them with 50 spf sunscreen each time they go out. It's their grandma's Native American blood showing. They're usually both about the shade of a burnished walnut by the time they go back to school. I would have killed for that base back in the day. I remember laying out in the backyard with coconut suntan lotion (not to be confused with sunscreen!) and never wound up even half that tan.

Happy Camper

2010-07-12T07:54:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we dropped Bear off at band camp. It was more than a little weird helping my 13-year-old move into a dorm room and get settled, then climbing into the van and making the 75 mile drive home without her. This is her first sleepaway camp, her first time being away from home for longer than one night. Two nights ago, she got nervous. "I'm really going to miss you, Mom," she told me at bedtime and confessed that her secret fear was that she'd be too homesick and have to come home.

Flash-forward to Camp Day, and this is what she was saying: "Boy, I can't wait for you and Daddy to leave, so I'll feel like I'm really at camp!"

And that evening? When she called home for the first time? "I'VE FOUND MY PEOPLE!" she announced triumphantly. She chattered about how as they finished their auditions, kids were sent into a mini-auditorium to wait. A sports movie was playing, and kids were largely ignoring it to read or talk. But then ... the movie was switched out for a Blue Man Group concert DVD, and the room fell raptly silent to watch. Bear couldn't get over this.

I can't wait to hear what this week holds for her, and I have a sneaking feeling that I'd better start saving up for next year...

Anniversary

2010-07-09T11:49:00.005-04:00

Last month, Tom and I had our fifteenth wedding anniversary. (And, hey, did I ever mention that when I went to get my wedding gown fitted the seamstress had to take in the waist by quite a bit to make it fit me? I like to work that into conversation when I can because no way is THAT ever going to happen again. I mean, unless I get one of those weird flesh eating bacteria diseases and it miraculously focuses just on my waist. Maybe then).

We made plans to go (à deux) to one of our favorite restaurants after Tom got off from work. That morning I pulled my little black dress out of the closet and selected my favorite long, pink accent necklace to wear with it. Pink toenails, my brand-new black patent leather wedge sandals, and a pink bag would complete the look. I don't get many opportunities to dress up (unless we're talking my nice baseball cap, rather than the dirty sweat-stained one I garden in), so each time I went into my bedroom that day, I took the opportunity to peek at my planned outfit. I pondered which perfume to wear.

I should probably back up and mention that my anniversary fell two days after my spectacular Backwards With a Full Twist fall into the pond hole? So that in addition to being my wedding anniversary, June 24th also marked the day in which my foot most resembled a swollen corpse foot? Yet somehow, as I looked forward all day to going out with my husband, it never really occurred to me that this would be a problem. Despite the inability to bear any weight on that foot. Or the fact that the foot began to swell rapidly and alarmingly within ten minutes of being up and around.

Around 4:00, I pondered my cute, strappy patent leather wedges and (in a blinding epiphany) realized that I had precisely zero chance of getting them on my foot. In fact, short of a strap-on snowshoe, I couldn't really think of any footwear that would work.

I called Tom and confessed that my Foot o'Shame was going to ruin our anniversary dinner. He gallantly offered to get takeout for all four of us from the same restaurant. I re-hung my black dress in the closet and tucked the pink necklace back into the jewelry box.

"You have a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to Daddy's & my anniversary dinner," I told the girls. "Only one condition: you have to set the table."

They agreed. There was whispered consultation, then they sent my to my room, where I iced my foot and listened nervously to the alarming amount of clatter coming from the front of the house.

I whipped out my cell phone and texted Tom:

Me: Told kids they can share our takeout only if they set table. Am fabulous mom.

Tom: Food ordered! Home soon.

Me: Kids just yelled don't come out. Smell matches. Bad?

Tom: Smoke alarm will be next...

Me: Just heard them both leave by front door. Weird.

Tom: I'd get out now, if I were you.

Me: Also, cat just flew back here looking clearly freaked out. Hear much running of water.

Tom: NOW. Get out now.

Me: Thinking I can make ladder of bed sheets and escape by window. Foot may be problem.

Not long after, Bug and Bear came to my door and called me out. This is what they'd done:

Not bad! I was especially impressed that they thought to pull out place mats (non-matching, but I appreciated the thought), put ice in the drinks, and picked flowers from the garden for a centerpiece. The lit candle explained the matches.

I may not have looked nearly as cute as I'd hoped (black yoga pants, t-shirt, ponytail, foot o'shame), but it turned out to be one of our best anniversary dinners to date.

Happy Fourth!

2010-07-04T12:03:00.004-04:00

Scene: This morning. Temperature: 92 degrees. Humidity: Off the fricking charts, judging my my hair-o-meter. [Meaning I can see frizz out of both sides of my peripheral vision simultaneously. It's a fairly exact science].

Me: I want to get a nice 4th of July picture by the flags and the garden. Come on, you two. Smile!

Bear: It's too bright. I can't keep my eyes open. (much exaggerated squinting)

Bug whining and shifting from foot to foor): My feeeeet hurt.

Me (growl): Smile.

Bug: Can't we do this inside? It's too sunny.

Me: Then it wouldn't be by the flags or the garden, would it? Now stand closer together.

Bear: I can't stand too close to her. I'm on a slope. I'll look freakishly tall.

Me: Fine. Then switch places.

Bug: What?! No. Then I'll look freakishly tall.

Me: FOR GOD'S SAKE JUST STAND NEXT TO EACH OTHER AND SMILE. MY HAIR JUST FRIZZED OUT TWO MORE INCHES WHILE I STOOD HERE NOT TAKING A FOURTH OF JULY PHOTO.

Bear (under her breath): Jeez...

Bug (blinks in bewildered manner): OK. Hey, will we be done here soon?

***********************

All that, my friends, to bring you these two Fourth of July photos of these seemingly angelic sisters. DO NOT BE FOOLED.

They're off at the parade with Tom right now, while I sip coffee in the air conditioning and recover from our photo session. No, actually, I stayed home to rest my wretched foot, whose feeble limits I pushed yesterday.

"Just a soft tissue injury! Probably!" said the doctor on Wednesday. "They can take quite a while to heal. Try to stay off of it and wear ugly shoes." Well actually, she said "shoes with better support than those", while gesturing to my adorable leather thongs with silver accents. There was also some talk about wrapping it in an Ace bandage, which ... no. An Ace bandage in 178% humidity? Methinks wallowing in a pool with my foot propped up on its very own floatie is a much more pleasant scenario.

I took my traitorous foot and the girls down to the park yesterday to hear an Elton John tribute band play and eat ridiculously unhealthy fair food. Note: eating fried dough while sitting in the shade of a willow tree on a riverbank listening to a band play is suspiciously close to heaven. Only my ugly shoes kept me tethered in reality.

Happy Independence Day!

PS: Oddly, the foot really doesn't hurt much while I'm walking on it. Just mildly burny. It's later, once I'm off of it that it aches like a sonofabitch. Anyone else ever experienced that phenomenon? I'd welcome any input, since I still don't really know what's wrong with it.

Makeup

2010-07-01T10:42:00.004-04:00

I've helped to parent this kid through many phases:

-The Middle of the Night Feedings Phase

-The Random Screeching and Flinging of the Sippy Cup Phase

-The Potty Training Phase (also known as Two Months o' Hell)

-The Fear of Encountering a Man Made of Cans Phase

-The Crabbing at One's Younger Sister Phase (ongoing)

-The "What Homework?" Phase

-The Snotty Tone of Voice Phase

This latest one though is potentially more fraught with peril than any of the ones that came before. Bear is starting to wear makeup.

She's been allowed to wear (light) mascara and lipgloss since this spring, and this week she asked if she could start wearing eyeliner and shadow. Now, I'm not a moron. An eighth grade girl who wants to wear makeup and whose parents forbid it, will wait until she's out of the house before spackling it on with a trowel. Then she'll carefully wash her face before coming home. Rinse and repeat.

No, if there's going to be makeup, then I'm going to be the self-appointed Head of Quality Control. To that end, I gave my consent and tempered it with some simple rules for makeup application.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF COSMETICS

(Young Teen Edition)

1. Slathereth not of thy makeup onto thine face, for thee willst appear a skanky ho-bag.

2. Weareth not of thine eyeliner in a complete circle around thine eye, for it will rendereth them small and beady, like the crows of the yard.

3. Selecteth not a black eyeliner for it is too harsh for thine youthful aspect and will projecteth both an image of easy virtue and a dearth of aesthetic sensibility.

4. Lineth not thine lips in a color not exactly matched to thy lipstick unless ye wish to be mistaken for a clown of the circus.

5. Shouldst ye feel the need to wear foundation, weareth only the foundation of the shade which is exactly that of thine skin. Useth a small amount and blendeth well, unless ye wish to be openly mocked for sporting The Line of Shame alongst thine jawbone.

6. Weareth thine makeup to enhance, not to createth a mask. Because again, there will ensueth mocking. Likely from thine mother.

7. Purchaseth NEVER of the lipstick in the shades of white or black or any color which occureth not in the color spectrum of actual human lips.

8. Buyeth only of the good quality makeup, for that of the inferior quality will raise boils and unsightly blemishes on thy face.

9. Washeth thine face well at the end of the day, for thy mother wisheth not to see thy makeup in the form of smudges on thine pillowcase and, yay, willst rebel and confiscateth said makeup in a show of much fury and raising of the voice.

10. Beareth in mind that The Mother shall be both Judge and Jury where all makeup application be concerned. The Mother has allowed, but The Mother will surely as hellfire taketh away.

Pond: Phase 2, with Bonus Limping

2010-06-30T11:22:00.003-04:00

In retrospect, helping to lift and place the rocks around the pond's edge two days after spraining/breaking my foot probably didn't do it any favors. At least, that's what I infer from the fact that it swelled up like a dead toad after two hours of working. I should have taken a picture of my feet that day because on the left was a normal, though naturally large-ish (size 11, shut up.) foot. On the right was what appeared to be one of those elephant leg trashcans, made all the more ridiculous from the petal pink nail polish on its toes. There was not a strappy sandal on this earth that would have prettied up that monster.

And, YES, I have a doctor's appointment today at 2:15. Violet's comment yesterday scared me into going to have it checked out. So help me God, if I wind up paying the equivalent of a really cute pair of shoes only to hear that it's "sprained" and I "should stay off of it and keep it elevated", I'm going to go all sniper-on-a-clock-tower. And that's going to be damn inconvenient because I don't even know where there's a clock tower in Maine.

Pond progress: liner set, pond filled, and working on rock border.

Tom fidgeted and fussed with rock arrangements all afternoon on Father's Day to create a waterfall. All those hours with Legos and Lincoln Logs as a little boy finally paid off.

I'm much happier with the new pond shape in terms of it not looking so much like a Jacuzzi, but I have a new concern. Because of choosing to site the pond on uneven ground (Jenn: not big on planning or forethought), we had to add dirt to the low side to level the edges. Some physics crap about water seeking it's own level or something. (I tuned out when Tom was explaining that part and wandered off to check Facebook when he actually brought out a plank of wood with a level duct-taped to it and began systematically checking every angle).

Now I feel like it resembles a tiny volcano filled inexplicably with water. Something about it just screams "Add baking soda and vinegar and red food coloring!" to me.

Picture (with disclaimer):Next up: Phase 3. Plants! Fish! Less volcano-y!

At What Price Pond?

2010-06-29T10:07:00.008-04:00

Allergy Update: We figured out the cause of Bear's frightening allergic reaction that resulted in a hasty ER trip. There were only two items we'd eaten for dinner that evening that were new foods for her. One was a chicken marinade, and the other was packaged naan (an Indian flatbread).

I was equally certain that I'd checked out both of the labels before buying them, but obviously something had been wonky. Tom dug out the marinade bottle from the trash while Bear and I were at the ER, but the ingredients were fine.

The next afternoon at the grocery store, I went over to the naan display and re-read the label. I read through the ingredient list (fine) and the Potential Allergens line beneath it (wheat, soy, and egg). Nothing. As I was setting the package down, a smaller line of type down below the allergen list caught my eye. In a different, lighter font it read "May contain pieces of tree nuts."

Goddamn. It slipped by on my watch. I felt terrible.

If there is a silver lining to the whole experience, it's that I've learned that I can't be assured safety just by reading through the ingredients and the allergens list. I have to read the whole package. Carefully.

The other good thing to come of this is that Bear is leaving for her first sleep-away camp in two weeks. The freshness of this experience and how frightened she was will help her to remember not to take any chances eating unlabelled foods. I've already spoken with the menu coordinator at the university her camp is at, and special arrangements have been made to accommodate her allergy.

************************************

In lighter news: I have a pond!

In darkish news: At the cost of personal injury. Specifically, a sprained or broken foot. The jury's a bit out on which, and I'm being stubborn about going in and having to pay for an x-ray when it's probably (hopefully) just sprained.

It all began on my birthday, when Tom very gamely began to dig the pond that I may have mentioned wanting two or three (thousand) times.

Doesn't he look like he's having fun? I'm pretty sure that when I took this picture, he was thinking I wonder if I'd bought her more jewelry for her birthday if she'd still be making me do this?

The answer is yes, honey. Yes, I would. But more jewelry is always welcome.

When he got done that day ("done" being defined as exhausted, filthy, and more than a little cranky, if we're being perfectly frank), the hole was starting to look something like this. The deeper part is about three and a half feet deep, with an 18" deep ledge around the outside. This is to set plants on.
Now, don't get me wrong: I greatly appreciated his efforts. I thought it was looking great. I just thought that once we lined it and filled it with water, that it was going to look a little bit too much like a jacuzzi filled with questionable water. The shape was too jacuzzi-like, not organic enough. And not as big as I'd pictured, although we were somewhat limited in size by the size of liner I'd ordered. When I mentioned my concerns, he grumbled something about fixing it "next weekend" and disappeared to grab a cold beer from the fridge, saying "For God's sake, don't you try to do it or you'll throw your back out."

The next day, I went out and looked at it again. Jacuzzi. Hmm. I felt bad asking Tom to do any more, so I grabbed a shovel. (That's my official story, and I'm sticking to it. The truth has more to do with the fact that once I've pictured how I want something to look, I have a very difficult time waiting. I need/want it to look that way NOW. This slight personal quirk has led to many instances of personal injury. This proved to be no exception).

The girls were in the pool, as I measured and dug, spreading out the pond liner to be sure I was still within its limits. It was looking great, and I was spreading the liner out one last time before I called it quits for the day. It was ferociously hot and muggy, so as I stepped along the plant ledge, dragging the heavy rubber liner along, I was thinking about what iced beverage I'd like as soon as I was done: diet cherry Pepsi or iced tea?

I tweaked the liner toward me and took one more step backward along the ledge ... except that there was no ledge just where I chose to step. Instead, I fell blindly back into the (three and a half foot deep) hole, landing solely on my right foot, which instantly corkscrewed sideways under my weight.

There was a moment where I was lying on my back on hot black rubber in a dirt hole in my yard, staring up at the blinding sun, sweat plastering my hair down and dripping into my eyes, my ankle a white blaze of pain. A moment where my entire being was thinking, "Oh, SHIT." A moment where I wanted nothing more than some sort of cosmic half-second rewind button.

The moment passed, and was followed by another, equally enjoyable moment, where I realized that not only was I lying on my back at the bottom of a hole in my yard, but that I now wanted to get out of the hole. I just had no idea how to go about doing that. I scrabbled pathetically at the liner and pulled myself to a sitting position. The utter ridiculousness of my predicament began to hit solidly home.

I called for the girls, who were splashing and shouting in the pool, and couldn't hear me. I hollered louder, "Girls! I need your help! GIRLS!" That finally yielded a dripping wet Bug, who peered down over the edge of the hole at me, then very gamely helped to haul me out by one arm.

With Bug's help, I managed to drag/limp my way to the patio, where, looking like one of the Mud People from Woodstock, I collapsed into a chair. Bug trotted inside and returned with a Spongebob ice-pack and some paper towels to clean up with, which was not unlike trying to sop up with oil spill in the Gulf with a Q-Tip.

I sat for a minute to regain my equilibrium. Then I called Tom at work.

"Hi, honey. I've been working on the pond. Good news: I didn't hurt my back!"

Waiting for Normal

2010-06-24T10:04:00.002-04:00

I have several great blog topics I've been planning to post about. On Tuesday, I decided to set aside Wednesday morning as blogging time to catch you up on the pond, my inability to do projects without sustaining major injury, and the awesomely hilarious Father's Day card that Bug made for Tom.

Then Tuesday evening rolled around, and instead of the quiet family evening at home (followed by early bedtime), I wound up spending a few hours with Bear at the emergency room.

Instead of blogging Wednesday morning, I spent it remembering how to breathe. And being thankful that everything had turned out OK.

I know I've talked here before about Bear's peanut/tree nut allergies (this would be a link to a previous post if I'd had my full ration of coffee).

At the dinner table Tuesday, she took three bites of the grilled chicken and dropped her fork. "My mouth is itching like crazy! It burns!" She ran for the freezer and popped in an ice cube. I handed her a dose of Benadryl.

While she sucked her ice, I dug through the trash for the marinade bottle. It was a new brand, and I was 99% sure I'd read the label. Nope, no cause for alarm in the ingredients.

The itching subsided as the Benadryl took effect, and we shrugged it off. We've been through this before, and it usually ends here.

Two hours later, she began to experience the next level of reaction - gastrointestinal, extreme dizziness, nausea, and racing heartbeat. For the first time in my kid's life, I heard her say, "Please, Mom, can you take me to the doctor? " in a distressed and frightened voice. Since one of the hallmarks of anaphylaxis is a feeling of doom and anxiety, she didn't need to ask twice. Tom stayed home with Bug, who was already in bed, and I rushed Bear to the emergency room, handing her more Benadryl on the way.

We were lucky. The reaction did not progress to her respiratory system, so I didn't need to use her EpiPen. As we waiting at the ER, her symptoms gradually began to decrease. They gave her a hospital gown and put her in a bed for observation for a couple of house. You do not want to see your kid in a hospital gown and bed. It makes all sorts of possible scenarios seem glaringly real. By midnight, she had only some lingering dizziness and was feeling tired. They released her, with instructions to wake her up at 3:00 am for another dose of medicine.

I slept beside her that night, although sleep is a generous word for the light dozing I did, waking up in an anxious fog to check her, check her breathing, make sure she was OK.

Wednesday morning, instead of being Blogging Time, was kind of a train wreck of exhaustion, emotion, and lingering anxiety.

Today is better. Bear is being her usual brand of teenaged cranky, sniping at Bug, sighing elaborately when I ask her if she's brushed her teeth yet. I tell her sternly to knock it off, watch the attitude, but it actually doesn't bother me a bit today.

The Fine Art of Caving

2010-06-15T13:25:00.003-04:00

"Can I have Facebook?" Bear started asking me in sixth grade when "all" her friends were piling onto the social network like lemmings.

"No way." I said, cementing my status as the uncool mom who "never let her do anything." Unfortunately for her, I'm cool with that.

However, I recently caved. She just finished seventh grade, and while by no means worldly, has acquired a bit more savvy about the Internet. Enough, at least, to let me green light Facebook with several caveats:

-Don't list your birth year.

-Don't list your school name.

-Don't list your town name.

-Don't be a moron.

-Dad and I are among your FB friends.

-I am privy to your login and password and control your privacy settings.

She knows that The Mom Gaveth and The Mom Will Sure As HELL Taketh Away, if the power of the Facebook is abused.

When I was toying with the idea of caving, I did some exploring around on some of her classmates' FB pages. Pages whose privacy settings were open enough to allow me (not their FB friend) to surf through their information and photos. I can confidently say that some of their parents spend zero time on their kids' Facebook pages.

I found suggestive photos (i.e. preteen cleavage shots), profanity, and horrendous spelling/grammar. I was pretty equally appalled by all three. Not usually the judgmental type, I can confidently say that if my 13-year-old consistently misspelled "what" as "wat" on their FB page, that she has no business spending her time on FB. Call me a hardass.

Letting Bear on FB has had the additional effect of curtailing some of my own FB fun. I've never accepted friend requests from kids before, but now I am in the interests of keeping my finger on the pulse of her social life. It's all very Big Brother, and I can confidently say that my own parents never had half this information about what went on amongst me and my friends. Fascinating.

For me, though, this new Bear-inclusive Facebook means:

-No more cursing on FB. Damn it.

-Removing all links to my blog on FB. I need to reserve some corner of the Internet where I can bitch with impunity.

Wish us luck.

The Last Day of School

2010-06-11T07:43:00.005-04:00

Today is the last day of school:

And Bug and Bear are just all broken up about it:

Bug has Step-Up Day today, where she gets to meet her fifth grade teacher and see who will be in her class next year. Bear is performing in the school talent show (hence the Hawaiian garb). She and five of her friends have formed a woodwind quartet and will be playing some Vivaldi and calypso music. Interesting blend of styles, yes?

School's out for the summer at 11:00 am. I'm sipping my last solo cup of coffee and savoring the quiet of an empty house for the last time until September.
Shall we begin the countdown until the first "I'm bored. There's nothing to do around here." of summer?

Band BBQ or I Sincerely Hope My Homeowner's Insurance Is Paid Up

2010-06-10T10:25:00.006-04:00

Me (randomly, to Bear): Hey, you know what would be fun? Let's have an end-of-the-year BBQ and invite your band class.

Bear: Cool!

I shot off an email to her band teacher, proposing the get-together and offering to supply drinks, hot dogs, hamburgers, and dessert if the kids would bring chips and side dishes. "Great!" she replied.

A couple of hours later, it occurred to me to ask Bear how many kids are in her band class. Which, you might have already realized, is probably how I should have opened the conversation.

Fifteen kids came, so it worked out fine.

Junior High band kids? For the record? NUTS. At 2:15, the first cars pulled into our driveway and disgorged a horde of teenagers onto my lawn. Taking about 2.5 seconds to get the lay of the land, they descended on the snack table and four-square court like locusts.

In the three hours they were here, I saw:

-backflips

-a sprained ankle

-an impromptu group song-and-dance routine to a Spongebob song

-people eating cupcakes whole

-karate

-people chasing each other with badminton racquets

-tree-climbing

-"dancing" (quotes to indicate loose classification of what looked like spastic body movements).

-a boy asking my cat out on a date

-much, much chasing of boys by girls and vice-versa

Bug parked herself in a chair near the four-square court and kept a covert eye on the action.

"They're insane," she informed me quietly, when I walked by.

"Hormones," I told her. "Powerful stuff."

She nodded and sought refuge in her book, peeking up now and then to watch with something akin to awe.
I also got to see Bear in her absolute element. She was giggly, goofy, and so happy. "I had the BEST time!" she told me afterwards.
A couple of days before the BBQ, she told me she was kind of nervous about it.

"Why? Are you afraid it will be lame?" I asked her.

"Yeah. Kind of," she admitted.

"No way!" I reassured her. "I bought party hats, cute little noisemakers, and treat bags today. It's going to be awesome!"

I watched horror creep over her face.

"Oh, and we're going to have face painting!" I chirped.

Her mouth hung open.

"Kidding," I told her.

She sagged in relief, "Oh man, I thought you were serious. That would have been awful. I can't even imagine."

"Give me some credit, kid," I told her.

Why is it so hard for them to believe that we were ever teenagers ourselves?

Gasp. Wheeze. Cough-Cough-Cough.

2010-06-03T08:54:00.003-04:00

There are something like 50 forest fires burning merrily away around Quebec this week. And while normally this is something I care about on an environmental/where will the little bunnies go?/poor trees/I hope it doesn't burn any homes - level, it's suddenly become personal. As of Saturday, a nasty thick cloud of smoky crap began to settle over Maine. I logged onto weather.com and found myself confronted with words I hadn't seen since moving away from Phoenix in 1996, "Air Quality Warning", and a blurb about smoke from the wildfires drifting toward our county.

Right on cue, that night I began to wheeze. Then cough. And cough and cough and cough and cough. Bear complained that her throat felt "thick." Bug's nose was itchy. Tom began clearing his throat upwards of 38 times per minute.

It had been a gorgeous day, and all our windows were wide open to catch the evening breeze. I caught of whiff of woodsmoke and remarked to Tom, "It smells like someone's burning brush." Just as the sun set, I noticed that the air was looking hazy and thought that probably meant that tomorrow was going to be a real scorcher.

When my genius-level, lightning-quick reflexes kicked in about four hours later I connected the air quality warning with the smell, the haze, and my family's inability to breathe and hurried to shut all the windows. Which frankly didn't help all that much at that point.

Let's just say husband has a pretty clear idea of what it would feel like to sleep beside a 75-year-old man with emphysema and incontinence problems now, what with my wheezing, grabbing for my inhaler, coughing, then running for the bathroom because coughing makes me need to pee. I was a delight and take full ownership for his sleep-deprived crabbiness at the breakfast table the next morning.

That was five days ago. The air still sucks. I'm getting a little peevish about it, and I'm starting to suspect that the fires were started by pharmaceutical companies.

No, seriously. Hear me out.

The smoke from these fires is affecting not only people in the Quebec area, but New Hampshire and Maine. That's a lot of people. (I'm too lazy to Google population numbers here, and I don't voluntarily do math before noon). Many of these people will need cough medicine, allergy medicine, or inhalers because of the air quality. (I'm basing this on a smallish research group comprised of me and the fact that I've been swigging Robitussin straight from the bottle and sucking on my $124 inhaler like it's a pacifier). Multiply that by some large number to represent affected population minus smaller number to represent number of population with lungs of steel/people who shut their windows earlier than me. Result? HUGE revenue for drug companies.

I'm hoping if I solve this for the Canadian government, I'll at least get a free inhaler out of the deal.

Garden Tour!

2010-06-01T09:44:00.010-04:00

Last night I said to Tom, "If I only had one more Limelight Hydrangea, it would totally complete the garden."

He said, "Yeah, right."

It's possible that I don't have the highest credibility on this subject. For instance, every August I heave a frustrated sigh and say, "This is absolutely all the garden I can deal with. No more new flowerbeds!" Then every spring, I dig a new flower bed.

At most recent count, I have six flowerbeds in the front yard, two shade borders and a hillside of wildflowers in the side yard, five blueberry bushes, a pea and cucumber patch, a raspberry patch, and a small flower bed in the back yard. Also, I helped the girls each put in a flower bed outside their bedroom windows.

Tom likes to tell the girls that when they come home to visit in twenty years, they'll find him in the front yard with a shovel, digging up the last square foot of yard for me to plant something. I pretend to take offense, but I really am thinking of how utterly freaking amazing the yard would look if I could plant the entire two acres in gardens.

You can sum up my garden philosophy like this: More is more.

I spend a lot of time weeding.

This is all a roundabout way of explaining why I've been persona non blogger this month. May is the key gardening month in Maine. I've been tilling, amending soil, sowing seeds, dividing perennials, and planting annuals. I thought I'd give you a peek. In this photo, you can see four of the six front yard beds, including the bizarrely-shaped new flowerbed. Every day I cock my head at it, decide it's not quite right, and dig a little more here, a little more there. Eventually, it will blend. My style of garden planning is what you might call kamikaze. Plans are for the wusses. Just start digging. I have a similar method when it comes to cutting hair, which is why I never, ever do.

Yeah, there's an above-ground pool in my front yard. Quelle white trash, yes? It happens to be the ONLY completely flat piece of yard we own, so the neighbors have to suck it for the three measly months of swimming weather. I try to distract them with pretty flowers, but it's tricky to pull focus from an 18-foot cylinder of eye-bleeding turquoise. Someday, when the kids are past the swimming-in-the-front-yard age, I plan to make that spot into a flower bed. Surprised?

Irises:

Climbing rose:
Lupines:

Adventures in Orthodontics

2010-05-25T12:21:00.004-04:00

With braces in her (very near) future, Bear has been crabbing nonstop about how she sees no need for them.

I get that braces aren't exactly something to look forward to, but how can you argue against the benefit of a correct bite and straight teeth? I've talked to her about how your mouth is one of the first thing people notice about you - first impressions and all that, and I've mentioned her uncle, whose bite had to be corrected in his 20's with a horrific surgery that involved breaking his jaw. Still, she crabs on.

Finally, the other day, after a lengthy whine about how unfair and mean we are to make her get braces, I snapped.

"You want to know why you're getting braces? It's so in three or four years, when all your friends have their braces off and have perfect smiles, you won't be embarrassed by your crooked teeth and never smile and never, ever get asked on a date and DIE ALL ALONE."

Not, perhaps, the most politically correct or feminist-minded argument for orthodontics, but she has not brought up the subject since.

******************************

Yesterday, Tom and I had The Meeting at the orthodontist's office. You know the one I mean? The one where they show you the x-rays and photos of your children's teeth, then outline the care plan they've developed for each of them. Finally, at the end of the meeting, they slide a print-out across the table with a number on it. A BIG number that makes you flinch involuntarily and hold your purse just a little tighter.

THAT meeting.

We walked into the conference room with the office manager, and as she pulled up various teeth photos on the computer, Tom said (mostly) jokingly:

"I feel like I should mention before we get started here, that based on my daughters' behavior this morning, I'm not going to be willing to spend very much on their mouths."

The woman laughed and said, "Bad morning?"

"Oh, dear God. Bickerfest 2010," I said fervently.

"Well," she said, "It might help if you try thinking of the braces as a sort of torture device."

Tom looked thoughtful. "Interesting. Tell me more..."

Week? Gone.

2010-05-14T15:10:00.005-04:00

It has not been the best of weeks. It really started with Bear coming home from school last Friday with a fever, and spending the weekend disguised as a little grey lump on the couch. Monday night, I succumbed in grand style. And Wednesday, Bug was sent home from school with a fever. Whee!

This is the first time I've been on my computer since Sunday. Usually my slavish devotion to weather.com alone is enough to have me logging online two, three times a day. This week I was unaware of what day of the week it even was, let alone that there was weather happening outside my window.

Two words: Stomach flu.

Puking, fever, chills, stomach pain ... all the standard cast of characters. And let me tell you, my inner hypochondriac had a fricking field day. Although I'd like to go on record here by saying that while I play along with the whole "hypochondriac" label, I prefer to think of myself as "medically well-informed."

So Monday night, I'm laying in bed with horrible upper-right abdominal pain and a fever, and I'm forcing Tom to look up the location of both the spleen and the gall bladder in our medical book. True story. I'm groaning and clutching my stomach, trying to decide whether I need to throw up or do a C-section for the alien trying to emerge from my abdomen, and he's reading me all the encouraging bits he can find about things like "ruptured peptic ulcer", "pancreatitis", and I'm roaring, "I don't care about that. Find out where my goddamned spleen is!"

At some point, in between the groaning and the clutching, I also found strength to tell him the plot of the latest Grey's Anatomy where the woman was having a major heart attack which presented solely as a stomach ache and vomiting. And she died.

It was quite a party. Then I threw up. The end.

The spleen's on the left, by the way. And I'd like a bit of credit for not diagnosing myself with appendicitis, which is usually my go-to for any form of stomach disturbance. A true hypochondriac would never have been that discerning. I'm more like an amateur doctor, but instead of going to med school I just watch a lot of House, Grey's Anatomy, and own a copies of both The Physician's Desk Reference and The Mayo Clinic Family Health Book. You can learn about many, many alarming things that can kill you from these sources. Tip: skip the pages that illustrate skin diseases if you ever want to sleep again.

On the upside, I've basically been eating ice chips and Jell-O for four days now, and that's gotta be good for at least a pound a day, right? Because otherwise, all I've gotten out of this week of puking, aches, chills, and night sweats is a lesson on spleen geography. And if that's true, I'd like my week back, please.

Lessons from Motherhood

2010-05-08T11:24:00.014-04:00

It's hard to believe that tomorrow I'll be celebrating my fourteenth Mother's Day as a mother.

Motherhood is the ultimate trial by fire. There's no practice runs and no do-overs. You learn to think fast and react quickly. Thanks to my girls, I've learned to how to deal with a wide variety of life experiences, many of them involving vomit and/or belligerence. Sometimes both.

When your baby pukes large quantities of minced beets all over her darling pastel Beatrix-Potter themed crib... Grab the baby and offer to bathe her while sweetly suggesting that perhaps your husband could "maybe clean this up and just toss the bedding in the washer." Move swiftly toward bathroom while suppressing your gag reflex.

When your toddler emits constant ear-piercing shrieks at the grocery store because you won't let her suck on an empty produce bag... Leave. Immediately. Do not be The Mom With the Air Raid Siren in Her Cart Who Blithely Continues Shopping. Nobody likes that mom.

When your toddler vomits all over your shoes at Target... Flee. If you see an employee, mention that you noticed Aisle 13 needs a clean-up. Do not break stride.

When your preschooler ambushes you (in front of the kid and his mom) for a playdate with the one kid whose mother you cannot stand, the one who smokes in her car in the preschool parking lot and uses words like "sexy" and "hottie" to describe her three-year old... Pleasantly agree to have the kid over to your house, but be ready with a long list of excuses why your child cannot go to his house. Ever.

When your first grader refuses to listen to her teacher's corrections to her math homework and steadfastly insists to the teacher that "No, I'm right. You're doing it wrong." ... Die a quiet death of mortification when the teacher calls you, then begin the three hour process of forcing The World's Most Stubborn Six-Year-Old to apologize.

When your preteen moans that everybody else's parents let them do X... Explain calmly that, yes, they probably do, but because your main goal here is to help her survive to adulthood/ruin her life, she's just going to have to deal with it. Or come up with a better argument, because that one? Didn't work twenty-five years ago when you used it against your parents.

When your children arrive beaming at your bedside around 6:30 a.m. bearing a cup of warm juice and a plate with two pieces of toast, each slathered with approximately one jar's worth of grape jam... You sit up and eat every bite. Despite hating grape jam. And even though warm juice makes you want to Brillo your tongue.

It's been quite a ride.

Bear and I, circa 1998.

Bug and I (with my Aunt Donna), circa 2001.

Over the years, I've picked up many tips and tricks from my own mother, my mother-in-law, my mom friends, moms who've written books, and moms who write blogs. Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there!

Siren Call

2010-05-06T11:51:00.008-04:00

I've been one wretched excuse for a blogger lately. It's just that I find it impossible to stay inside, when the outside has finally clued into the whole "Spring" concept. It's gardening season, baby. (You wouldn't be hearing from me today, but it's rainy and buggy outside. Feel special?)

My birch is finally leafing out. The sight fills me with joy. It fills Bear with itchiness. She's allergic to it. I'd cut it down out of motherly love, but she's also allergic to pretty damn near every other tree in the state, so it would be kind of a pointless gesture. Dramatic, but pointless.

Random tulip and variegated hosta. Last year, after The Summer of the Neverending Torrential Rain, that hosta looked like swiss cheese due to the ongoing slug convention in my garden. I took great pleasure in sprinkling salt on the little terrorists and watching them writhe. It's possible that I'm not as nice a person as I pretend to be.
Chives! And a rock!
Tulips: Pretty. Super-crooked horizon line in back of picture: Indicative of one too many cups of coffee.
I even like the dandelions in this picture. Cheery! Yellow! (Then I went and yanked them out as soon as I put the camera down).
I do have loads to tell you about, so I'll be back soon. Promise!

Am Endless Source of Help to My Children

2010-04-30T08:02:00.005-04:00

Scene: Yesterday afternoon. Bear sits doing homework with her Social Studies textbook and a notebook open in front of her. I am cleaning the kitchen or something equally glamorous.

Bear: Hey, Mom, what was the Proclamation of 1763?

Me (authoritatively): That's the one where they banned ginger ale in the colonies.

Bear (pausing doubtfully with pencil poised above paper): I didn't know they had ginger ale back then.

Me: Oh, sure. No, wait! 1763 ... actually that's the one that prohibited dogs from mating with squirrels.

Bear (laughing): Mom! It was not!

Me: I get those two confused.

Bear: Come on...

Me: Oh, I know! Why don't you try LOOKING IT UP YOURSELF, Miss Lazypants?

Bear: *grumble*

Dear Spring: Quit Being Mean.

2010-04-29T12:47:00.004-04:00

So far today, we have had:

-a frost (complete with frozen birdbaths)

-sun!

-really damn cold wind

-spitty, pathetic rain

-hail

I await the plague of locusts and tsunami with great interest. It's like a frigging Weather Showcase around here.

I glance out and see sun and think Yay! I'll head outside and do some gardening. In the time it takes me to slip on sneakers and grab a hat, the sky completely clouds over and begins to toss down fat, chilly raindrops. I turn sulkily back to folding laundry, glance out two minutes later and think Yay, sun! NOW I'll head outside and garden. Aaaaaand cue the hail.

I get the distinct impression that someone is messing with me and laughing their ass off.

Someone (sniggering): Watch this, watch this... we just convinced her it's freezing and hailing, but I'm going to whip out the sun and she'll be all Woo-hoo, it's spring! Be ready with the blizzard effects as soon as I give you the signal.

I'll blog more later. It's been sunny for two and a half consecutive minutes, so I'm going out to garden! Yay!

The Local Rodent Population Has a Lot to Learn About Gratitude

2010-04-26T14:36:00.004-04:00

(photo culled from random internet stock photo site, but let's pretend I took it. It's pretty good).

On Sunday, the girls burst into the house, voices tumbling over each other as they called for me to help them.

"It's Chip! It's Chip! He's stuck in the trap," Bear told me frantically. Chip is a chipmunk that lives in our garden. He's so used to us that he frequently gathers fallen from the bird feeder on the patio while we're sitting a foot or two away. He's adorable, bright of eye and stripey of head. We've gotten a little attached to him.

(And I know what you're thinking, and you can stop speed-dialing PETA now. It's a Hav-a-Hart (humane) trap set up on our front porch to catch the diabolical gray squirrel who has made it his singular life mission to knock down my bird feeders. When we catch him, he will be humanely transported across the river so he can knock down someone else's damn feeders).

"It's fine," I told her, "As soon as he spits out his mouthful of seeds, he can fit right through the bars. I've seen him do it before."

"No, he's stuck half in and half out," Bug added urgently, "You've got to help him, Mom!"

Wondering exactly when I became "Mom: Saver of Wildlife", I went out on the porch to discover that he was indeed wedged halfway through the bars and seemed stuck at his pelvis. Hm. He scrabbled wildly, biting at the bars, and struggling to free himself. I watched for a few minutes but began to be afraid he'd hurt himself. The girls waited anxiously.

I sent Bug for my leather gloves and tried to eyeball the situation. I couldn't tell for sure if it was his pelvis that was stuck or a hind leg, which seemed to be snagged near the mechanism that held the seed.

Putting on the leather gloves (See? I'm not a moron. I probably shouldn't disclose that I also occasionally use these gloves to pick up snakes that I find in the garden), I gently cradled his body with one hand and reached the other into the trap to check on his leg. He relaxed in my hand and eyed me with one beady little black eye.

Me: Hey, little buddy, we're just going to get you out.

Chip: (valiant pull and scrabbling of legs)

Me: Aw, girls look how sweet his little pawsies are! OK, the leg is fine. Let's see if we can eeeeeeease his pelvis through. (I try shifting his body slightly one way, then another to no avail).

Bear: He's being so sweet!

Bug: Poor Chip! Hold on, Chippie. You'll be out soon.

Me: No, that's not going to work either. I think I need to get him back through the bars, so he can come out the front of the trap. (begin to gently, gently! push his tiny body back through).

Chip: (tenses body and braces back legs so I can't push him)

Me: Come on, Chip. Work with me.

Chip: (eyeballs me, swiftly turns head and tries to bite my finger, but gets mostly glove).

Me: Whoa there, nipper! (I ease the glove out of his mouth and try again to get him through the bars).

Chip: (reassesses, takes another mighty chomp on the finger. Even through the glove, I can tell those teeth are SHARP).

Me: SON OF A WHORE. Er, I mean, go get the phone book, girls. We're calling Animal Control.

The girls, wide-eyed, fetch me the phone book. And, of course, as I sit there paging through the book to find the Animal Control number, Chip magically frees himself and scampers off the patio.

Not even a thank-you.

Henne Lärarna Tala Mig Hur Hon Er Skarp*

2010-04-20T09:40:00.004-04:00

For most of last week, Bear would intermittently whack the keys on her laptop and sigh in frustration. She would mutter something about "darn punctuation keys" under her breath, and go back to typing. After about the seventh episode of this, I asked her what was up.

Bear: My punctuation keys are all messed up. I go to type an apostrophe, and I get this weird symbol. The quotation mark is some strange kind of "a", and I don't know where the semicolon went.

Me: You need to go to one of the computer teachers at school, and see if they can fix it.

Bear: OK.

Two days later, she stops typing her science homework and lets out a primal yell.

Bear: AARRRRG.

Me: What?

Bear: AarrGRR ... stupid ....grrrrrAAAAGG.... dumb .... RRRRAAAGGR.... punctuation.... (disintegrates into feral muttering).

Me: Did you ask a teacher about it?

Bear: I asked Ms. E., and she thought she knew what it was, but it didn't fix it.

Tom: Did you take it to the computer teacher?

Bear (staring belligerently at the screen): No.

Tom: Give me the computer. (He closes out of the applications and looks briefly at her desktop). Hm. Bear?

Bear: (grumble)

Tom: Why is there a tiny Swedish flag up in the corner for "nationality"?

Bear (perks up): I like Sweden. I want to go there some day.

Tom: I think that's your problem. Let's change it back to "United States."

Bear: Nope, that won't do it. I know because my friend Kendra changed hers to "Hawaii", and she's not having any problems.

Tom (deep, steadying breath): Bear. What language do they currently speak in Hawaii?

Bear (thinks): English?

Tom: Yes. And what language do they speak in Sweden?

Bear: Swedish!

Tom: And does the Swedish alphabet look anything like those strange symbols that keep showing up when you type?

Bear (considers, then light dawns): ..... Ohhhhhhh!

*Her Teachers Tell Me She Is Smart

Dance Recital Week

2010-04-18T12:00:00.011-04:00

Just telling the truth here ... the dance recital? Major. Pain. In. My. Ass.

There's the cost of costumes, shoes, tights, and hair accessories (nets for the ballet buns, hair glitter [yeah, seriously], a bazillion bobby pins and hair elastics, and the equivalent of a fifty gallon drum of hairspray).

There's the ironing. MAN, I hate the ironing. As a hearty proponent of the "spritz it and hang it in the shower steam" school of ironing, being faced with yards of tulle, sequins, and shiny/silky fabrics is my personal corner of hell. And FYI, you can't steam tulle. It wilts. To get the crisp ballerina tutus, they must be ironed. Every single damned layer.

There's the scheduling: late night rehearsals on weeknights mean prodding tired, cranky girls out of bed for school the next morning. It also means no time for real meals. Hot dogs, drive-thru's, and cereal become the mainstays of our recital week diet. Add to that the random handfuls of Goldfish, Skittles, and Teddy Grahams grabbed for quick backstage pick-me-ups and you have one truly stellar nutritional intake.

So why on earth do it, right? I'll give you a little bit of backstory.

When Bug was two and Bear was five, we stopped at a farmer's market. I was perusing the vegetables when a woman nearby asked me, "Oh, does your little girl take dance?"

I looked up about to answer affirmatively, when I saw that she was gesturing toward Bug, not Bear (who was indeed taking her first dance class that year).

"No, she's only two," I explained.

"Oh," the woman said, looking puzzled, "That's funny because she's doing shuffle - tap- ball change - shuffle - tap. "

I looked sharply at my two-year-old, and she was indeed doing the little routine (complete with arm movements) she'd watched Bear learning in Beginning Tap. She started lessons the next year, and she's never wanted to stop.

Simply put, they both love dance. They each take four classes a week and still dance at home on their days off. I see the self-confidence and poise it's given them both, how neatly it dovetails with their shared love of music, and how they both can walk out onto a stage in front of an audience without a bit of nervousness. And when I weigh all of that against the inconveniences of recital week, it doesn't seem like quite as big a pain as I thought.

I love to see them light up when they dance:

Obviously I'm Dead. Or Hallucinating.

2010-04-14T15:14:00.003-04:00

I don't even know how to say this...

Right now... at this very moment ... my children are sitting peacefully side-by-side on the sofa doing their homework. They are NOT squawking about who's hogging the sofa, breathing too loudly, or fighting a turf war over the lap quilt.

As I type this, Bug just leaned over and quietly asked her sister for assistance on her math logic packet, and Bear amicably agreed to help her.

Oh, holy hell, now they're discussing possible answers IN A REASONABLE TONE OF VOICE.

I never woke up this morning, did I? I must have had a massive heart attack in my sleep.

And this is heaven.

It's THAT Time of Year Again

2010-04-09T12:11:00.002-04:00

Dance Recital Week. A.k.a.: Crazy Week, Week o'Exhaustion, The Week of Much Fast Food & Little Sleep, and Hairspray Fume Awareness Week.

I'm really tired. Really, REALLY tired. We've had evening rehearsals all week and didn't get home until well after ten o'clock from last nights. I had to threaten both kids with cruelly creative consequences if they didn't take showers before going to bed. (Because hair wax [to control the frizzies for ballet buns], glitter spray, and a full-face of theater makeup equals pillowcases that you have to throw away).

My ten-year-old still has traces of eyeliner from last night's dress rehearsal, and it's freaking me out every time I look at her.

My thirteen-year-old is just plain mean from lack of sleep (my little contribution to her genetic makeup?).

I have scads of cute pictures to share with you, but I'm way too tired to open them in Photoshop, fix the demonic red eyes, then upload them to Blogger. Maybe next week.

Right now, I'm going to go sit very still on a recliner and doze. If I'm feeling ambitious later, I plan to watch Oprah and eat potato chips. But only if someone will feed me the potato chips.

Set Ye Not the Bar Too High For It Willst Fall and Whappest Ye On Thine Head

2010-04-02T09:30:00.003-04:00

Now that Bug is in on the whole Easter Bunny/Santa charade, I hopefully launched an idea at the dinner table,

"You know, once Uncle Awesome and I both knew about our parents being the Easter Bunny, my mom used to leave our filled baskets in our rooms for Easter morning."

Bug looked up sharply, "What?! I want you to hide them and leave clues like you always do."

"But if they were in your room, you could have a piece of chocolate the very second you wake up!"

Bear looked intrigued.

Bug was appalled. "No. No way. Clues. Hiding. That's the way we do it in this house."

So now I have to come up with a bunch of damn clues by Sunday. It doesn't help that in past years, I've done a different style of clue each year. I've already done trails of string leading to the basket, rhyming couplets, and trivia style questions where the answer is the hiding place of the next clue.

A very evil part of me is tempted to use Google Translator to do this year's clues in Mandarin. I bet if it takes them all day to find their basket, they may rethink the whole baskets-at-the-foot-of-the-bed scenario.

Cultural Diversity FAIL

2010-04-01T07:59:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, Bear and Bug were discussing the elementary school art teacher, who is something of a free spirit. At one point, Bear described her as a "hippy."

Bug (with the amount of condescension that only a younger sibling who gets to correct their older sibling can achieve): HahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHA! She's not a hippy, Bear. She's ASIAN.

Bear: Um, Bug? "Hippy" isn't an ethnicity, you know.

Bug: ... oh. Huh.

I'm Positive the Calories Don't Count If the Voices In Your Head Tell You To Eat Something

2010-03-30T09:27:00.006-04:00

I'm not the world's best bargain shopper. I cruise the sale racks, and I pay attention to the prices on the shelf tags, but I don't clip coupons and I don't read the circulars. Mostly, this is because we don't subscribe to our local newspaper, since its main purpose seems to be to accelerate global deforestation. When I realized I was only using it to cover the dining room during art projects, I cancelled our subscription.

(This is where you refrain from telling me in the comment section that there are websites where you can print out coupons. I know. I have Inappropriate Purchasing Disorder. If I come across a coupon for Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies, I'm buying the damn cookies. Ditto Cheetos. Ditto "snack cakes", Cocoa Puffs, and any number of other things that I wouldn't normally buy, but will now because I have a coupon. Theory #1: coupons are a tool of Satan. Theory #2: it's possible that I'm not too bright).

At the grocery store last week, I found myself in the potato chip aisle. Not intentionally, of course. I must have blacked out somewhere around organic produce because one moment I was selecting an eggplant and the next thing I knew I was in the chip aisle, and two bags of Cadbury Mini-Eggs had found their way into my cart in the interim. As I beat a speedy and virtuous retreat out of The Aisle of Sin, my eye was caught by a brilliant orange shelf tag posted by my very favorite, highly addictive Parmesan 'n Garlic potato chips. SALE! 2 for $5!

Voice in Head: You can't pass that up! What a deal! You can put them in the cupboard and save them for summer BBQs!

My hand reached out involuntarily and popped two of those suckers in my cart. At that price, it's just irresponsible not to buy them. Then I grabbed two more bags. I hesitated, put one back and got a Jalepeno 'n Cheddar instead. We had friends coming over that night, and I knew that my friend's husband loves anything spicy. I was buying them for him. Because I'm a giver.

I left the aisle feeling quite virtuous. Because three bags of chips is totally reasonable, but four is not.

[Sidenote: Turns out I like the Jalepeno n' Cheddar version just as much as the others. The one or two chips I sampled "to be polite" while our friends were over turned into twenty, plus two handfuls. Delightful slow burn of spiciness with a rich, mellow undertone of cheddar.]

Yesterday I was sitting by the front window unsuccessfully trying to sketch a new garden plan on graph paper (Dear Fussy Little Squares: Piss Off. Yours, Jenn) when the Voice in My Head piped up and suggested that a handful of Parmesan n' Garlic chips would be just the thing to cure my late-afternoon munchies. I opened one of the bags and ate a modest handful. Ohhh, the superb zing of garlic! The sharp bite of parmesan! Heaven. I dumped a few more into a small bowl and savored them.

They were gone way too quickly, and sure, I felt a pang of guilt as I unfolded the bag for the third time. This may be overdoing it, I thought. I briefly considered just licking the intoxicating flavor off of a few more chips, thereby saving myself most of the calories and fat grams, while maximizing flavor, but I didn't really relish explaining to Tom why there was a whole pile of soggy potato chips in the trash can. Besides, I wasn't even planning on copping to eating most of a bag of chips anyway. I was counting on blaming the kids for eating the chips and counting on his man-brain not to remember that the kids hate that flavor.

I spent the rest of the evening with the winning triple combination of unquenchable thirst from eating the equivalent of a half a cup of salt, ferocious parmesan-garlic breath, and shame.

Until I remembered that this is officially PMS week.

Voice in Head: Oh, PMS, you poor thing. Perhaps a few more chips would settle your stomach...

Finding Your People

2010-03-28T11:06:00.008-04:00

Bear had a rough start to junior high last year. In elementary school, her circle of friends had mostly been her Girl Scout troop and whoever was in her class that year. When sixth grade began, most of her friends went out for school sports and friendship groups began to form along the lines of who played on what team.

Bear had given sports a fair whirl for a few years and emerged with nothing more than two black eyes and a terror of balls. She declared herself "not a sporty girl" and decided not to go out for any of the junior high sports. Since she was already taking four dance classes a week and music lessons, that suited me just fine, too.

But at school, she began to feel left out of lunchroom conversation, a lot of which centered around the sports teams. She began to notice that she wasn't being included in group invitations to the movies or to hang out at someone's house.

"Mom, I'm not good at anything," she told me in a quiet, heartbroken voice.

"Of course you are!" I replied, "You're smart, you're creative, you're musical and a dancer, and you have an amazing sense of humor!"

"But, Mom," she said patiently, "None of those things count in junior high."

And my heart broke into tiny little pieces. Because I remembered that feeling, the feeling of suddenly finding yourself cast out of a group and wanting desperately just to belong again, even if you have to completely reinvent yourself to do it.

"Bear," I told her firmly, "Your only problem is that you haven't found your people yet. You are going to find friends who share your interests. And when you find them, you'll discover that you don't have to try to be something you're not for these friends. They're going to like you just the way you are, and you will feel more at ease and alive than when you're trying to fake interest in something just to belong."

We talked about how friend groups splinter and re-form many times throughout junior and senior high. When I told her that she might have two, three, or more different best friends between now and 12th grade, she gawped at me in disbelief. And I remembered how at twelve, there is only now, and it feels like things will be this way forever.

But, miraculously, within the first few weeks of school, I began to hear new names: S. from Band, A. from her accelerated science class, and L. from ballet. And within a month, I had my happy, self-confident Bear back. And miracle of miracles, she found that even though she didn't share as much in common as she once did with her old friends, they were still lots of fun to talk to at lunch or in the halls between classes.

Yesterday, a year after her self-confidence meltdown, I got to sit and listen to Bear play four classical pieces at her recital. She looked cool and composed as she mounted the stage and sat gracefully in her chair as she played her oboe. I was so proud of her.

This summer she's going to a one-week sleep-a-way music camp at one of the state universities. She is , and when her father and I gave the permission and wrote the deposit check, she told us excitedly,

"I can't wait to meet the other kids at camp. I just know that to want to go to a camp like this, they will be my kind of people."

I Am Only a Moron About Cars. Swear.

2010-03-26T10:45:00.002-04:00

After posting about my harrowing experience with a stuck accelerator pedal yesterday, several of you left kindly worded comments inquiring why I didn't shift the van into neutral?

Heh.

Funny story, that.

A couple of weeks ago, when all of the uproar about random acceleration in Toyotas was splashed throughout the news, Tom and I had the following conversation:

Tom (judgy and irritated tone of voice): I don't know why these morons whose cars accelerated out of control didn't just shift them into neutral.

Me (making list of pretty, pretty flowers I plan to put in my garden this spring): Hmm?

Tom: Well, instead of crashing, they could have just shifted into neutral and braked to stop the car.

Me (ooh, don't want to forget snapdragons!): Uhh, I dunno. Maybe they were panicking?

Tom: Still. Everyone knows that taking the car out of gear will stop the acceleration.

Me: (what's the name of those spiky purple flowers I had last year?): Right.

To my (very slight) credit, I did remember this conversation while I was trying to unstick the accelerator pedal. Problem was, I couldn't remember if he had said "shift into neutral" or "shift into park." I was leaning toward "park." Which I think we can all agree, probably wouldn't have ended well.

Once I made it to the stores that day and finally reached Tom on the phone, he first made sure I was safe. Then he launched into an endless lecture about what to do next time, why to do it, and oh, I don't know, how an internal combustion engine works? I admit to partially tuning him out once he'd moved on to sentences using words like "spark plugs", "combustion", and "rpms."

My brain reacts to car talk in much the same way it reacts to football. It shuts off. Then it makes its way to a happy place. In this particular case, that happy place was the candy aisle in Target.

Unrelated: Finally! A new look for my blog! What do you think?

I Just Wanted To Go Shopping

2010-03-25T07:59:00.005-04:00

So yesterday the accelerator pedal on my Toyota minivan got stuck while I was flying down the highway. I know what you're thinking ... how clichéd, right? My minivan isn't even one of the model years listed in the Toyota recalls.

They're never going to believe me, ran on a loop in my head as I tried to unstick the pedal, closely followed by I'm going to die a horrible, fiery death. And by "they" I was mostly thinking of Toyota and my husband, not you my blog readers. I mean, I love writing this blog, but it didn't exactly make the cut for "Things To Think About in Your Last Ten Seconds On This Earth." Sorry.

Here's how it all went down:

I merge onto the highway, heading to a store in search of a non-jeans-and-hoodie outfit for Bear to wear to her oboe recital this weekend. The pick-up truck in the right-hand lane moves to the left-hand lane to allow me to merge. All is good. I ponder exactly how girly of a dress I can buy for Bear without her refusing to wear it. Not very, I'm guessing.

As I come up to another on-ramp I see a semi on it preparing to merge. Unable to move over, since Mr. Pick-Up is still driving in the left-hand lane beside me, I decide to speed up to get out of the semi's way. Speed up I do - to about 75 mph.

Once clear, I brake lightly to slow down. Something feels weird. Glancing at the speedometer, I see that despite my foot on the brake (visual check here, yup, that's the brake), the needle is still inching up - 80 mph now. Okaaaay... that's not normal.

I brake harder. 85 mph. Huh.

Freaking out slightly, I move to check the accelerator. It's depressed, despite my foot not being on it. 90 mph. Not. Liking. This.

I tap the accelerator to try to make it release. Um, no. Apparently not going to happen. 92 mph.

I stomp the brake with renewed vigor, and steer onto the shoulder. Some hard-wired circuit in my brain flips on the hazard lights Miraculously, the van is slowing down. Slowly. 85 mph. Even more miraculously, the highway is virtually clear this morning, so I don't have to make any of those tough Crash Into Someone? or Roll Van Into Ditch? decisions. (For the record, I like to think that I would not have opted to crash into someone. Unless, say, Osama bin Laden turned out to be inexplicably driving the pick-up next to me).

65 mph. Hey, I might not die today!

50 mph. Something smells burny and horrible. I'm guessing that the car manufacturer did not intend for one to accelerate and brake at the same time. Noted.

In some order which is not clear in my head, I wrestle the van to a stop, turn of the ignition, and reach down for the pedal. When I duck my head down, I see that my rubber floor mat is wedged way up under the accelerator, so much so that it folds over the side of the pedal. Ah. I think I see the problem.

I sit for a couple of moments on the shoulder of I-95 and breathe. I call my husband, who is in a meeting. I consider my options. Damn it, I still want to go shopping. Bear is NOT wearing jeans to her oboe recital.

I restart the van and test the pedal. Seems fine.

I call my BF and make her stay on the phone with me while I cautiously drive a few feet down the median. I'm not sure exactly what the reasoning here was, but something along the lines of "if I'm going to die in a runaway van, someone's going to witness it, damnit." The logic kind of falls apart if you think about it too hard. I merge back on to the highway. The van seems fine.

I proceed down the highway at a cautious 65 mph, braking at random intervals, much to the delight of the vehicles around me. Just checking! Carry on.

An hour later, I stood in Target debating the merits of the Lindt Dark Chocolate & Orange Essence versus the Ghiradelli Bittersweet with Caramel.

Because cheating death on the highway absolutely equals giant candy bar in my book.

Bug Solves the Economic Crisis

2010-03-23T10:18:00.002-04:00

Our school district is facing a major budget crunch for the upcoming school year. Rumors have been flying thick and fast amongst the school kids ( and parents, if I'm being perfectly truthful) as to what programs and teachers will be cut due to lack of money.

Scene: last Friday, after school.

Bear: Mom! There's going to be a budget meeting at the school on Monday, and you have to go because they might cut band. Will you go?

Me: Of course. I was planning on going anyway.

Bug: I heard that there won't be any more sports or Stretch (gifted) classes and they're going to fire a bunch of teachers.

Bear: My art teacher said that they're going to start by cutting all the fine arts programs. He said that artists are always the first to get fired when the economy tanks.

Bug: Student X told me that there will be 30 kids in every class next year.

Me: Let's not get crazy. There are a lot of rumors flying around right now, and we don't know if any of this is true, which is why Dad and I are going to the meeting. We don't have any facts yet.

Bug (frustrated): I just wish I could tell everyone about my idea, and then we wouldn't be having this problem.

Me: Which idea is that?

Bug: You know, where the whole world agrees to get rid of money and just help each other out to be nice.

Adventures in Laziness (with a moral)

2010-03-20T09:47:00.004-04:00

I wore prescription glasses from the time I was two until I was thirteen, when my eyes were declared cured. This run of good eyesight lasted about fifteen years (and dovetailed nicely with The Vain Years: Dating and Early Marriage). By the time my opthamologist told me my run of luck had run out, I really didn't care so much about having to wear glasses.

I did have half-hearted fling with contacts, but my astigmatism made them feel exactly like wearing little slivers of glass in each eye.

My eyes, one of which is staunchly nearsighted while the other is perversely farsighted, have now deteriorated to the point where I have to shell out for prescription sunglasses, too.

Prescription sunglasses which I wear every day when I pick up Bug from school. You see, Bug's school has a policy where parents picking up children have to come into the school lobby to get their kids. It's a good policy, and I support it, but it does get a little tiresome having to find a parking spot and go into the lobby to retrieve her every day. And rather than carry my glasses case with me and switch out glasses for the thirty seconds I'm inside the school, I just shove my sunglasses to the top of my head when I walk in, scan quickly for the familiar outline of my kid, take her and leave.

Last Wednesday, I walked into the school lobby to pick up Bug and a friend. I saw Bug standing with her back to me looking up the main staircase, likely waiting for the friend to come down. I patted her head and tugged her ponytail lightly and said, "Hi, honey!" Then I stood with my hand on her shoulder and waited for the friend to come down the stairs.

Out of my peripheral vision, I could tell Bug was continuing to look up at me and not the stairs. Looking down at her, I saw that ... OH CRAP. This kid was not Bug at all. I removed my hand from the shoulder of the kid who was not Bug, but who was (in my defense) dressed in exactly the same bright green hoodie and navy capri sweatpants as Bug was wearing that day, not to mention being brown of hair and the same basic height.

"Heh, heh," I said, "I thought you were my kid." She gave me the weak smile you give the mentally unstable when you don't want to upset them. I took two non-threatening steps away to show that I was not the person they warn you about in the Stranger Danger talk.

Luckily for me, Bug came down the stairs right then, and I was able to show the Kid Who Was Not Bug that they were dressed exactly the same. And, wow, WASN'T THAT FUNNY! NOT WEIRD-FUNNY, BUT FUNNY-HA-HA?? Then I dragged Bug and her friend very quickly out of the building.

Moral: There's a reason why you wear prescription glasses, you dumbass.

Sick

2010-03-19T13:10:00.002-04:00

Fever.

No Appetite.

Cough.

Croaky voice.

Joint paint.

Exhaustion.

BUT! I've lost three pounds. It's Jenn's Viral Weight Loss Plan. Works every time.

Because Why Would I Give You Interesting, When There Is So Much Weird?

2010-03-15T10:49:00.005-04:00

As a nice counterbalance to the wide variety of craptastic events last week, Rose sent me this award. It made my day.

According to the rules of this award, I'm supposed to list 7 interesting things about myself. But since when I'm getting to know people, I most enjoy ferreting out out their bizarre little quirks and weird chapters from their pasts... that's what I'm going to share instead.

Consider it a random act of kindness. This list should make you feel much better about yourself.

1. I don't like metal utensils. My long, painful history with dental work has left me with a horror of anything metal in my mouth. If it weren't for trying to pretend I'm all normal and well-adjusted, and also the fact that it's damn hard to cut meat with a plastic knife, I'd use plastic utensils all the time. I absolutely have to use a plastic spoon for certain foods (yogurt, ice-cream, pudding); everything else I use metal for but am scrupulously careful never to let it touch my teeth. If somebody around me scrapes their fork on their teeth, I wince and have a minor breakdown back in a dark corner of my brain. Also, somewhere a fairy dies.

2. I seem to be incapable of putting on my clothes right-side-out. There have been way too many (more than four - that's all I'm admitting to) instances of people telling me gently in public that my shirt's on inside out. This may have its roots in a body image meltdown I had awhile back that culminated in my cutting out the tags in all of my clothes so that the sizes on the tags would stop taunting me. Add that to my general blindness without my glasses on, and you get an inability to discern which side of the shirt goes against my skin.

3. I'm kind of a freak about pronunciation. If Tom ever leaves me, it will because I've corrected his pronunciation one time too many. I know it's rude. I try really hard not to do it, and I never do it with friends or acquaintances. But here's the thing... if Tom mispronounces a word consistently, then the kids will start pronouncing it that way. So, really, my correcting him is simply good parenting. I'm doing it for the children.

4. I can take absolutely any medical symptom and diagnose myself with either cancer or appendicitis.

5. One of my favorite smells is dirt.

6. I worked as a butcher for two summers during college. One of my duties was to hose all the blood off the walls after the head meat-cutters went home for the day. (Note: not as glamorous as it sounds).

7. I quite enjoy bugs. This will no doubt amuse my parents, who lived through many years of my shrill screams and histrionics when I encountered a stray Daddy Long-legs in the shower or an errant earwig who traveled inside in our rolled-up newspaper. Now suddenly I've turned into the weirdo who transports bugs outside on an index card rather than kill them. Except mosquitoes. Mosquitoes I squish with malicious zeal.

I'm tagging Meg, Dawn, Lora, smalltownmom, and Cindy. Post the award on your blog and list seven interesting (or weird! I encourage weird!) things about yourself, and link back to me.

Friends, Romans, and Assorted Short People in Ponchos and Turbans

2010-03-14T16:45:00.005-04:00

Easily one of the highlights of Bug's academic year is Country Night, put on by her Stretch Reading class. The students spend weeks researching the country of their choice, writing an in-depth report, and constructing a display board. On Country Night, they wear a costume that represents their country, and bring a native food.

Bug's country was Italy this year, and she's been bombarding us with Italian factoids for about six weeks now. I now know that Italians spend a larger percentage of their income on clothes than Americans "because they're into fashion", that back in Etruscan days Italians lived in caves, and that Venice is slowly sinking into the sea. I actually already knew that last one because I used it in one of my more inspired attempts to guilt Tom into taking me to Italy sooner rather than later. If we wait too long, Venice will SINK INTO THE SEA. His response (eye-rolling) seemed to indicate that he thinks I'm making this up.

Coming up with an Italian-ish costume was tricky. Left to my sewing (i.e. stapling and hot gluing) skills, Bug would likely have shown up garbed as either Chef Boyardee (what? Pasta is Italian.) or perhaps an olive (because they make olive oil in Italy?). I briefly envisioned crafting a black olive costume out of a Hefty bag stuffed with newspapers. Bug rejected this idea with undisguised horror and suggested something more along the lines of haute couture because she had read "that lots of famous designers are Italian." I flatly declined to rustle up an Armani for her. As you can imagine, we were both greatly relieved when Grandma took over the costuming duties.

Which reminds me... a word of advice to any unmarried readers? Forget about marrying a guy who's sweet, funny, and picks up his dirty socks. I mean, that's nice and all. But in the category of Absolutely Essential is FINDING A MOTHER-IN-LAW WHO SEWS. Thanks to Grandma, my kids have always had the Halloween costumes of their dreams. And when completely stymied as to how to jury-rig a costume to represent Italy, a quick email to Grandma resulted in a gorgeous Roman noblewoman's dress.

All of the kids were completely adorable in their costumes. This year's crop included a Mountie, a German boy in lederhosen, a ninja, a gaucho, Fidel Castro, Golda Meir, an Afghan tribesman, a Statue of Liberty, and the tiniest little Mexican señor you've ever seen (with a lush, black, but not-quite-sticky-enough fake mustache that he spent much of the evening carefully pressing back on).

I'd like to give a shout-out to my kid for picking a country that I could actually supply food for. Unlike Bear, who during her elementary school years, selected countries like Sweden (newsflash: no lingonberries available in Maine supermarkets) and Tanzania (Google helpfully turned up a scant handful of recipes, all of which called for "bush meat"), Bug obligingly chose Italy. Piece o'cake. Well, piece o' tiramisu. That and two cheese pizzas from the local pizzeria, and my contribution to Country Night was done.

Again proving that she is her mother's daughter, Bug loved sampling all of the different foods:

I'm assuming that this look Bug gave me while she was standing on the stage means, "Exactly how many pictures are you planning on taking, Mom?" That or she was spontaneously channeling Mussolini. She's always had a soft spot for fascist dictators, as was demonstrated by her behavior from ages one until three.

The Post of Many Excuses

2010-03-10T10:20:00.004-05:00

It's been a week of little blogging. I just wanted you to know that I've been busy with Very Important and Essential Things. Such as:

Sick Kid. Bear spent Saturday through Wednesday looking like a very pale little lump under a blanket on the couch. I did much pouring of ginger ale and fetching of Jell-O. She nibbled, sipped, dozed, and watched TV.

Massive School Project. Bug is doing a project on Italy for her Stretch Reading class. She did the lion's share of the work, although I did assist in typing her report for her. I also volunteered to do some of the gathering-of-photos-for-the-display-board work because I suspected (correctly, as it turns out) that when you do a Google Image Search for "Italian women" and "Italian men" that what you get is porn.

TWO teacher in-service days this week, meaning four-day weekend for the kiddos.

PMS and a bowl of Cadbury mini eggs that were not just going to eat themselves.

Gorgeous spring-like weather that has had me doing things like exultantly dragging out the patio furniture, sweeping the porch, gathering rocks for my pond project, and sketching this year's garden plans.

Also there was this tree that's been gradually encroaching on my front window for the last nine years. By Monday I'd decided that it's time had come. I wrangled Bug into helping, grabbed the nippers and the tree saw, and we took that sucker down. (Except for the stump, which is large and unwieldy and going to require a chainsaw. WHICH, I might add, my husband continues to refuse to buy for me. Something about hadn't I learned my lesson from the whole Frankenfinger debacle...?)

What about you? What have you been up to?

In Which I Elevate Laziness to Performance Art

2010-03-08T11:53:00.002-05:00

After refusing to cook dinner until Tom allowed me to drag him around the yard and show him exactly where I wanted our future pond to go, and also pointing out specific rocks that would require transport to the pond site, I made mention of the fact that I thought I'd rake out the flower gardens this weekend. This usually results in ten or more wheelbarrows full of brush and dead leaves to be hauled out back and dumped in the ravine. (And, yeah, I know that you're technically supposed to tidy and "winterize" your gardens BEFORE winter, but I once read this article that vaguely suggested that leaving the dead plants and leaves in situ actually insulated the perennial roots during the cold months. That's all it took for me to totally ignore the gardens once they die in the first frost until spring when I actually feel like gardening again).

Anyhoo.

So I was talking about raking the flowerbeds, when Tom said thoughtfully, "I don't know why you don't just rake all the brush into a pile in the center of each bed and burn it."

I rattled off a long list of reasons why this was the most ridiculous idea I'd ever heard of and would likely kill all the dormant perennials, but mostly I was making it all up because I hadn't thought of it myself. I tend to prefer innovative, labor-saving ideas when I come up with them.

So midway through raking all the dead stems and leaves, it occurred to me that I was next going to have to haul this all out back in a wheelbarrow, which makes my back hurt. And just burning it seemed like a great idea.

I hollered to Bug (Slightly Overzealous Assistant Fire-Watcher and Hose Holder), raked the brush into a pile in the center island bed, and torched it. It was highly satisfying, and the wheelbarrow stayed untouched in the back shed.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere once that ashes are good for garden soil.

And He Say's I'm Irrational...

2010-03-05T11:45:00.002-05:00

ACTUAL CONVERSATION

Time: 2:37 a.m., last night

Place: my bed

I awaken to the sound of Tom snoring. I try to ignore it and get back to sleep, but after five minutes or so of listening to his buzzing vibrato, it becomes clear that this is not going to happen. And I'm not so much a lay there and suffer in silence kind of person.

Me: Tom.

Tom: ...

Me: TOM.

Tom: mmm....

Me: Are you fricking kidding me? (not wanting to lose my comfy position, I try whacking the mattress with my arm) TOM!

Tom: mmmrraakkpfft... huh?

Me: Roll over, hon. You're snoring.

Tom: ...

Me: Oh, no you didn't. (gently kick in his direction; mostly accidentally land a pretty solid one on his thigh).

Tom (suddenly awake and pissed): What the hell?!

Me: Roll over. You're snoring.

Tom (not rolling over): Yeah, I know.

Me: Then roll over.

Tom: I am.

(He's not).

Me: TOM, ROLL OVER ONTO YOUR SIDE.

Tom (in suddenly pissy and officious tone): LOOK, I can't do anything about it, OK? It's all linked through my Facebook page.

Me: ...

(Fabulous. He's not actually awake).

Me: TOM, ROLL OVER ONTO YOUR SIDE OR SO HELP ME GOD...

Tom: I'm on my side.

Me (gritting teeth): Roll to your OTHER side.

(Through what I can only attribute to divine intervention, he finally does. I, however, am now widethefuck awake and remain so for the next hour and a half).

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

2010-03-04T06:00:00.008-05:00

Bug felt strongly that she should head up the Giveaway Quality Control. She carefully wrote each entry on a slip of paper and folded them into squinchy little pieces.

"It's important that no writing show through," she told me gravely, a tip picked up no doubt from her obviously extensive giveaway experience.

Entry slips folded and in a bowl. (Picture taken from across the room, where Bug had instructed me to sit. You know, lest I taint the process or something).
Followed by thirty-nine (I counted) seconds of eyes-closed bowl stirring. It's a science, you know.
And the winner is...

Congratulations Country Girl!

You've won an item of up to $75 value (including shipping) from csnstores.com.

I'll be emailing you with the details!

I Have a Dream. Well, Obsession. But Let's Say "Dream" Because It Makes Me Sound More Sane.

2010-03-02T10:21:00.010-05:00

Last Day to Enter the $75 Shopping Credit GIVEAWAY!

For months now, all I can think about are ponds. I've been driving around town secretly coveting other people's ponds for years, and now I'm determined to have one of my own. I think I've even got Tom on board. At least, he's made a few resigned remarks about dusting off his shovel and beefing up his digging muscles, so I'm taking that as agreement.

You might remember my first foray into water gardening last year:

Yup, that's a pond in a flowerpot, complete with water plants and goldfish. By the end of the summer, the water hyacinths had grown to take over more than half the surface area of the pot, and the fish would swim up to the surface and poke their little mouths out when you came near. (They'd figured out the whole "people + proximity = food" equation).

When I picture my future pond, I tend to envision something along the lines of this:
Did you hear that? That was the sound of my husband fainting, followed by the rustle of divorce papers.

No, I know that I'm not going to get that pond. But isn't it beautiful and serene?

A little closer to being within the realm of reality (but still not quite there - you can stop breathing into a paper bag now, Tom) is this one:
The landscaping around it is gorgeous. I'm a sucker for river rock and fieldstone, and I am in complete love with the little waterfall at the far end.

I'm thinking that my pond is probably going to be more along these lines (please picture without the large burgundy elephant ear plant on the left; it makes me inexplicably tense):
I actually have quite a few rocks that we've hauled out of the creekbed and, um, (*cough*) kind of stolen from construction sites. The only real expenses will be a liner and a pump, which we'll use to create the waterfall.

I'm not sure what to do about fish because (get this) putting koi into a pond/stream/whatever in Maine is ILLEGAL. And while part of me thinks it would be secretly badass to go to jail for "illegal harboring of pretty fish", I realize that this would seriously cut into my pond-enjoyment and gardening hours. So, not sure yet what to do about that. Minnows? Non-claustrophobic trout? This is going to require much Googling.

Bug is hoping that frogs find our pond, and Bear is rooting for turtles.

I'll keep you posted. This is going to be fun. No matter what Tom says.

Paying It Forward (GIVEAWAY!!)

2010-03-01T15:06:00.007-05:00

In the past several months, I've been the recipient of more generosity and kindness than I can begin to acknowledge.

-My parents & in-laws who were quick with the financial help while we were immersed in the 2009 Construction-n-Major-Life-Upheaval Rodeo ... my mother, who flew 1000 miles to help me paint my house ... my BF, who rolled up her sleeves and helped me move furniture, paint, put away laundry, and anything else that needed doing during the months of renovation ... a friend who took the time to make sure the treats she was sending in to school for her son's birthday were safe for Bear's nut allergies ... the bloggers and blog readers, whose writing/comments and friendship has come to be an important part of my life. The list goes on and on.

So when I was contacted by an internet company this week and asked to host either a giveaway or choose a free item do a review on this blog, it was a no-brainer for two reasons:

1. I can't repay most of what I've been given in kind,

so why not pay it forward?

2. Review blogs bore me.

(Just to be clear, though, if this company had offered me shoes or a trip to Italy? You'd totally be reading a review blog right now).

The company that's hosting the giveaway has a ton of sites, carrying everything from kids beds, to bar stools, to cookware. I've spent quite a bit of time poking around on their websites, and frankly, they carry some version of just about anything I could think to type into the "search" box. And believe me, I can think of some pretty random things.

The winner gets to pick an item up to $75 (must include shipping) from any of their websites. Here's a sampling of some of the things I'd be likely to pick:

1. The Eurostyle Maybelle Aluminum Coat Rack, $67.95 + free shipping.

I can't say that I really need a coat rack, but I think this one is really cool and sculptural looking. I also think that I would need to buy a fabulous new coat to hang on it to make it look complete.

2.The Le Creuset Zen Teakettle in "Caribbean", $59.95 with free shipping.

It speaks to me. It says, "Put me on your stove where I will look pretty and make you tea."

3. WHOA. This company has a SHOE WEBSITE? This is seriously testing my whole kindly pay-it-forward philosophy. Here's what I would have picked (IF I were a selfish bitch, which I'm not. Usually.)

The Azura Tobago Thong Sandal in Brown, $71.00 + free shipping:

To Enter: Leave a comment in the comment section telling me what you would buy with a $75 credit!

I'll be choosing a winner at random. Check back Friday morning to see if it's you!

13

2010-02-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

Bear's 13th Birthday Shopping Extravaganza was an unqualified success. The party posse traveled from store to store in a cloud of teenaged materialistic giddiness. Favorite quotes from the day:

"Look at this purse ... the fabric reminds me of a dead fish. (*pause*) I LIKE IT."

"Wow. I can't believe I just spent $40 and only got two t-shirts. Money sure goes fast." -Try getting a mortgage, sweetie.

"No way am I spending my money on underwear. That's why I have a mom."

"Is this a thong or an eyepatch?"

(After listening to my BF and I rap out a raucous version of "Busta Move" along with the Glee soundtrack as we drove to the mall): "Well. That just wasn't weird at all."

(All identities except Bear and BF's daughter concealed due to not being sure if their parents know I have a blog and to avoid any potential PTA meeting weirdness if they find out I do by stumbling across photos I've posted of their kid. Plus I'm amused by the whole "several of these people have entered The Witness Protection Party as a result of this party" vibe).

For Bear's birthday cookie, I found this crazy candle online. It starts off by looking like a closed-up flower (sort of lotus-y?). When you light it, it shoots off pyrotechnics about ten inches into the air, then slowly opens into what you see here, all the while spinning and playing "Happy Birthday." Then, in a sort of grand finale, when Bear blew out the candles, it set off the smoke alarm (We upgraded to hardwired smoke alarms during the remodel that all "talk" to each other, so that when one goes off it triggers a whole houseful of bleating/beeping/honking Sweet Jesus, is a flock of Canadian geese flying through my BRAIN? kind of bedlam). Add to that: overreactive adolescent shrieking, my husband loudly wondering how to shut the damn things off, and two thoroughly panicked cats darting around assuming it's the Apocalypse. Stir and serve chilled over ice with a Motrin garnish.
Two days later on her actual birthday, when given the options of going out to lunch or to the movies, Bear said, "I really just want a lazy day at home." She spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch with her new quilt from Grandma and a stack of new books. If her maternity had ever been in doubt, I'd say that pretty much clinches that she's my kid.

Happy 13th Birthday, Bear!

Weird

2010-02-26T15:06:00.002-05:00

This has been a really strange winter. I know from reading blogs in states south of mine that there has been no shortage of snow nationally, but here in Maine ...? We haven't had a decent snowfall since January. The massive storms that have dumped truckloads of snow in the mid-Atlantic states have passed far to our south. A normal February here is a never-ending succession of storms, snow days, and wind-chills below zero. This year, February has looked a whole lot like late March, complete with gusty winds and some rainy days. (Rain! In February! It's simply not done!). Ive even had the windows open on sunny afternoons. Oh, sure there are still patches of snow in shady spots beneath the trees, but most of it has melted.

Truth be told, I've been feeling a little pissy about the lack of snow. When you move to Maine, you sign on for epic snow. No wussy "dustings" of snow or "storms" that deliver an inch or two. Please. In Maine we measure our snowfall in FEET. This year, I've had to forfeit my winter-hardiness bragging rights and sit glumly watching clips on the national news showing dump trucks moving mountains of snow out of Washington D.C and people making snowmen in Georgia.

In the last couple of weeks, though, my thinking has shifted, and I've been all Spring ... yeah, Spring. The grass looks like it might be trying to green up a little if you squint and look at it out of the corner of your eye. There are tiny ruffs of green poking up from the base of my perennials in the flowerbeds. I've been perusing gardening catalogs, making lists, and sketching out changes I plan to make in the gardens this year. I may or may not have even poked the ground with a stick to see how much longer it will be before I (Tom) can start digging the pond I've decided I can't live without.

Which is why, of course, I logged on to Weather.com this morning and saw that we're scheduled to get 4 - 8 inches of snow by tomorrow night.

Bastards.

The Marital Bed

2010-02-23T18:53:00.008-05:00

Before you get married, there are certain conversations that need to be had. Skipping blithely into matrimony without a thorough sit-down can result in two years later discovering you have acquired a spouse who thinks that raising minks in the basement for cash is a swell hobby. Tom and I covered all the biggies: religion, where we wanted to live, career goals, how many kids to have, pets vs. no pets, and whether black lacquer is acceptable on furniture (no). What we failed to discuss was mattress density.

I have a bad back. It functions approximately as effectively and reliably as Congress. I never know when it will stage a random attack. Paint the whole house? No problem. Hiding Easter eggs? Ten days in bed on muscle relaxants. It once went into a massive spasm as I was blow-drying my hair, sending me corkscrewing to the floor, where I laid for about an hour until I realized that sooner or later I would need to pee. By employing a sort of slow-motion, belly-side-up crab scuttle, I was able to inch my way across the living room to the phone to call a friend for help.

My point? For maximum back placation, I need a firm mattress. Firm like my stomach before I had kids.

Tom likes a cushiony mattress. At one point, he explained this by saying that the springs of our firmer mattress felt like they were stabbing him because he didn't" have as much meat on his bones". Which I pointed out was the same as calling me fat and did I mention that I'm damn handy with a butcher knife? He made a hasty retraction and some lame-ass explanation that he was specifically talking about the way his own personal hip bones are constructed. Then he shut up because I was starting to get the crazy eyes and happened to be standing within an easy arm's reach of the knife block.

For awhile, Tom and I thought that a memory foam mattress would suit both of our needs. Firm, yet cushiony. Soft, yet resilient. We both have memory foam pillows that we adore to the point of taking them with us when we travel. If we could afford it, wouldn't a whole mattress of memory foam be the ultimate perfect solution?

Short answer = no, it wouldn't. Turns out, it's like my personal mattress version of hell.

Using the excuse of Tom's 40th birthday, we splurged and bought a four-inch memory foam mattress topper. The very first night I laid down on it and thought, huh, it's squishier than I realized and kinda hard to roll over once you sink down into it. I brushed the doubt aside, figuring that I'd be sleeping so soundly that I wouldn't need to roll over.

I didn't realize exactly how many times I roll over in the course of a night until I found myself having to come fully awake each time in order to first hoist myself up and out of the Jenn-shaped depression in the memory foam and then flip over. In my new position, I felt myself sink, sink, sink until I looked like I had been surrounded in foam for shipping purposes.

"It's like I'm being cradled in my sleep!" Tom cooed happily the next morning. I gave him a sickly smile and kept quiet, figuring I just needed time to adjust. The next few nights, I slept fitfully and had recurring dreams of being trapped in small places: caves, coffins, elevators, and once, a filthy ball pit at a McDonald's Play Place. I woke up in a cold sweat, panicky and unable to move my limbs. A couple of nights I wound up migrating to the guest room bed, where I was free to flop around like a salmon as much as I pleased. Tom slumbered on, peacefully unaware in his memory foam cocoon.

Eventually, though, I had to confess that our pricey new topper wasn't doing it for me. And since we're not ready to go the whole Dick van Dyke Show route and have separate twin beds, we're back to square one. Tom keeps musing about cutting the memory foam in half and using it just on his side of the bed, which would make his side four inches higher than mine and turn bed-making into a logistical nightmare. So far, my response to that suggestion has been a look of mute horror. But I also don't have any better ideas.

Oh, and are you ready for the ultimate irony? Last year, we won a Sleep Number adjustable bed through some online sweepstakes. At the time, and this was before we knew we'd be adding on to the house, we had no way of fitting the bed into our bedroom and driving an hour away to pick it up seemed like a hassle anyway. We never went and claimed it.

And the Big 40th Birthday Memory Foam Splurge is currently folded up on the guest room floor, where the cats enjoy sleeping on it.

The Humility Post

2010-02-22T10:12:00.011-05:00

It has come to my attention through years of research (i.e., public embarrassment) that there are certain things that I can not do. At all. Ever. Like, don't even bother trying to teach me because many have already tried and failed. These are gaps that will never be bridged.

I've managed to live a relatively normal life despite my deficits. I maneuver around certain situations. I compensate. I flat-out lie.

No more. As of today, I am owning my shortcomings. Consider this is my public service announcement. Do not EVER expect me to display competence in the following areas. From now on, any expectations related to these categories and the subsequent disappointment you will inevitably suffer are your problem and not mine. Capisce?

French Braiding: I have two daughters. Hair-styling is part of the job description, so several years ago I hired my beautician, Jody, to teach me to French braid. She worked with me for 45 minutes, demonstrating several techniques on Bear. I carefully watched her deft fingers, I completely understood the concept, but when I took over to practice it looked not unlike a pair of knot-tying chimps had been let loose on my daughter's head. Jody watched my work with a politely horrified smile and ended our session by suggesting that perhaps I should practice on a Barbie Styling Head. I did. When Bug came home from preschool and saw what I'd done to her Barbie head, she cried.

Spatial Reasoning: When I was in kindergarten, the teacher gave us each a small wooden puzzle to put together. "When you're done with your puzzles, please put them back on the shelf, then come over to the carpet for Story Time," she told us. I had a fire truck puzzle of perhaps 12 pieces. I got a few of the pieces placed correctly but was goddamned if I could fit the others in. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see that some of the kids were already sliding their finished puzzles back onto the shelf. Anxiously, I stared at the pieces of fire truck in front of me. It had to be a trick. No way would those pieces fit together. The last of my classmates were putting away their completed puzzles and heading over to the Story Time Rug, leaving just me all alone with The Fire Truck Puzzle from Hell.

I swallowed my panic, carefully stacked the pieces on the puzzle board, and placed it quietly on the puzzle shelf. Then I left. Left as in walked right out of that school and was heading home when my bus driver spotted me and picked me up. He took me home, where I tearfully told my flabbergasted mother that I was not going back to kindergarten ever. When my kindergarten teacher showed up at my house that evening carrying the puzzle, my shame was complete. However, she gently led me through piecing together that damn fire truck, and I graciously agreed to give formal education a second chance.

My spatial skills have not improved much in the ensuing 33 years, meaning that I will have to try an average of five Tupperware containers before finding the correct size to house the leftover pasta salad and that when I'm shopping and hold up a shirt to gauge its size, I'm unclear as to whether it will fit me, either of my kids, or perhaps the cat.

Football: In junior high gym class, I once made a touchdown for the opposing team. As I ran fleetly down the field, I thought my teammates were screaming my name in kind of a "Yay, Jenn! Way to run that ball!" kind of way. Turns out it was more of a "Turn around, you utter freaking moron," way, and several of the boys were seriously pissed at what I still consider an honest mistake given the baffling nature of that game. OK, admittedly, I might have more of a shot at understanding football if I gave a crap about it. I don't, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Recognizing People Out of Context: Let's say that your kid is in the same dance class as my kid. We see each other once or twice a week. I say hi to you when I come into the dance studio, and we've probably even chatted a bit as we stand and watch our daughters' class. Now let's say that you see me at the grocery store. We're in the same aisle, even. I will walk right past you with no indication that I've ever seen you before in my life.

And if you come up to me and say hi? I will happily respond and even chit-chat with you for several minutes before making my escape to the produce section, where I will have a minor panic attack because I still have no idea who you are. Weeks later, I may or may not make the connection. Probably not. Don't take this personally.

A good rule of thumb is that I will need to interact with you about 20 times before I recognize you on a regular basis. But all bets are off if you: (a.) change your hairstyle or color, (b.) wear a hat or sunglasses, or (c.) wave to me as you drive past in your car.

So, how about you? What is something that you consistently fail at? (Feel free to make something up to make me feel better).

Change of Address

2010-02-21T15:08:00.004-05:00

Please note! I'm switching this blog over to a new (custom! fancy! shiny!) address... please change your bookmarks to:

www.perspectiverequired.com

According to Blogger, you should be forwarded there automatically, but I really don't trust them that much.

I'm also adding word verification to the comment process. Sorry to add the extra step, but I'm hoping it will reduce the ridiculous spam comments I'm getting.

Party Prep

2010-02-18T14:14:00.005-05:00

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but we don't have a shopping mall in our little town. Nor in the middle-sized town 20 minutes away. Or even the other middle-sized town 45 minutes away. The closest mall is an hour and ten minute drive from here. So when I asked Bear what kind of a birthday party she wanted this year, she didn't even hesitate, "I want a shopping party, where you take me and my friends to the mall."

Done. We're supplying them each with a modest amount of spending money (and most of them have been saving their allowances for weeks in anticipation), having lunch at the Food Court (must. contain. my. excitement.), and then coming back to our house for pizza, movies, and a sleepover.

Think of me tomorrow, if you will, driving down the Maine State Freeway with five screechy, giggly thirteen-year-olds. To fortify myself, I plan to go with my tried-n-true combination of liquid personality (Starbucks latte x howevermanyIdamnwellneed) and earplugs (for the car ride). I'm also taking reinforcements in the form of my best friend, who makes an excellent latte partner and who can be loud as all hell, if necessary to quiet the party posse. Plus, she is the Designated Person I Can Roll My Eyes At.

I told Bear to think of us as her Secret Service detail. We won't be right alongside them, but we'll be with them. Twenty paces back or so. With the Starbucks cups. And possibly a giant pretzel.

This morning Bear and I went to the grocery store to pick up the snacks for the party, i.e. The Ceremonial Buying of The Crap. Bear tossed candy, chips, and all manner sugary, salty, and artifically-colored junk that I don't normally buy into the cart with an unholy glee.

At the cash register, I saw the cashier's eyes widen and saw her swallow the urge to comment as she scanned bottles of soda (caffeine-free, and yeah, I get the irony of buying $50 worth of high-fructose corn syrup and artificial colors but drawing the line at caffeine) and bags of candy and chips. I repressed a wicked desire to talk about the nation's childhood obesity epidemic and how Michelle Obama is kind of a hero of mine.

Finally, unable to hold it back, the cashier said, "Boy, that's a lot of candy."

"Sleepover," I said succinctly.

"I don't think there will be much sleeping," she said dubiously.

Hmm. She might have a point. However, the party posse will be "sleeping" in the downstairs family room, while I can retreat to the sanctuary of my shiny, new master bedroom. So, frankly, I don't much care if they sleep. I'm pretty cool as long as they stay off the internet and don't vomit on my furniture.

Bear wanted a giant chocolate chip cookie for her birthday cake, and she wanted to decorate it herself. Having done the elaborate nine colors of frosting, hand-decorated teddy bear/princess/flower cakes, I was all knock yourself out, kiddo. I baked the cookie and sat down with a cup of coffee while she used Junior Mints, Smarties, and candy melts to polka-dot the cookie. It's adorable.

The party plates and napkins are opened and ready, the crepe paper is strewn, the gifts are wrapped, and my van is clean and filled with gas. If you need me, I'll be sneaking in a nap. I have a feeling I'm going to need one before facing tomorrow.

Counting Down to the Teen Years

2010-02-17T11:09:00.003-05:00

In four days, my oldest child will turn 13. A teenager. Making me ... the mother of a teenager. What the hell?

I distinctly remember my mother when I was a teenager. She had no clue. She was nosy, always wanting to know the personal details of what was going on in my life and who I was friends with. She invaded my space by requiring that my bed be made and my room be picked up. She did not dress in cool and trendy clothes, like ripped neon sweatshirts or acid-washed jeans. She refused to spend $80 to buy me a pair of Guess! jeans and forced me to save my allowance instead. She listened to horrifyingly uncool music, like Barbra Streisand and oldies, and sang along in front of my friends. She only let me drink one soda maximum per day and only bought Doritos once in awhile even though she absolutely knew they were my favorite.

"SHE'S TRYING TO RUIN MY LIFE!!!" I wrote in my diary once when she (totally unfairly!) refused to let my sixteen-year-old self go to a concert two hours away with my boyfriend and spend the night in a hotel with him and a bunch of friends. It was like she didn't trust me, or something. (I even squeezed out a few tears and deliberately let them drip on the ink and smear it for effect, just in case she later snooped and read my diary. Then she would see the depth of my devastation and change her mind). (She didn't change her mind).

Just in this past month alone, I've ordered Bear to clean her room, explained that it's not OK to just eat the cookies or chips out of her lunchbox and bring home the fruit, refused to let her be dropped off at the bowling alley when there wouldn't be parental chaperones, sung along enthusiastically to "Chicago" in the car while she begged me to switch to the radio, and forced her to wear seasonally appropriate clothing with no regard to what's cool. (And apparently flip-flops in February are cool. Noted).

Actual Conversation:

(Scene: Last week. Bear starts to head out the door for school in a short-sleeved t-shirt and lightweight hoodie).

Tom: So, Bear, just out of curiosity, how cold would it have to be for you to wear your winter coat to school?

Bear: I dunno. Cold.

Tom: No, give me a number. How many degrees?

Bear: Uh ... ten.

Tom: It's seven degrees this morning. Put on your damn coat.

Bear (with gritted teeth): FINE.

Moral: We're blatantly unfair and trying to ruin her life. Damn that karma.

Aw, Nuts.

2010-02-13T13:03:00.005-05:00

So in a not-even-slightly-surprising postscript to The Saga of Bear's Peanut Allergy, it turns out that she is also allergic to all tree nuts. In order to determine this, Bear had to undergo a back scratch test (there's probably a medical term for it, but let's call a spade a spade, shall we?). The nurse writes numbers on her back (eighteen this time, I think) in marker, then makes a small scratch next to each one, using a sharp little tool dipped in a liquid form of the potential allergen. As a control, the first scratch is made using a histamine, which always reacts positively. Then Bear has to lay quite still on her stomach for fifteen minutes while we wait to see if there are any positive reactions, i.e. hives and welts. If there are, they then measure these for circumference and height to help determine how severe the allergy is.

Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito, one of those huge ones that looks like it's come right out of the Jurassic Period, and not reached down to smack it away and scratch? Imagine being told that if you did scratch, that you would have to be bitten again. And now imagine having to lay still, while your brain focuses on nothing but the building itchiness. Now imagine that it's your kid who's undergoing this, and you have to watch and be the one to tell her not to wiggle, to be still, and don't scratch. It's right up there with waterboarding, I tell you.

Within four minutes, Bear's back had bloomed into angry red welts swelling with hives next to nearly every number. I scratched lightly with my fingernails around the perimeter of the testing area and blew lightly over the welts to try to give her some relief. Tom and I chatted with her about where we should have lunch, her birthday party, and exactly how much Benadryl she'd be allowed to take once the testing was over. She couldn't even turn her head because the nurse had cautioned her not to let her hair touch the testing area.

It sucked. Big time. And when the nurse came in at the end of fifteen minutes, she took one look at Bear's back and said, "Well. I guess nuts are out of the question for you, sweetie."

However! In a small gesture of benevolence from The Powers That Be, it turns out that she is not allergic to pine nuts. As a passionate consumer of pesto, Bear was deeply grateful. As someone who was not really looking forward to figuring out a pine-nut free recipe for pesto, I was equally grateful. (Oh, you know I would have, but I'm lazy about recipes that require me to use the food processor, and I quite like our grocery store's brand of low-fat pesto).

Oddly, Bear doesn't really mind going to see her allergist. That might have something to do with the fact that this is her doctor (note: photo brazenly stolen off of his website):

Doesn't he look like he could stroll onto the set of Grey's Anatomy and fit right in? In fact, he'd probably be cast as the hotshot new surgeon who makes the cute lesbian pediatrician switch teams. McCutie-Pie.

When he left the examining room to get the nurse, Bear turned to me with a grin and a sigh and said, "I always forget just how cute he is."

If you have a thirteen-year-old daughter who's being told she's stuck with navigating potentially fatal food allergies for (likely) the rest of her life, it does seem to help if Dr. McCutie-Pie is the one giving you the news. FYI.

The Newest Member of Our Family (No, Not a Haitian Orphan)

2010-02-12T11:42:00.006-05:00

The other evening, I went into the girls' bathroom. As a general rule, now that I have my own bathroom, I try not to do this. But since theirs is the bathroom used by guests, and because my girls seem genetically incapable of hanging up their bathmat or closing the shower curtain, I occasionally pop in and tidy things up. On this occasion, I noticed that the caps were off of both of the tubes of toothpaste (Of course my children disagree about toothpaste flavor. Bear enjoys a sharper, more pepperminty flavor, which Bug claims burns the tastebuds off of her tongue. And, naturally, Bug's milder bubblemint flavor makes Bear "gag so hard I almost throw up, I swear, Mom").

As I reached to pick up one of the caps to put it on the tube of toothpaste, I noticed that both caps were neatly lined up along the edge of the sink and FILLED WITH WATER. What the hell?

"Bug!" I hollered, knowing she was sitting in the living room, "Why are the toothpaste caps full of water?"

"That's for Paco to drink out of," she called back.

Several possible scenarios flitted through my mind. Two involved rodents. None were very good. I stuck my head out into the hall and reached deep down for my Zen Mommy voice, "Paco?" I inquired serenely.

She carefully stuck a bookmark in to mark her place, came into the bathroom with me, and pointed,

"Paco. Right there."

"You have a ladybug named Paco?" I clarified.

"Yup. Bear found him, and we decided to keep him in here since it's too cold for him to survive outside."

I thought about this and decided that I really didn't care whether a ladybug lived in my guest bathroom. I put the kibosh on the toothpaste caps as drinking trough idea, though, and suggested they just occasionally splash a little water in the sink for him.

All went swimmingly for several days until one night before bed, when Bug appeared at my side
with tear-filled eyes, demanding a new toothbrush.

"Paco was on my toothbrush," she told me in a voice that trembled with disgust, "And God knows where he's been.

I supposed I wouldn't really like to find a bug, even a cute little ladybug, hanging out on my toothbrush bristles, so I handed her a new one.

"I don't want him anymore. Let's put him outside," Bug announced with the cold resolve of the recently betrayed.

Bear protested passionately that Paco would die, die!, in the cold and refused to consider putting him out. In an act of compromise, I suggested that Paco be enrolled in a sort of Ladybug Witness Relocation Program. Bear would take him to an anonymous, far-away-from-Bug part of the house. Perhaps he could change his name to Guillermo.

"I just hope... I hope I don't find him all dry and crunchy on a windowsill some day because he couldn't find access to water," Bear told me mournfully.

We hardly knew ye, Paco.

The Family Email Chronicles, vol. 1

2010-02-09T09:56:00.009-05:00

Among the things my family never gave me: a trust fund, a shiny red convertible with a bow around it on my 16th birthday, and an in-ground swimming pool (despite the fact that when my father said, "You can either have a pool or a college education," I clearly stated that I would take the pool. To which he said, "No," in a blatantly unfair and dictatorial maneuver. It's a miracle that I still send the man Father's Day cards).

What they did give me, through both nature and nurture, is a delightfully dark and twisty sense of humor. My family shares a love of the darker side of humor, the sarcastic, and the just plain wrong-but-undeniably-hilarious. And, honestly, it's served me much better and longer than any of the items I mentioned above. (I'm still open to the trust fund idea, though).

Occasionally, either from sheer boredom or deep-rooted, unresolved family issues (hi, still waiting for that in-ground swimming pool), we like to mess with each other. Such as in this email thread from last week (somewhat edited for clarity, length, and to make me look good)...

From: Mom

To: Dad, Jenn, Pat, Tom

Subject: bummer

Not sure what's going on, but I don't feel at all well this morning. I talked to Jenn for a while, then struggled to get some cookies baked. I've been sipping on tea, but that isn't settling my stomach. I'm going to lie back down for a while and see what's what around noon.

BTW, I did some research online this morning. Gracie [their cat]definitely has a cold. I felt her body, and she has no fever. She really has the sniffles this morning, but is otherwise acting fine.
I wonder if Gracie picked this up in the vet's office last week? I can't imagine where else she would have been exposed. TTYL, Linda

To: Mom, Dad, Pat, Tom

From: Jenn

Subject: RE: bummer

Mom, it kind of sounds like you're blaming not feeling well on me, despite my living 1000 miles away. I've decided to take offense, but can be appeased with plane tickets to Italy. (I like to fly first class).

Some viruses do skip between humans and cats, so I suppose you're going to blame Gracie's cold on me, too. (I like to stay at the Ritz-Carlton). Love, Jenn

To: Jenn, Mom, Pat, Tom

From: Dad

Subject: RE: RE: bummer

I think your self-declared Trophy Wife status is going to your head. You may try to exploit this with Tom, but not us - sorry. Neville Chamberlain taught us that appeasement is a slippery slope. -Dad

To: Dad, Mom, Pat, Tom

From: Jenn

Subject: RE: RE: RE: bummer

Is that something along the lines of "never negotiate with terrorists"? I've decided to take offense at that, too. If you ever want to see your grandchildren again, I'd better be lounging on the Amalfi Coast this time next week. -Jenn

To: Dad, Jenn, Mom, Tom

From: Pat

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer

Jenn? A trophy wife? Bwah hah hah hah! I had to live in fear of her my entire childhood! Only if a trophy is intended to torment, dress you in the other sex's clothing, and generally make your life seem not worth living. -Pat

To: Pat, Dad, Mom, Tom

From: Jenn

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer

Yes, but look how well you turned out. YOU'RE WELCOME. It was all part of the master plan.

And FYI, that was not "the other sex's clothing". That was my Sassy Walkin' Doll's clothing. Technically, she was not human, and therefore sexless. But her pink pants fit you quite well. It's almost like I knew that skinny jeans would be fashionable one day. I call that rather prescient and fashion-forward for a six-year-old. -Jenn

PS - Have a bottle of champagne waiting in my hotel room in Italy, and we'll call it square.

To: Jenn, Mom, Pat, Tom
From: Dad
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer
I told your mother we should never have helped you with your house renovation. I'll have her read King Lear... -Dad

To: Jenn, Dad, Mom, Pat
From: Tom
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer
You know what? I'm also not feeling well today AND I spoke with Jenn this morning. Interesting coincidence...

To: Tom, Jenn, Mom, Pat
From: Dad
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer
In your case, Tom, it's having a trophy wife like ~~Goneril Regan~~ , I mean Jenn. (What did she eat last night? Seems like giving a Gremlin food after midnight). Dad

To: Dad, Pat, Mom, Tom
From: Jenn
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer
Sigh. You people make me tired. How on earth, Dad, do you remember arcane movie trivia like feeding gremlins after midnight makes them morph into tiny monsters? Do you stay up late at night watching crappy 80's movies? I will note, though, that the ferocious monster gremlins were far more interesting than the insipidly cute n' fluffy gremlins. Since I don't do cute, I choose to accept the gremlin reference as a compliment, as I'm sure you intended. They were cunning and strong-willed, with daring hairdos. My kind of people. Jenn

PS - I always thought Cordelia was kind of a wimp.

To: Jenn, Dad, Pat, Tom
From: Mom
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: bummer
I am finally awake and getting caught up on your messages. All I have to say is:

1. I am feeling better. I just needed a nap.

2. NO ONE is going to Italy without me. End of discussion.

3. As I recall, Jenn, the slacks you squeezed your brother into were from a set of female doll clothing. You still owe him an apology.

4. You can skip the bottle of champagne, but I'm fine with the other arrangements for OUR trip to Italy.

5. Is it too late for me to be a trophy wife?

Love,
Mom

When You Raise a Child With Sarcasm...

2010-02-08T09:01:00.002-05:00

Scene: For our Family Movie Night this week, we screened "Jurassic Park." After the movie, to the kids' great amusement, Tom darted about the living room pretending to be a velociraptor.

Tom: ScEEEEEEEeech! HaaRRRRkkkk! (pause to cock head, then dash across room) SCREEEEECH!

Me (to Bear): Aren't you glad that at least your mother is a sane and reasonable parent?

Bear: Wait. You're not my mother?

I Blame Whole Foods for My Weight Issues

2010-02-02T11:33:00.004-05:00

Yesterday at the gym, I sat down at one end of a metal bench in the locker room to change my sneakers. Mistake. The other end of the bench soared into the air, not unlike the unoccupied side of a teeter-totter that has a hippo on the other end. I leapt wide-eyed to my feet, sending it clanging back down on the concrete floor.

"Well, that's never a good sign, " I told my best friend, who snorted behind her hand in an unsuccessful effort to hold in her laughter. She later claimed to be laughing "with" me.

I share this with you for two reasons:

1. I actually went to the gym, and I generally like to publicize that as much as possible.

2. Yeah, I've put on a few pounds in the last few months.

3. It is 100% Whole Foods' fault.

Despite my ardent letter-writing campaign, Whole Foods has neglected to build a store in my town. The closest one is an hour and twenty minutes away. Not exactly convenient for dashing over to grab a dozen hormone-free eggs or when I have a craving for a random tropical fruit, like a cherimoya (which, no doesn't happen that often, or even actually ever, but I'm making a point here). IF I wanted a cherimoya, I would have to drive an hour and twenty minutes to get one and that's ridiculous because of the price of gas and the fact that I don't technically know what a cherimoya is. Don't worry, though, because I've taken revenge on Whole Foods by eating a whole lot of processed crap in the past five months. So, really, I'm the winner here.

And I do understand that there are quite a few organic and healthful things for sale right in my local supermarket, but it's no damn fun to purchase them without the correct store ambiance of wood floors, artful displays of produce with names I can't pronounce, a gelato bar, and a make-your-own granola station. Whole Food makes me feel all healthy and like a person who would want to buy those foods. Hannaford makes me want to buy Oreos, Diet Pepsi, and Teddy Grahams. It's completely beyond my control.

I should also mention that along with inappropriate snacking issues, I also have a minor problem with denial. Here, take the following test and see how you do.

SCENARIO #1:

Over the course of several weeks, you notice that your pants are becoming tight. You conclude:

a. Hmm, perhaps I've put on a few pounds.

b. Damn cheap synthetic fibers. These pants are defective.

c. Perhaps my husband is secretly doing the laundry, and we all know he does it wrong.

SCENARIO #2:

You are walking next to your children, when you notice that while their shadows seem proportionately correct, yours is looking a bit wider than normal. You conclude:

a. Hmm, perhaps I've put on a few pounds.

b. They must be walking closer to the sun, therefore their shadows are smaller.

c. Clearly, my shadow is broken.

SCENARIO #3:

You notice that your face is looking chubbier than normal in photographs. You conclude:

a. Hmm, perhaps I've put on a few pounds.

b. The camera lens is distorting my face.

c. I should really buy new makeup.

If you are me, the answer is NEVER "a".

This is all by way of telling you that suddenly, yesterday, I realized that the answer actually IS "a". And to warn you that things might get a whole lot bitchier around here. I'm giving that new fad diet called "Eat Less and Move More, You Lazy Cow" a whirl.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Double Digits

2010-02-01T10:35:00.006-05:00

No, not the weather here. Let's not get crazy.

Her:

She's ten. And let me tell you, there's something about your youngest hitting those double digits to really make you realize how quickly your life is whizzing along. And also that you really need to stop referring to your muffin top as "baby weight."

It hasn't been the easiest year for Bug. Of all of us, she was the most affected by our renovation project. She's always been a child of routine, who needs her sleep, and who thrives on predictability. Living with workmen tromping to and fro, nail guns and generators thundering away, walls being torn down around her, and just general chaos for four months brought out a new anxiety in Bug. She worried more and cried more, and as consumed as I was with the renovation, it took until we were done with the construction and settling back into a normal life to realize that Well, DUH, maybe this whole process has been hard on her. I'm intuitive like that.

Bug really threw herself into her party planning. She chose "Chocolate" as her theme and devoted a notebook to planning her guest list, cake, games, and pretty much any detail ever ?associated with a child's party. Cake? Giant cookie decorated with candy. Movie? Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Breakfast? pancakes with chocolate chip and whipped cream smiley-faces. Treat Bags? Hershey kiss lip balm, cookie cutters & sprinkles, mini boxes of chocolates, and packets of hot chocolate.

She decorated the cake/cookie herself. The best thing about it is that with its adornments of Skittles, Junior Mints, Rollos, and Swedish fish, I had no desire to sample it. And me passing on birthday cake is a minor miracle.

Bug and her four best buds. Since their parents don't know about my blog, I blacked out their faces. (Any resemblance to "Girls Gone Wild" is mostly coincidental).

Actually, it was one of the easiest slumber parties we've ever hosted. They hauled out the boxes of dress-up clothes early on and spent 80% of the party wandering around in my old heels, dance recital costumes, and elaborate hats playing some completely engrossing, highly bastardized version of "Mother May I." I actually had to call them up from the family room to eat cake and again for the movie.

Bear and I engineered a "Name That Candy Bar!" contest. The girls were given a small slice of ten different candy bars and using taste, touch, and smell had to write down the name of each one ( or half credit if they were able to accurately describe the candy but didn't know its name). Most were fairly common (Milky Way, Twix, Snickers), but I threw them a few curve balls just in the interests of self-amusement (Mint Aero - a Canadian candy, an 80% dark chocolate Ghiradelli bar, and Cadbury's Caramello bar).

Tip!: most ten-year-olds don't like 80% dark chocolate. At all. In fact, Bug was the only one who did. The other four took one bite, gagged, and tried to scrape it off their tongues with a napkin. Entertainment value galore.

Happy Birthday, Bug!

Isn't This How Everyone Reads?

2010-01-29T07:00:00.002-05:00

Bug is determined to achieve her straddle split this year in her classical ballet technique class, so this is her preferred method of stretching without getting bored.

After each chapter, she sits up and pushes the stretch for awhile:

Then back to reading.

Some weird kid, huh?

Winter: Participation Optional

2010-01-28T09:29:00.006-05:00

I took some serious crap from Arizona friends when we announced our plan to move to Maine.

"You know it snows there, right?" they'd ask, "Like, A LOT."

"I love winter, " I told them staunchly, "Bring it on." I may have harbored some slight reservations about driving on icy roads. And, yeah, rattling around in the back of my head was a story I'd heard as a kid from some military friends of my parents. They'd been stationed in northern Maine, and during one truly terrible winter had even had to have supplies airlifted in to them.

But for the most part, it was true. I love winter. I think it's beautiful. I love watching the slow slide of seasons from the lush green of summer, to the bright fall leaves, and on into the monochromatic palette of winter. Spring is so much more miraculous after months of leafless trees and frozen ground drifted with snow.

However.

It occurred to me the other day that I love winter as viewed from my window. I love its visual starkness and beauty, the lavender and blue shadows cast across the snow by the branches of my birch tree, the tiny birds at my feeder, and the grace of snowflakes falling from a leaden sky. I like significantly less the driving in slush, the slipping and falling on the ice, and the way I look in snowpants. When I picture myself going skiing, I don't picture myself whizzing elegantly down the slopes with poles tucked confidently at my sides. No, my vision goes immediately to me snuggled comfortably in an overstuffed leather chair in the lodge reading from my Kindle with perhaps a mug of coffee (lightly spiked with Bailey's) steaming on the table beside me. Sometimes there is an afghan. Out the windows around me, other people are whizzing elegantly down the slopes. Occasionally one of them falls spectacularly. I savor their clumsiness while sipping my coffee smugly.

A couple of weeks ago, after a generous snowfall, the kids begged to go sledding at The Big Hill. The gentle slopes in our backyard were boring, they pleaded, and we hadn't gone sledding as a family even once this winter! We all gamely suited up in snow pants, parkas, boots, hats, and gloves and loaded the sleds into the back of the van.

And despite being unable to completely fold myself into a pretzel to fit on one of the girls' saucer sleds, the first couple of runs were great fun. I climbed back up the hill and savored the crisp, cold air. Look at me! Outside enjoying the Maine winter! All active-like! I thought in that self-congratulatory was that always seems to invite comeuppance.

On the third run, my saucer spun and sent me down the hill backwards and off-kilter. In this position, my snow pants functioned quite efficiently as a scoop, shoveling great quantities of snow down the back of my pants. Just before the bottom, the sled hit a chunk of ice and careened to the left, while I went backwards-with-a-half-twist to the right, landing with inimitable grace on one shoulder while my kids laughed with evil glee. I retrieved my hat and sled and removed as much snow from my pants as modesty would allow in a snowy field filled with children and their parents.

While I huffed my way back up the hill, my cold-weather asthma kicking in, the little balls of ice stuck to the inside of my wasteband chose this time to begin melting, sending random trickles of freezing water down my butt. This sucks, I realized, reaching the top of the hill with damp underwear and no desire to try a fourth run. I began to daydream about my Kindle and an afgan. Ooh, and coffee.

Class Three

2010-01-26T06:46:00.004-05:00

Two years ago, at age ten, Bear was diagnosed with a peanut allergy. At the time, she'd been growing so fast and furiously (up, as opposed to my preferred method of "out"), that her pediatrician became concerned about her weight. Despite throwing double protein powder in her breakfast shakes, grilling steak tips (her favorite meat) for dinner twice a week, and offering her Hershey bars for an evening snack once her sister was in bed, nothing seemed to result in Bear putting on a speck of weight. Looking back, when your kid grows six inches in six months, there's not going to be much energy left for putting meat on her bones. At the time, all I could see was that her arms were getting Ethiopia-thin, that we were getting concerned questions from teachers, and that no clothing manufacturer in existence made pants to fit that long and skinny of a kid.

She ate plenty. Oh, she loved to eat. It just didn't help that this was a kid who, from the time she was a toddler, preferred Jell-O over pudding, popsicles over ice-cream, and fruit over any form of protein ever invented. I frequently wheedled her into eating a dish of full-fat ice cream when what she really wanted was an apple. (Sidenote: how is this my kid? How?)

At my most desperate, I started making her peanut butter sandwiches. She'd only ever tried peanut butter a couple of times, around the age of five, and declared she didn't like it. But now - I had to bring out the big guns. She brought the sandwiches home in her lunch box with a bite, maybe two, taken out of them.

"Bear, this is ridiculous. You won't eat lunch meat. You don't like the school lunches. You have got to eat these peanut butter sandwiches to give your body enough protein to build muscle."

"Mom, they make my mouth itch," she whined.

"BEAR, YOU ARE TOTALLY MAKING THAT UP," I told her firmly. (In retrospect, not my proudest mothering moment...)

Luckily, the next week we had an appointment with an allergist to address to seasonal allergies. When he asked if she'd ever reacted to a food, I initially said no. Then I remembered The Battle of The Peanut Butter and said offhandedly, "Well, she says that her mouth itches when she eats peanut butter..." (Probably my second proudest mothering moment).

He scrawled something quickly in her chart and added peanut butter to the list of things they would test her for that day. In addition to a host of trees, grasses, dust mites, carrots, celery, etc., peanut butter tested positive. To be certain, they ran bloodwork as well. Positive. Class 2 (out of 0-6, with 6 being the most severe).

Our lives shifted hugely. We read up on peanut allergies. I apologized to Bear for not believing her. We carried an Epipen and learned to read labels and ask detailed questions at restaurants. Did you know that peanut butter is a common thickener used in restaurant chili? Or that many Asian restaurants cook in peanut oil? We began ordering snack foods like granola bars and cookies from Canada, which has some completely peanut-free manufacturing facilities.

Our big consolation was that since she tested at Class 2, her allergist felt that she had an excellent chance of outgrowing the allergy. We would be excruciatingly careful to keep her away from peanuts and re-test in two years.

We are now at two years. Yesterday, the allergist's nurse called with the results. Positive. Class THREE. She's getting worse, not better. Bear was devastated.

I sat last night on her bedroom floor, with Bear in my lap, like she used to when she was younger. She leaned her cheek against mine, as I rocked her back and forth and said every consoling word I could think of. If the worst thing that happens in your life is that you have to be careful of peanuts, that's not so bad. Her face was still, so sad. Tears slipped down both cheeks, but she nodded, I know. I just really hoped it would be gone.

I would give anything to be able to make this go away for her.