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A letter to Maggie on her fourth burthday

2008-09-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Maggie,

Happy fourth birthday my love, my girl, my hunnybunny.

I considered this morning that your birthday will always be most significant to me because your birthday is the day I became a mother. I don’t want to marginalize my love for your little “brudder”, because he is sweet and adorable and certainly less lippy than you. But Maggie, your birthday is especially specially special to me.

August 21st, 2004 brought me to a place where I became free to love with wild abandon and run around like the liberated adoring smitten mother that I am. It’s fun to love someone as much as I love you. I don’t care who sees me kissing all over you at Target, or gazing adoringly as I push your hair behind your ear at the grocery store. I am punch-drunk in love with my babies. And you my dear, were my first baby.

I didn’t know how to love like that until August 21, 2004.

You may find out someday that having a baby changes the way you look at the world. I say this not only because I really really really want to be a grandma someday so that I can play with your kids, hop them up on sugar, and then give them back to you. Then I will go home to my house where I will sleep all night, every night, for ever and ever amen. Only to be woken by the occasional bad dream and your father flopping around like a 200 pound walleye, but certainly NOT to be woken up by a preschooler who can’t find her blanket, or wants her pink pony, or water, or is scared to be alone, or who wants to writhe on the floor screaming at 1:30 a.m. for no discernable reason.

I also say this because you have taken to telling everyone who asks what you want to be when you grow up “I want to be mommy”. Which makes me run to the cupboard and hand you a bag of foil-wrapped chocolates.

Your head nearly exploded when I explained to you that you could be both a mommy AND a scuba diver. But not a scuba diver in the ocean, because oceans are far away from our small plot of land locked smack dab in the middle of North America. I would not allow you to move to the coast, I explained to you, because then I wouldn’t be able to make you dinner twice a week when you are a grown-up. You nodded in agreement and explained to me (as though I were stupid, mind you) that you would instead be a scuba diver in a POND. Being a scuba diver of ponds will conveniently allow you to remain in the Midwest and close to your mother and free meals while you start your family and climb to the top of the scuba diving in ponds field.

And none of this matters anyway, because you now want to be a singer, and definitely not a scuba diver.

So, you very well may understand someday that having children shifts the entire center of your universe away from yourself and onto another person. This might sound bad, but it’s not. Life with myself in the center was boring and consisted of a lot of time spent in bars smoking cigarettes pondering the meaning of my self absorbed life aloud to anyone who was bored or drunk enough to listen. Sadly, as a main character and center of the universe, I was not nearly as interesting as you are. You, Maggie, are much more fun to watch.

I love watching you in action, but stealth and secrecy must be implemented in order to observe you for any length of time. You seem to have an irrational fear of being watched, and when you catch me, you shriek “Ma-ma!!! DON’T LOOK AT ME!!” STOP LOOKING AT ME!!! I then raise my brows in a surprised expression and wander to a corner so I can pretend to chop tomatoes and continue to spy on you, only more stealthily. You act out dramatic social interaction between dinosaur friends, zoo animals, or “pretty pink ponies” (who aren’t even all pink, mind you). They say things each other like “Oh, we LOVE YOU!” and they all talk EMPHATICALLY to one another, and you basically create a world of fantasy where dinosaurs and ponies and creatures have nonstop birthday parties with cake-eating and hand-holding and disclosure of very exciting secrets.

I have to be honest though, I am not sure if I will miss 3. You turned three and became a bossy, fit-throwing Godzilla who had to be tiptoed around and spoken of in hushed tones and observed with nervous fleeting glances.

Every day, we have a struggle over something. I can not, to save my own life, figure out what it is that you get out of these scuffles. What is your motivation for seeking out nonstop conflict? For demanding that I choose the shoes you will wear to school only to reject every pair I pull from the closet. MEANLY. Sometimes you even thrown them and scoff. And when I give up in frustration and say “fine, you pick out your shoes or go barefoot to school!” you fall onto the floor pulling your own hair and screeching. Then I say “Fine! Wear these!” and you wail.

“NO! I DON’T LIKE THOSE!” You shout, with a pained, red accusing face. It’s as though by this exercise you communicate your utter frustration and resentment that I do not understand what it is that you need, and you need me to understand what it is that you need, and in not understanding what you need, I am failing you miserably.

Then I carry you to the car and pretend you are going to school with no shoes while you kick and scream in sheer agony while the neighbors all peek from behind their blinds to find out who is pulling the claws from the cat’s foot with a pliers. But I really secretly bring a pair in the car, which you obediently put on your feet as though nothing happened as soon as we get to school.

Also, for example just this morning you were so well behaved that I said you could have a treat in the car on the way to school. In an effort to not give you the WRONG treat (which happens often and is SO EMBARRASING!) I decided to offer you your choice of three. A starburst, a baby ruth, or a few sweet-tarts. You sat, buckled in your car seat and began to whine the moment I offered them to you. You didn’t want any of those treats. You wanted a different treat. I instructed you to choose one, and got in the car and began to pull out of the driveway. “Those are your choices, and you need to pick one” I told you.

Then you threw all three treats at the back of my head as I drove.

You quickly changed your mind and decided you did in fact want a treat. By this time, of course, you had a snowballs chance in Hell of getting anything from me. And then you cried and screamed and threw yourself on the ground outside of school as parents walked by and gave me sympathetic looks.

I do not know why you do these things.

Another example: this year we had a daily toothbrush trauma.

When asked to brush your teeth you inevitably refuse the first toothbrush I choose for you, demanding that I present you with another. When presented with another, you turn your nose up at THAT one. You scoff at “Thomas the Tank Engine” and God help the poor fool that offers you spider man. We repeat, and repeat and run around in circles until I lose all patience and tell you that we are done trying to choose a toothbrush and you are going to bed without brushing your teeth already to which you respond, screaming and sobbing, and tearing our your hair “I DON’T WANT MY TEETH TO TURN YELLOW!” Then you race into your room in a panic with red face, tears and frantic frenetic jumping to and fro.

This went on for nearly a year until we realized that if you only have ONE TOOTHBRUSH all this can be avoided. SEE! We’re not so dumb! It only went on for seven months until we found the painfully obvious and simple solution.

On the other hand, three was a lot of fun. It was amazing to watch you figure out the world. You understand the seasons, and you know how to make cupcakes, and you know to ask to lick the beaters every time, because I will always let you. You know to behave well when there are treats at stake. You know to ask Mommy for things that Daddy already said “no” to. When we ban treats for bad behavior, you say “but I am being good NOW!” with the same conviction one would use arguing, say, a supreme court case. You know that you are much more likely to get what you want when instead of simply saying “please” you give your dad a wide-eyed look and implore “Oh, please daddy?” while jumping up and down. You are no one’s fool. While I admire this about you, your intelligence presents some parenting challenges.

You seem to have mastered emotional manipulation at a young age. This started when you spread your arms as far as they could go, and said “I love Daddy this much.” Then you looked at me solemnly and placed your palms parallel to one another two tiny inches apart, and said “I love you this much”.

“So you love Daddy more than me?” I asked?

“Yes” you replied.

Later that night, when your father and I were going to bed, I was still bothered by this. “She’s MEAN!” I whined incredulously. This bothered me for several days until I found out I could confuse AND trump you by nodding enthusiastically and smiling every time you repeated this, and saying “OH! That’s wonderful sweetie”. This confused you so much that you stopped once and for all.

The strangest phenomenon of our growing family is that each of you seems to think I can carry on three conversations at one time. Just the other night, I was sitting at the kitchen table looking from you to Ben, and back to you, trying to decide if I should take you to both to the doctor to be checked for an ear infection. Ben was screaming for my attention with red goopy eyes and snot crusted nose. Your father was asking me for the 8th time if I REALLY needed to take you to the doctor. And you exclaimed “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” – these things all took place simultaneously – everyone loudly demanding my attention, but you called my name with such urgency that I stopped, looked at you and said

“yes, Maggie?”

Pause

“Why to pterodactyls have wings?”

Other popular questions are “Why are the bugs in the world?”, “Why are there animals in the world?”, and “Why are reptiles reptiles and mammals mammals?”.

I love that you are so inquisitive.

You like reptiles better than mammals, even though you are a mammal and so is your whole family. You don’t care. Also girls are pretty, and boys are handsome.

You are also incredibly brave and tough. You recently had to get 2 shots at the doctor’s office, and did not shed a single tear. I nearly started bawling as you sat in my lap and that nurse stuck a needle in your perfect, precious little arm. But not you. You took it like a champ.

You make me very proud.

I will miss the time (and I know it’s coming) when you stop telling me on a daily basis “Mommy, you’re my BEST FRIEND.”

I hope you never stop calling me Mama.

I worried how you would adapt to having a little brother, and you took it all in stride this year, and have a perfectly typical love / hate relationship with Ben. You slam your bedroom door in his face and make him cry when he enthusiastically crawls towards your room. You push him out of the way and knock him over on a daily basis. But every morning you greet him with a huge smile, put your face right up to his, and give him a “Hey there buddy! Hello Stinker!”. He never seems to hold anything against you, and returns again and again, seeking you out and trying to engage you with a smile and a laugh. Most of the time, you give one right back.

You are a lot of fun.

You are so smart, it amazes me.

I love spending time with you.

You are really funny.

I love you.

Thanks for being you, for being four, and for letting me be your mom.

Love, Mama

Keeping up with the Liberians: A wince-worthy statement

2008-04-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

"For most American women, of course, the idea of 16 weeks paid leave is a mere dream. The United States is one of a handful of countries with no guaranteed paid maternity leave policy, along with Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, Lesotho and Liberia, researchers found last year. "

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24206008/

Excuse me, I would like a refund please.

2008-01-03T07:27:00.001-08:00

There has been a recent proliferation of dairy products designed to “aid digestion”.

I noticed that one of these products advertises a money-back guarantee.

I tried to imagine the conversation required to exchange enough information to communicate the products failure to perform, and the desire for one’s money back:

“Yes, Hello. I would like my money back for your cheese product. I ate it for a week, and it did not make me poop.”

“Okay, I am happy to help you. Let me understand. Our cheese did not make you defecate, and you would like your money back. Is that correct?”

“Yes. I ate your cheese. Then I didn’t poop. Because of this, I would like my money back, please.”

“Okay, great. We just need a little more information. For a refund to be processed, we require some form of proof of your failure to defecate. To ensure that we have enough information, we ask you to verify pressure of the contents in your colon. Please provide us with an address to which we can send our fecal pressure gauge, follow the simple instructions, and return the results to our lab. If the report reflects a manometric pressure of more than 3 pounds per cubic centimeter, your two dollars and forty nine cents will be refunded.

If you happen to have a bowel movement between now and the time you receive your verification kit, we ask to preserve the sample so that our technical staff can study the shape and markings of the fecal matter to estimate the velocity at which the contents of your bowels were extruded.

Our forensic experts will study the markings of your dung and compare them to a test sample. As with bullets fired from a gun, each fecal extrusion posesses markings unique to the individual who fired them. So please, do not attempt to send in matter not belonging to you. We seek first to prove that the matter was produced by your bowels. Next, we test the markings to reveal the colonic pressure estimated upon extrusion. If our forensics team finds the measurement to be above our required level, you will receive a voucher for a product of equal or lesser value.

“Yes, please send me the kit. It is imperative that I receive a refund for my two dollars an forty nine cents. You promised your product would make me poop, and your product did not, in fact, make me poop. Therefore, it is well within my rights to request a full refund. Thank you.”

“We look forward to hearing from you. Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions.”

“I appreciate your help. Thank you.”

A very special 5 days of Christmas

2007-12-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

On the first day of Christmas a loved one gave to me:
a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the second day of Christmas, a loved one gave to me,
2 Pink eyes
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the third day of Christmas, a loved one gave to me:
3 nasty coughs,
2 pink eyes,
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the fourth day of Christmas a loved one gave to me:
4 runny noses
3 nasty coughs
2 pink eyes
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the fifth day of Christmas a loved one gave to me,
5 ounces of ham! (stuck in my husbands esophagus requiring a visit to the ER).
4 runny noses,
3 nasty coughs,
2 pink eyes
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

May your holiday season be free of helmets, esophagus's filled with ham, and general snotty congestion!

For Maggie

2007-11-07T06:48:00.001-08:00

Dear Maggie,

There have been so many moments when I have stopped, made a mental note to remember a specific thing you said that was hysterically funny, or something you did that was just so.. well... MAGGIE. Here a few things I want to be sure to remember from age 3 years 2 months.

You live in Minnesota, and have always lived in Minnesota, but instead of using the local dialect and accent (straight out of the movie "Fargo" no matter how many locals insist we don't talk like that. WE DO), your accent more closely resembles a jewish grandmother from Long Island.

You even say "talk" like her. "Toowalk" You wanted to stick your hand in the flour jar ther other day because is was "sowaft".

Where you picked up this affectation is beyond me, but it is highly amusing.

You have an obsession with soap. This is preferable to other possibilities like poop and garbage, so I will count my blessings.

When you visit your grandmothers house or your aunts house, or any new place, I know that if I haven't seen you or heard you in five minutes that you are rooting around the bathtub looking for bars of soap. No matter if it's nothing but a sliver. You sniff them out the way a squirrel finds nuts and lovingly clutch them to your chest like little baby birds.

Yesterday your Grandma gave you 3 small hand soaps and you brought them to bed with you during your nap. I told you not to rub them in your eyes, and no sooner were the words out of my mouth, you raised one to your eye socket and smushed it around in circles to test my hypothesis that it would sting and make you cry. I take no small amount of pride in the way you stubbornly insist on deciding for yourself if someone is full of crap or not. And I was grateful that you kept your eye closed while smooshing the small purple fish-shaped soap around your eyelid, proving my theory wrong.

Boy, you really got me there.

You have taken an interest in playing the piano as well. You stand before the keyboard, raise your hands, pause, and shout "ONE! ONE! ONE TWO THREE!" before you begin pounding away. Because this is what Lindsay Buckingham does in the live version of "Go your own way" that your father tivo'd and watches with you over and over again so that you can dance and sing along.

This is good, because you no longer allow me to play music cd's for you when you play in your room. I am not sure why you decided that you no longer enjoy music. Perhaps it distracts you from other things you like to do in your room, such as pretending you want to play with your animals, shutting the door, undressing, putting on your own pull-up, re-dressing yourself, and crouching in a corner to poop. This is all to avoid defacating in the dreaded toilet. This kind of thing takes a great deal of concentration, and you can't be distracted by the soundtrack of "Diego Live".

I have kept you far from all varieties of princess toys and movies, and so far you are much more intrigued by things that are creepy-crawly. One of your favorite toys is a rubber lizard we got at Target for two dollars and fifty cents last spring. Your dolls sit in the basement gathering dust, but that lizard gets dragged from place to place.

Your favorite thing to say to me is this: "Ma-MEH! CAN I HAVE A SNACKANADRINKANWATCHMONSTERS?" You would watch "Monsters Inc." fourteen times a day if we let you. I must confess that I am tiring of being your snackanadrink fetcher. I may resort to getting you your own minifridge and raisin cupboard to keep in the TV room. I'll have to think about that one.

You spontaneously burst out with "I love you Mah-Ma" about twenty times a day. Often while grabbing my hand. Sometimes you tell me "I love you Da-Deh" just to be funny. You think it's positively HYSTERICAL. I hope you never stop doing that, however I know you probably will. I will miss it terribly.

You also love your baby brother, which truly makes my heart swell with pride and love and wonder. You wake up in the morning and immediately want to touch him. You stick your face right up next to his, and exclaim in this breezy, rushed, high pitched voice: "HiBEN! HiBEN!"

If he cries, you turn on the music on his baby rocker and sing for him. You love your baby brother. And it had nothing to do with your father or me prompting you or pressuring you (not that those kind of tactics work with you anyways). Your love for your baby brother came from your own heart, and that heart of yours is enormously sweet, and whipsmart, and adorably stubborn and independent, and I am so very proud of you.

There's is a lot more where that came from, but that's what I have time to write for now.

I love you hunnybun.

Love, Mommy

Thoughts on Home Depot

2007-11-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

If I have to set foot in Home Depot one more time I think I shall stab myself in the eye with a carpenter's pencil.

I have accompanied my husband on approximately 435 trips to the black hole of our money in the last 12 months. Most of these invitations have been covert. As in: "Honey, do you want to grab a bite to eat?"And then we end of at Home Depot.
"Are you in the mood for a coffee?" (Once I am in the car, miles from home): "I just need to make a quick stop."

45 minutes later while husband peruses 45 different kinds of caulk, I find myself giving my 3 year old her 2nd timeout in the bath fixture aisle while silently cursing the entire big box concept. I also curse the hamster wheel of modern home improvement.

Keeping up with the Joneses stuff, like granite coutertops and stainless steel appliances that are trademarks of the new alterna-yuppie affluents. SO ALTERNATIVE. Not. We are all suckers. Suckers who drop a hundred bucks at Home depot every weekend. Those who are truly alternative drive by home depot with their middle fingers raised, and go home to their outdated kitchens and bathrooms without emptying their bank accounts and racking up credit card debt.

Note to self: implement moratorium on all home improvement projects until further notice. "Project never ending blackhole of a basement bathroom" has been in full patchy swing for over THREE YEARS NOW, and we still don't have a blasted everloving toilet on the lower level.

Staying / working at home is harder than going to work

2007-11-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering which was harder.

And also, I am mired in poo.

Maggie is old enough to go into her room, change into her own pull-up and re-dress herself so she can take a giant crap in her pants, but not capable of going poop in the toilet.

Also, my children have been re-named Madge and Bif by their aunts.

Madge, Bif, and giant piles of doodie. There are the things that compose the vast majority of my waking hours.

It's not as bad as it may sound.

It's a good thing they're cute.

And so we had pork...

2007-10-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I made a dinner of roast beef and roasted potatoes, and in doing so, I seared all the pads on the fingertips of my right hand on a white-hot handle of a frying pan.

After thawing out an entire pork tenderloin with my burned hand, I eventually went to bed with my hand in a bag of frozen chicken parts. Remind me to get a refrigerator with an ice machine. Please.

The next day Maggie flipped over face first, upside down, into the ladder on her bunk bed. I expected her to come up with broken teeth, but she just had a bump on her forehead.

Just in case any of you were questioning the importance of health insurance. We are poster children.

Last night, we ate pork.

Welcome to the World, Baby Ben

2007-10-16T05:54:00.001-07:00

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

Martin Luther King Jr.

Benjamin James arrived on September 21st, very very early in the morning.

He's a big boy, weighing in at 9 pounds 7 ounces at birth, and is now past a whopping 10 pounds.

No wonder I was so tired all the time. Lugging this kid around!

Now if only we can get him to sleep for 3 consecutive hours with some regularity...

We are over the moon, though. He is a peach. We think he is the cutest thing ever. Even with the not sleeping and all. And much to the disbeleif of my entire family, he is indeed a boy. After his face, it was the first thing we checked.

The blog posts shall resume with some regularity from this point on.

It was a long summer that included a new job, a very tired, very large pregnant lady, and a lot of long, hot days.

Hope you are all well!

Silent Silver Lining.

2007-06-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

One might think that a woman 5 months pregnant might relish her sleep as though it could be nuttered away for the impending REM famine and middle-of-the-night newborn hootenannys to come.

The baby has not yet arrived, so aside from a few bumps and kicks, the fetus is innocent of all wrongdoing.

The Gods appear to be against me in other, Hellish, Random non-infant forms.

For example, the most annoying:
Neighbors who leave their grossly neglected dog outside ALL FRIGGING NIGHT, EVERY NIGHT, who just last night, stood outside our bedroom window and barked from 3:30 a.m. until 5:30 a.m.

About 4:00, I looked up their number on the Internet with a reverse address search, and called them to inform them that their dog was disrupting my sleep.

And I enjoyed that part.

Someone picked up the phone and mumbled something about bringing the dog in.

20 minutes later, I heard a few yelps (did they KICK the dog? Nice.) and then half an hour later the barking started up again, indicating that they had intentionally LEFT THE DOG OUTSIDE TO CONTINUE BARKING. Probably so that they might get some undisturbed sleep. How nice for them.

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND, INSIDE A MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREA, LEAVES THEIR DOG OUT ALL NIGHT LONG?

A DOG KNOWN FOR BARKING AND WHINING CONSTANTLY DUE TO LACK OF ATTENTION?

And I like the dog. She’s a beautiful Siberian Husky and very sweet. She is just terribly neglected. AND SHE’S LEFT OUTSIDE ALL NIGHT. EVERY NIGHT. Usually these problems lie with the pet owners. Seriously. What’s the point of having a dog?

So there’s that really pleasant not-at-all-annoying issue.

And then we have…

My preschooler, who has developed a fear of the dark. She calms her fears by crawling out of her warm bed several times a night, racing through the house to turn on every light on the first floor, and then scampering back into her bed to resume sleeping.

The night before last, about 2:30 a.m., I heard her switch on the hall light (that shines directly in our bedroom). Then she shouted “Light ON!” authoritatively before racing back into her bed. As though to warn all the grown up s in the house that they’d best leave that light as-is, or else.

So last night at 3:00 a.m., Maggie made her nightly “run of the lights” and returned to her bed. Normally she will go back to sleep with all the lights in the house blazing bright, but this time she appeared by my bedside, ponytail askew, to whimper “Where’s my binky?”

So I heaved my growing more enormous by the day belly out of bed, dug her binky from where it was wedged between the wall and her bed, and returned to bed. Then, of course, I couldn’t sleep, so I got a granola bar and some milk. I managed to drift off about 3:25 a.m and..

Cue the F-ing neighbor’s dog.

Jim suggested an air mattress in the basement. At this point that sounds like a good idea. No. I am not even kidding.

I will be sure to mention to my neighbors that their pregnant neighbor has been forced from her bed to an air mattress in the basement because they neglect their dog which barks all night directly outside my former bedroom window. Seriously. What the Hell is wrong with them? There are about 7 people that sleep in that house every night (combined widower / divorcee families) not to mention 5 cars parked in the driveway and in front of our house. They all seemed to sleep right though the ruckus. How nice for them.

Jim wears hearing aids, which he takes out at night. He has considered his hearing loss to be a bit of a hardship. Until now. My recent Hellish nighttime tribulations have shown him the silver lining to his cloud, in the form or removable hearing aids and sweet, sweet silence. So we have that. At least we have that.

2007-05-27T02:41:00.001-07:00

It's 4 a.m... Can't breathe normally. Playing solitaire until the storm in my head blows over. Maggie turns on all the lights in the house (practically) 2 or 3 times a night. This wakes me up, but not really, because if it wasn't for that would just have to pee anyways. Getting kicked from the inside by this little boy. Thinking about the second thoughts I am having about the new job that I wanted so badly. No maternity leave. That risk seems a lot more huge now that I am feeling the weight of the pregnancy and the fatigue. The fear of a new job. What if I don't do well? What if I am too tired to function? What if I go a little bit crazy after the birth of this little boy like I did last time? The safety of a place I dislike seems preferable to the big bad unknown. For which I have not tenure or paid leave. So. Here I am, thinking I may ask them to wait until the next position opens up. After I assured them that I was okay with that risk. I just wanted to win. Now I am freaked and scared and anxious. Not good. Also doing just fine where I am... except for the hating it sometimes..

I have been dreaming of ex boyfriends - I always do when I am pregnant. Don't know why. Perhaps I am trying to bulldoze unresolved issues from my subconscious to get ready for the new arrival and new change. Getting angry about stuff that happened 12 years ago. Lies and bad behavior and the shame of being the last to know. And wondering why I spent so much time mourning a person who had proven themselves to be of so little value or real worth to me. It was perhaps, more that it was so shocking to my system that someone could take me down emotionally so completely. That someone's carelessness had made me wither from the inside out. But that was more than one person. It was about much more than that. That was me being drowned out by things and by people and by life.

I was thinking about moving out of my parents house for the first time. Into the sorority which I paid for myself (which I was later kicked out of because I couldn't afford it). On the day I moved, my parents weren't around to help. No plans. No worries. I don't even think they had arranged for a car for me. A really nice guy named Rob who I was seeing helped me. Rob, who I eventually stopped calling with no explanation. Rob who sent me romantic letters reminding me of the time we spent together in Madison sitting by the lake for hours, until the sun came up. He was so sweet, and I was such an asshole. But even then, I thought it was strange that my parents didn't help me move. It was an afterthought of course, like "maybe we should have helped you" was uttered at some point. But the damage was done. Walking into the sorority with a large comforter and the anxiety, cold in the pit of my stomach. Seeing all the other girls with their doting parents, who cared enough to ask about what kind of food we would be fed, worrying about the likes and dislikes of their daughters, and feeling that familiar feeling of "other" ness. Being on the outside, looking at the way normal people acted. Normal people who mattered to their families. Years later, my parents made a big production of moving my younger sisters into their dorms. That they paid for. And then later, into the house she rented with friends. That they paid for. And wondered why I was never worth the time or money or energy that they were.

Someday I hope to recover from the atrocities of my youth. I write that with the sense of humor of someone who does understand their own profound ability to wallow shamelessly. I also know, I will never. Ever. Do that to my children.

Pretty.

2007-05-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago on my day off, I brought Maggie in to work to show here around. I was sitting in my cube just now, and realized I had forgotten to point out that I had pictures of her hung up right where I can see them.

Then I thought about my parents at work when I was a kid, and how they probably displayed pictures of my sisters and me in their offices.

And I felt a little bit sorry for them.

First Day

2007-05-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Maggie,

Today was your first day at your new school. The first day we have ever left you with someone you haven’t known your whole life. I have been anxious about this day for weeks.

I tried very hard to act as calm and collected as I could as we got dressed and headed out the door. Today, I dressed you in your turtle pants, and matching green turtle shirt, and we put a green ribbon in your hair. You had milk and a banana in your favorite chair, and watched Pinky Dinky Doo while I got ready for work. I took a picture of you in your car seat as we got ready to go, and you gave me a smile, which you hardly ever do these days when there is a camera around. I told you to say “I’m going to SCHOOL TODAY!” and you repeated it back to me with a big, huge grin. We will save that picture forever.

We have been talking school up for about a month now. We took you for a visit last week so you could meet your teachers and get used to the new room and the playground where you will spend two long days a week. I was so worried that you would cry when I left, so I made sure you knew what the drill would be. We talked over and over again about how Mommy would bring you to school and play for a little while until I had to go to work, and you would stay with your teacher and the other children. Then you would play, and have lunch, and take a rest, and play some more, and then Mommy and Daddy would come and bring you home.

While you got situated, I filled out some paperwork about what you like and don’t like, and made sure to write down that you are left handed. They asked about behavior issues, and I wrote that you have the occasional temper tantrum, whining, and the rate episode of hitting. I broke out sweating as I wrote, and had to wipe my forehead under my nose several times, which means I was feeling more than a little panicky.

I wanted to get there early while it was still calm, and there were two other kids there. The entire class had been hearing about Maggie, the new kid, for over a week, and they have been very excited to meet you. Your first day was supposed to be a week ago, but you had a fever so we kept you home. I was secretly relieved that we had a little more time, because frankly, I wasn’t quite ready yet. So everyone knew you were coming, and every time a kid was brought in by there parents, the teachers, Jenny and Erika, said “Hello (so and so)! Maggie is here today? Remember how we talked about Maggie?”. I asked if you could say “Hi” to your new class mates and you simply replied “No” and went about your business.

You immediately found a box of dinosaurs and asked if you could dump them out and play with them. You got right down to business. Then you asked if you could play with the bugs, and the teacher told you that you could, as soon as you put the dinosaurs away.

And I started to sweat some more, and had to wipe my upper lip again, because I got so worried about leaving you in a place with all these new rules that you didn’t even know yet. And what if you no one understood that in big groups of kids, you really like to play by yourself, and what if they thought that was rude? And what if they thought that meant you didn’t like them, and what if then they weren’t nice to you? And what if they didn’t understand how sweet you are underneath it all, and how unabashedly loving you can be? What if you don’t speak all day, and they have no idea how smart and funny and wonderful you are?

And of course you simply put the dinosaurs away, and then took out the box of bugs like it was no big deal at all. Like you learned new rules every day, and learning the ropes was no biggie.

My plan was to stay until they served breakfast and help you get situated. I wanted to ease you in to the day, without making things harder by staying too long. That is a very faint line as a parent, and it’s so hard to know if you are doing the right thing. I worried that the teachers would think I was a nervous Nellie. Most of all I worried about whether me sticking around was making things easier for you or harder for you.

We sat you in a chair, and the teacher poured you some cereal in a bowl, and some yogurt in one cup, and milk in another, and you dug right in, like you had been going to school for ages.

My heart pounded as I got ready to say goodbye. I was as jumpy as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and I didn’t want my nervous energy making you nervous. I don’t think you noticed at all. At least I hope you didn’t. I knelt down, and kissed you on the cheek, and I said “Mommy’s going to work now! You are going to stay here and play with the teachers and all the kids!” in a cheery voice that masked the fact that I wanted to sit right down and cry and about to have a full fledged panic attack.

You kept right on eating your cereal and nodded. “I love you!” I said as I started walking away. I blew you a kiss. “Do you want to blow me a kiss?” I asked.

“No.” you replied. And kept right on eating.

I turned and picked up your paperwork with shaky hands. I walked out the door, and to the car. I shed a few tears in the car on the way to my meeting.

I called an hour and a half later to ask the teachers how you were doing, and they said that you were fine. You hadn’t cried at all yet. And that the other kids were VERY interested in you, but you weren’t so interested in them. Which didn’t surprise me, because that’s just the way you tend to be in large groups of kids. You like to find some toys and a quiet corner, and stay out of the fray.

Your Grandma Vi called me at work to ask about how things went, and your dad called to check in this morning too.

I am biting my fingernails, and about to call again, because it’s nap time right now, and I am worried you won’t be able to sleep in a strange place, without your usual blankie and bed.

This really hard.

But you seem to be fine.

And that makes me very very proud, and very very happy, and more than just a little bit sad. All at the same time.

You are doing great. And I am so proud of you.

Love, Mommy.

Where did Attila the Hun come from?

2007-05-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Attila the Hun Sprang forth from the conjoined DNA strands of my husband and me.

The terrible two and three quarters are upon us. I always thought that MY CHILD would never hit the terrible twos. Miss Madge is as sweet as brownies with M&Ms and gumdrops. And ice cream. The days of wine and roses have come to a screeching halt.

Saturday, after the 9^th total and complete meltdown, Jim and I were looking at each other like "what the Hell happened to our kid?"

We set a record for number of time-outs in a single day. She screamed ALL DAY LONG. She hit Jim in the face with a plastic microphone, and then refused to say she was sorry.

She received time-out after time-out until she finally uttered the words “I’m SORRY”. It was a showdown of epic proportions. The old west theme song (you know…ooh-ee-ooh-ee-ooh, WUH-WUH) played in the background as young Madge dug her heels into the Oriental hall runner and screamed with the intense heat of a thousand burning hot suns. The paint on the walls and woodwork blistered as hot tears leapt from her eyes and sprayed the walls. She and her father stood face to face, neither backing down, as she repeatedly refused to apologize for nearly taking his teeth out with a cheap plastic microphone.

Then she gave even me a double-handed slap (one on each side of my face). As my friend Jen said “The kids’ got Chutzpah. Chutzpah would be an understatement. OY FREAKING VEY.

After much hand-wringing and wailing, we finally got a mumbled “Sa-wee.”

We finally set her in front of the TV with a bowl of chex mix to watch “Go Diego GO”. We skulked away on tiptoe and spoke to each other in hushed whispers. “What is WRONG with her?" Coupled with some shrugging and head-shaking.

Then, yesterday, she was fine. Right back to her sweet, agreeable self. Until it was time for her bath, that is. She refused to take off her diaper and wailed with alarming indignance "NO!! I HAVE TO POOP REALLY SOON! YOU CAN’T TAKE OFF MY DIAPER!!!" Then she refused to sit in the tub, so I had to wash her hair with her standing up, and me pouring a bucket of water on her head while she shrieked.

Please send in all available reinforcements.

2007-05-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

I am being featured today over at Mommybloggers!

Go here to check it out: Mommybloggers

It’s actually my official farewell. I loved collaborating with Jenny and Jenn, the incredible, talented, warm and lovely ladies that they are. We really have had some fun.

However, working full time, managing this site, contributing Mommybloggers, parenting a preschooler with a new baby on the way left me feeling a little haggard and spent and something had to give. The good news is, I decided to keep the kids and the job. The bad news is that I am not superwoman (who knew?) and sometimes one has to simplify a bit to preserve ones sanity.

I have met and interviewed so many incredible writers by being a part of Mommybloggers. The good news is that I am still here, and will continue to be in touch with all my pals.

It’s been an incredible ride. Thank you!

The straight poop, so to say....

2007-04-30T11:09:00.001-07:00

Perhaps the reason that so few people give good advice to new mothers is this: Real advice might scare the shit out of the most fearless of would-be mothers, steering them away from parenthood entirely.

In doing so, real advice would contribute to the end of the species. So the ass-vice givers are really just doing their part to perpetuate the human race by offering advice on only the more useless and banal aspects of parenthood, avoiding the nitty-gritty, more useful tidbits.

Motherhood is scary as Hell. It's also hard work. However, the rewards do outweigh the hardships. Evidence of this being multiple-child households. So rest assured, it is worth it. I don't know a single person who would revert back to their worry-free parentless days if given the choice. The problem with these children is that you fall head-over-heels in love with them. That never, ever, goes away.

Here is my best ass-vice and advice for Liz, Christina, and Tammie (congratulation on little Myles, Tammie!) for the blogshower over at mothergoosemouse.

Steaming pile of ass-vice:

Maybe I am too good at blocking out what I don’t want to hear. I don’t recall getting a lot of ass-vice. I do recall reading Dr. Sears book on attachment parenting, choking back tears of despair and inadequacy on several occasions because I didn’t follow all of the parameters of what was deemed good attachment parenting. My daughter an I didn’t have an instant bond. Breastfeeding didn’t work out. I felt like I absolutely faked my way through the first month or two. Then I had to go back to work. Then I decided it was all too much, and I gave her away to a nice Lutheran couple. Just kidding about that last part.

There were a lot of things written in that book about mothers who were so in sync with their babies they always knew exactly what was wrong with them when they cried. I was not that mother, and reading about mothers like that made me feel like a total failure.

In fact, to this day, I avoid self-proclaimed "mother superiors" like the plague. I just don't have the time or energy to pretend to believe that kind of song and dance. If you can't commiserate, or make me laugh at both our inadequacies, you are of no use to me.

BUT: Thirty two months after having my daughter Maggie, I really can figure out a lot of what’s going on with her. I don’t always get it right. But oftentimes, I do. We just had to get to know each other. And I know my child like no one else could. You can't read it in a book. It just takes time.

Also, the people that say “sleep when the baby sleeps” have no idea the unannounced foot traffic we get at our house. My head hitting the pillow during the day is a damn near guarantee that at least three people will stop by unannounced. It’s like we live in a community drop-in center for the love of Pete.

Best advice:

Don’t compare yourself to other mothers. Don’t judge other mothers. Try not to allow yourself to feel judged by other mothers. Just figure out what works for you, and be content with what you can accomplish, while maintaining some semblance of self, and sanity.

And if you feel like you are as crazy as a shit-house rat, it’s not your fault. You just have a touch of the PPD, and you need to get your heine to a professional who will help get you back to feeling like yourself again.

In addition, the first few months are HARD, and it does get so much easier. I promise.

We had joy we had fun we had throw-up in the sun

2007-04-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Please forgive the extended absence but things have been busy professionally and personally.

We spent 3 days in Sanibel with some friends, and had a great time. There was an abundance of shells, sun, ocean, and freestyle barfing on the beach, in the bed, and in a bucket. Maggie will GLADLY tell anyone who asks.

I should have known the moment I saw that Maggie had fallen asleep on the beach. I had just returned from a walk down the shore. There I was, full of self-congratulations about how she was having SO MUCH FUN she had up and exhausted herself. I sat next to her with my magazine, smiled, and gently touched her cheek. She looked up at me, rolled her eyes back in her head, and commenced spontaneously vomiting.

What is it about sick children that just breaks your heart? I picked her up and she slumped limply against me. I carried that 40 pound child a quarter mile back to our room without batting an eye. She didn't cry. She just looked at me gave me a beleaguered smile as I changed her into dry clothes and tucked her into bed.

The pox upon our hotel room was mercifully short-lived. A good night sleep and a quart of gatorade later, she was right back in her "A" game.

And it was over. At least until we got home, and a day later, I came down with the barfing disease a mere HOURS after an important meeting (saying retroactive hail Mary' s as I write this).

Not to get all Pollyanna on you, but sometimes that child of mine impresses the dickens out of me. She traveled like an old pro, played her little tuckus off, conquered the stomach flu, and didn't miss a beat. I think we'll keep her.

Letting the mojo go

2007-04-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's pretty amazing how a good night's sleep and a little bit of sunshine, along with NORMAL average temperatures (I am currently giving winter, and all cold weather systems thinking of heading towards the upper midwest the big, fat, FINGER) can make you feel like the world is right, once again.

I am not yet getting any unsolicited questions about the contents of my expanding belly. I will be soon though, as it's getting harder and harder to suck in the old gut. I am feeling the annoyingly familiar creaks and pains that occur when your center of gravity shifts (this is a precursor to the entire center of your universe shifting, at least it did with the first child). The funky sharp pain in my left upper buttock is back, whispering "remember me?" every time I get up from a sitting position. I also sigh with meaning, getting in and out of cars and chairs.

Speaking of expanding bellies:

WHY, oh why, doesn't anyone make a decent pair of maternity pants? Like some nice comfortable drawstring pants one could wear to work? What happened to the drawstring?

Do people not understand that it's not just the belly that expands? My ass will soon have it's own zip code. I just don't understand those women perusing the racks at Mimi Maternity with skinny little asses. They confuse me. I simultaneously loathe them and am fascinated by their diminutive rumpuses in their skinny maternity jeans, which, I must point out, are an oxymoron. How do they DO that? More importantly, why do I covet their freakishly tiny bums?

Much like the last time, my bosoms have blossomed 2 additional cup sizes. The boobage cups runneth over. And under. And around. I have newfound empathy for women who are well endowed in their normal state. I have divets in my shoulders, and a sore back. It's not so much fun. I remember last time being about 8 months along, and holding up my old bras, thinking they looked just insanely tiny. I was sure I would never, ever wear anything that small again. Yet miraculously, they shrank back down, and then some.

There is so much weirdness to all of this business of incubating of humans.

I recall hobbling my stitched-up, flabby self into Target 2 days after giving birth to Maggie in a joyous and tentative momentary escape from all consuming infant care. I got an ogle from a man with questionably low standards. The shock to my system of being seen (or more accurately, objectified), once again, as a woman with perhaps a small iota of sex appeal, was almost as shocking to me as the freakish pleasure I derived noticing. Noticing that I was being viewed by some pervy guy as an object possessing feminine wiles once again.

That creepy post-partum woman-ogler guy put the spring right back in my step. What in the WORLD does that say about me? Oy vey.

I swore three ways to Tuesday that I would eat healthy, and have less weight to lose this time around. The trouble is that I just flat out don't want to cook. By the time I have composed a healthy meal, I am usually too tired or grossed out to eat it. This leaves takeout. Which is not so healthy. Plus, I am really REALLY into bacon.

Ironically, I have received messages from the Twin Cities Marathon, and the Urban Wildlife half marathon in the last 3 days. Ha. HAHAHA.

It's best to just let all forms of vanity go at this stage. Beyond a good haircut and some lipstick at least. I haven't sunk so law as to resort to mom jeans. I will let that be my bar of success for the time being.

Funkity Funk Funk

2007-04-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

It’s cold and it’s grey and it has been so for many many days. My mental health is fragile. As a friend of mine said today “I’m solar powered”. Which means I am slogging through cold molasses up to my armpits. This shit is for the birds. It is supposed to SNOW later this week. I want to hide in my closet until May.
Incubating fetuses (or feti, in this case) is mind-numbing business. Was I stupid before, or is the fetus sucking all my mental energy?
I dropped Maggie off yesterday morning, got all the way to work and realized I forgot my computer. What the Hell am I going to do with TWO children every morning? I am officially scared.
Much of the time, I feel like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
I dream about buying cute clothes for regular sized people.
I want to go somewhere warm this weekend. Like Mexico. But trying to decide whether to bring Maggie or not, and if not, who to leave her with, makes me too tired to pursue it any further.
American idol is on tonight, and that makes me happy. What does not make me happy is that I have become the kind of person I made fun of in my twenties. The kind of person who gets excited about watching television.
I can smell the bad breath of a coworker from across the cube wall. It’s not pleasant.
I need a vacation from my own life. Where shall I go?

Well slap my behind and call me Polly

2007-04-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

Izzy and Nancy nominated me for a thinking blogger award, and I am appropriately flattered. It is an honor to be recognized.

In turn, I have been asked to appoint some of my own thinking blogger awards.

Most of these women have already been awarded, but I have go to give props where they are due.

Liz from Mom 101. There’s always a good post up over at mom 101. Liz gets riled up over many of the same things that I do (women’s rights, the ethics of marketing to children, plus she has CONVERSED WITH GLORIA STEINEM!) . She also includes links to all sorts of intellectual articles that back up her ideas, so that I can so in and plagiarize for my own use. Kidding! (sort of). Plus, she’s funny. And I dig me some funny. She’s also a gifted introspective writer, and I also dig me some introspection.

Izzy: “No! YOUR’E SCHMOOPY!!!!” But seriously, we share a passion for wanting to protect our daughters from objectification, and extend their worry-free childhoods as long as possible. We are both looking for ways to navigate American culture while simultaneously raising well-adjusted daughters with healthy self-image. I hope she tells me when she figures it all out. Her self-depricating sense of humor make for many great laughs as well.

Sweetney: Tracey succinctly describes her horror brought on by everything from the Amish School shooting to Bratz dolls. From video clips that give me the giggles, to posts that make me want to pound my chest in solidarity, there is always something good going on at Sweetney.

Alice Bradley from Wonderland (and also finslippy). Alice might be afraid that I will over-serve myself on Chardonnay and try to molest her (again) at next years BlogHer, but she’s not afraid to write about ANYTHING. There’s always a hot (and often controversial) topic related to motherhood over at Wonderland. Don't forget to peruse the comments, because there's some great stuff there as well. She’s got nerves of steel, that Alice, and I admire that.

The definition of insanity

2007-03-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

"I'm fucking Irish, I'll deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life."

-a quote from a scene in the movie "The Departed"

I expend by tenfold, the energy it would take to just suck it up and make major changes, by continuing to turn myself inside out and right side in again waiting for change to just happen. Wishing that it would.

Is it stubborn determination? Fear of change? Ambivalence? Low self –esteem?

Or is it just because I'm Irish?

Twice the Sucker

2007-03-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

Young Madge should be able to add “Big Sister” to her title sometime in late September.

This is not exactly breaking news, as I have had this little secret ferreted away since mid-January. I’m out of the gestational closet, so to say. I will be all about publicly harboring the fetal stowaway until said stowaway decides to meet the world, which includes a big sister, who has plans to name them “Beets”.

Speaking of Madge, she is two and a half in every way. Which means she is so exasperating I break into a sweat just thinking about trying to get BOOTS on her flailing feet, and alternately so unabashedly sweet and full of wonder, that I want to scoop her up plant thirty kisses on her cheeks twelve times a day.

We walk out the door in the mornings and she peers up into the giant maple tree in our front yard and exclaims “Look at the Bugs [buds] on the trees! They’re going to turn into leaves!” which makes my heart swell with love. Then she does something infuriating, like throwing a basketball down the driveway and subsequently, down the hill sending me chasing after it in my high heeled boots, swearing under my breath.

By the time I get her dropped off and on my way to the meeting I am late for, I am a sweaty jangled mess. The added bonus being that I also feel like the world’s meanest and most impatient mother, because I forgot to blow her a kiss from outside the window when I left (my in-laws later told me she cried because of this, and I wanted to impale myself on a rusty sword).

She pulls up a stool to “help” me in the kitchen. Help being a decidedly relative term. She helps me by dragging a chair directly in front of me, popping her small head between my arms from underneath, and obscuring whatever I may be trying to chop or stir. In turn, I help her by doing my best to prevent her from maiming herself with sharp objects and hot things. It seems to work for us, although it takes a long time to cook dinner.

She can identify approximately four thousand different types of animals in her giant animal encyclopedia (thanks Tiffany). She can identify everything from a pygmy marmoset to a spectacled bear to an okapi. It’s frightening, her talent.

While being admittedly impressed by her talents in animal identification, we are quite properly under-whelmed by her potty training Chutzpah. She has had one successful mission, which occurred immediately upon returning from Target with a bag full of chocolate chickies and lambs. I told her she could have one if she used the potty, and the second we got home she was all down to business, and we were all jumping and screaming and calling Grandma. And she proudly sat like a tiny queen, unwrapped her prize of high quality foil-wrapped chocolate and ate it, bit by bit.

Since then, she has shown no interest whatsoever. Apparently one trip to the mountaintop is enough for her. And I KNOW now, that she is capable because I saw it with my own two eyes. I suspect that she knows how much we want it, and this is why she’s holding out on us. She is drunk with power, and enjoying every minute of the irony her toddler table turning has to offer. We are slaves to her pottying whims and she knows it.

And yet, she is a sensitive soul who desperately wants her parents to be pleased with her. When we give her time-outs for explicitly stinky behavior for which she has been explicitly warned several times, she wails in despair and sobs “make me feel better?” And I count the seconds until I can free her from her self-imposed prison in the hallway, plant kisses on her tear-streaked cheeks, and wrap her up in a hug.

She is likely to spontaneously exclaim “I love you mommy. You’re my BEST Friend” at any given moment. And then I say “as long as you’re potty trained by the time you go to College, it’s fine by me. Want a chocolate chickie hunbun?”

Adding another child to this mix is an exciting and terrifying prospect. Keeping TWO kids in diapers ‘til they’re twenty is going to send us straight to the poor-house. What if I lose my mind and become crazy mom who can’t complete sentences and screams things like “OUT! NOW! YOU! SIT! EAT!”?

The thought of dressing two children and lugging them to the car and into their carseats every morning just makes me tired. But there will be twice the good things too. And I miss things like chubby baby thighs, and toothless grins, and holding a child that sits still for stretches of time extending beyond two nanoseconds. So here we go again.

I will be twice the sucker with twice the love and twice the exhaustion. And again, twice the love. Bring it on.

I think?

A Tender moment

2007-03-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

Last night, while preparing the evening meal of coarse brown bread and Johnnycakes (okay… it was quiche, really), the Handsome Dutchman came up behind me to place his hands on my waist in a loving gesture, a’la Charles and Caroline Ingalls wood burning stove foreplay.

However, because I didn’t hear his silent and stealth approach, my response was not a warm smile and a giddy “Oh, Charles!”

My response was more like this:

SHRIEK, JUMP. GLARE.

“Don’t DO THAT! DON’T EVERDOTHATAGAIN! YOUSCAREDTHECRAPOUTOFME! ANDMADEMEPEEMYPANTS! DON’TDOTHAT!!!!!”

The Handsome Dutchman's eyes opened wide, and he slowly backed out of the room.

These are the moments we cherish.

Before morning's first light.

2007-03-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

"Maggie has started getting up at the crack of dawn (6:00 a.m. in the pitch dark), dragging a stepstool into our bedroom and setting it up on my side of the bed to stand on, so she can stare directly into my face until I wake up. Sometimes I know she's there, staring, but I pretend I am still sleeping. Is that bad?"

A direct quote from an e mail to my friend Brooke today.

When Good Praise Goes Bad

2007-03-01T10:34:00.000-08:00

So THIS is what’s wrong with our kids today.

Alice, of Finslippy and wonderland recently posted an entry regarding a news item that reported an increase in “problem children” for which many sociological and economical forces were considered as primary sources of influence. The usual suspects are rounded up and blamed: Kids from dual income homes and the resulting lack of supervision, the media, and even feminism.

The real source of the problem might be parents tell who their kids how smart they are.

Is it possible that the real cause of this increase in “problem children” is too much praise?

Sounds suspect right? Well, I majored in Child Psychology, and after reading this article ( http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/index.html ) in New York Magazine, written by Po Bronson, I have to say, my opinions about self-esteem and praise of children completely turned around.

Thanks to a couple of commenters over at Mandajuice for publishing the link.

It turns out that telling your kid how smart they are can actually be bad for them.

Praise isn’t necessarily BAD. But giving your child general praise about their intelligence (for example: “You are so smart Timmy!”) may not be good for them. At all.

If you frequently tell your child they are a genius, they learn to rely purely on organic talent and just give up in the face of difficulty. In their minds, struggling equates to ignorance. They become fearful of losing the label of “Smart”, and in order to save face, they just refuse to try. Interesting.

Scientific evidence reveals physiological effects on the brains of children who learn to struggle to find solutions versus children who give up in the face of a challenge.

I recommend you read the entire article, but here are a few teasers:

“praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy.”

“The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.”

“image maintenance becomes their primary concern—they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarming studies illustrate this.”

“without regard for effort or the impact of skill development based on a good workout of the old brain….The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear…..Jumping in with praise is like jumping in too soon with the answer to a homework problem—it robs him of the chance to make the deduction himself.”

The Socioeconomic factors that lead many parents to charter dual-income territory does play a role in all of this. What I find the most interesting, is that the problem behaviors exhibited by children of dual income households don’t necessarily stem from hours of unsupervised delinquency. What seems to matter most is how PARENTS adapt their parenting styles to compensate for perceived shortcomings based on their time constraints which reduce the amount of face time parents get with their kids:

“Out of our children’s lives from breakfast to dinner, we turn it up a notch when we get home. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can’t say during the day—We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you.”

Working parents may lay it on a little thick in the praise department in an effort to compensate for the lack of time they are able to spend with their kids. Apparently parents who go this route aren’t doing their kids any favors.

So, is all of the lingo about encouraging self-esteem a bunch of hooey? Yes, if you over-simplify (You’re a genius, Mary!) and leave out the parts about hard work and stick-to-it-iveness. A more effective approach is to praise them for the process (You really stuck with it! Way to pay attention to directions!).

The conclusion: Don’t tell little Sally and Timmy how smart they are unless you want them to end up as lazy ninnies who don’t even want to try unless they’re immediately deemed “the best” at something. Get specific about behaviors. Teach them that intelligence isn’t chiseled in stone, and can be developed by challenging ones brain. When they are old enough, a good study of dendrite connections and how they are made might come in handy.

Praise them for gutting it out, and show them that the difference between potential and success is often just a little bit of elbow grease.

And for the love of God, stop telling them how smart they are. If you really thought they were that smart, they’d already know it themselves. Right?

Such a Funny Child

2007-02-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

I present to you the note on my sister Julie's refrigerator. Compliments of my 13 year old niece Jane.

This neat cut-out form makes it WAY too easy for a girl to break the news to her parents that she dun got herself in the Fambly way.

This way, a kid can break the news gently by tucking a parent's worst nightmare in between the Pizza Hut Coupons and their last Spelling test, in which they got a 19 out of 20. That ought to soften the blow.

Please note the "I'm kidding!" at the bottom. Such a funny child, that Jane.

What are you?

2007-02-28T09:10:00.000-08:00

I am an ENFP

Apparently only 3% of the population are ENFP’s.

When I am not full of crap, and gratuitously laying it on a little thick to gain favor with others, I am actually a pretty cool person who loves finding meaning in life, and inspiring others with my exceptional enthusiasm. I seek meaning in everything. I am an extrovert with need for quiet speculation. Plus I can read people’s motivations like a book. So I can smell a shitbag from a mile away.

Oh, and I HATE mundane tasks (like going through the Godforsaken unrelenting mail I am bothered with EVERY DAMN DAY), and view them as complete and total wastes of time.

See Jim? That enormous pile of unread mail is just part of my emotional make-up!

Uncanny in it’s accuracy.

http://www.personalitypage.com/ENFP.html

http://keirsey.com/personality/nfep.html

Take your test here, and let me know how it turns out! I want to know what makes you tick.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Scenes From a Standoff

2007-02-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

Sunday in the parking lot of the Grocery store. In the middle of a Minnesota Blizzard:

Me: “Maggie, you have to hold my hand”

Maggie: “Mommy! No! I don’t want you to holding my hand!”

Me: “Maggie, when there are cars, you have to hold Mommy’s hand.”

Maggie (screaming): “NO! I want to WALKING. WA-A-AHLKING!!!”

I tug her arms as she is walk-pulled to the car. I raise writhing wriggling child into car and hover her flailing limbs and torso over the car-seat.

Me: Losing patience. “Maggie, sit in your car seat!”

Maggie: (Writhing herself into a convex arch, screaming): “NO! I DON’T WANT TO SIT!!!”

Me: (Trying to press convex child hovering over car-seat into concave child sitting IN car-seat) Panting: “Sit” (pant) “DOWN”.

Continue to try in vain to press her into her seat using last resort parental manhandling techniques in an effort to pop convex child into concave “shape of car-seat” child. Desperately try to latch buckles over her abundant snow-pants as she wriggles out of control.

Maggie: red faced, crying real tears: “NO!! EEEEE-eeeeee!”

By now, only the neighborhood dogs can hear her pleas. They peek out of their respective windows, doors, and alleyways and wag their tails at me in sympathy.

Me: (Whimpering. Defeated by two year old): “Maggie…” press on her lap in one last ridiculous, halfhearted attempt to press child into car-seat. Wonder if anyone watching will call Child protective Services. Want. To. SCREAM. BAD. WORDS!

Stop. Sigh. Pant. Wonder how long this standoff will last. Wonder how long it will take loved ones to grow concerned and send out a search party for the missing parent and child horn-locked in epic four-day battle in grocery store parking lot. Pick child up and out of car. She crumples against me. Hug her face to mine. Feel warm tears on cold cheeks.

Me: “Maggie. What is wrong? You need to sit in the car-seat so I can buckle you in. You are behaving very badly and mommy is very. VERY. ANGRY.”

Maggie, rueful, goes limp and allows herself to be placed in car-seat. Drained, I weakly buckle her in, my arms trembling with fatigue, and shuffle slowly to the drivers seat.

Me: Sternly but calmly “Maggie, you are getting a time-out when you get home. You behaved VERY BADLY.”

Maggie: (with the most pathetically sad face ever seen by human eyes) “Mommy, make me feel better?”

Me: cringe with guilt, then straighten shoulders, and reinstate resolve. “I love you honey, but you are GETTING a time-out when we get home”.

Maggie miraculously recovers from the trauma of our altercation in approximately one nanosecond. She sings along to the song on the radio and bounces her head to the music.

We arrive home. I remove her from the car-seat and slog-lug her into the house.

Me: “Maggie, you’re getting a time out.”

Maggie: (cheerfully reeking of desperation) “But I’m MUCH BETTER now Mommy!” To prove this, she leans in and plants a large kiss on my cheek. “I’m sorry!” she rushes. “I love you mommy” she gushes. She leans in for a very enthusiastic hug.

I know when I am being worked.

Me: “I love you too. But you are still getting a time-out because you didn’t listen to mommy”.

Maggie: “b-b-but my s-s-snowpants! My mi-mi-mittens!”

I walk her to the time out spot and remove her snowpants, hat and mittens. She sobs and wails. I walk away, mildly alarmed by the intense satisfaction I feel. Is it vengeance? Is it pride? Am I pleased that I stuck to my guns, and that this tough love is good for her? All of the above.

Two minutes later:

Me: “Maggie, you got a time out because you didn’t listen, and didn’t’ cooperate when mommy needed to put you in your carseat. Tell Mommy you’re sorry.”

Maggie: (head lowered, she rushes in for a hug and mumbles) “sah-wee”.

We hug and she turns on her heel and bursts out cheerily “Can we play with my animals?”

I need a nap. Crumple into a ball on the floor. Assume fetal position.

Maggie: “Lalalalalala!”

Incredible Shrinking Girlhood

2007-02-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite sayings:

"When you have children, the days are long, and the years are short"

I have yet to find a better one-sentence summation of the crazy time-warp that is parenthood.

If you happen to be the parent of a daughter, it seems those years are getting even shorter.

There exists a bizarre and disturbing cultural phenomenon. It threatens to rob our daughters of years of childhood, and it has a name. It's called "The sexualization of young girls". It also has a task force. I suppose that's a good thing. But somehow knowing that doesn't do much to ease the rock of seething anger that thunks around my stomach every time I think about it.

I am trying to determine what cultural or (more likely) economic need is fulfilled when young girls are made to feel objectified before they hit puberty. Why buy Dora underwear at Target, when you can buy Thongs for your 8 year old at limited t00? Even more baffling to me, is what the parents of these kids are thinking (or perhaps not thinking). I know the typical offenders well. Bratz Dolls, and clothing that makes elementary school kids look like hoochie mama streetwalkers. Why on God's green earth are parents letting their daughters walk out of the house wearing that kind of garbage? Don't they grow up too fast as it is?

Thanks to Tracey over at Sweetney for writing a compelling piece and a link to this article in her post.

The article mentioned above reads:

"Girls also sexualize themselves when they think of themselves in objectified terms. Psychological researchers have identified self-objectification as a key process whereby girls learn to think of and treat their own bodies as objects of others’ desires (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997; McKinley & Hyde, 1996). In self-objectification, girls internalize an observer’s perspective on their physical selves and learn to treat themselves as objects to be looked at and evaluated for their appearance. Numerous studies have documented the presence of self-objectification in women more than in men. Several studies have also documented this phenomenon in adolescent and preadolescent girls (McConnell, 2001; Slater & Tiggemann, 2002)."

Further evidence that parents who place their children in beauty pageants are abusing their kids, and should be placed on parental probation. And probably kicked hard in the shins.

There are emotional and cognitive consequences for girls who self-objectify. And yet, it's culturally pervasive, and seems to be growing more so.

Personally, I don't care if my daughter is still playing with (non-hoochie variety) dolls at the age of 17. As long as she's not preoccupied about whether her body looks good enough for for someone else's enjoyment, I will host her tea parties til she's 30.

How sad to think that young girls get cultural messages that the primary purpose of their bodies (and entire existence) are for being ogled and for the pleasuring of boys. Pardon me while I swallow bile.

How do we battle an entire cultural phenomenon on behalf of our daughters?

I plan to pull store managers aside in every retail operation where I find inappropriate items being marketed to young girls, and give them an earful.

I plan to tell every parent who puts their daughter in a kiddie pageant that they are absolute morons and need to go to remedial parenting camp. Then I will make them watch the epsiode of "Intervention" that features the beauty queen who downed 14 mini's of Smirnoff a day because she needed to look perfect and be perfect. And she was drowning her failure in vodka.

I plan to talk to my daughter about body image.

I plan to honor her mind, and her humor, and her creativity more that I praise her looks. Even though I think she is the most beautiful child in the world. It will be hard not to tell her that on a daily basis.

When she is old enough, I plan to discuss the objectification of women with her, and to point it out when I see it.

Maggie is two and half. I hate that I live in a society in which I have to worry about this crap. Growing up is hard enough. Why are we dumping this stuff on our girls?

What are your thoughts?

Love means never having to share your Chutney

2007-02-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

I have developed newfound empathy for crack addicts. But not the kind of addictive substance Ms. Whitney Houston was referring to when she astutely observed “Crack is Whack”. I didn’t smoke it in a pipe.

I stuffed it in my mouth. Rapidly. My crack was a lovely hot mango chutney in which I dipped coconut shrimp. I could not stop. My Valentines dinner conversation consisted of this:

Me: “Oh. My. GOD. This is good.”

Jim: “We have really grown together as a couple. I love you.”

Me: “I can’t believe I have never tried this before!!!”

Jim: “We are truly blessed.”

Me: “Would you pass me some more shrimp? This is HEAVEN!”

Maggie: “I love you mommy. Happy Balentines!”

Me: “Are you going to eat that?”

Other observations:

I enjoy cooking again. I enjoy it because Maggie enjoys helping me, and I enjoy overseeing her enjoyment. I set Maggie up on a chair at the counter, and she assists by chattering away, stirring things and making sculptures with a head of iceberg lettuce, half a lime, and two spears of half-eaten raw asparagus (it was impressive – her sense for color, symmetry, and spatial relations is uncanny). She also helps me prepare dinner by chomping stalks of raw asparagus and then exclaiming “ROOOOAAAAR! I’m a Dinosaur!” as green bits fly out of her mouth. Then she orders me to “act scared”.

It sure beats her old schtick: Standing between me and the stove, stomping her feet and pushing me back shrieking “NO MOMMY!” and then throwing herself on the floor kicking and screaming whilst I struggle to not spill something on her head.

Now if I can only figure out how to keep the dogs out of the Valentines cupcakes, next year will be an absolute breeze.

Now that I have unlocked the magnificent bounty of mango chutney, the joy waiting to be gleaned from life is utterly limitless.

Lessons in Misery

2007-02-09T12:28:00.000-08:00

It was week 2 of muddling through fantastically shiteous below-zero weather. I thought I would lose my mind, being cooped up all day every day. I wallowed in self-pity and lamented my boredom and the walls that surrounded me.

My self-absorbed moping was a cue for the universe to chuckle, and throw me a curveball.

I thought I knew misery.

I knew something was wrong when Maggie wanted to snuggle. She planted herself on my lap, draped her arms around my shoulders, and didn’t move (not that I wanted her to – I enjoy my rare moments of snuggling because she rarely sits still for such things).

With her head dangling over my shoulder, her stomach spontaneously erupted for the first time. It was the first of approximately 42 vomiting episodes. . Warm. Vomit. Down my back and into the couch cushions.

“Uh-oh” She squeaked. “I spilled”.

"Yeah honey, you sure did".

What followed was a blur or panic and sleep deprivation, but I vaguely recall washing 6 pairs of pajamas, 5 sets of sheets and washing and drying her vomit-soaked blanket 7 times. Jim followed us from room to room, scrubbing the floor with carpet cleaner while I tried to soothe Maggie, who seemed utterly baffled by the entire scene.

The first day, she took it like a champ. She offered up a sweet, tired “thank you mommy” and a warm, weak smile every time I handed her a cup of pedialite or a cracker.

Frankly, I was impressed by her ability to stay in good spirits as long as she did. I marveled at her diminutive strength.

Until the following night when she hit her limit.

I leapt out of bed and raced to her room every time the coughing started, and tried to soothe her through the dry heaves that racked her exhausted little body. She convulsed and choked for what seemed like torturous excruciating eternities. When she finally caught her breath, she wailed miserable tears of surrender. She sobbed as though the universe had betrayed her. This scenario repeated itself twice an hour until 3:00 a.m.

It just about killed me.

I wanted to sit on the floor and cry. I wanted to take each microbe or viral cell or whathaveyou, and beat the life out of every one of them. I wanted to shout “She’s just a little girl! Leave her alone! Let her sleep, you miserable assholes! She’s just a baby!” I cursed the germs of the world, and swore to not let her play with another germ infested child until she hit puberty. Screw kindergarten.

She started coughing up dark green bile.

I thought about parents whose children have cancer, and terminal illness, and my heart bled for them. Watching your child suffer is the worst thing imaginable.

All the next day, we doggedly watched for signs of dehydration. She sat in a chair and dozed all day. She wouldn’t speak. She wouldn’t smile. I had to hold her down while she cried, to force water into her mouth, because she refused everything we offered her.

I was certain she would grow up to hate me for holding her down while she cried. She would refuse water for the rest of her life due to the emotional scarring, and we would have to buy a hospital bed and stick an IV in her every night. She would have to drag an IV and a feeding tube on a rolling rack to the prom. We would decorate it with flowers to match her dress.

We put her to bed, still lethargic and combative. I checked on her compulsively through the night.

In the dark of the wee hours the next morning, I woke to hear her small footsteps. They stopped by the side of my bed.

“Good morning Mommy.” She beamed her signature bright-eyed greeting. “It’s time to wake up!”

Relief washed over my entire being. My heart sang with joy. I couldn’t have kept the smile from spreading across my face if I had tried. I got up, and went to the kitchen with Maggie trotting behind me. I poured milk for her in the grey of the early morning.

Welcome back, baby girl. It's good to see you again.

The shiteous weather will continue through the weekend, but suddenly it doesn’t seem quite so bad.

Weather be damned, I am grateful to have a very limited understanding of true misery.

2007-02-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Americans are wierd.
What do you get when you cross "News as entertainment" with a bunch of Puritannical Americans who tend to deny that there is anything normal about the biology and phisiology of human sexuality?
"News" that includes

This:

This:

And this:

It seems we might want to focus our shock, interest, and moral judgement on other things.

Some days the top stories say scary things about American culture. This was one of them.

Sixteen Below Brings a Special Kind of Crazy

2007-02-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

It's too cold to leave the house. This kind of cold makes my brain go dead, and my car wheeze.

This weekend, I learned to play chess. I baked my own bread. I sighed. A lot.

I am getting weirder by the day.

If this weather pattern continues, I may complete shoebox dioramas of the nations largest 25 cities, complete with state birds and flowers. Perhaps I will spin my own yarn and make a latch- hook rug of the Mona Lisa, but in neon colors. What could a person do with toilet paper rolls and empty boxes of baby wipes? How many things can a person make with flour, water, sugar, and eggs? How about a paper mache bra?

I want to get out of the house, but I don't want to leave the house. Because it's sixteen below.

The local news keeps running stories about how it's illegal to let your unmanned car run with the keys inside. I think I will continue to tempt the fates. Because when it's 16 below zero, it's just plain crazy to sit in your cold car while it warms up. My daughter's diaper would freeze to her car seat and then what, I ask you? THEN WHAT?

Sanity preserving suggestions are welcome.

Things I have learned this week.

2007-02-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

Staying home with children is harder than working.

I have been straddling both worlds while the in-laws are in Florida, staying at home with Maggie in the mornings and zipping to work at noon every day. I have never been so exhausted in my whole entire life. I love hanging out with her in the morning. Don't get me wrong. But GOOD LORD those little people sure take it out of you.

That may help explain the extended silence on this site.

Random Smattering of tidbits:

Something a man who wants to keep his gonads in tact should never ever say to his wife:

"I don't think other women complain as much as you. I mean, maybe because I am not married to other women, I don't hear them complain. That and you really complain a lot. More than anyone I know."

They are never too young to train:

If your bank offers a one-time grab into a change jar to children who open up new bank accounts, letting them keep whatever change they can grab with one hand, it's best to have Grandpa practice with them a few times before you go. Because if you do, a two and a half year old might grab Five dollars and Thirty six cents in change in one little dimpled toddler hand. I don't know. It impressed the Hell out of me.

This state is not for the faint of heart: If you don't enjoy the feeling of snot freezing in your nose every time you inhale outdoors, don't live in Minnesota. Also, if you like leaving your home in winter, it's best to not live here.

On a brighter note: Patty Griffin's new album is coming out next week. I have pre-ordered mine, and happened to catch a chance broadcast of one of her new songs on my way into work, which is even more extraordinary because she never gets played on the radio.
Why her name is not yet a household name is beyond me, but we also re-elected "W" into office, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by much.

Hands off my kid's brain, bozos.

2007-01-19T13:38:00.001-08:00

The company that makes Hummer Utility Vehicles wants my toddler to buy their cars. And no. I’m not kidding. My daughter is not even two and a half, and corporations are already focusing on ways to get her attention.

A recent article I read in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Ads seek kids' grip on family purses, December 4th 2006) offered up a slap in my consumptive forehead. In fact, the piece scared the dickens out of me. Large Corporations, it seems, are after my two year old daughter’s mind. They want to influence her. They want her loyalty. They want to convince her that their car is the best car, and she can’t even drive, and won’t for nearly 14 years.

“Hummerkids.com offers games and coloring pages to teach children about the joys of owning a colossal sport-utility vehicle. Honda is about to launch an advertising campaign on Disney's ABC Kids channel. The Cayman Islands' department of tourism buys ads on Nickelodeon, a children's cable channel, promoting expensive holidays. And Beaches Resorts, a hotel chain, has teamed up with Sesame Street to make its resorts more appealing to children.”

Are these people crazy? Marketing to kids who can’t drive, and won’t for over a decade?

Some might say they aren’t crazy. Instead, they are shrewdly planting seeds of brand loyalty in our children’s brains. Seeds that will hopefully bear fruit decades down the road.

Corporate Advertisers and Marketers are seeping in through Sesame Street like parasites riding on children’s programming host animals to set up shop square in the brains of our children. Marketing to children is everywhere, and it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

I remember a comment made at the BlogHer Conference in July 2006. Someone stood up and said that Corporations are anti-mother, because mothers stand between them and our children. At the time, the idea seemed a bit over-the-top. But is it really?

How much of this insanity is insidious Corporate Vulcan Mind Control, and how much responsibility do we bear as parents to set a good example and guide them through the messages?

As parents, we have certainly earned the right to have the largest impact our children’s values. For Pete’s sake, I am the one who got up (albeit blearily) with my child in the middle of the night for feedings and diaper changes. I am the one who feeds her, dresses her, reads to her, sings to her, and gets up with her at 2:00 a.m. when she is sick with the croup and frightened by her own barking cough. I put on her hat, coat, and mittens, and buckle her safely into her car-seat. As parents, we do these things because we love our children.

Somehow, I question whether John Doe in Marketing at ACME CORP. has these same feelings of dedication, duty, and love for my child.

If someone in the marketing department for Beaches Resorts wants to contribute to my daughter’s well-being and pitch in to make a healthy meal, or read to my daughter for an hour once a week, I might give them 5 minutes for a quick pitch. But they don’t. So I won’t.

Yet here I am, repeatedly bamboozled into giving “Beaches resorts” their five minutes, because I can’t figure out how to Tivo out their blurb before Sesame Street starts, and my daughter loves Sesame Street so I love to let her watch it, and with it, she gets a dose of Beaches Resorts marketing.

The article implies that parents are partly to blame for the madness:
"The parents have ceded control. Children are making decisions about most household products," said James McNeal, a consultant who has been writing about marketing to children for two decades. He estimated that children under 14 influenced as much as 47 percent of American household spending in 2005, amounting to more than $700 billion. That is made up of $40 billion of children's own spending power, $340 billion in direct influence ("I want a Dell") and $340 billion in indirect influence ("I know little Timmy would prefer us to buy the Lexus").”

Who in the Sam hill let’s their child pick out the family big-screen?

On second thought, kids today are pretty technologically savvy, and might have a good and well-informed recommendation.

Here is where the water begins to muddy a bit, and this is precisely why our kids are a $340 billion dollar industry. They are hungry to learn, and their minds absorb quickly. Because we are old and tired and often confused by technology, we consider their opinions when making decisions. This is exactly why our kids are so valuable to marketers. Scary.

People tend to develop coping mechanisms for this kind of thing. Generation X seems to have developed its own bullshit detector in regards to advertising. Being bombarded with ads for several decades has made us skeptical and suspicious of anyone hawking wares. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The marketing our kids will deal with in their lives will dwarf what we have been exposed to.

On the other hand, a good hard look in the mirror never hurts now, does it? We Gen X ers have turned INCONSPICUOUS consumption into an art form. We might roll our eyes at the guy driving the Hummer, and joke about what he is most likely “compensating” for. But then how many of us covet status symbols like new iMacs, designer handbags, granite counter-tops, hundred and thirty dollar jeans and stainless steel appliances?

We love to think that our level of taste is superior, and the quality of the things we possess is superior to that of the Joneses. We’re not as smart as we think we are, after all. We haven’t escaped the claws of marketing Vulcan mind control. We just forced them come up with subtler, wittier, and more intellectual ad campaigns in order to get us to want their stuff.

But back to my point. How do we shield our kids from this madness?

Like so many things related to child-rearing, there are no simple answers. One could attempt the impossible: remove your child from society altogether. Home school them. Forbid television. Forbid contact with any children outside your carefully constructed Utopia. But there are cracks, even in the best laid plans. What about the billboards you pass on the walk to the park, or the drive to Grandma’s house? What about invitations to Birthday Parties, carefully written out on “Dora the Explorer” themed paper? Do you intercept the invitations and let your child believe they have no friends? All in the name of protecting them from consumerism. That approach just isn’t realistic (or healthy, in my opinion).

Perhaps the key is education. Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t mind a special series in elementary school curriculum on advertising, to teach kids how to sort out what’s real and what’s not. A little knowledge never hurt anyone. However if Coca-Cola sponsors the athletic program, that might cut off some funding. See? It’s everywhere.

Or maybe the best course of action is to instill some good old Generation X Skepticism in the minds of our kids. Teach children that advertisers want you to buy their things, and to get you to do that, they will try to make you think that you need (insert product here) to be happier, friendlier, smarter, or more attractive. They need to make you to feel insecure and unfulfilled so that you will give them your money for their product to make yourself feel better. Explain it to them. Think about it yourself the next time you peruse the Baby Einstein DVD’s or eye up that new SUV or handbag.

And I’m not saying I won’t buy the handbag, because I love handbags. In fact, I may buy one tomorrow. However, I know the difference between wanting and needing. I also have a well-defined idea of what I am willing to pay for something that I like, and want to have. I think about my reasons for buying the things I buy. I plan to teach my daughter to do the same with her hard-earned money.

I hope that when my daughter buys her first car, it will be something safe, and something that shows a degree of respect for the environment. Something that doesn’t cast a shadow a mile long and block out the sun. At least I have time on my side. I have almost 14 years to try to talk her out of that Hummer, thank God. In addition, I plan to do what my parents did for me, and make her buy it with her own money. Nothing teaches sound fiscal policy more effectively than a limited budget of minimum wages.

So there it is. My solution will be to make her spend her own babysitting money on the things she wants. Until then, I will tell her that Hummers are for people who have no friends.

I have fourteen years to hammer that into her brain. See? Parents are more powerful than you think. It just take a little planning.

Golden Globe Recap, courtesy of my sisters and me

2007-01-16T12:51:00.001-08:00

There are no better people to watch award shows with than my sisters. We perfected the concept of Mystery Science Theater 2000, but we did it first, and our commentary was on Little House on the Prairie instead of cheesy science fiction films. Our breakdown of last nights events:

The good:

Meryl Streep: She was one of the very few people who had anything of interest to say all evening. We loved her. Talented, intelligent, funny and Self-deprecating.

Helen Mirren: I hear she swears like a sailor, which makes her A-ok in our book. I think she had an ass-out wardrobe malfunction. The world may have gotten a glimpse of her undies. How embarrassing….. NBC was kind enough to move the camera angle up a bit. Crises averted.

Forrest Whitaker: Still deciding if he was veklempt or drug-addled during his acceptance speech. At any rate, he is a top notch actor who I wouldn’t mind seeing more of.

Reese Witherspoon: Just as we expected as a pending divorcee, she looked va-va-voom, yet classy, in a fitted yellow sheath. Go Reese. Your soon-to-be-ex is only invited to the ceremony when he's your date. Which he's not! Eat your heart out Ryan Whatsyourname!

Jennifer Hudson: Haven’t seen dreamgirls yet, but I hear she earned it. Plus I think she’s gorgeous. The speech went from cute to kind of sad very quickly though.

Borat: He livened things up, which was desperately needed. Particularly following the seemingly never-ending monologue of Warren Beatty. At this point, talk of testicles and trapped anal gasses was a merciful oasis of respite from droll, monotonous, privileged old man-speak.

Alec Baldwin: The man is funny. I want to dislike him, but I can't.

Kate Winslet: Would someone let this woman win an award for God’s sake? How many times can she be nominated and NOT win??? Did anyone SEE Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind? Didn’t freaking Hilary Swank win that year? Have these people been lobotomized?

Little Miss Sunshine: Why the Hell Didn’t Allen Arkin get a nomination for best supporting actor? Seriously. What kind of dimwits are in charge of these nominations?
Why did this movie not win an award?

Two words. Totally. Robbed.

Best Golden Getup: TIE!

Drew Barrymore, who looked lush and fit in her pink column dress, but not weird and skinny.

Tina Fey, who rocked her black lace cocktail dress with her trademark wit and smart sex appeal.

The Bad:

Brangelina: Enough with these two. Please. Make it stop. We speculated whether they would adopt a Slovakian Prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard on their way home from the ceremony. We did wish Ryan flaming-bag-of-poo would have asked Brad how Jen was doing…

Warren Beatty: STOP. TALKING. Old. Man. No wonder his wife was downing champagne like a flapper in a speakeasy. The man is a windbag, and copious amounts of champagne are required to make him tolerable.

Tom Hanks: The man was puffy. Like DOUGHY puffy. Has he been club hopping with Britney? Someone needs to slap the saltshaker out of his hand asap.

Kyra Sedgewick: Her scattered speech was cute for about 5 seconds, until she thanked her lawyer and about 42 members of her red-tape posse. Not. Good. Or. Interesting.

Eddie Murphy: Heard he was good in “Dreamgirls”. The whole Scary Spice “It’s not mine” thing is just so Steve Bing. Yuck.

Beyonce: It would be refreshing to see her not look cheap, with boobs, bootie, and bad hair all flailing simultaneously, competing for attention.
Boobs: “LOOK AT MEEEE!”
Bootie: “I’M THE REAL STAR OF THIS SHOW!! I’M RIGHT HERE! LOOK AT MEEEE”
Hair: “MEEMEEMEE! LOOKIE MEEE!”

Two Words: Run Amok.

Arnold: WTF? “BAAAAHBul”????????

The Donald: Again, WTF? Fortunately his wife Melania chose a hairstyle that covered most of her face, which she apparently sharpens into angular points with some kind of tool on a regular basis. While pouting.

Jamie Foxx: Why does he shape his hairline into a square??????? Seriously! WHY???

And finally, the so bad it was good:

Angelina Jolie, during the Ryan Seacrest Interview. Her expression during his interview was priceless. She appeared to have set her eyes on a flaming bag of dog poo, but the bag of flaming dog poo was trying to interview her, and the bag of flaming dog poo was also Ryan Seacrest. Who, based on her expression, also smells like a bag of flaming dog poo.

America Ferrara Interview: Who was the dumbshit in charge of her post-win interview? The woman who started the interview by saying something like “So America, How do you feel about the producers not wanting you for this role?” She may as well have followed up with “Because no one wanted you, because you are not pretty enough. And no one likes you. In fact they HATE you. EVERYBODY HATES YOU. ”

Our take: The dumbshit interview lady had gone up for the part of Ugly Betty and lost to American Ferrara. Her resentment squeaked out like a fart from Gwynneth Paltrow.

And Finally, the Ads:

Target ads: Still Weighing in on the ad campaign. We do admire their unabashed promotion of the consumption of stuff by the modern yuppie (who has perfected the art of the discreet consumption of SUBTLE class ranking status symbols). It’s totally hipster chic to buy loads and loads of crap from Target for your home and your dog and your baby and your garage. As long as it’s stylish crap designed by professional DESIGNERS. And as long as they use hip, new (ripped off) versions of classic songs to sell them.

As my sister Betsy pointed out, since M.J. hit the skids financially, he seems to have sold off his Beatles rights at bargain basement prices in order to pay the lawyers who have thus far kept his tiny pedophilic rear end out of jail. He apparently sold them all to Target.

Orville Redenbacher: We thought it would have been more inventive, and far less cheesy, to have used a computer generated version of his rotting corpse to promote their popcorn.

If you're going to air a commercial that's creepy and spooky (albeit, seemingly inadvertantly), you're better off making it REALLY creepy and spooky.

Until Next time. Julie, Meghan, Molly and Betsy.

Does the "gluttony" level of Hell have a hibachi chef?

2007-01-15T15:02:00.000-08:00

See if you can beat this.

Friday, I had a lovely lunch of chopped Filet of Beef Tenderloin at a Japanese Hibachi restaurant. The cook chopped it all up in front of me and cooked it at our table, while juggling salt and pepper shakers and making volcanoes out of sliced onions. I also had salad and Fried Rice.

Then for dinner, I went to a DIFFERENT Hibachi restaurant where I had a lovely dinner of chopped filet of beef tenderloin, chicken and steak, also served with salad (AND SOUP!).

Two Hibachi meals in one day. Can anyone else out there say they have been to two Hibachi restaurants for two Hibachi meals in one day? Damn, life is good.

Performance Improvement Plan

2007-01-09T08:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Meghan’s Brain,

I regret to inform you that you have been put on a performance improvement plan (also given the sprightly name of “PIP” in the illustrious world of sales).

This is not a punishment, but an action plan for improvement that we shall work together. Because you are sucking wind with no identifiable end in sight. No offense.

If a sufficient amount of progress has not been made by the end of the term specified, we will have to terminate our professional relationship and send you elsewhere for gainful employment with the best of luck and perhaps a letter of recommendation if you promise not to take legal retaliatory action.
.
The factors leading to this intervention:

Your lack of output of anything that might be considered funny or witty.

Even it the words “might” “funny” or “witty” are used liberally and / or sympathetically. Writing about how you don’t have anything to write is worse than not writing at all. Don’t even think about it, this will count against your progress.

Your lack of measurable production.

Staring blankly at “Law and Order” reruns is not considered productive. Neither is eating microwave popcorn, sighing regularly, or snapping at your spouse for repeatedly asking questions at the exact moment you begin to doze off in front of said “Law and Order” reruns. Neither is washing your hair every third day, or gazing out the window at the snowless landscape which serves as a visual reminder of the reality of global warming which is then quickly moved to the “don’t think about that kind of thing” part of your brain, the area of which is growing at an alarmingly exponential rate. You might want to consider leasing the property next door for more storage space.

Your general attitude.

Your habit of taking things in the worst way imaginable and moping in a stew of injured feelings is really not adding much to your well being, or the well being of those around you. Buck the fuck up. Just because you read “The Bell Jar” and watched “Sylvia” in the same week does not give you license to mope or validate your own fragile sanity by comparing it to that of a person who ended up sticking her head in the oven.

Suggestions for improvement:

Do not read literature produced by any author who ended their own life. At least until May, when the increased daylight is likely to improve your general attitude.

Write something worth reading every day. Even if it takes you twenty lame attempts.

Get out of the house and talk to others in social situations. Sooner than later.

Exercise. Preferably outside.

As for “Law and Order” reruns, that may require some kind of an intervention. Let’s not take on more than we can handle. We will address this item at a later date.

We will review progress weekly. If you don’t comply with the aforementioned requirements, you will be unceremoniously dismissed with nothing beyond perhaps a small obligatory superficial acknowledgement of our 34 year relationship, to perhaps make this seem less severe than it is, in reality. It’s not that we don’t like you. We just don’t want you to work here anymore. It’s just business.

Sincerely,

Meghan’s cold and unfeeling department of Human Resources.

Sound bites from a spent mind.

2007-01-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

I am currently slogging through my post-holiday stupor in which I am rendered absolutely of no help to anyone whatsoever. I will offer up a post-mortem at some point, but I can’t quite think properly yet.

In the mean-time, my nearly 2.5 year old, Maggie’s new catch phrases:

“What about ME?”
She whines / inquires this in response to everything from me opening up a can of mineral water to putting my coat on to go to the grocery store. My response: “What about you? Please share!”

“No Mommy, you CAN’T count to five! You CAN’T!”

This is shrieked in horror, with tears, every time I try to implement the counting technique, otherwise known as “I know you love to climb into your car seat yourself, but perhaps in this century if for no other reason than to prevent my untimely dismissal from my place of employment”. Or “If I get to five and your little heine is not in your car seat I will lovingly place it there for you”.

“Mommy, you’re my BEST FRIEND.” This is said earnestly, with her arms around my neck, with eye contact. Then she hugs me deliciously with her head resting on my chest.

Then I give her whatever she wants. Candy, Play Doh, her own car, you name it.

I just want you to hear my triangle. Is that too much to ask?

2006-12-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

The Triangle. Yes, it’s a shape, but more importantly it’s an instrument. Held high in the air and swatted with a little metal rod, the diminutive “Ding!” still manages to be heard in the midst of an entire orchestra of instruments.

Last night I had a dream that I was giving a presentation to a group of handsome men. I was witty and charming, and one man in particular laughed at everything I said. He hung on to my every word. It was clear he thought I was the cat’s meow.

And a co-worker leaned over to me and said

“That guy can REALLY hear your triangle.”

It made perfect sense to me at the time. In fact, the phrase was pregnant with meaning. I awoke feeling I has just had a meaningful conversation with Buddha on the mountaintop.

It’s a good thing I don’t do drugs. My mind seems pretty well altered sober.

Happy Holidays Times Four. Times Four.

2006-12-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

Have I really not posted for 2 weeks? Forgive me. It’s DARK. And darkness does not do much to motivate creativity, or motivation itself for that matter. Plus I just don’t feel FUNNY these days. I don’t feel BAD per se, but I also don’t feel that I have anything particularly witty to write.

Instead, I will post the invitation I created for out cousin’s party tomorrow night.

The reason: 4 girls in my family, 4 girls in my cousins family.
I think the universe is telling us something.

The theme: Little House on the Prairie Meets Sex and the City.

It’s the episode where Laura discovers the joys of being “try-sexual” with a man who has a trapeze in his bedroom, and Mary’s husband Adam, tries Viagra. Many hijinx and much hilarity ensue. Then Carrie worries she will never meet her Prince Charming, and Grace has a child out of wedlock.

Happy Holidays to you. And best wishes for a healthy and happy 2007.

FourFourFour
And Four

COINCIDENCE?

You be the Judge.

But my Pa always says good things come in fours!!!

Announcing the Annual Cousins Christmas Party!!

Little House on the Prairie Meets Sex and the City.

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006.
6:30 p.m. to ???????????????

Featuring:

Bonnets, Cosmopolitans, Blackbird Pie, Johnnycakes, and very few men!

Slap on your Bonnets and Minolo Blahnik’s and prepare and share your favorite dish from 19th Century Prairie country or 21st Century Manhattan.

There may be locusts, blizzards, mad dogs, cheating hearts, talk of causal sex, and copious cosmopolitan Consumption. Consider yourself Warned.

Also: reruns for everyone!!!!

M I KOOL R WHAT?

2006-12-05T07:48:00.002-08:00

I now have a Myspace page. Perhaps next, I will start hanging out at the mall with an ipod in one hand and a red bull in the other, and shopping at Abercrombie for pants that don’t cover up my arse. While texting people with things like HowRU? We R dun. Just so U know UR Dumped. KWIM?

These things, by design, feed on people’s insecurities. I mean, I started the page ages ago, (for some reason I was forced to sign up several months back – I think I was trying to get to Patty Griffin’s site), and I checked on it yesterday, and I only had ONE FRIEND. His name is Tom, and he works for the IT department at MySpace, so I felt his offer of friendship was a bit disingenuous and fake. Whatevs.

This all flung me emotionally directly back to Junior High, when my self esteem was particularly fragile, and I probably did only have one friend (okay, maybe two and we were relegated to the second to the bottom dork table in the lunch room– and I feel the need to point out that it was not the very bottom dork table, but the SECOND to the bottom dork table thankyouverymuch). I think it was the first year of my life people figured out I was not, in fact a boy, but a very homely, very tall girl. With big feet.

And suddenly I was all jangled and desperate for some kind of proof of social acceptance. Who could I get to be my MYSPACE friend so I didn’t look like a loser? Oh my God, I can’t look like a dork……

It gave me honest to goodness ANXIETY.

Then I remembered I am 34 years old. And a wife (of a very tall and handsome and funny man TAKE THAT NANCY PARSONS!) and mother with a full time job, and a lot of friends. Real ones.

But still, I totally didn’t want all these Myspace people to think I had no FRIENDS.

I emailed my cousins Tiffany and Colleen, and begged them to be my Myspace friends. I considered e mailing all my friends to ask them to sign up for Myspace so they would prove their loyalty to me to all the kids out there on Myspace. And then I considered that they would probably nod and smile and think to themselves “How old does she think she is? 14? Note to self: Stop hanging out with Meghan”.

So I limited "Operation Friend Campaign" to the people who have Myspace Pages.

Fortunately, Tiffany and Colleen accepted my invitation to be my Myspace friends (THANK U! UR KOOL! KWIM?).

And, by the way, so did PATTY FREAKING GRIFFIN! And BOB SCHNEIDER! WHO I SAW PLAY LIVE AT THE FINE LINE ON SATURDAY NIGHT!

So now, I have a small, and extremely exclusive group of Myspace friends. And I know I look cooler than cool, and am definitely NOT relegated to the second to the lowest dork table.

Then I consider the parallels to Blogging……..

These Social Networking sites are great aren’t they? Nothing like exploiting people’s deep rooted social insecurities for fame and fortune. We are pathetically easy targets. Like shooting fish in a barrel really.

And yet, I am proud of my Myspace Friends! THANK U! UR AWESOME! BFF! TTFN!!

A letter to women who hover and run

2006-11-29T11:50:00.001-08:00

Dear public toilet seat peer-uponer,

I presume that the true reason you hover and spray your urine all over God’s Green earth is that you are afraid you will get some kind of butt disease if the skin on your arse touches the toilet seat. I can see your point of view. And I’m cool with it. Even though I have read a plethora of evidence to the contrary. I have zero problem with you hovering your heine a good few inches above the toilet seat and pissing all over tarnation, or at least all over everything within a 12 inch radius. If nothing else, it’s a good thigh workout right?

Here is what I have a problem with: You have such a delicate constitution that you can’t bear the thought of your clean pure flesh coming in contact with a public toilet seat. I get it. YET YOU LEAVE YOUR PISS ALL OVER SAID SEAT FOR THE NEXT, PERHAPS LESS NEUROTIC PATRON TO SIT IN.

In other words, clean up your pee, you self absorbed twit. There is special place in Hell for you. Think Dante’s Inferno with an entire level of Greyhound bus station feces-covered restroom, and your face duct-taped to the toilet seat.

Sincerely,

Public toilet seat sitter-onner-who inadvertently sat in your pee because you are a selfish, disgusting person.

Holy Schleich Batman!

2006-11-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

Is there a 12 step program for small plastic animal addiction? Because I think it’s time to contact friends and family for a sit-down intervention with the tall Dutchman. During this interventionI know I deserve to be called out onto the carpet for my enabling of this addiction. My husband can’t stop. Plus he thinks my ability to google anthing known to man borders on genius. So the cycle of abuse contiues.

You know that company that made those little soft plastic Smurfs? Well they also make cool little hand-painted plastic animal figures. Schleich figurines. Some of these cost as much as $15.00 a piece. Which would be fine, if we purchased them one at a time. But we don’t. We order 30 at a time. I should have NEVER introduced him to online purchasing. Or e-bay for that matter. At this stage, it’s like trying to fix the titanic with duct tape and paperclips. I am just screwed.

We now own several horses, two stingrays, giraffes, whales, Sharks, an entire primate family, every farmyard animal imaginable, every forest creature known to man, amphibians, and several extinct prehistoric saber-toothed creatures.

And it doesn’t look like we are stopping any time soon.

We may squander so much money on little plastic animals that Madge will have no college fund, or home, or clothes. But the child will be a venerable walking encyclopedia of animal taxonomy. Maybe she can get a job at the zoo. Or maybe she can pawn off her priceless collection of plastic Schleich figurines at Sotheby’s.

I have always secretly mocked people who collect things. I think I harbor deep rooted resentment over my sister Julie’s horse and dog collections. She had dibs on all the cool things. In my near obsessive preoccupation with doing the opposite of what she did, I started the shittiest most half-assed shell collection known to man. I displayed about a dozen broken shells on a shelf in our bedroom for several years until my mother finally threw them out. At least I think she did, but I don’t really remember because I had long since stopped caring about my sub-par shell collection.

At least we haven’t sunken to the level of “precious moments” figurines. Yet.

Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

2006-11-21T13:21:00.001-08:00

For the following things, I am thankful:

For Maggie, who, on Friday night, looked up at me and said “Hi Mommy. What’s up? You’re my best friend.”

For Jim, with whom I sat up in bed last night reading self-help books. And who follows me around the house with a broom and a dustpan cleaning up my messes. Even though it annoys me. I am still glad that the house is clean.

For cute shoes in size 11.

For being ready to work on my own happiness. And for actually thinking that I deserve to be happy. And also that it’s worth working for.

A good haircut.

My parents, sisters, and nieces.

My mother and father in law and wonderful extended family. Yes. I actually love my in-laws. It would be hard not to.

All my phenomenally irreverent women relatives and friends. I forget sometimes how great it is to know you. But it is truly great to know you. I am a lucky lady.

My in-the-oven digital roasting thermometer.

My stinky dogs. Not feet, but actual canines.

My funny talented internet friends. Who I never talk to, but always keep up with via their websites. I heart you. And if you are wondering if I am referring to you, then I am.

Puppies. In particular, Rhea, Finn, and Teddy. This seems to be the season of the puppy.

Patty Griffin. I am hoping she comes to my next birthday party and invites me to join her in a sing along. Just like Davey Jones showed up for Marcia Brady’s that one time. Except I don’t love Patty the way that Marcia loved Davey, if you know what I mean. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The American voting public, who voiced their opinions very clearly this November. Good Lord am I thankful for you. Except those of you in Minnesota’s 6th district, because you elected a batshit crazy person.

My daughter’s face, when she saw the cupcake I brought home for her on Saturday. It had a giant pile of blue frosting on top, which was soon transferred to her face.

Coffee on a Saturday Morning.

Saturday Mornings.

Gravy. I love me some Gravy.

The way my little amazon daughter looks when she sleeps.

Pining for The U.P.

2006-11-14T08:03:00.000-08:00

I just got pictures from our fourth of July family weekend in the Upper Penisula of Michigan. What we lack in timeliness, we make up for in craziness. Here is a photgraphic summary:

The Dog went missing and was presumed dead and eaten by wolves. ON MY BIRTHDAY. We found him the next day. He survived the wolves, but then I had to brain him. For ruining my birthday.

Just kidding. He's really only sleeping. Running away from throngs of people fruitlessly calling your name in the dark, to be presumed dead by all, only to return the following noon full of burrs, fleas and ticks is very, very tiring.

Over the fourth of July weekend this year, we set up a top-secret North Woods think-tank to find answers to the complex mysteries of the universe:

Does Jesus REALLY like America best?

Does spending time with my relatives drive a person to drink?

How do you fit 12 women, two men, and two toddlers and two dogs into a three room cabin in the North woods?

I can't remember exactly, the answers to these burning questions, due to the exhaustion of trailing Madge from danger (HOT- woodburning stove) to danger (HOT- Open Fireplace) to danger (open water) to danger (three seater outhouse) to danger (two lane highway). I was too tired to speak, but she came back in one piece, so I must have done a good job.

Four months later, these pictures triggered some repressed memories. Based on photographic evidence, I think I had fun!

Relatives do drive us to drink. Because of this, there were push-ups and booze for everyone:

Beer

Good!

We had an ugly patriotic Tshirt contest and learned that Jesus DOES like America best. At least that's what Tiffany says.

There is nothing more patriotic that kittens in hammocks (this was my creation).

And also puppies.

And also the American flag in beer bottles, and also Neil Diamond.

The world's most beautiful child in the world's most beautiful place.

Life on the Cube-Farm

2006-11-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

Today while attempting to look up the website of a client, I entered .com instead of the accurate .net, and up popped an entire screen of enormous neon-colored dildos.

Fortunately it was a rare moment when no one was hovering in the door of my cubicle peering over my shoulder (why do I always feel like cubicle is a bad word???? Because it has the same ending as matching orbitous male anatomical components? ), so no one was there to witness my choice of internet-surfing and assume I was doing some early Christmas shopping for myself.

Did you know that Bob Propst, inventor of the cubicle, originally called them “Action Offices”? The original concept was a good one (as were his intentions) that was eventually blasphemized by office real-estate economics, and turned into the dilbert habitats we know today. They were later coined “cubicles” (not testicles) and even later, they were referred to as “bright satanic offices”.

Personally, I like to call them “I AM MAKING AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE CROTCH DOCTOR! DID MY ALL- MALE COWORKERS HEAR THAT? CROTCH-DOCTOR!!! NEXT I’LL CALL MY THERAPIST, AND THEN I WAS THINKING ABOUT FIGHTING WITH MY HUSBAND ABOUT WHEN TO PAY THE CABLE BILL!!!! Workspaces”.

Based on a decade of cube-dwelling, that seems to be the most apt description.

Voting Day Survey

2006-11-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

Does everyone get those red "I Voted" stickers, or is that just a Minnesota thing?

As I waited in line, I couldn't help but look around, and sing "these are the people in my neighborhood" to myself... Did THAT happen to anyone else?

Am I the only one who tried to size up the other people in line to guess which party they belong to? Shoes and use of hairspray say a lot about political affiliations in my neck of the woods.

Did anyone vote on a 3rd Party candidate out of disgust over the campaign ads of the two main candidates?

Personally, I wanted to vote for the 3rd party candidate in one race, but refrained because polls show the election is very very close, and I dislike the one guy enough to vote for the other guy who I might not want to admit 2 years from now I voted for. If he wins. Which he might.

Did anyone else cross party lines? I crossed party lines in my vote today for a pretty good moderate type-candidate. Partially because I don't mind them so much, and partially because I want to tell people I didn't vote 100% across party lines.

Is anyone else glad all the hulaballoo is over? Every poitical ad I have been repeatedly subjected to in the last 2 months has been so bad, I initially suspected they were satirical Saturday Night Live ads. They were THAT bad.

Now, all you smart people who have not yet performed your civic duty, get out there and vote! Go on now! Git!

Old habits die hard.

2006-11-06T07:41:00.000-08:00

This morning, as I lay in bed, contemplating getting up to make coffee and greet the day with my Madge, I tried something new. I gave myself a little affirmation. A Stewart Smalley type Mantra. I saw something on Larry King Live recently about the power of thought.

Actually the people DID seem a little odd and cult-ish. Really, they seemed just pain weird. But they were discussing theories of quantum physics and the power of thought and the push and pull of the universe and how our thoughts and emotions are a part of that much larger push and pull – the idea of it fascinates me. How changing one's thoughts might change their life. I also recently read a quote from Arianna Huffington about self-dialogue and how we are so much nastier to ourselves than we would be to other people. That idea is not new to me, as I have often considered that I would never in a million years say the kind of cruel things I say to myself to another human being. I like to think I am not a cruel person. But in a way I am, because of the things I say to myself. I am MEAN sometimes. And a nag. And broken freaking record. I am working to change that.

The affirmation worked for a while. Then I got caught up in the trap if measuring myself by someone else’s standards. I was reminded of my own shortcomings, and that little external jostle put the needle right back on the old record. So I am working to set it straight again, and change the tune. I suspect this takes a great deal of practice, which takes a great deal of perseverance, both of which I know I am capable of.

Also, Monday mornings are just kind of hard.

So here we go again.

Tom Waits sings the itsy bitsy spider.

2006-11-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

This morning I awoke at 6:50 a.m. to a gravelly, soulful version of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”. The lyrics were broadcast from the baby monitor, sung in a growling, Tom Waits Monster voice. It was so low and gravelly that I could not even do an imitation of a high enough caliber do it justice. Jim is the only one whose voice can go that low. Jim, and our toddler that is.

Needless to say we both woke up laughing today.

Jim’s comment “She’s her mother’s daughter”.

I would not in a million years ever enter that child in a beauty pageant, however I am toying with the idea of a Tom Waits cover band. She can already play the kazoo and the drum.

She makes me proud, that one.

Confessions of a well intended, bad mannered, grateful ingrate

2006-10-30T15:13:00.000-08:00

I have tortured myself over your thank-you cards for the last year.

If I could only write out thank you cards immediately, I would open up a whole section of my brain that is currently reserved and utilized solely for self-flagellation. Did I mention my self-induced cringing when I think of my own apparent lack of gratitude every time I look at gifts from loved ones, which are evidence of my etiquetteal oversights?

I AM grateful for the thoughtful and lovely things people give to me and our daughter. Not that anyone would know it. Because I keep forgetting to send thank-you cards to the generous friends and family who bestowed these gifts upon me.

Two months ago, my neighbor Nadine gave us these adorable wooden letters that spell our M-A-G-G-I-E, and I have yet to give her a thank you card.

My friend Jen and her new husband Steve hosted a great night out last weekend, which I enjoyed immensely. I intend to send a card to thank them for their generosity. But I haven’t done it yet.

My cousins Tiffany and Shanna gave Maggie these fantastic books last year for Christmas. My cousin Andy’s wife and my cousin Amy sent these adorable overalls and a little crocheted sweater last winter. I meant to get a card out right away. But I never did.

Basically two thirds of the people who have given Maggie a birthday or Christmas present in the last 2.5 years have not received a thank-you card. I am terrible. REALLY. I am.

Yet, here I sit, cringing.

At my desk at work sits a thank you card for friends of ours for a wedding gift. They gave us a lovely set of Henkels steak knives in their very own butcher block. I wrote out the card and hung onto it because they were in the midst of a move, and I did not yet have their new address. That was three years ago September.

The card is actually written and sealed, and has been for over three years, yet there it sits. I wonder if it’s too late to send it in.

These same friends were over for dinner a while back, and as she and I worked in the kitchen together, she took notice of my knives. I totally froze, broke out into a cold sweat, and secretly wished for our really bad country-themed linoleum to swallow me up. She started asking questions. Did I put them in the dishwasher? Why did we have two kinds of knives? She was torturing me on purpose. I knew it. I called her bluff and casually reminded her that they had given us the fabulous knives, and that we used them all the time. “Huh” she sniffed. Did I detect an eensy weensy bit of hostility? Part of me feared a sharp knife to my socket. But I deserved to sweat a little. I mean, three years? Come on.

The truth is, I think of my cousins Tiffany and Shanna every time we read Maggie’s favorite books, all of which came from them, and for which I have yet to send thank you cards. They gave them to us last Christmas. I marvel at how they managed to know exactly what Maggie would love (an enormous encyclopedia of animals complete with hundreds of illustrations, most of which Maggie can now identify, a huge book of fairy tales full of dragons, and a book called “Maggie and the Monster” which she can recite the first 5 pages of from memory at barely 2 years old.

Then I wince at my own personal scourge of bad manners. I am a heel. Not only that, but my cousin Tiffany, one of the benefactors, is a master of correspondence. Not only does she always send a thank you card, or postcard when traveling around the world, but she writes all sorts of great things that show she out THOUGHT into her notes. She puts me to SHAME.

I think of our friends every time we use those steak knives.

I am grateful. Yet I am haunted by shame about my own bad manners.

Last year for Christmas, my mother-in-law gave me an enormous box of thank you cards. She is the kind of person who will make sure you get a card no more than 48 hours after having her over for dinner. I took the hint and promised myself I would try harder. I don’t think its’ going so well.

Here is the question. At what point do you look like an absolute freak for sending out a thank-you note? Is there a sane limit? Because I can remember a wedding gift I meant to send but never did that dates back to about 1995. And I KNOW they would think I was koo-koo nuts if I sent it out now (mainly because I haven’t seen them for eleven years).

In addition, is it selfish of me to send them out at this point only to clear my own tortured conscience? Isn’t that selfish in and of itself? How do I clear my mind and pay up these karmic debts?

This is the part where you add your two cents. But no flagellation, guilting or mocking. It’s already been self-induced three ways to Tuesday.

Van Morrison

2006-10-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

It’s a rainy Monday and my neighbor in the cube-farm is playing Van Morrison’s greatest hits.

There is no other album that shoots me back faster to a specific place in time.

I was a trusting, overly enthusiastic college student who felt safe and headstrong. I wore high-wasted jeans, and I thought I looked good. I thought white Grenache from a box was rather sophisticated. I had recently paid off an enormous debt to my sorority that caused me great heartache, but also gave me a world-class education in responsibility. I learned the huge satisfaction one feels when they have cleaned up self-induced mess while maintaining a sense of dignity.

I believed people were good, first and foremost. I erred on the side of trusting. I see flashes of a kitchen table, a stained-glass overhead light, and a deck of “Uno” playing cards. The smells are sweet, cedary, and slightly musty. The lighting is warm, and I am safe in this place. It's 10:30 at night, and it's snowing outside. The quiet, windless kind of snow that makes you want to put on your boots and an over-sized coat from the back of the closet that makes your nose itch, and trudge to the store for more cigarettes. The kind of snow you can HEAR hitting the ground softly.

The memory is bittersweet, and gets caught in the back of my throat. I worry that I like that version of me better than the one I see today. I was less angry. I gave more of myself to those around me.

I miss that me.

On the other hand, I too often judged myself based on what other people felt. I worried about how I was perceived. I jumped through hoops like a trick poodle. I had to be perfect, and to be perfect, I had to figure out what people wanted, and then give it to them.

Still, I fear I have grown to be an emotional miser. Suspect and stingy. Angry. I have seen a lot of behavior from people I have loved that has caused me enormous pain. Certainly, I have dished up similar meals and served them to members of my own inner circle.

How do I forgive, and reconcile that slightly annoying, optimistic, and younger version of me? The me I was before I understood the dark things in people. The conflicts between pure and good, and the demons we all battle within ourselves. I feel too wise to the ways of the world to go back. But sometimes I really want to.

Raw deal

2006-10-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Having just read this Article, I have an overwhelming urge to kick the nearest American policymaker in the gonads. Viva La France.

p.s. If you want to find out how to actually DO something about it, check out momsrising.org,and sign up here.

Push + Pull = Stuck

2006-10-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

ambivalence

Pronunciation Key [am-biv-uh-luhns]

–noun 1. uncertainty or fluctuation, esp. when caused by inability to make a choice or by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things.

2. Psychology. the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action, simultaneously drawing him or her in opposite directions.

Who's zooming who?

2006-10-16T13:17:00.001-07:00

A visitor to our suburban rambler of late might wonder what the awful racket is all about.

It goes something like this: “Screech! Rattle-rattle-thump-thump- shriek-shriek-indignant-whimper-thump-thump-sob!”. It lasts for about a minute and seven seconds.

It’s the sound of Maggie getting a time-out. In her room, not a “naughty spot”. I lack the strength and stamina to try to keep a 25 month old child in one spot against her will. Instead, I shut her in her room while she screams and heaves herself against the door in a state of total indignation and panic.

One could say she is not yet taking behavior modification gracefully.

I hate giving them. I know I am supposed to give her a minute for each year old she is (two), but I can barely make it past a minute, seven seconds. The sound of her sobbing in agony just about kills me, and I sit and watch the clock. I have yet to make it to a full 2 minutes.

We give time outs pretty sparingly, and I am trying so very hard to be consistent. She always gets a clear warning first, and so far, she has received time-outs for the following offenses:

Opening up the refrigerator door after being warned not to, whilst looking me straight in the eye and smirking.
Hitting, kicking, hair-pulling, or any other physical maiming-type aggression. So far these have been inflicted solely upon me.

I hear that it’s normal for children to be aggressive towards their mothers, and that it’s actually indicative of a trusting relationship.

Apparently it means that she trusts me not to slap her back, squarely across the face in retaliation, or yank her hair with freakish strength, or “forget” to bring her home from the grocery store when she pummels and maims me.

They say that toddlers act out this way because they lack the verbal skills to express themselves.

Then I think about last week, when Maggie looked at me, giggling, and said “Mommy’s got a BIG NOSE!”, and I realize she is pretty well capable of expressing herself.

Sixty-seven seconds into the time-out, I predictably cave in and open the door to find her, hot and red-faced and tear-streaked. It hurts my heart to see her in such a state.

She sniffles and asks anxiously “a hug?” Then she throws her tiny, freakishly strong arms around my neck and holds on for dear life. I explain to her again, why she got a time-out, as she clings to me, full of remorse and anxiety.

And I melt into a big pile of goo. Sometimes a big pile of goo with a little toddler hand-print still throbbing on my cheek, but a pile of goo nonetheless.

I think she is starting to “get it”. So am I. I remind myself that it’s good for her to learn the boundaries, and that these things make her feel safer in the long run. It’s hard on both of us, and it’s for the best.

But I sure do love those hugs when all is said and done. She presses her tear-streaked cheek to my neck, and gasps "Cookie?"

I nod, take her hand, and we walk to the cupboard together to get her a cookie.

I have to hand it to her. The child. She's good.

Dear Prison Slang Mommyblogger

2006-09-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Prison Slang Mommyblogger,

We have hit the terrible twos and I need help! Our two-year old daughter recently learned how to climb out of her crib. When I try to place her back in for her nap, she hits me. Hard. I tell her “No!” in a firm voice, and she just laughs at me. How should I handle the situation so she stops hitting me and stays in her crib? Please help!

Frustrated in Poughkeepsie

Dear Frustrated in Poughkeepsie,

So your little jitterbug has the rabbit in her, and thinks it’s funny to split your wig. That’s off the hook, but you can handle it with the help of Prison Slang Mommyblogger!

Dig this out: when dealing with toddlers, you can’t be flipping the script. You have to be consistent, and stick to your guns.

If your little cell warrior continues to bug out, tell her in a firm voice that she needs to stay dead mouthed until she gives you a dime of flat time.

If she makes jackrabbit parole and gets on the bricks again, calmly place her back in her crib and explain that she needs to max out in the big house until you tell her she’s done with her flat time. Otherwise the bling bling will be rolling right back in to give her an LWOP. If she treats you like a lop and tries to sleep you, Give her one warning, and calmly place her back in the bling. You can give her a binky through the bean slot if you need to.

She might cry and say you crossed her out, but like I said, don’t be copping deuces. Consistency is key with toddlers. Put her back in the can until she stops buggin’ out.

If she calms down, you can let her walk down her paper with some cho cho in front of Sesame Street

That should get things stitched up for you.

Good luck,

Prison Slang Mommyblogger

Translation:

So your child climbs out of her crib, and thinks it’s funny to hit Mommy.. That’s a tough situation, but you can handle it with the help of Prison Slang Mommyblogger!

Thy this: when dealing with toddlers, you can’t cave in. You have to be consistent, and stick to your guns.

If your little napper continues to throw a tantrum, tell her in a firm voice that she needs to stay quiet until her two minutes of time-out are over.

If she climbs out again, calmly place her back in her crib and explain that she needs to stay put until her time out is over. Otherwise Mommy will march right back in, and then she will be in time-out again. If she continues to disrespect you and tries to hit, Give her one warning, and calmly place her back in the crib. You can give her a pacifier in her crib if you want to.

She might cry and say it’s unfair, but again, it’s important to remain consistent. Put her back in her crib until she calms down.

If she calms down, you can let her finish her nap with some ice cream in front of Sesame Street as a reward for good behavior.

That should take care of it.

Good Luck,

Prison Slang Mommyblogger

Say, for example, Peter and Paul get into a fistfight and then turn on you...

2006-09-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

According to a recent study, mothers who work are spending more time on work obligations AND more time on family and child-related obligations. This of course, leaves very little time for themselves (if any). Being stressed out and overwhelmed, it turns out, raises cortisol levels, and high cortisol levels have scary health-related ramifications.

You can read the article about women and down time on cnn.com, and you can find it here. The author emphasizes the importance of “Me Time” for all women, particularly mothers, and particularly mothers who work outside the home.

I struggle sometimes with “me time”. I try to carve out time to have dinner with friends and family, sans my two-year old. I have a pretty active social life, and I hate to miss out on ANYTHING, but frankly, most of the time I feel like I am doing most things in a depressingly half-assed fashion.

It’s hard to be a good friend when, not only do you have very little free time, but when you do, your mind is so numb and frazzled from fielding obligations around the clock that it’s hard to put together a coherent sentence.

As my sister Julie once said, it’s possible to be a good mother and a good employee, but rarely if ever on the same day. I will take that a step further by saying it’s possible to be a good friend, a good wife, a good sister, a good mother, and a good employee, and good to myself, but never, ever, all on the same day.

This is where the GUILT comes in. With their SEVERE lack of time, working mothers are forced to steal from Peter to pay Paul. This leaves us with an angry and disenfranchised Peter. Except it’s not Peter that’s getting stolen from . It’s your kid, or your husband, or your best friend, or your boss that’s getting the heave-ho in order to make room for something else.

If I spend three hours taking in a play on a Saturday afternoon, that’s three fewer hours to spend with my daughter. That leaves me feeling incredibly guilty, so I bail out on the monthly get-together with the neighborhood ladies. And so on.

When I get too busy and distracted (which is often), I feel like the worlds WORST mother. It is so hard to live in the moment when you are constantly rattling through a mental to-do list in your head. When I say constant I mean CONSTANT. The to-do list. It never stops.

There are days when I feel I am failing everyone, including my child, and myself. I am doing it all, just not very well. It begins to make a person feel like they just suck. I feel terrible for my friends when I check out mentally, because then I start doing rude things like not returning phone calls or e mails, because I am so crazed and overwhelmed that by the time I finish the dinner dishes I can hardly even speak. The best I can manage is to put my daughter to bed and stare mindlessly at Law and Order reruns.

Oy.

Here are my questions:

First off, I am looking for commiseration. I want your sob stories.

Then, I want to talk solutions.

How do you find “me time”, and when you do, what works to bring mental peace and clarity?

What are your challenges to “me time” and how do you make it (and keep it) a priority?

Freak Filter

2006-09-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

The following are all honest-to-God questions I answered today on a psychological assessment for a job opportunity. Do you think I'll get the position?

Note: my actual answers may have been changed for comedic affect. The questions, and the options given for potential answers however, have not been altered in any way.

137. Sometimes I get angry enough to smash things.
XTrue
False

139. I feel I am not as smart as I used to be.
XTrue
False

159. If we expect the worst, then we won't be disappointed.
XTrue
False

17. Most social reformers are not really sincere.
XTrue
False

33. Sometimes I feel I could just scream.
XTrue
False

90. Utilities should be allowed to raise rates because they have been regulated more than most other industries.
XTrue
False

120. People who act like they're better than me make me feel bad.

XTrue
False

119. I sometimes feel like I lock myself inside.
XTrue
False

75. There is so much government control that commercial business is rapidly being destroyed.
XTrue
False

38. Beer can collecting has become popular because

Xit's fascinating to meet collectors from all walks of life.

it's fun to impress friends with rare acquisitions.

it's an inexpensive hobby.

2. People who raise tropical fish do so because

they are challenged to breed fish that have never been bred.

Xthe serenity of the fish is a welcome change from daily life.

it's a hobby the whole family can enjoy

10. People patronize the arts because

they seek better or unique methods for self-expression.

they want to make exposure to the arts available for everyone.

Xthey're "uppity" or trying to appear better than others

What's wrong with "Us"?

2006-09-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

Let me be the first to admit that I am a subscriber to “Us” magazine. I eagerly anticipate its weekly arrival in the mail and I devour every page like a starving dog with a bowl full of kibble. It’s not right. But I can’t stop.

What is my fascination? What is our fascination? How has this seemingly contagious case of voyeurism caught on like wildfire across the country, and why oh why does anyone care about what Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, or Nicole Ritchie did this weekend?

Do you care as much about what your own family and friends are up to? Your neighbors? Who your single friends were recently spotted with?

Having read nearly every reputable gossip rag for over a year, I can not think of one interesting thing uttered by any of the three women I mentioned. They are quite possibly, the most boring people alive. Their conversational skills possess the banality of a plastic bowl of a low-quality, freezer burned, melted vanilla ice cream. Their teeth, hair and jewelry blind the viewer, strategically rendering them less likely to notice their duller aspects, like their views on life (or decided lack of them), their vocabularies, their actual accomplishments, and seemingly, their brains.

Yet, their images are everywhere. I know their catch-phrases and I know about their legal troubles. Are these the kind of women my daughter will look up to? Will she try to emulate them? Good Lord, the thought of it chills me to the bone. Check your brain at the door, accomplish nothing but greedily obtaining gratuitous publicity, and look good while you’re doing it. This is considered the pinnacle of success? In pop culture, it seems to be just that. What the Hell are we doing?

Consider women who have ACCOMPLISHED things with their lives. Women like Jane Goodall, Ann Richards, and Mother Theresa. They are all women I respect and admire tremendously. They have changed the world with their hard work, love for their fellow creature (both human and non-human), and their clever minds. These are women who have inspired, and who have created things. Important things. They had ideas. THESE are the women I want my daughter Maggie to know about.

And what am I doing about it? Nothing.

I am often too tired and distracted (did I mention lazy?) to make the effort to block out the media, and create a more thoughtful, carefully orchestrated environment for my daughter to soak up like a sponge.

All day at work I field phone calls, and e mails. I pay my bills online. I remember 30 passwords from rote memory. I barely hang on, juggling 24 moving piece parts each day, none of which require any form of complex thought. People pop their heads in my cubicle, which lacks a door, interrupting my already fragmented train of thought with random questions. I am distracted by the phone conversations of every person around me, which I can hear every word of.

Then I go home and find something in the fridge to make for dinner. Then I clean up dinner, play with my daughter, and put her to bed. Finally, I find a nice, comfortable reality television show to watch before climbing into bed.

This is what I do, because it’s easy, and I am often too exhausted and distracted to be thoughtful. And yes, I am aware that I offer up a giant, enormous cop-out as an excuse. Apparently, so do a lot of Americans.

Sales of expensive flat-screened TVs are up. The explanation for this, based on an article I read today, is that people are investing their entertainment dollars in big screen TV’s and leaving their homes less and less. They buy these TVs to avoid having to go out to movies and the expenses associated with various forms of entertainment that as a by-product, also cause us to interact with others. That kind of freaks me out. Everyone seems to want to live on their own island with their own garage and their own flat screen TV. Is human interaction really that scary?

This is chasing the American dream! Stay home, tune out, buy stuff, ignore your neighbors and stalk celebrities in cyberspace!

Just give me my magazine and leave me alone with my sweet, sweet escapism.

Why do I love to read my “Us” Magazine so much? Am I shallow? Yes! Sometimes I am! But I try to be decidedly un-shallow in many aspects of my life. I am conscious of the ridiculousness of it all. Particularly, I am painfully aware of the utter lame-ness my own behavior. I have bought in, and am a happy shareholder, of American Pop Culture. Because it’s mindless, and it’s fun, and Sweet Jesus I am too tired to do much else. Give me my gossip rag and stop talking at me.

I have the disease. Call it boredom. Call it escapism. Call it loneliness. Call it exhaustion. I want to know about the love life of that beautiful ditzy miscreant. How do they stay in shape? Who does their hair? It’s all so fascinating! But really it’s not. It’s a diversion from the banality of my own distracted life.

When I stop and think about the big picture, I get freaked out. I want to lead a thoughtful life for myself and for my family. A lot of the time, I feel like I am failing.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”

I have to say I agree with Eleanor. And my manner of thinking is often among the smaller-minded. Often, but not always.

For the time being, I will keep my subscription to trashy publications. Because like I said, it’s mindless entertainment for a frazzled mind. And the state of my mind is decidedly frazzled on a regular basis.

On that same note, I pledge to try to maintain an awareness that much more is possible from this underutilized mind of mine. The best way to fight mind-frazzle is to stubbornly carve out a little time to consider the big picture. To think about whether you are living the life you want to live for yourself and for your family. To quiet one’s distracted mind.

I think yoga is good for that. Does anyone know a good yoga instructor? I hear Gwennyth Paltrow LOVES yoga.

Remembering

2006-09-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

The pain of September 11th, 2001 is still fresh. I can’t bear to watch documentaries or films about that dark day, because they seem voyeuristic and intrusive towards those who were killed. It hurts to watch it all over again. It’s excruciating to think about the people who kissed their kids goodbye and went to work just like any other day, and died in the flames of a collapsing skyscraper that was smashed and broken by hatred.

To those who have used the atrocity of the crimes that were committed against human beings that day to further political agendas: Shame on you.

Peace and healing to those who lost loved ones that day. The entire country has mourned with you for five years. My heart goes out to you.

Santiago and his chicken

2006-08-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher called my parents in for a conference.

She was concerned. I couldn’t count, she told them. Not even to ten. I was falling behind the other students, and perhaps I lacked the aptitude for kindergarten. I was the youngest student in my kindergarten class, after all, and maybe I just wasn’t ready.

My parents informed my teacher that I could count just fine. In fact, I could count all the way to one hundred. This confused everyone.

Why did I flat out refuse to count for my teacher, at the risk of looking like I was incapable?

I didn’t like her.

In my young mind, why in the world would I jump through hoops for someone I didn’t even LIKE? Who the Hell did they think I was anyways? Some kind of teacher-monkey trick pony?

I don’t remember WHY I didn’t like her. I have a vague recollection of feelings of residual bitterness over the fact that I didn’t get the pretty teacher who wore her long brown hair in a bun. My teacher had short gray hair. I was already predisposed to prejudice based on appearance. I admit it. I was barely 5 years old. Sue me.

Throughout my elementary school academic career, I flip-flopped between good years and bad years based on whether or not I liked my teacher.

In the first grade, I had a great teacher, Miss Kreevey, and I did well. In the second grade, I had an okay teacher, Miss Archibald (we called her Miss Itchy-boobs). My year can be summed up by one word: “meh”. In the third grade, I cried all the way home from the first day of school. I had been assigned the “mean teacher” Miss. Hanson. I was inconsolable. This proved to be my first lesson in forming my own educated opinions about people. Miss Hanson ended up somehow communicating to me that I was definitely not stupid, I just needed to TRY. And I blossomed that year into the avid reader I am today. That was a great year, because Miss Hanson was a great teacher, even if she did talk incessantly about her childhood dog, whose name escapes me now, which is driving me batty.

In the fourth grade, my happy school days and the learning that went along with them, came to a screeching halt. You know how Jerry Seinfeld can only speak Newman’s name with utter disdain? That is the only way I can even utter the name of my fourth grade teacher. “Miss Wenger” (hiss). The fourth grade brought with it the pinnacle of my academic trauma in the form of a year-long stand-off with the worst, meanest, nastiest teacher I ever had. She didn’t like me, and I knew it. Miss Wenger (hiss) SUCKED. She only liked girls like Jessica Rose, who had long hair, and perfect freckles, and wore pure white pleated skirts and new shoes, and probably bathed with regularity. If you could conjure up the image of a girl exactly the opposite of that, you would have me, in the fourth grade.

The fourth grade was the year of “Santiago”. “Santiago” was a story in our class reader, about a boy and his chicken. I spent the majority of my fourth grade year on the story on Santiago and his fucking chicken. I started out the year in the highest reading group. By the time I finished that goddamned story, I had fallen back two groups. Miss Wenger (hiss) would not let me move on to the next reader until the stapled packet of goldenrod paper with questions about Santiago and his fucking chicken was completed with no errors whatsoever. It will suffice to say that I was not the worlds most detail oriented child. She refused to educate me further until I had every comma and period in the right place. Reading comprehension, and the big picture, meant nothing to this woman. She was all about the details.

I turned the packet in, Miss Wenger (hiss) marked it up with her red pen and gave it back to me, and I erased my errors and started over. Repeat this scenario approximately 47 times over the course of 6 months for which I was kept inside for recess. When I had erased my wrong answers so many times that I created HOLES in the goldenrod packet for the story of Santiago and his fucking chicken, I was given a new packet with which to start over. This was the only act remotely resembling generosity I ever witnessed from Miss Wenger (hiss).

I would like to say that I carry no hate in my heart, but I HATE Miss Wenger (hiss). She is dead. And I still hate her. THAT’S one for the confessional.

My mother, who is and was a teacher, had to request a meeting with this horrible woman to insist that I move past the story of Santiago and his fucking chicken, thus releasing me from Santiago and his fucking chicken purgatory, to read a new story for the love of God. The reading packet for the subsequent story was mercifully NOT goldenrod.

The evil in this woman only found a new host in the form of our winter poem packet. Miss Wenger (hiss) assigned us the task of writing an entire book of thoughts, feelings and poems about winter. My first poems were written in neat letters, and went something like this:

“I like snow. Snow is nice. When it’s snowing, I eat rice.”

Towards the end, after I was forced to stay inside for recess for 2 months straight, the poems took on a darker tone:

“I hate snow. Snow is yucky and dirty. And I hate it”

This was scrawled, nearly illegibly, by a pencil in the hand of a very angry and frustrated fourth grader.

And that is all I have to say about Miss Wenger (hiss).

In a lovely bit of merciful luck, my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Bevans, was truly amazing. She raised my broken self-esteem up about 25 levels and I will always love her for it. She reminded me that I was bright and creative and worth getting to know. God bless that woman. She was a gifted teacher.

This story comes to mind this week for a reason.

It’s time to leave the Hellish purgatory of Miss Wenger’s fourth grade class and the story of Santiago and his fucking chicken.

I am disappointed in myself for not finding a way to get past this habit I have of not performing to my full potential for people like Miss Wenger. I cut off my nose to spite my face, it seems, when dealing with the Miss Wengers of the world. But I have spent a long long time on the story of Santiago and his fucking chicken, and it’s time to move on to happier classrooms. Because I know I can do better. And I don’t care to impress Miss Wenger, because I can’t stand her.

It’s time I moved on to a classroom more like Mrs. Bevans’.

All I have to do

2006-08-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

All I have to do tomorrow, is get a replacement fish for Dorothy. Dorothy was our goldfish. We had to euthanize her last night. She was a good fish. She was a good friend to Edgar, the blue Beta. Edgar is now the sole resident of our tank. It was a difficult decision, but when a goldfish is swimmimg belly up, and no manner of poking revives her, it's time to do the humane thing.

Choosing a new goldfish is the only thing on my agenda, and that makes me very happy.
Don't get me wrong. I am sad about Dorothy, because she really was a good fish.

But facing an entire day with only one thing to do feels good right now.

Off to read a book. Goodnight!

My head has eyes. Eyes which I now want to scrub with clorox bleach

2006-08-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

Warning: Spoiler Ahead.

If any of you all were thinking of seeing the movie "The Hills Have Eyes" I want to make sure that what happened to me, doesn't happen to you. Save yourselves. Please. Let my poor judgement be a lesson to you all.

Is there some kind of a magnet I can swipe my head past to erase the memory of this film? I would forget all about romping around with my daughter earlier in the evening, and perhaps my name and the names of my loved ones, but I would still gladly come out the victor, just for deleting this atrocious movie from my brain. I want my brain back in it's previous near-pristine condition.

I can recommend a few alternatives that can similate the experience of this movie for you that mercifully, don't involve actually watching it.

Look up the level three sex offender list in Appalachia, examine their photographs closely, and read detailed accounts of the crimes. Then watch "Deliverance". Then, carefully study a pile of gutted dog carcasses. Draw your own rendering of the pile of dog carcasses. Get the dog carcasses BURNED IN YOUR BRAIN.

Then read the last chapter of "The Grapes of Wrath", except instead of an emaciated geriatric dustbowl geezer suckling on Rose-of-Sharon, picture a murderous three eyed, rotten-toothed deformed radiation victim Hill-Dweller. Who then kills Mommy with a gunshot to her face, and steals the baby (because he wants to eat it with both his teeth). Then, in your now totally disturbed and damaged mind, hunt the funky man down, puncture his skull with a nail on the end of a two-by-four and watch the blood shoot out with alarming velocity. THEN, imagine the man with a lumpy, veiny, 75 pound head who can't get out of his rocking chair (because of his 75 pound head). Imagine freaky cranium guy walkie talkie-ing someone with an order to kill the baby and eat her. Then, imagine finally saving the baby, but not before her grandpa is beaten severely and then burned to death in a tree with his children and wife watching and screaming and carrying on.

I won't even mention what happens to Grandma and Auntie. Those would be gratuitously violent details.

If you, like I, enjoy things like having an appetite which allows you to ingest food, and possessing a general sense of well-being, do all the things I mentioned above instead of seeing this movie. You will only be one fourth as nauseated and mentally disturbed as I felt after watching this film.

It's that bad. Consider this a public service announcement.

Thank you for your consideration.

I am a house-hunters superstar! And I am also expecting a visit from child social services at any moment.

2006-08-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

I am a celebrity. Did you know that? I am!

I made a guest appearance on an episode of "House-hunters". Two of my very best friends, who happen to be sisters, starred in their very own episode in which they scour Minneapolis for a nice Urban home to buy. So technically, I am a celebrity hanger-on, but who's keeping track, really........

My big part is at the end of the show, when the sisters host a barbecue for their friends to show off the house, and the updates they made.

And people have NOTICED.

Here is one recent comment from a coworker regarding my superstar status (said to my friend J, who I happen to also work with):

“Hey, I thought I saw you and Meghan on an episode of “House-hunters”, except Meghan was pregnant. And drinking a beer!”

HAHAHAHA!

And then J said “THAT WAS US!”

And I am not certain whether or not she chose to use that opportunity to clarify that I wasn’t actually gooning Malt Liquor, but rather, I was taking an enthusiastic chug off of a bottle of non-alcoholic root beer in a deceptive brown glass bottle.

Note to self: When 8 months pregnant and being filmed on television, DO NOT WEAR RED.

Also: DO NOT PUT YOURSELF ON CAMERA TAKING A HUGE SWIG OFF OF A BROWN BOTTLE THAT LOOKS LIKE IT CONTAINS BEER. YOU KNOW, AS TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE YOU ARE GUZZLING BEER WITH AN ENOURMOUS PREGNANT BOOB AND BELLY “TRIFECTA".

It was ROOT BEER. It really was root beer. But the only people who know that are the people who were actaully there at the barbecue. The percentage of people who were there compared to the people who have seen that episode are like 19 to 450,000.

Nice.

It was ROOT BEER!!!!!!

Does the man EVER work?

2006-08-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

Terrorists are apprehended not long before boarding planes with explosives to murder thousands of Americans in a terroristic plot. "There was no immediate public reaction from the White House. Bush is spending a few days at his ranch near Crawford, Texas".

How do you think the vacation days of your average single working mother stack up against "W"'s?

Thank God the British showed up for work today.

Mind the Crap

2006-08-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

Our local kiddie pool runs amok with small, wriggling human creatures slathered in sunscreen. They like to scream and run and turn and crank various levers, all of which activate high-velocity jets of water which, no matter where I am standing, are subsequently shot directly into my face. This happens most often exactly during the rare moment where Maggie loses her balance and stumbles face first into the water. Blinded, this leaves me to frantically search with my hands (because my eyes have been displaced by water pressure to other parts of my cranium) until I manage to locate her and pull her, choking, out of the water to safety.

After this undoubtedly occurs, I glare at the offending urchin with the hatred of a thousand burning hot suns. The offending urchin then typically considers me for a moment with an off-hand glance, before shrugging their shoulders and moving along to continue their wide path of total destruction and terror elsewhere.

I am often loathe to wonder what kind of excrement lies trapped, lumpy and soggy underneath their swim diapers. I especially wonder this when Maggie eagerly lowers her chin into the water, sips delicately, and exclaims “MMMMM. GOOD!”

These are just a few reasons why I am happy to announce we have graduated to the big pool. The big pool, where there are fewer e coli bacteria per cubic liter of chlorinated water, where there are no blinding streams of water shot at my face, and where there are no play structures on which to trample main, and knock down my sweet, innocent Amazon girl.

This summer, Maggie has grown considerably bolder in the water. She climbs up and down the stairs of the shallow end. She leaps from the ledge into the arms of her father and mother, and she jumps up and down with gleeful wild abandon. It has been a joy to watch her confidence grow.

I had been eying the big waterslides attached to the big pool for the last two summers, but have not tried them because I didn’t want to flout my motherly duties. Even when my husband and I are both there, Maggie seems to prefer that I stay within arms reach in case she needs me. And I am okay with that. Our time at the pool is fun family time, not mommy goes on wild rides by herself time. The waterslides did not appear to be for toddlers, so I just let it go. Not that it was easy. I love rides. The scarier the better. I also hate to go on rides alone. So imagine my excitement when I was informed by a lifeguard that as long as I rode on a tube and held her in my lap, Maggie and I could go down the waterslide together. And faster than you could say “e coli”, we were setting off down the chute.

I worried a little bit that she would be scared. Actually, I worried that I would scar her for life, and that she would never ever want to go in the water ever again. That I would have to give her sponge baths with wet wipes for the rest of her life. We swirled through a dark tunnel, flew into the sunlight, down the shoot, around several corners and shot with a big splash to the bottom. Her only comment as we climbed out with our tube; “Go again?”

I am so excited about the first of many thrills we will share together.

She might look like a miniature, girl version of her father, but that child is mine. One hundred percent.

Letting the cat out of the bag

2006-08-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

I disclosed something very personal and very frightening to two mothers in two separate conversations this last weekend at the BlogHer Conference. I admitted what it has taken nearly two years for me to muster the courage to share.

Well that’s not really true. I made the same admission to a good friend of mine once, while we were walking, about a year ago. She had just had a baby, and because of that, I thought she would understand. I blurted it out, and my words were met with a look of sheer horror. My friend’s mouth gaped open, and she promptly slapped a hand over it. I quickly brushed it off with a “But I’m fine now”, and kept right on walking. I decided then and there, that this was something I was better off keeping to myself.

This weekend, for some reason, I shared the same admission with two women in two separate conversations. Neither one of them looked one bit horrified. In fact, both of them nodded in recognition, and shared their own frightening and personal experiences with me in turn.

When my daughter was tiny and helpless and newborn, I was afraid to walk by the butcher block on the kitchen counter while I was holding her. I was afraid that my body would involuntarily pull a knife from the butcher block and use it to hurt her. And I was terrified. I didn’t know at the time where these wild thoughts came from, but I know now. I was suffering from postpartum depression.

PPD is terrifying. I don’t think I have ever been as afraid of my own mind as I was in the first few months of motherhood. All my life, I knew I wanted to have children. When I was pregnant, I fantasized about what my daughter would look like, and how I would talk to her and hold her, and how I would do everything in my power to keep her safe and help her grow. I loved her long before she was even born. With all my heart, I wanted to adapt to my new role as mother with aplomb and ease. I wanted to feel a connection with her, and I wanted to do right by her, because she deserved all the love the world could ever offer up in a million years. I wanted to be a good mother.

But my mind was uncooperative and stubborn. It just wouldn’t work right. I didn’t feel connected to my baby, or to anything for that matter.

I dreaded the sunset every night. The impending darkness stirred up the very worst of my anxiety and panic. Every night at dusk, claws of terror gripped me until I was nauseated and shivering with cold. I sat on the couch next to my husband and sobbed. I sputtered things through my tears like “she deserves a better mother than me! What if she gets cancer? What if she gets hurt and I can’t help her?” And I would look at my tiny baby girl and just cry. I was inconsolable.

The thought that anything bad might happen to my daughter shook me to the core. Yet there I was, afraid to walk by a maple butcher block full of the gourmet knives I loved to cook with. It was not the knives that scared me. It was ME that scared me. I felt crazy and disgraceful and ashamed for even conjuring up such a horrible image. I didn’t trust myself, and wondered “What kind of mother THINKS these things?”

My worst fear was confirmed. I was a horrible mother. I had no business caring for an infant, and I was mortified by my inadequacy. I sank deeper into isolation. I was afraid of being judged an unfit mother. Instead of seeking out help, I dug my heels in, and attempted to muddle through. I refused to fail.

I didn’t seek out medical help because deep down in my soul, I knew I was not capable of hurting her. Looking back, I think it was very unwise of me to ignore those frightening symptoms of post partum depression. But I did ignore them, because I didn’t want to be weak. I didn’t want to be weird.

At the time I really could not recognize what was happening. I thought that even if I had to fake it forever, she would at least have a decent parent in her father.

Depression is funny in that it’s very difficult to recognize when you are smack-dab in the midst of it. Two years distance has me looking back thinking to myself “knock-knock puddinghead! That was a CLASSIC case of Postpartum Depression, and you were taking an enormous risk, tackling that on your own.” But at the time it was terribly confusing and I kept thinking I just needed to walk it off.

It wasn’t until I started feeling better that I considered admitting there might be a problem. I have always been frighteningly good at faking it. Eventually, during a phone conversation with my mother, I managed to squeak out “I think I’m having a little bit of a hard time.” That statement alone seemed to set off a few alarm bells, and I started receiving daily phone calls from my mother and sisters just to check in to see how I was doing. As someone who has never liked giving any impression of weakness or neediness, it was really hard to accept that kindness and concern, but I will be eternally grateful for it.

I told my husband, about six weeks into it “If I don’t feel better in two weeks, I am going in to talk to the doctor”. Then it was one week. Then it was two days. By then I felt like maybe, just maybe, I was beginning to hit my stride and the oppressive force field I was trapped under was beginning to let up.

Things did get better. I gained confidence, and eventually I got to a point where I felt right, being her mother. One day I just knew with all my being that there was no one else in the world who was better equipped to take care of her than me. The love I have for that child knows no boundaries. It has seeped into every corner of my life. It has made me a more compassionate person. It has taught me to slow down and pay attention. It has helped me to be more forgiving, even to myself.

I am a great mother. I can acknowledge that now, with confidence. I didn’t always feel that way. I did not have a white-light moment in the delivery room. It took a little time for me to get to know my daughter, and to get my footing in my role as her mother. I know now what I didn’t know then. Once you fall in love with your own child, it’s impossible to un-do the power of that connection.

This is what babycenter says about post-partum depression:

Our society also makes it difficult to admit to having negative feelings about motherhood or the baby. When mothers do express feelings such as ambivalence, fear, or rage, they can frighten themselves and those close to them.

It was shame that kept me from seeking out help. Postpartum Depression is a physiological and psychological condition that deserves medical attention. I hope that sharing my story helps remove that shame from the equation for someone else. It was the courage of the two women who shared their stories with me that helped me muster up the courage to write about my own experience.

Postpartum depression can happen to anyone. Even the best mother in the Universe.

I would not allow things to get so bad a second time around. If I have another child, I will be much more aware, and much more careful. If that scenario plays itself out again, I will be on the phone to my doctor faster than you can say “anti-depressant” to get some help.

For anyone out there who might be struggling with Postpartum Depression, here are some links, and here are the symptoms, according to wellmother.com:

• Feelings of sadness or "down"-ness that don’t go away
• Inability to sleep, even when the baby is sleeping
• Changes in appetite – eating much more or much less
• Irritability, anger, worry, agitation, anxiety
• Inability to concentrate or make decisions
• Inability to enjoy things you used to; lack of interest in the baby; lack of interest in family
• Exhaustion; feeling "heavy"
• Uncontrollable crying
• Feelings of guilt or worthlessness
• Feelings of hopelessness or despair
• Fear of being a "bad" mother, or that others will think you are
• Fear that harm will come to the baby
• Thoughts of harming the baby or harming yourself
• Thoughts of death or suicide

Please don't let fear or shame prevent you from recongnizing and treating a very serious medical condition. Postpartum depression can and should be treated.

We had joy, we had fun....

2006-08-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

I can't quite do justice to the ugly, the bad and the good (in that order) that took place this long, wild weekend in San Jose at the BlogHer Conference. So I won’t even try.

I flew home on Monday, after spending the night as a refugee with Kris in the gorgeous home of the gracious and wonderful Grace Davis and her handsome husband George. Who, by the way are two of the loveliest people in all of California.

On the flight home, I was seated next to a twenty-something young man. As I settled in with a magazine, I noticed him paging through some kind of Nickelodeon “Highlights” style kid’s publication. Feeling sorry for a grown man left to thumb through a children’s book, I grabbed my bag, pulled out a magazine, and offered him a spare. He looked at me. No. He stared at me. He stared ominously, with eyes as big as saucers. He held my gaze for an uncomfortable and seemingly endless amount of time. Finally he grunted a “No” and returned to his “Highlights”. Then, he flipped the stainless steel lid of the impotent relic formerly known as an airline ashtray backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforth. It was then that I noticed that I had offered him an “Us” Magazine with a huge mug-shot of Lance Bass grinning from ear to ear like a stuck pig, with an enormous caption that read “I’M GAY!!”.

The man spent the rest of the trip alternately flicking everything in sight and giving me long and creepy sideways stares.

It was right around the fourth time he asked the flight attendant "do you have any candy?" that I realized that he was mentally disabled. I was relieved that not only did he probably not want to kill me in a homophobic rage, but also, he might have just liked what he was already reading, thank you very much.

It was the perfect ending to a long, crazy weekend. A weekend that otherwise might have ended with merely a marathon debauchery session, and finally, Jenny and I being walked to our room at dawn by an enormous man named Sasquatch.

Thank you to all the lovely ladies I had the pleasure of meeting, greeting, and slobbering over.

Thank you to Lisa Stone, Jory Des Jardins, and Elisa Camahort for creating such an incredible and empowering event.

While I was gone, my daughter grew approximately three inches, and learned to speak in complete sentences. In Latin. She will be two the end of this month, and I am confident she will be far ahead of her peers, both in size and intelligence when she starts kindergarten in the fall.

I was never the kind of child that was prone to homesickness. I was always at the home of a friend or relative. It seems it took having a child to bring out the wussy in me. My home is wherever she is. Based on recent experience my quota of days away from her before having a full emotional break-down is four. Now I know.

BlogHer Part Deux: The year of reckoning

2006-07-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

I signed up for BlogHer last year on a whim, and 2 weeks later I decided (in my head) to back out of the conference and eat the entrance fee. Why? Because I didn’t know ANYONE, and as someone who had their 5th grade ass handed to them on the school bus on a regular basis by the popular girls, I was a bit leery to head into a conference full of women I didn’t know.

Then Elisa Camahort e-mailed me to ask if I would co-lead a break-out discussion for the mommyblogging panel. At first I thought that perhaps Elisa had confused me with someone else, or that maybe she was in the midst of some kind of week-long stress-induced booze bender. I had been blogging for all of about 4 weeks. Then I theorized that I was perhaps the only blogging mother who had registered (this was, in the end, my final theory, but I didn’t even care because I was so honored to be asked). I decided to put on a brave face and risk a weekend of social ostracization which was likely to include me, eating my lunch cowering alone in the ladies room. I bought my plane ticket.

I am so glad I took that risk. The weekend of BlogHer was amazing, and although I felt like an absolute neophyte, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I collaborated with Jenny and Jenn to co-host the mommyblogging panel, and discovered an amazing, whipsmart, thoughtful, talented and knowledgeable group of women. Many of whom not only acknowledged my existence, but were incredibly fun to talk with.

Were there groups that seemed a tad bit exclusive? Yes. But I also think that perception is strongly influenced by the way people often interpret shyness, or general shell-shock, as an insult. Particularly from people who are successful. The more well-known the person, the more likely people are to assume the worst of them in the snobbery department, and it’s not always justified. Some people are just shy, or tired, or wierded out.

Was it overwhelming? Yes. I discovered that people who blog love to talk about themselves and their blogs, naturally.

I found myself backing into corners and longing for a two-way conversation that had no mention of BLOG. I wanted to talk about anything non-blog related. That rash on your elbow? Tell me more! Food allergies? Fascinating! Good God I just needed a break. At one point Saturday evening, after several glasses of wine, I unceremoniously demanded that everyone at the table shut up about their blogs and talk about something else for a change. THAT went over well….. I think part of that reaction may have been due to my lack of understanding of the subject matter. “I’m not dumb, Mr. Einstein, it’s just that you’re boring! Let’s move on from Quantum physics and this “transport” nonsense to something more interesting. Do you like Outkast? Which baby is better, Suri or Shilo?”

Was it worth it? Hell Yes.

This year will be different because it’s HUGE. And I am again, extremely nervous. I worry that it will be so big that the magic of last year will be gone. Kind of like the blogger version of Woodstock 1999. But then I realize that the same crew who put it together last year are in charge again this year. And they learned their lesson about playing Shania Twain during the introductory gathering. So no worries!

I am also extremely excited to meet a whole slew of people who are going this year who weren’t there last year, and to re-connect with the superfreakmotherfuckingbitchasshomommybloggers I met (or didn’t meet) last year. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. We are going to crimey our roomie’s chonies! And then give them back! We will have zoo-zoos with our ace-deuces and give up the grapes! We will totally snap the chain. In fact, I may even bust me out with an ace. And I know a couple of people who might join me in that.

So get ready, San Jose. Here we come.

Little House in the wolf-infested woods

2006-07-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

You want the cabin? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE CABIN!

If you are brave enough to try, you can see photographs by clicking here.

Because for some lame-brained reason, I can't post pictures on Blogger. Dagnabbit.

Look

2006-07-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

I recently noticed a strange phenomenon seemingly found only in Hollywood scripts. Since I first took note of it, I see it EVERYWHERE, all the time.

What is this phenomenon you may ask?

Characters in movies and on television starting their sentences with "Look...."

Do people actually start their sentences with "Look.." in real life?

It seems so....condescending to me. For instance, if someone says:

"Look, I have to be at the barber by 2:00."

It seems what they really mean is:

"Look, you blind, deaf and dumb nincompoop.... I have to be at the barber shop by 2:00. Can't you see that? Are you stupid? LOOK! It's right THERE! In front of you! LOOK! LOOK!"

It just seems rude. I personally can't think of a single occasion in which I have started a sentence in this manner.

Maybe it's my uber-polite Minnesota upbringing. This state runs amok with reserved Sandinavian people who consider any kind of confrontation to be the pinnacle of tabu. We prefer the more psychologically scarring passive-agressive, yet polite approach to conflict resolution. For example, if you cut in front of a Minnesotan in line at The Gap, the victim is likely to smile primly, wait until you leave the store, and then say something to the clerk at the cash register like "Some people's children Eh?" The translation of which, is understood by all parties to mean: "Did you get a load of that guy? What a freaking a-hole!" And then people nod their heads in agreement while going about their business.

On the other hand, perhaps the polite approach could be more accurately described as the cowardly and repressed approach. We want to say our piece, but do not want to suffer the consequences of our own disgust, or (gasp!) risk facing the ire we may draw with our (gasp!) opinions.

Maybe I just read too much into things (cue laugh track here). I am fluent in the language of the pasive-aggressive.

I tend to seek out negative hidden meanings in all manner of things. Is this a shame-based thing? Do I only notice this because I was raised Catholic, and because of this, I am acutely aware of any situation in which drowning in shame could be one possible outcome?

I am like the Quarterback of negative innuendo's. If there is a comment lofted from the 50 yard line, and if there is any way to interpret that comment in a shameful, negative way, however abstract, I will catch that ball, score the touchdown, and do a little dance in the end-zone. Then I will curl up in the fetal position, and cringe at my own inadequacy. Then I will berate myself for being negative and for lacking self-esteem. I am the MVP of self-flagellation.

Look... I am sorry I brought it up.

Look... I know this conversation is really something I should talk over with my therapist, and not in rambling incoherent stream-of-consciousness posts to the internets.

Look... it's just a theory.

But SERIOUSLY. Does anyone in real life really start their sentences with "Look..."?

Please tell me. I am really curious.

The DAMN DOG and the STRANGERS!

2006-07-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

My parents Shetland sheepdog, Ernie, wrecked my birthday.

How in the world, you may ask, can a dog wreck a persons birthday?

For starters, the dog can be pre-disposed to all forms of doggie wierdness. Somehwere in Ernie's walnut-sized brain is a list like this:

Things that are good:
Meat
Walks
His own balls
Other dogs and their butt-smells
Herding all categories of things. Animals, people... If it moves, RUN AROUND IT IN CIRCLES!
Cheese
Sandwiches
sniffing your own poop

Things that are bad:
Getting humped by other dogs
Loud noises made by FIREWORKS!
STRANGERS!
Being locked in a log cabin with STRANGERS!
Being touched by STRANGERS!
Being looked at by STRANGERS!

Things that are bad, but not even considered by Ernie's tiny walnut -sized brain:
WOLVES. The kind that roam around the U.P. and around our cabin.
The kind of WOLVES that killed a neighbors shelte. WOLVES who didn't just kill it, but tore it apart in tiny little pieces, leaving only the poor little guys HEAD which was collected and buried in a small ziplock bag by it's bereft owners.
TWO-LANE HIGHWAYS on which many local dogs have met their maker by way of automobiles hitting and crushing them.

This last part is what led to the disaster that was my birthday. We left the remote log cabin in the woods of the U.P. to dine at a restaruant called "The Root Cellar". Everyone except for my cousin Kerry and her son Zeke, my sister's dog and THAT DAMN DOG Ernie, went to dinner.

Dinner was good (Prime Rib) Service was "meh". Maggie was exhausted, and required constant entertainment in the form of seventeen trips outside to play in the large rambling estate on which "The Root Cellar" is located. Because it was my birthday, my sisters and cousins all did their best to appease the tyrannical toddler so that I could eat.

When we returned to the cabin for birthday cake, and presumably, some celebratory wine, we were alerted to a small problem. Ernie had left the premises. In his doggie panic that transpired shortly after we left because he was unfamiliar with the STRANGER! we left him with, he darted out the screen door the first chance he had. Our poor cousin Kerry called to him and called to him, trying to coax him back in. Ernie, in all his neuroses, refused to re-enter the cabin.

Cue in the FIREWORKS!

The dog, already in a panicky, agitated state, was further agitated by the ass-clowns blowing off fireworks in 2 minute intervals at the county park across the lake.

By the time we got home, the dog was nowhere to be found.

Search parties commenced. There was much worry and concern. Tears were shed. There was coaxing and luring, and shouted fruitless bribes of treats and walks. But there was no Ernie. It grew dark. The searching continued, and our cousin Shanna's fiance Bill sat up for hours in a small pup tent, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

No Ernie.

All night, I startled awake, thinking I was hearing a small shetland sheepdog being torn apart by wolves. I trotted out to the outhouse at 3:00 a.m. and took my time, carefully peeking the shadows I normally race by, afraid of the dark and the critters hiding in it.

We awoke the next morning, and still no Ernie.

The searching continued. My sister inquired at the county park if anyone had seen our dog, and she could barely get the words out through her tears.

Neighbors were alerted to our situation.

I was certain that we had seen the last of Ernie. Ernie was a goner, and was somewhere herding sheep in doggie heaven, his earthly body torn to pieces on the forest floor of the U.P.

Regressing to my self-centered Id, I moped internally. My birthday would forever be ruined. People would weep every year as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake. And I would shake my fist in the air and shout "THAT DAMN DOG RUINED MY BIRTHDAY!", and then I would cower in shame at my own self-centeredness. And my friends and family would think to themselves "all she cares about is her birthday. She didn't love that DAMN DOG. We are writing her out of the will because she is selfish and small." and I would get no birthday presents at all. Ever.

One thing was for certain: I was NEVER GOING TO THE CABIN ON MY BIRTHDAY EVER, EVER AGAIN. My birthday, forever marred by the anniversary of the violent untimely death of Ernie the dog, at the hands of wild wolves.

The following day, my birthday cake sat, uneaten, on the counter.

Later that morning, a neighbor (perhpaps, now, my all-time favorite Upper Penisulan) pulled into the driveway. Ernie had been spotted by a STRANGER! He had made it through the night! The STRANGERS! called out his name, but because they were STRANGERS! Ernie ran away, just like he did every time a well-intentioned STRANGER! tried to help collect him. In my estimation, this scenario played itself out about four hundred times throughout the day. STRANGERS! shouting "Here Ernie! HERE BOY!" and Ernie pausing, cocking his head to the side, and running, terrified, right back into the woods from which he came.

The searching continued, but the atmosphere changed. Knowing the dog was alive, we started to criticize his stupidity for staying out all night. What kind of a wierd dog doesn't let people touch him after spending a long, lonely night in the scary wolf-infested woods with no food? Why was Ernie so stupid? Was it because he had been isolated in a garage with his also-neurotic shelte brother for the first 12 weeks of his neurotic life? Was it because he lacked human interaction as a puppy? Why was Ernie so dumb? Dumb, DUMB Dog.

My favorite neighbor returned throughout the day to tell us of the most recent Ernie sighting. The DAMN DOG continued to run away from well-intentioned STRANGERS! Well into the afternoon.

Eventually, we recovered the dog. I was out searching neighboring properties spanning about 4 miles when he was found. In the end I returned home while, with no small degree of irony, a search party had been dispatched to locate ME. Because THAT DAMN DOG! had been found, yet I was still, out searching for him. DAMN DOG.

Upon my return to the cabin, I walked over to the dog and kicked him as hard as I could in the ribs for ruining my birthday.

Allright. I didn't really do that. I looked at his scraggly furry face, gave him a scratch behind the ear and said "Ernie, I am glad you are back, and that you didn't get eaten by wolves. Oh. AND YOU RUINED MY BIRTHDAY YOU WORTHLESS FREAKING MONGREL!"

I did wish that we had ERNIE CAM footage so we could review all his adventures, but alas, we have only our imaginations.

I gave the DAMN DOG the cold shoulder the rest of the week. But secretly, I was glad that he had returned to us unharmed.

We had birthday cake that night, the day AFTER my birthday. Maggie helped me blow out the candles (which was really the only reason I was so insistent on having birthday cake. The child thinks birthday cake is mind-blowingly exciting).

I do love that DAMN DOG. In all my selfishness, I did secretly pray for his safe return with all my might, and seeing that DAMN DOG! again (alive, with his head attached to his body), was possibly the best birthday present of all. DAMN DOG.

Mr. C.

2006-07-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Combine a few days off of work and also off of my usual, predictable routine; add some sad news, and my mind just goes funny. Today I am melancholy. And wistful. And I got stung by a bee on my inner left thigh while I was running. But it feels like it was my heart that got stung. It feels sore and swollen.

There once was a girl in her early twenties. She was sweet and mildly annoying with all of her loud talking about her opinions and idealism. She was laughably naïve. I suppose these are typical traits of people that age. She was also in love. She was hopeful and thoughtful, and painfully unsophisticated at times. She possessed the young confidence that only a person green enough to believe the world is fair and kind can have. Sometimes she tried a little too hard. She threw her entire being into this person and this relationship. She was so in love that she invested herself not only in this boy, but in this boy’s entire large family. He was the youngest son if a big Irish & French Catholic family. They were all tall, and full of life with all their height and long distinguished noses and masses of wavy dark hair. There were three older brothers and two older sisters all together. They were all married. The eldest brother was warm and loving and so open with his love, that it was mainly touching, but sometimes a tad bit uncomfortable. The next two brothers were smart, and full of swaggering attitude. The sisters were lovely and intelligent and goofy. The girl (the annoying twenty-something one)was tall and awkward and made fast, clumsy movements, and she felt downright diminutive among all the tall, dark haired Irish-French brothers and sisters.

She loved every member of this big, Catholic family. Especially the boy’s father, Mr. C. Mr. C was a big barrel-chested, handsome Irish man with broad rosy cheeks and a full head of gray waves that rendered him altogether dashing, even at his age. He had been in World War II. When he returned from the war, he met his wife at the Catholic University they both attended. He was older than the rest of the students due to his tour in the war, and when he came back, the buzz was that he was quite a catch for some lucky lady. That lucky lady was Mrs. C, who was tall and slender, and delicate and French. She was lovely and well-mannered and sophisticated, despite her small-town roots. They fell in love, married and had a family.

Mrs. C. had a dignified air about her. She was French. She was prone to making comments affectionately referred to as “zingers”. A zinger was an off-hand comment that was meant to be cutting, but her zingers were often so subtle, that an inattentive victim might not even know they were being criticized. Mr. C was happily oblivious to many of his wife’s zingers. Mr. C. loved a good steak dinner and a nice scotch, or three. Mr. C. was jovial, and always had a twinkle in his eye. He always made her feel a part of the family, and the girl (his youngest son’s girlfriend, the mildly annoying twenty-something) loved him from about the moment she first met him. There were many dinners and parties and trips to the cabin. There were passionate conversations with a lot of frantic hand movements, over many beers. She felt like a part of their family.

Mrs. C., the lovely French lady who threw a mean zinger, began to lose her battle with cancer. She died in June of 1995. After she died, Mr. C was inconsolable for a good while. For a long time, he smelled of stale grief and whiskey. He was badly shaken once by a neighbor who had seen a strange woman wandering the neighborhood, because he had been convinced it was the ghost of Mrs. C. The Irish have vivid fantasies tucked away in their imaginations. This made the girl adore Mr. C even more.

The fairy tale with the boy began to lose a little of its fairy dust. The girl made some crucial errors that cost her dearly. She had become so engrossed in another person, and another person’s family, that she lost her own footing. She forgot who she was, who she had been, and where she came from. She forgot that she had her own story. Or maybe it was not so much that she forgot, but more that she didn't think her story was worth much of anything. She hadn’t realized that she should never ever forget that she had her own story.

The relationship finally, officially ended, much in the manner of a small fuzzy kitten being run over by a bus. One could say that it was due to some bad behavior on the part of the boy. One could also say that it was due to the girl losing all sense of who she was, and who she had been. One could say the ending was inevitable just because it was young love, and young love is not meant to last.

When the ground began to crumble, it literally fell out from under her, and she was lost for a very, very long time. When she said goodbye to the boy, she had to say goodbye to all the handsome, tall, long-nosed, dark haired Irish-French brothers and sisters. She had already said goodbye to Mrs. C. and perhaps worst of all, she had to say goodbye to Mr. C., her barrel chested rosy cheeked, silver haired pal. This was possibly the most painful thing about ending the relationship. She was very sad for a long time.

The girl, now a bit older and wiser, sometimes misses that annoying naïve twenty-something girl who was so eager to please. She was fearless enough to leap wholeheartedly into another world altogether. It seems that small fuzzy kitten got replaced with a cranky old alley cat when it was squashed like a bug on the highway. Things are definitely different now. She is more suspicious of ulterior motives and is hesitant to let her guard down. She has seen the dark side, and it changed her. She wishes she still had some of that fearless, brave naiveté in her. She thinks it might be bouncing around in there somewhere. Because of this, she is thinking about getting another kitten. This time she will be sure to keep it out of harms way.

She misses Mr. C. to this very day, and she wonders if he knows how much she adores him, or how she still carries a little of him in her heart, and always will.

She just found out Mr. C is facing his own battle with cancer, and that it looks like it may get the better of him. And this makes her very sad. The alleycat in her wants to put all of the memories back in the box they came from, and tuck it back up in the attic. But the kitten part of her wants to look through the memories for a little while and just feel the melancholy.

She also realizes with no small degree of irony, that at some point all of this did in fact, become her own story.

Good luck Mr. C. You are in my thoughts, you sweet silver-haired, rosy cheeked, barrel-chested Irishman.

The fourth of July week in numbers

2006-06-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

I am taking off in my minivan with my sister Betsy, and my 22 month old daughter for a journey through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

You think that’s crazy? OH I haven’t even STARTED with the crazy.

Behold the crazy:

Number of estimated hours in car with 22 month old: 5.5 hours each way

The year the cabin was built by my great grandfather: 1914

Amenities offered at the cabin: plumbing: 0, electricity: 0, phone:0. The cabin does offer 1 roof, 1 3-seater outhouse (also built in 1913, and yes, this is still the one we use), a wood burning stove, approximately 12 kerosene lanterns, and 1 propane powered refrigerator that works 42% of the time.

Things on which Miss Madge may maim herself: 11

These include, but are not limited to the following:
A wood-burning stove
A lake
An exposed fireplace
Kerosene lanterns
Mosquitoes large enough to carry her off
Wolves
Bears
Leeches
Long wooden stairway (christened by my cousin Kerry who tumbled down them bum-over-head as a tot)
Bats
A two-lane highway within wandering-off distance (just ask my sister Betsy, who was once toddled off when my [ahem] father was supposed to be watching her. She was returned by a nice man on a motorcycle shortly thereafter).

Number of bedrooms: 1 large dorm like area on the second floor.

Number of relatives sharing the two room cabin: 15

Number of said relatives who snore: 10 (myself included)

Number of dogs: 2 (we are leaving good dog and bad dog home)

Number of potential outfits required for a week in a place where the weather can range from 39 degrees to 104 degrees: 273

Number of hours of sleep I am likely to average per night: 1.2

Percentage of my being willing the weather Gods to smile upon us: 100

Entertainment options on a rainy day at the cabin: 1.
This options goes as follows: Crowd 15 people in the cabin to stare at one another. Follow Maggie from hazard to hazard in an effort to prevent her from burning her hands down to stumps and / or burning the cabin down with all 15 inhabitants trapped inside, while tripping over the feet of said 15 inhabitants.

Number of birthdays taking place up at the cabin: 1 (mine. July 1. Same as Princess Diana)

Number of years that makes me: 34

Ratio of women to men at the cabin (our people kill off Y sperm): 87% women, 13% men.

Number of times the screen door will slam shut LOUDLY: 4,392

Average temperature of the water in Lake Gogebic: 59 degrees

Decibel level of shrieks emitted after submerging onesself in lake Gogebic: HIGH

Amount of sheer joy created by the simple act of taking a hot shower, watching television, and sleeping in my own bed upon my return home: infinite and priceless.

I will post pictures when I return. Wish me luck. I think I am going to need it

Observations from our visit to the Amusement Park

2006-06-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

The park looked a lot bigger when I was eleven years old.

The white roller coaster is really not that scary.

There are very few attractive adolescents. This fact makes me feel much better about my own fugliness at that age. I tried to see the attractive adult in each of them. It was hard.

I have no desire to go on a ride that requires me to sit in a small puddle of warm water that has likely been swished around a stinky teenagers butt. Water rides = human stew.

Boys ages 11-17 + a day at the amusement park at 80 degrees= Horrific B.O.
Please go on a water ride, get a quick rinse, and leave a puddle of stinky butt water for the next passenger (who will certainly NOT be me). Perhaps then you will not smell as much like the funk when I stand behind you in line.

Simply BEING at an amusement park makes people look trashier. I am sure I looked trashy just being there.

My husband is a very sweet man who adores my enthusiasm for scary rides. He is sweet for trying to hide the fact that he does not share my enthusiasm for scary rides.

Next time we go, I must bring reinforcements so that when my sweet husband turns green from riding on “Steel Venom” I will still have someone to accompany me on scary rides so we will not have to decide between going on rides alone, or leaving the amusement park early.

But at least we went on “Steel Venom” after we had been on all the other rides.

I rode “Steel Venom” two more times, by myself.

Waiting in line to go on rides by myself gave me anxiety. I was transported back to the 7th grade when I was tall, gawky, ugly, incredibly insecure, and the odd number in the group who no one wanted to ride with. I don’t think I smelled bad though. At least I had that.

Because if this, I made an awkward attempt at conversation with some adolescent kids (non-stinky ones) while in line for “Steel Venom”. I felt like a big freak. I made a point to explain to them that I was by myself because my husband refused to go on the ride again (So they wouldn’t think I was some kind of a psycho). They were adorable kids who spoke perfect Spanish (I believe it was their native language) and perfect English. They had much enthusiasm for the sheer and utter scariness of “Steel Venom”. We compared notes on which was better, sitting in the front, or the back of the ride, and what the scariest parts were.

They waved at me when I was seated and the ride was about to start.

It was nice that they waved at me.

While riding solo, I was nervous to sit next to a stranger on a scary ride. I worried that they wanted to ride alone and I was intruding.

Scary rides are much better when you sit next to someone you know.

At heart, I am still an awkward, funny looking adolescent who worries about people liking her. But I don’t have B.O. – At least I hope I don’t.

I wonder if I will ever grow out of that.

I hope I never grow out of my love for scary rides though.

Do you believe in reincarnation?

2006-06-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm.... Divisive, Evil and hate-spewing.

This is scary. No, actually, what is scary is that people actually pay to read the garbage she manages to get published.

Thanks Sweetney, for the link.

Take the quiz and see if you fared better than me (I got 9)

hilter reincarnated

Pearls of wisdom

2006-06-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

I promised a few weeks back to share with you the story of the godforsaken pearls.

As you may or may not know, I have three sisters. In an uncanny twist of blessed coincidence, we also have four cousins who are all girls as well. Our years of birth are proportionately staggered so that each cousin has a doppelganger cousin about the same age, except for the oldest and the youngest, who don’t have cousin-twins. But we still let them hang out with us.

All eight of us grew up in the same neighborhood and saw each-other often. The gaggle, in its entirety adds up to a total of eight grand-daughters bestowed upon the Grand lady herself, my grandmother, Margaret. In chronological order we go as follows: Julie, Meghan, Tiffany, Kerry, Molly, Shanna, Betsy, and Colleen. Let me emphasize that I am the SECOND OLDEST GRANDDAUGHTER.

Being the second granddaughter, one would assume that any coming-of-age gifts bestowed upon all eight granddaughters would come to me second. It is only right and just that it be so.

In the 1980’s, my grandmother Margaret went to China. When she returned she told us that she had picked up eight strings of pearls on her journey, and that in due time, we would each receive of one of them.

My sister Julie, the oldest granddaughter, received her pearls on her 16th Birthday. In fact, she was also taken to an extravagant lunch at the Woman’s Club (which was essentially a fancy sorority for old ladies who lunch). It was a big deal, apparently, to turn sixteen. I looked forward to my turn.

Two and a half years went by, and I eagerly awaited my sweet sixteen and the special days subsequent bestowal of the great and mysterious coming-of-age jewelry. My sixteenth birthday came and went with no mention of the pearls. I failed my drivers test. I had cake. We went up to the cabin. I was a bit disappointed, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, Grandma had a plan. I knew after all, that she had a necklace with my name on it. I was next in line. It was only a matter of time.

Or so I thought. Next came high school graduation. No Pearls. Not even a mention of them. I began to wonder if I had done something to offend Grandma.

I knew my parents had expressed concern on occasion, that they were raising a lost cause partying underachiever. I was pigeonholed as the family troublemaker at a very young age. My mother once asked me, point blank, if I did cocaine. COCAINE. I may have been a mainstay at our high school keggers, but a coke-head I was not. In fact, my friends would pass the little one-ie dugout pot smoking contraption right over me in the back seat when we drove around, skipping classes. I was sufficiently righteously indignant of the accusation.

Then I got to thinking. Had my parents misled Grandma into thinking I was some kind of a coke-snorting tramp? A coke-snorting tramp who didn’t deserve to have real pearls from China? I tried not to take the oversight personally, but try as I did, I couldn’t help but feel marginalized and judged unworthy. I plodded on into the college years. Pearl-less.

Time went by, and I grew to believe that my grandmother really did like me. In fact, she often seemed to like me a lot. Wasn’t I the one she jiggled her empty wine glass at? I can still hear her charm bracelet and silver bangles clanging as she wiggled her glass above her head, indicating it was time for me to fetch her a refill of white.

When we were on the dock, up at the cabin, wasn’t I the one she would prompt to go make her a sandwich? She sat on the end of the dock with her short legs swinging. Her small feet dangled just above the water, pants rolled up, and she would say: “Meggity. How would you like to go up and make me a nice roast beef sandwich on some of that good bread”. This was always issued as a statement, without the slightest lilt of a question at the end. The woman knew how to get things done, or rather, to get them done for her by peons.

I knew in my heart my grandmother Margaret liked me. She would say things like: “Meggity. You and I majored in the same thing in college: Having a good time.” Grandma knew how to have a good time. And being the kind of person who knew how to have a good time, she was good at recognizing the same quality in others. Grandma was also good at recognizing not only who made a good sandwich, but who was sucker enough to drop what they were doing and hop to it ASAP at her beck and call.

So my grandmother liked me. Yet, I was necklace-less.

Time rambled on, my younger cousin Kerry got her pearls for some milestone or another. And after that was Shanna. Then I think Molly got them on her 18th birthday. I can’t remember specifically how each presentation of the pearls went down, but I recall a Christmas incident in which the youngest grandkids got their pearls.

That left me. I had been overlooked, bypassed and snubbed.

I finally mustered up the nerve to ask what the frigging deal with the pearls was. It was at this point that I was given an ultimatum. You graduate from college, and you will get your pearls.

WHAT. THE. HELL?

Let me get this straight. Every other granddaughter in the family had to do nothing but either turn sixteen or graduate from high school (which, by this time, I had done 6 years prior). What was with the strings attached?

And then it occurred to me. No one thought I was going to graduate from college. Insult, meet injury. Get to know one another, because you are going to be spending lots of time together.

I have a chronic history of disorganization. I have left many a task unfinished. Several of my teachers had my hearing tested in elementary school because they suspected I was deaf. My hearing was, and is, perfect. I just tune out a lot, and to this day, I spend lots of quality time knocking around in my own head and staring off into space. You might say I have a touch of the ADD. I have always earned high test score, but I was chronically inconsistent when it came to assignments and papers. These qualities made my schooling a bit of a challenge, as did my waitressing job and the hours I spent at the bars with my friends.

Apparently my parents and my grandmother felt that if I couldn’t muster up the chutzpah to finish those pesky last few classes at the “U” myself, that the string of pearls already bequeathed to every sister and cousin on the planet might be just the carrot I needed to get my bachelors degree.

They thought wrong.

I did, eventually obtain my degree. A Bachelors of Science in Child Psychology and Business and Industry Education, in fact.

Contrary to the opinions of several family members, I did not complete my coursework so that I could finally get the godforsaken pearl necklace. By the time I finally finished college, I wanted to take that stupid freaking necklace my entire family seemed to be flinging around like some masochistic version of “pickle in the middle” and stomp on it with all my might. I completed my coursework because I wanted to a piece of paper to show for the 6 years I spent in college. I wanted my bachelor’s degree because I worked hard. I wanted something to show for it.

I did not tell anyone I had finished school for a long time. I did not walk through the graduation ceremony. I stewed in silence for a month or two, and cursed the pearl necklace and all it represented.

My grandmother, who I loved dearly despite the pearl debacle, got wind somehow that I had gotten my degree. She gave me the pearls, and I have since blocked from memory the likely awkward manner in which I received them. It’s difficult to feel gracious when receiving a gift that is tarnished with disappointment and misjudgment. I am certain I faked it pretty politely. And I was always crazy about her regardless.

Am I still bitter? Moi? Umm, yes….er….No…Okay, yes. I am bitter.

The only moral I can see in my sad story, is that if you want something, go out and get it for yourself. This is good advice, which I exercise often. A person can waste a lot of time waiting around for things to happen for them. In this case waiting = bitter, and bitter = BAD. Very Bad.

Life is short, and nothing sucks the joy out of receiving a gift more than waiting around too long for it. So go out and buy that pair of shoes. Hell, get the handbag too. You deserve it. Tell the sales clerk Margaret sent you. And while you’re up, think about gettingsomeone to make a sandwich for you on some of that good bread.

Daddy's Rock

2006-06-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I fell in love with the handsome Dutchman is that he has always been great with kids. I already knew he was cute and charming and funny and all, but seeing him with children just about curled my toes. And with that, the deal was sealed. I was his.

This week at Mommybloggers, we are featuring the essays of some of our favorite Dad bloggers. You don't want to miss this. Their essays amazing and touching and diverse. And they are pretty darn handsome to boot.

Go on over and say hello!

a dollar bill in your thong for your thoughts

2006-06-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Overheard after spending 1.5 hours in a state of near-tears with a nice, diminutive shoe salesman trying to find rare and coveted size 11 shoes that don’t accentuate my bunions:

Skinny, skanky, knock-kneed stripper, buying stinky, skanky shoes at the cash register. She may only be 19, but she’s got some hard years clocked on the meter. She lifts up a pair of size 9 red pumps and reveals to the rest of the patrons her IQ, which is exponentially small, particularly when compared to the enormous size of her mouth and her fake boobs:

“Oh my GOD THESE ARE HUGE! I don’t know what I would do if my feet were this big! Like, if I had feet this big, I would never leave the house!” (saying this to hoochie stripper #2, who by way of keeping her mouth shut, revealed a somewhat higher level of intelligence than skank #1).

Overly sensitive, indignant, and easily offended woman standing next to me:

“Some of us just can’t help the way we were born!”

Then easily-offended-large footed woman grabbed her bag of enormous shoes and marched off.

I lovingly stroked my size 11 Coach wedges, shook my head, and smiled kindly at big-boobs-tiny-brain. I smiled because she appeared to lack sense, and the fact that she said something that moronic in front of 6 women in the shoe department made me want to follow her around for an afternoon to see what other asininely stupid, amusing, insulting things she might say within earshot of perfect strangers.

I have huge, terrible feet, and yet I leave the house darn near every single day. No, Really! I DO! People Magazine is all over me for a special interest feature detailing me, my size 11 feet, and the courage I muster up every day just putting shoes on my big-ass dogs and walking out the door thus exposing my huge feet to the cruel, cruel world. Life is not kind to those of us with size 11 Zapatos. And yes, it’s hard. I cry myself to sleep and dream of tiny, narrow, strappy sandals.

Did you know they stop offering half sizes after size 10? It’s really quite insulting. As though to say “Your feet are so big, half sizes don’t matter anymore. They don’t matter because you are a fucking Amazon freak with enormous appendages. In fact, don’t even bother with shoes. Take a box-cutter to a rubber tire, affix a few rubber bands and off you go sasquatch! And while you’re at it, try some hormone therapy for your man-hands!"

But really, I’ll take my life and my sasquatch feet over whatever big-boobs-small-brain has got going on with her hooker shoes, presumably meant to show off kicking up her tiny feet while pole-swinging in front of legions of leering old men. Really. I’ll keep the feet.

And that, my friends, is why I refrained from kicking her a good one in the gut with my size 11, unbearably awful Alice-the-Goon feet.

The List. The one where I face my sickness.

2006-06-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a meme from my sister
Julie:
The sickness part comes towards the end.

5 things

5 Items in My Fridge
4 Different kinds of Hummus (left-over from my latest attempt at a detox diet)
A bottle of White wine
2 gallons of Whole Milk
3 balls of fresh mozzarella
A huge box of Go-gurt (I heart Costco)

Apparently, I am a big fan of anything containing milkfat.

5 Items in My Closet
A lot of shoes in a big huge pile
A lot of clothes that are either too big or too small
2 of my grandmothers handbags (she was an aficionado of all things shoe and purse-related, unfortunately she wore a size 5 shoe, while I wear a size 11, ergo the handbags)
A haphazard pile of sweaters, which I curse at every time they all tumble down on my head when trying to remove just one.
An underutilized shoe rack (I tend to prefer the “mountain-o-shoes” method)

5 Items in My Car
Several Mugs
A Stroller
A BBQ Utensil set with my name engraved on the spatula (received as a reward for hitting my numbers in April) This is so the steak knows who it’s MAMA IS! WHO’S YOUR MAMA? I AM!!! SMACK.
A pack of Hello-Kitty Stickers
A bag of red, white and blue decorating items to create a masterpiece of a 4th of July T-shirt for the contest we are having up a the cabin. I am making on for my sister Molly. It’s going to be freaking awesome. People will wince.

5 Items in My Purse
This is the one that will expose my true sickness to all of you.

I have the following lipsticks in my Purse:
Mac: Sheer Plum Lustre (for when I need a sheer-Plumb)
Mac: Redwood (for when I need a Red Glaze)
Mac:Sweetie (for when I need a lustry-pink)
Mac: Desire (for when I need a plum gloss that TOTALLY ROCKS)
Mac: Brick-o-la (for when I want an opaque pink)
Lancome: Nude 5 (It just GOES WITH EVERYTHING!)
Lancome: Nude 5 (Why do I need two? I don’t know! IT GOES WITH EVERYTHING!)
Lancome: Pink Candy (because you need JUST the right shade of pink at any given moment)
Clinique: Extreme Pink (Duh. For when I need an extreme pink)
Elizabeth Arden: Rebelette (a slightly pinker shade of Pink)
Elizabeth Arden: Blush (It’s lovely and sheer and PINK!)
Estee Lauder: Starlit Pink (Do I need to keep explaining the pinks?)
Estee Lauder: Electrified (for it’s lovely red-purple-y-pink iridescence)
A tube of DuWop Lip Venom (for glazing the top of the exactly perfect shade of lip-color)

Oh My God I am Out of control. Moving on:

A stack of “Bug Cards” for Maggie to hold while riding in the car
A cell phone
2 Pens
A pink ribbon necklace with a pink wooden pendant that says “Maggie”

Did you know my spell-check doesn’t consider the word “fro” an error? That is awesome.

And there you have it. I am a lipshade WHORE! A DIRTY LIPSHADE HOOOOOO-ER. My secret is out.

Don’t judge me.

A long overdue letter to Miss Madge.

2006-06-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Maggie,

In lieu of a second birthday letter, I am writing you a 22 months and 15 days letter. Because I am a non-conformist conformist who read Mary’s article, and decided it was high time I wrote about you for a change, because I really need to do more documenting of what the heck you are up to.

I often wonder if it’s normal to feel as separate from your own child as I do from you. I mean that in a good way. You are not an extension of me or your father. You are your entire own little person. You came into this world as your own Maggie, and every day I learn more and more about what you are all about. This is by far, the best adventure I have ever been on. You are proving to be a better child than I ever dreamed of. You are better because you are real, and you are you, and you are full of surprises and sweetness and wailing willfulness and cranky toddler irrationality. I am certain that I ended up with the best kid in the whole entire world.

Maggie, you have single-handedly taught me that life is best when you slow down and just enjoy the regular old pedestrian moments. Like when we wiggle under the sprinkler and shout “It’s WAINING!”, and sing songs, and get silly and goofy and dirty, and play “heart and soul” on the piano with your feet. Like this morning when I strapped you into your car-seat and you beamed and shouted “YAY! BUCKLES”! These are all moments well-spent. These are the scenes I will look back on when I am old, and on death’s doorstep, and wondering if I really lived my life well. I am storing these freeze-frames away in my mind so that I can play them over at the end of my life and remind myself that Hell yes, I really did live right. Thank you for setting me straight, Miss Madge.

Being your Mom is so much more than the picture I carried around in my head all those years before we finally became a team. It’s better because it’s real. On one hand it is flat-out hard work. Some days I admit that I feel isolated, and I want some time for me, with grown-ups, and that I need some peace and quiet, and perhaps a little more sleep. On the other hand, when I do get away, I end up missing you. When I walk through the door at home, I just want to see your sweet brown eyes and apple-juice cheeks and your exuberant welcome-wagon greeting followed by your signature abrupt rejection. You are all “YAY! MOMMY’S HOME! Okay that’s great, would let me get back to playing already? It’s not all about YOU, lady. Sheesh.” You literally push my face away from you with your hand. But I will not be deterred, little lady. No Sir-ee.

Every night when I put you to bed, we have to say goodnight to daddy, and goodnight to the fishies, and goodnight to the doggies, and good night to the ducks. Then I finally get you into bed, and lean in for a kiss and teeter on the edge of your crib with my feet dangling in the air. Next, we start the charade of me leaving your room. As I approach the door, you let out a big “MMMMMM!” which indicates you are ready for another kiss, so I hop like a bunny, back to you, and give you another one. We repeat this three times, with a few different moves tossed in for fun (like pirouetting from the door to your crib… that one is a real crowd pleaser).

I check in on you every night before I go to sleep, and each time I am alarmed by how big you are. It’s as though you grow an inch every time I lay you down to sleep. You are a giant Amazon of a toddler. I worry that you will end up to be 6 foot 5 and have to shop at special big-girl stores, and have size 14 shoes specially cobbled just for you and your giant feet, but then I think it won’t matter. It won’t matter because you are Maggie, and Maggie, you are the funniest, smartest, most beautiful girl I have ever known. Anyone worth their salt will agree with me.

Just last night you approached my open closet door with an eager, wide-eyed “OH WOW!” and proceeded to rummage through my shoes until you found the right pair to place your feet in. Then you clomp-clomped around the house in them, like you had been doing that your whole life. It was the first time I have ever seen you do that, and it struck me as the most quintessential kind of daughter-emulating-mother behavior. It reminds me that I need to be very VERY mindful of what kind of model I am for you.

You are obsessed with your aunts and your grandparents every dog and kitty you have ever laid eyes on.

You are in tireless, relentless pursuit of the contents of the drawer in the bathroom. It is your mission in life to un-cap any liquid-holding container from this drawer, and dump its contents onto the white carpet in your room. The other week, I noticed the house had grown eerily silent. I went room to room, looking for you. Upon my second trip to your bedroom, I discovered you had cunningly hidden yourself from view behind your crib so that you could suck on a tube of aqua-fresh toothpaste. As I approached you, you simply handed me the tube without protest or upward glance, as though in guilty acknowledgement of your busted covert toothpaste-sucking mission. I couldn’t help but laugh.

You also can count up to twenty and you know the entire alphabet, but I don’t want to tell people about that because I don’t want to brag about your accomplishments, because they are your accomplishments, and not mine. That, plus I don’t want anyone worrying that their child is not cutting the mustard in comparison to your obvious intellectual superiority and blinding beauty and charm. Those things will just be our little secret, okay?

Life is so much better with you in it, Maggie. I am so enthralled by the thought of watching you grow up. Thanks for being 22 months old. Thanks for being perfectly imperfectly perfect. Thanks for being Maggie.

Love, Mommy

Pizza. I want pizza.

2006-05-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

You may or may not have read about my last stint with a “cleansing diet”. Much like childbirth, the memories of the pain of my last attempt have waned. Plus, it is swimsuit season, and I would like to lose 5 pounds. Okay, maybe a little more than that, but who’s counting?

The gist of it is to cut out sugar, wheat, gluten, meat, dairy, eggs, caffeine, and alcohol. And that, my friends, doesn’t leave too much to choose from.

We started last night, and I am already feeling a little sluggish. Apparently my bod likes the bad stuff. I am finding it hard to concentrate, and I have a slight headache due to the lack of coffee today. Based on past experience, the headache will continue to worsen until the end of the day tomorrow, when I will have to lock myself in a dark room to rock back and forth and hum lullabies to myself.

After about 24 hours of no sugar, eggs, meat, dairy, gluten, etc…a person just stops being hungry. I could say that is because of my blood sugar leveling out, but it’s more likely that after 3 days of raw almonds, apples and rice cakes, raw almonds, apples and rice cakes just don’t sound very good. Last night it was falafel, basmati rice, and tahini. So far today, I have had a handful of almonds, a field green salad with oil and vinegar, lentil soup, a banana, rice crackers, and olive tapenade.

Based on the way my feelings towards garbanzo beans took a violent turn for the worse last time, I am realizing that the key to a successful cleanse is to make sure you plan meals that have variety and flavor.

Another issue with this diet is that you have to cook everything yourself because what take-out restaurant serves gluten free wheat free egg free meat free entrees? And you are too exhausted and confused to cook, due to the shocking of your system with the lack of junk and all. I think last time we did this, I would have a glass of water for dinner. Then I would put Maggie to bed. Then I would sit and stare.

Tonight: Either portabella mushroom caps stuffed with chipotle mashed potatoes (with rice milk) or tacos made with homemade rice flour tortillas, black beans, avocado, tomato and onions. It really depends on how energetic I am feeling. We also managed to find a frozen entrée made by Amy’s that doesn’t break any of the rules. Hooray.

If you care to place bets on how long I will last with all this nonsense, please feel free. Here’s a hint: Last time I planned to go a full week, and I made it 3.5 days.

I do have a wine tasting planned tomorrow night, so that’s not really cheating, because I always planned to cheat that night anyway. So there.

Not-quite pearls of wisdom

2006-05-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

What’s more controversial than the mommy wars? The mommy wars combined with religious cultural wars and corporal punishment! If the web page you are viewing happens to melt your computer screen, it’s because the exponential synergy of the combined controversies up and fried your computer with the force of two small, but vocal opposing ideologies. If all goes according to my plan, these same opposing forces with also magically create such compression that your computer will turn into a big-ass diamond, and you can all sell it on e-bay and use the proceeds to take time off to finally write that novel that’s been bouncing around in your head.

I know a lot of great parents from all walks of life. These parents have varying beliefs, belong to varying political parties, and practice various non-Christian and Christian religions. Their disciplinary techniques differ as well. Some use time outs, and some spank their children. I consider them all to be good parents, and I respect their choices in how they raise their children. I do not agree with all of their methods, but I can agree to disagree on a lot of parenting topics, as long as there are no severe threats to a child’s physical and emotional well-being.

I can sympathize with parents who spank as a last resort. I know that certain kids are very difficult to get through to, and a swat on the butt sometimes does the trick. I know people who have threatened a spanking and then ended up walking away because they were WAY to angry. Spanking is a far cry from beating your kid with a two by four.

I mean, I was spanked and I turned out all-right! Just as my therapist! She thinks I am fantastic. Really, she just told me that last week.

All this controversy started, oh about the time the Bible was first written.

The article I read that started all this can be found here.This article details one man’s ideology and subsequent publications of said ideology in a book that subsequently created a large source of income for him. His name is Michael Pearl, and he is basically a guy who is a little nutty and a lot religious. He is also likely very rich, having sold a lot of copies of his book to a lot of impressionable parents.

"To Train Up a Child," was written in 1994 by Michael Pearl, who is a Tenessee Pastor. In his book, Mr. Pearl encourages parents to use physical punishment to discipline their children. He uses a lot of biblical references. I question whether hitting a child with a twig is really what Jesus would do. I do not recall any biblical stories involving the son of God, a child, and PVC pipe (or a sapling switch, mind you). But then again, I was typically daydreaming about cookies and M&Ms during biblical discussions in my religious classes as a child (CCD for those of you with a little Catholic wherewithal). I could have missed the part about Jesus beatin’ on children.

Here are a few excerpts from Mr. Pearl’s book, "To Train Up a Child":

Mr. Pearl says his ideas: "are not new, deep insights from the professional world of research, [but] rather, the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules, the same technique God uses to train his children."

Sounds great! Here is my conversion plan: I will shriek “GEE!” and “HAW!” at my child and then whack her with the branch of a birch tree instead of offering a measly firm but gentle “No”. A firm but gentle “No” is for pussies. I will refer to my daughter from now on, not as Maggie, but as “Number 7”. I can do that. Good heavens, this is going to be so easy! And my kid will do everything I say all the time!

“Michael Pearl, 60, writes in his book"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

Okay, so, if I have this right, if you teach your kids that the biggest bully wins, then when they are older, they will be successful in bullying anyone who is smaller than them, and whose parents read and followed the same book. Cool. As long as your kid is bigger than most, this will work for them. The problem is, there is usually someone bigger. This creates a conundrum for parents who wish to raise a “winner” of small stature. If yer kid can’t put up their dukes, the future does not bode well for them. Okay. There’s a wrinkle. But my husband and I are tall, large-footed people, so Maggie….um…. I mean number 7, will be high up on the food chain. I’ll take it (insert Randy Newman’s song “Short People” here).

In his book, Mr. Pearl also recommends:

"Switch their hand once and simultaneously say, 'No.'"They will again pull back their hand and consider the relationship between the object, their desire, the command and the little reinforcing pain. It may take several times, but if you are consistent, they will learn to consistently obey, even in your absence."

Here’s my two cents: Shout “LIFE IS HARD AND PAINFUL AND YOU WILL COMPLY WITH IT’S DEMANDS!!!” at your child thrice daily. That oughta do it.. Consider it extra-credit towards becoming an ultimate corporal punishment parenting champion. The parenting anti-pussy.

On a more serious note, one of this guys groupies took things Tragically too far:

“While the Pearls are well known in fundamentalist Christian circles, they were largely unknown to the secular world until March, when their discipline methods were tied to the death of a North Carolina boy and the alleged abuse of two of his siblings. The children's adoptive mother, Lynn Paddock, 45, a devotee of the Pearls' teachings, is currently behind bars. She is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 4-year-old Sean, who suffocated when wrapped tightly in blankets”
“ She is also charged with felony child abuse in connection with welts found on two of Sean's other five siblings. Nowhere in the Pearls' book do they advocate restraining with blankets; however, Sean's siblings had apparently been struck with a particular type of "rod" recommended by the Pearls: a length of quarter-inch plumbing supply line. “

All joking aside, this is getting pretty serious. An occasional and rare spanking is a far cry from serious bodily injury and death. It’s that fine line that gets pretty tricky to walk. The danger in publishing a book that suggests that God wants you to beat your children, is that if a parent is abusive and depraved to begin with, you are essentially validating their sickness by writing such a book. You just gave a sicko a green-light, from God no less, to inflict irreparable damage upon a child. Quite simply, it is wrong.

If my husband whipped me with PVC pipe, I would call the police, and they would haul him off in a cruiser with the lights flashing. I would probably flip him the bird as he was being taken away to the can. I would then take out a restraining order and get a good lawyer. A child is totally dependent upon their parents. What options does a child have when their parents whip them with a PVC pipe and tell them it’s because of God? In most cases, their option is to stay put and to get beaten. To suggest that such a thing is not only acceptable, but optimal, is unforgivable and sickening. My question is: Where is the outrage?

At the risk of offending any followers of Mr. Pearl, I conclude this:

I respect people of all religions. I know and love a lot of people who follow conservative Christian Ideologies. I bet a lot of them would agree with my next statement: Writing a book promoting violence to children in the name of God is pretty well fucked up. I chalk part of it up to laziness. It takes less time to smack a kid than it does to explain that they can’t have a cookie until after dinner, and then explain it again when the screaming and fit-pitching commences. But lazy doesn't begin cover it when a child ends up dead because your writings potentially encouraged a sick adult to inflict severe physcial harm onto an innocent child. Mr. Pearl your terds of wisdom are not so wise.

I'm weeding as fast as I can

2006-05-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

This morning I didn’t have my cursed Godforsaken meeting at 7:30 a.m., and for that I was happy. Until I dropped Maggie of at the in-laws and realized that I had forgot to tell them, and they had been up since 7:00 waiting for us, and had already had breakfast, which they usually have with Maggie. I have been late twice this week, and my father-in-law has been late for two coffee meetings because he wanted to wait to see his granddaughter before leaving.

Can you say G-U-I-L-T??

Yeah, I am an asshole.

Well, actually I am not. I am not an asshole at all (Thank you therapy… two years of hard work and I can definitively say I am NOT an asshole). I am doing the best I can. I am simply WAY too optimistic about what I can and can’t accomplish in one day. Or a week. Or a month for that matter. It might be time to get real about my limitations. And the fact that I have limitations does not mean that I am an asshole.

We have three large garden beds in our backyard. One of them is enormous, and in past years I have grown corn in it. That particular garden bed becomes the bane of my existence every year. My battles with this garden bed have been epic. It starts out hard a rock, requires tilling, which requires the rental of a machine, and then proceeds to overgrow itself with weeds to a ridiculous degree. I mean ASININE. I work full time, and try to get out to weed in the evenings while mosquitoes feast on my flesh. One rainy weekend can throw my plans totally out of whack. Every year, I have a weed-pulling episode where I maniacally rip out everything I can see in a manic frenzy until I exhaust myself. Then I realize that I have only pulled approximately 10% of the weeds, and that garden bed chuckles, and then gives me the finger.

Last night I pitched a fit because all the manure and peat moss I bought Saturday morning was still sitting in bags in the garage. Meanwhile, the brief window of opportunity I have to plant was rapidly ticking by. I broke under the pressure. I huffed and puffed and was all “I’lldoitmyselfthankyouverymuch stupidfreakinggarden Idon’thaveasparemomenttomyself Ican’tcarryathoughtinmyhead poor poor me” until Jim finally got out the wheelbarrow and begrudgingly helped me plant some tomatoes.

The large garden bed stared at me as though saying “You wanna piece of me?” and I realized that the answer is no. I do not want a piece of that garden bed. Gardening is supposed to be enjoyable. Not a frantic crazed desperate rush to get things in the ground so they can grow before the cruel winter frost kills them all. I have been racing around like some crazed half assed Martha Stewart freak, who simply MUST grow their own corn. You know what? You can buy corn at the store for about ten cents an ear every August. Money well spent, as far as I’m concerned.

This morning on my way to work, I began to berate myself for forgetting to call my in-laws last night after I got home from work, played with Maggie, planted tomatoes, made dinner, gave the kitchen a half-assed cleanup job, and bathed Maggie, put her to bed and indulged myself with a little American Idol before falling asleep on the couch.

I absolutely regret forgetting to tell my in-laws that I didn’t have a meeting which caused them to wait around for an hour. I will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I did something different this time. Instead of immediately going to that place in my head where I mercilessly berate myself for being stupid and forgetful and ungrateful and selfish, I realized that I am simply doing too much. When I do to much, I neglect details like remembering to call my in-laws to tell them that I don’t have a meeting.

So the big garden is out. In fact, I think I need to do a little more pruning of my social and professional obligations. I want to enjoy my summer. I want to enjoy my garden. I want to buy my corn at the store. Instead of seeing my forgetfulness as a sign of my own incompetence, I will see it as a warning that I am doing too much, and something has to give. I do not want to be perfect. I want to be happy. I want to be realistic, and most importantly, I want to be kind to myself. I am glad this therapy thing is actually starting to work.

Happy Birthday to my Baby's Daddy.

2006-05-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

Top Ten list

In honor of the 37th birthday of my baby’s daddy, I present the top ten list for the handsome Dutch man I married.

10. You are my baby’s daddy, and you are a great daddy, at that. You come up with games like “Helicopter” Which involved throwing a large disc up into a maple tree which causes the helicopters to fall down and look really pretty. Our daughter, Jim junior, loves her daddy. She is like a girl version of you, but with brown eyes instead of blue. She is the best gift I ever got, and ever will get. Thank you.

9. Jim, you are a marketers dream. You share my weakness for the impulse buy, which is why we have 19 polar fleece pullovers, two fancy lawn chairs, and a stuffed grouse, among other things. I find this quality extremely endearing, except for when we run out of closet space.

8. You love to sing and make up your own songs and lyrics out of the blue. Not just regular lyrics, but crazy off-the wall, juvenile humor lyrics. I can’t recall exactly what it was that made me fall over laughing this last weekend, but good grief it was funny.

7. What I lack in attention to detail, you more than compensate for. If it weren’t for you, our lawn would be a jungle, and our carpet would be home to critters and crumbs. You make it look like I might actually have my shit together domestically. HAHAHAHA!. If people only knew you were my secret weapon for organization.

6. You are an absolute dream to cook for. Pretty much anything I make gets an eager and enthusiastic reception.

5. You love independent films. I am always impressed by the movies you like, and you let me pick out all sorts of crazy things on netflix, and not only do you rarely complain about my choices, you actually seem to like most of them.

4. You are a music lover and a loyal fan of your favorite artists. I have always admired that about you. You go from Wilco to Jeff Tweety to Sunvolt to Jay Faraar to that crazy Scottish band I can’t think of the name of right now. You buy tickets to see them at First Ave and tuck the ticket stubs into the cd cases. You are like a kid in a candy store when we peruse the concert schedules. It’s sweet, and your enthusiasm actually makes me want to stay up until 2:00 a.m. on a school night watching Ryan Adams get wasted and sing the same song 3 times and then rip on Paul Westerberg in his hometown like some kind of spoiled idiot.

3. To say we have had our struggles could be a wee bit of an understatement. And we both know what I’m talking about sugar. Thanks for being willing to learn with me. We have some roads ahead. You continue to surprise me with your ability to grow. I hope I am able to reciprocate.

2. You have a really nice chest and shoulders. I really really like them.

You get excited about trinkets. Every time I get a cheesy award for hitting sales numbers, like a miniature pretend silver phone, a gumball machine, or say, and hourglass with my name on it, you excitedly grab it from me and place it in our office where you keep the shrine to Meghan’s Sales Trinkets. It’s funny and quirky and sweet. And so are you.

Happy Birthday Poops. I love you.

Organic Ecstacy

2006-05-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

Clean up in aisle nine! Clean up in aisle nine! My head just exploded out of sheer ecstatic, orgasmic joy in the middle of TRADER JOE’S. Yeah, you heard me, TRADER FREAKING JOE’S BEEEEE-YATCH! In MINNESOTA, Yah, You Betcha! TRADERFUCKINGJOES YEAHTHATSWHATISAIDTRADERFUCKINGJOES!

“AAAAAAH!” Do you hear the chorus singing? The Birds chirping? What a beautiful noise! What an orgasmic, exquisite, beautiful place!

Half of the frozen food section had been pillaged and plundered by overeager Scandinavians during the Grand opening. There were rows of empty shelves and bins, and I was still just like a kid in a candy store, I tell you. My limbs trembled as I ran a finger across the nitrite-free organic beef hot dogs. I held back the tears for a while, and then finally let go, and began to sob. And then, I sniffled my way through the sauces! Jars of Yellow Curry Sauce! Marsala Sauces! Marinated meats! I walked out, exhausted, with 5 bags of groceries and several bottles of wine. My strength, it was gone. All used up in the ecstasy and all. But Mama’s going back. Oh yeah. Mama’s going back. If there is breath left in her body, Mama will be back, Trader Joe.

Mama’s got a new Daddy. His name is Trader Joe.

I will say to my husband, “Now, now, baby. It’s okay! Stop your crying. Mama still loves you! There’s enough love for two men in mama’s heart! You love me and our baby! You mow the lawn so good, baby! And then Mama’s got Joe. Don’t feel bad, because Joe makes Mama real happy, and no one’s happy if Mama’s not happy. So you understand baby, don’t you?”

So get ready for me Joe, because I’ll be back. Big Boy. OH YEAH I’LL BE BACK! And you KNOW what I’m talking about. Meow.

Teachers, Students, and Lessons

2006-05-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

I have been buried under an vague but massive, lung-crushing sense of oppression and frustration for some time. Some of it these feelings are based in current events and politics, some in my professional life, and some in my personal life. I can’t think of a time in my life when I have felt and tasted total frustration, disappointment, and deeply buried rage so tangibly. These are feelings I have traditionally forced inward and then numbed with red wine, passive aggression, and paralyzing insidious self-doubt. Or, I have tried to compensate for them by being the perfect cook, host, gardener, friend… Whatever it took to hide my inadequacies in the closet, and compensate for my failings in other areas. I have become very good at compensating.

I was born with the scourge of sensitivity on my soul. I can be painfully vulnerable to gratuitous confrontation and finely tuned jabs. I am the perfect victim for the passive aggressive. I am also admittedly a card carrying member of the P.A. club. I am aware of this, and for the love of God, I try to play along and to take things lightly. I try not to be weak and easily hurt. I don’t want to be Debbie Downer, or the person everyone has to tread softly around. I try to be assertive and direct. It does not come naturally, and it is a constant uphill battle. Then again, I see nothing wrong with admitting that at this point in my life, I overwhelmingly prefer to be around people who are kind and fair and loving. People for whom I don’t need to prepare for by dressing in soul-armor.

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine this weekend. We were talking about some challenges I have faced in some personal and professional relationships. She told me that there are some people in life that are meant to be teachers. These people are sought out because subconsciously, we know we have something to learn, and somehow we know these particular people are going to be a part of that learning process. If you have some wherewithal, you will eventually learn a valuable lesson or two. Oftentimes these people are inadvertently leaping about and flailing their arms, metaphorically flagging you down, and saying “knock knock! Anyone home? Are you even SEEING THIS? How can you not be seeing this?”

The best teachers tend to be the ones who make you the craziest. Crazy, as in: I am frightened by the amount of anger I am harboring towards them, I never thought I could have such rageful thoughts about them, and it’s eating me up inside angry. I like to think of myself as a nice person. A lot of the time my feelings about some of my teachers make me feel profoundly NOT nice. My feelings about some of my teachers make me feel like a wounded animal, ready to bare teeth and go for the jugular.

Relationships with these teachers can be complicated and filled with resentments, hurt feelings, misunderstandings and real pain. PAINFUL pain. To complicate things further, a lot of time, you also have incredibly positive feelings for these teachers, like love and respect and admiration. I have noticed in myself, a desperate desire to find some middle ground on which to connect, without fear or anger. I yearn to win the struggle to forgive, and to make peace. I want to replace uncomfortable and excruciating feelings of pain with feelings grace, kindness, patience, and total acceptance.

As someone who tends to have an elephant’s memory for the various ways in which I have been wronged in my life, and the people who have wronged me, forgiveness and kindness at times, seem like far-away places I visit only in my dreams.

I don’t want to give up the fight. I don’t want to walk away. There are still things to learn. But I am feeling really tired and vulnerable right now. I think I might need a time out. And I think I can be okay with that.

And then there is that ever-looming concept of personal responsibility. As other people are teachers, so am I. I teach people how to treat me. I teach people what I celebrate, and what I will tolerate and ignore and deny. I am realizing that I have been teaching from a really flawed lesson plan. I have been teaching things like funny math, and “the earth is flat” kind of lessons.

Changing the lesson plan is really fucking hard. Students and teachers alike will become confused when the game is changed partway through. And I have to deal with it, because this is the house I built with my own two hands. I created the game, like it or not. I am the one who sealed myself into a room with no windows. I am the one who painted myself into a corner. I did those things because for some reason, it felt like home. But now I see the flaws in my past ideology. And now I am trying to change the lesson book. I have to change the lesson book because I have to save myself.

I keep saying it over and over again. “We teach people how to treat us”.

I am at a difficult point right now, because changing the lesson plan can make a person feel really isolated and lonely. No one knows the new, strange tune I am trying to whistle. Christ, it even feels foreign to me. As a person who has always loved and craved feelings of connectedness to humanity and to people, those feelings of separateness are really, really difficult and lonely.

When I think about my tenuous relationships I have with some of the teachers in my life, I try to think to myself “Would I want anyone treating my daughter the way I am being treated?”. Taking things a step further, I wonder if I would ever allow anyone to speak to Maggie in the cruel and degrading way I often speak to myself. The answer is no.

I treat my daughter with so much more kindness than I treat myself. I notice how I love her so completely and unconditionally, and with such acceptance and warmth. It feels good to love like that.

And I realize that I have a teacher I never, ever expected. In an amazing turn of events, my twenty month old daughter just handed me the lesson book. And the answers are all right there, and she is flailing her arms, metaphorically flagging me down, and saying “knock knock! Anyone home? Are you even SEEING THIS? How can you not be seeing this?”

It’s my turn to be the student. I think I will shut up and pay attention for a change.

Paraphrasing

2006-05-16T14:46:00.001-07:00

Older sister with well-adjusted teenage daughters who don’t kick their mother as hard as they can in the stomach thrice daily:

“Kids are like puppies. You have to totally ignore behavior you don’t want to encourage”

Me (whining):

“But! It’s hard to ignore your freakishly strong toddler kicking you freakishly HARD in the gut repeatedly with her freakishly large feet, and then cackling fiendishly at her own mean-ness while I wince in pain. Is crying silently still ignoring? If I don’t make any noise? Do silent tears of pain still count as ignoring?”

Older sister with teenagers who don’t appear to kick her in the stomach repeatedly:
“(Sympathetic sigh)”

Ode to sweet silence

2006-05-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

There once was a toy called a Ferbie
That hopped right on everyone’s nervies
And rode them and grated
Til ferbies were hated
And on every last one was wished Scurvy

I browsed through the tables and Chairs
With nary a worry or care
My sister’s yard sale
And instead of a pail
I came home with a blob, eyes and hair

At first sight the toy, is was sweet
All fuzzy faced, with cute little feet
I placed batteries inside
And the toy came alive
and he chattered as we walked down the street

Back to our house we trodded
As the hours went by, mommy plotted
To take that damn toy
And to kill it with joy
Before mommy’s brain fully rotted

The Ferbie, it seems has one flaw
An “off switch” can’t be found on it’s jaw
Or it's back for that matter
On and on, it will chatter
Until violent visions I saw

I have never heard such a toy
That whines without feeling or joy
“I’m Hungry” “I’m sick”
Know what little prick?
You’ve uttered your very last “oy”

And with that in my mind I resolved
And for mommy, the problem was solved
Without feeling or care
I hurled Ferbie down the stairs
And I knew I was truly absolved

For what kind of parent can take,
A toy that will whine cry and shake
When right there before them
Their toddler adores them
Yet requires all the life force we make?

And now we can all go to bed
Knowing our little pal ferbie is dead
At the base of the stairs
Bits of eye, feet and hairs
That goddamned toy made me see red

A how-to guide for ruining a perfectly good day off

2006-05-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

I treated myself to 3 whole days off of work. Work was making me stupid. And crazy. I stopped for a moment today, after I had one of those meandering thoughts that one has only when they are not being distracted by, say, annoying e-mails popping up every 5 seconds, the phone ringing incessantly, and a venerable cornucopia of incredibly urgent, mindless request forms and spreadsheets. My thought was: "work makes me stupid". My job might bring in the bacon, but I feel IQ points dropping the second I walk in the door. A difficult but monumental realization.

What a relaxing day off I have had. The jackhammers in front of my house are pounding, blocking out the birds that are probably singing, except that I can't hear them but for the jackhammers. Tomorrow morning, the same men currently jackhammering will knock on my door at 8:30 a.m. so that they can spend 2 hours making a racket inside my home. They will mess with our gas meter, and then they will tear apart our lawn. My presence is required for all of this. While they do all of this I will be trapped at home trying to entertain my toddler indoors on a rainy day. How, may you ask, do I manage such a positive attitude in the face of all of this? I don't! My attitude stinks, and if you are still with me you have likely come to that conclusion already.

It all started this morning. I was in my pajama's and trying to get the house picked up. The dinner dishes from last night were dirty in the sink, the dishwasher was full, and the baby needed to be fed. It was supposed to be rainy all day, but somehow this morning was sunny. I had phone calls to make and e mails to check. I ran all over frantically, trying to get it all done so that I could take a shower and get out and enjoy the day. Summers in Minnesota are so short, there is an insane amount of pressure to get outside and enjoy every moment of sunshine. There is so much pressure that it starts to feel like an olbigation. Only I coud take a beautiful day and turn it into something BITTER. I wanted to do something fun with Maggie, like take her to the Zoo. But most of the exhibits at the zoo are indoors, and like I said, I consider it a sacrilige to be indoors when it's nice outside. So I ran around trying to get it all done so we could get outside and enjoy some fucking sunshine goddamit.

My mind raced, I couldn't decide what to do with this precious and rare day off, on a precious and rare nice spring day. THE PRESSURE. Oh, the pressure! Again, only I could take a beautiful day off in the spring and come up with a reason to be resentful. I finally decided to walk over to our in-laws to see if they were home. They weren't. Instead, I pulled Maggie in her red wagon and we went to the park. As we walked we chattered back and forth, and I stopped to point out a bright red cardinal. The lilacs were blooming and the breeze was cool and sweet. Maggie pointed out the clouds and the birds and the flowers with such enthusiasm that I was touched, and got a little choked up. We went to the park, and we played with rocks for a long time, and we had fun. It occurred to me, that the meaningful moments are often times the most pedestrian. We didn't need no stinking zoo. We just need mommy to fucking relax.

I am not sure why I put pressure on myself that ultimately sucks the fun out of things like, say, days off with my daughter. It does occur to me that when I just resign myself and do whats easy, I end up having more fun. And I KNOW THIS. Except I keep forgetting because of all the noise, and ringing phones, and deadlines, and month-end quota requirements.

In the end, I suppose I didn't really ruin a perfectly good day off. I was on-track to ruin it, But I seem to have pulled it out in the eleventh hour, as I am inclined to do. I hope I remember how not to ruin a perfectly good day off tomorrow when the gas meter guys pillage my house and lawn and I am about to lose my shit. I think I need to pull out a thick pad of post-its and stick the same message all over the house so I don't forget again. The golden rule moving forward: "the key to enjoying life is getting mommy to fucking relax".

Now where are those fucking post-its?

Grosser Than Gross, or How I know my Subconscious Doesn't Like Me

2006-05-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Repulsion is subjective. As unique as the varying objects, visions, and smells that send us shrieking, retching and cowering in a corner fighting to keep our cookies down, are the variances from human to human. What is utterly vile and repellant to one person can be totally benign to another.

The range of revolting offenders is fascinating, as are the neuroses that likely lie behind the gag reflexes deeply rooted in the subconscious of the afflicted. There are a few things, that when conjured in my mind, create an overpowering revulsion and nausea so strong, I become desperate to banish the image from my mind for all of eternity. Except that I have one of those brains afflicted with oppositional defiant disorder. Stupid, agonizing, torturous, ODD brain. I desperately try to banish these disturbing visions from my mind, and they pop up repeatedly, rendering me weak and helpless and yearning for aliens to suck out my thoughts and memories and save me from the torture my subconscious berates and mocks me with. I have an evil subconscious.

There are a few things on my list. Terra Cotta. I can not touch terra cotta without cringing. When I touch terra cotta, I can’t help but think about how terra cotta would feel if I CHEWED it. How the crunch of terra cotta would feel on my teeth. I. CAN’T TOUCH TERRA COTTA. Chalk incites a similar response.

Another one is the image I conjured up when friend told me about her uterine fibroids. I have not problem with the thought of fibroids all by themselves. Things started careening out of control when my friend said to me “They’re really not that big of a deal, but someone once told me that they grow hair and teeth”. HAIR AND TEETH IN YOUR UTERUS. I think that’s enough said. Those substances should only be in that place when there is an actual baby in there. I am trembling at the very thought right this very moment.

I once had a dream that bugs crawled out of my pores. That was about ten years ago, and the image still disturbs me.

There is the story about a person biting into a chicken tender, causing a big fat tumor to explode in their mouth. I have yet to move beyond that image.

I discovered another one yesterday while composing some geranium planters in the backyard with my sister Betsy. ROOT NODULES. I was finishing off a planter with asparagus fern, and when I removed the plastic container to place it in the pot, the mass of thick white roots were exposed, along with these pale, hairy pustules. I paused quizzically and took a closer look and I thought I saw one MOVE. Fat, juicy, hairy, pale alien sacks. They looked like some kind of insect pods, and I was certain they were incubating fat, pale wormy, writhing, fast-moving critters that were about to leap from the roots onto my face and start sucking blood. But the pale juicy, likely worm-infested Root nodules weren’t bad enough. It was then that I noticed what had actually made the movement I saw. The dreaded millipede. I shrieked the most terrorized, high pitched shriek, and flung the entire plant, millipede, pustules and all, across the backyard with a startling velocity. I am sure that I scared the bejeezus out of Betsy.

I was nauseated for hours. And my uncooperative brain, with a sick and twisted sense of humor, conjured up the image repeatedly throughout the evening. I hate my brain.

I searched and searched for a photograph of these asparagus fern root nodules, and have so far been unable to find a photograph that does the root nodule atrocities justice.

I am cringing right this very moment of the mere thought.

I wonder if a hypno-therapist could clean some of this disgusting junk out of my brain.

Now that I have cursed you all with visions of the most disgusting things imaginable, please take advantage of the comments section to return the favor with a few of your own.

And with that, I will leave you with a picture of the closest thing I could find. Except my plant had throbbing paler, juicier nodules. With hair.

Random smattering of thoughts from a random, smattered mind

2006-05-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

I am wearing green suede loafers today. One might ask the question, are green shoes really practical? I mean, how often does one wear green? I currently own 3 green sweaters that I rotate, which means I will wear these green suede loafers at least twice a week. Not sure what that says about me.

My daughter Madge has a Barbie doll that her father bought her at a garage sale. She keeps it over at Grandma’s house. She calls it “Mommy”. Not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing.

Things that have occurred to me today:

I habitually underestimate myself. Not sure what that means, but I am sure my therapist could help me with that one. I suppose that’s better than walking around like an over-inflated ninny all the time. I wish I had more self-confidence. I often use the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it” but I typically do more faking than making. However, I sometimes enjoy baking. I am devilishly good at faking, though.

The song lyric that best describes my mood today: “Today my heart is big and sore. It’s trying to push right through my skin” – Patty Griffin

I hate telephones, and I am beginning to hate e-mail.

You win the game of life when you sit back in your home and think to yourself “there is not one thing I truly need that I do not have." This is the only way to beat the system, as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t do the aforementioned nearly often enough.

If awards were given out for passing the buck, I know of about 15 people tied for first place. That’s a whole lot of blue ribbons. People who step up to the plate are a rare and treasured breed.

On a bad day, one of my favorite saying is: "The person who cares the least, wins."

I try very hard not to care sometimes. I am occasionally successful at it. However that success is short-lived, and I usually go back to feeling the pain of every upper-cut and left hook.

People in positions of power who unnecessarily and gratuitously make people jump through hoops like trained poodles just for the sake of it make me very angry.

Did I say I HATE TELEPHONES? I HATE TELEPHONES.

Power to the People

2006-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Last night Jim and I had a hankering for Pad Thai, and stopped by our local Big Bowl for takeout.

When I approached the counter, I was told that they were closed in honor of the immigration protests.

I thought to myself "That is freaking awesome", and I meant it in earnest.

I felt like a bit of a heel for forgetting about the boycott and for attempting to spend money on a day that people (whom I agree with) decided to rally together to protest and bring attention to their economic power, not to mention their value to American Culture.

On Saturday I saw a group of people on the news who held a rally in support of restricting immigration. A few of them were wrapped in American flags. They gave speeches to their very small, very sparse audience, describing how immigrants are a threat to our very happiness as Americans. And I couldn't help but think that those people really should find hobbies, or at least try to wrangle together some semblance of a life.

Then I wondered when their stinky putrid ancestors stepped off the overstuffed boats at Ellis Island, and if they had to deal with similar hatred from ignorant, frightened, small-minded people. They looked ridiculous. Stupid loudmouthed people have a way of making themsleves look ridiculous.

At least call it what it is: As my friend put it "The hating haters club".

It made me happy to see the masses of people across the country coming out to protest restrictive, ethnocentric, racist policies. I was moved to see that kind of passion in people again. I sometimes fear that I have lost mine.

Jim was equally impressed with the sucess of the grassroots coordination of the immigration protests (the ones with hundreds of thousands turning out, not the ones with 75 morons).

"How did they (meaning legal and illegal immigrants) pull of such a big protest in such a short time?" he asked me.

"People finally got angry, and led a well-coordinated grass-roots protest. Isn't it inspiring?" I replied,

"Yeah. Why can't the Democrats pull it together like that?"

"I don't know, but clearly we should elect an immigrant to be our next president."

"Uh-huh."

Should a parent issue a time-out for stalking?

2006-04-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

Last night I took Maggie to our mommy and me music class. Out of nowhere, she began stalking someone else’s mommy. When I say stalking, I mean stalking. This child was COMMITTED. She wanted nothing to do with me. She wanted nothing to do with the music. She wanted to stand in front of someone else’s mommy and STARE. Maggie stared with an unwavering, intent gaze that would render the most easygoing person uncomfortable. The kind of gaze that makes me afraid of her future boyfriends and the restraining orders that will likely be issued. Parenting through the teenage years will hard enough without dealing with restraining orders.

My daughter stood and stared at this poor woman with an unsettling intensity. Then she turned around, flopped casually into her lap and stayed there for the entire duration of music class. She sat in this strangers lap like the queen of Sheba. The woman’s son stood next to them whimpering, wondering who had hijacked his momma. I tried to engage him with some red wooden sticks to ease his suffering, and to make use of myself. We were in the same boat, he and I. My own daughter had gone and left me for a new momma, and HIS momma was too uncomfortable to shove this strange child off of her lap so she could play with him. We were nomads in music class, trying to make the best of a really weird situation.

The worst part is, I know why Maggie became obsessed with her. The reason made me cringe and cower in fear. I longed for the days before Maggie could talk. As she made a bee-line for this woman she shouted “GAMMA!”. The nice lady who let Maggie sit in her lap was not a Grandma. She was the mother of a toddler, and she happened to have gray hair. She was older than the rest of the mommy’s and likely, a little sensitive to that fact. And my daughter called her “Grandma” and proceeded to stalk her. Maggie’s new mommy looked a little taken off-guard. Frankly, she looked a little scared.

At the end of music class, we sang our goodbye song, put the bells and triangles away, and Maggie walked over to her new mommy and waited expectantly. It was time to go home with her new mommy. She stood next to this woman like it was simply the thing to do. She grabbed for her hand. She wouldn’t be IGNORED, after all.

I pried my daughter away, feeling simultaneously rejected and frightened by my daughters newfound obsessive stalking of strangers. Considering she does in fact have half of her mother’s DNA (by saying mother I mean her biological parent – a.k.a. ME), I should have expected it. My kid, it seems, is a bit weird.

The Godforsaken Whirlpool Tub, the Godforsaken String of pearls, and other things I need to work on in therapy.

2006-04-21T09:42:00.000-07:00

There are times in life when things that are meant to be gifts can actually end up giving you a metaphorical kick in the head. Whether they are gifts to ones self or gifts from another person, if there are any kind of strings attached, they can end up mercilessly making a mockery of you. These treasures can end up making a person feel like a total asshole. I can think of two examples at this very moment. My Godforsaken whirlpool tub, and my blankety-blank string of real pearls.

Allow me to back up. I don’t deal well with disappointment. Disappointment is for the weak. That is exactly why I created a little workshop in my head. In my workshop, I do nothing but transform pure disappointment into seething rage, resentment and frustration. Resentment and frustration are powerful and intimidating. Disappointment is not. Disappointment is whiney, annoying, and irritating. Disappointment is for spineless ninnies.

Two weeks after Maggie was born, the pipes in our bathroom imploded. The implosion of said pipes rendered our only bathtub totally useless. The same tub in which I was supposed soak, to treat my third degree tear and other insults sustained by my woman parts in the course of delivering a baby just under nine pounds. With foreceps. The imploded pipes also totally destroyed the downstairs bathroom as it caused the plaster to fall off the walls and ceiling in giant, soggy, heavy chunks. Oh, the goddamned bathrooms. I am beginning to seethe this very moment, just writing about them.

This winter, my husband Jim began the long arduous process of tearing down the downstairs bath to begin the remodeling process. My trepidation grew as I discovered the financial reality of home improvement projects. They cost a bazillion dollars and they take decades to complete. No. They take quarter centuries to complete. In an effort to create a sense on enthusiasm, I busied myself with choosing new bathroom fixtures. I chose a pedestal sink, a new toilet, and a brand new whirlpool tub. Oh the luxury of soaking in a whirlpool tub of my very own! Visions of my spa-like sanctuary danced in my head. I purchased candles in every fragrance, and stocked up on bath gel and waited eagerly. I tried to be patient. I would soon have my whirpool tub! A healthy way to deal with life’s stresses and aggravations! A place of my very own in which to carve out a quiet moment or two, and read magazines in beautiful silence.

This was in January. It is now nearly May, and the goddamned fixtures still sit in the basement, gathering dust, and mocking my naive excitement. Excitement is for the gullible and delusional. I should have known better.

It started with the walls. They were full of mold and had to be chopped to bits and destroyed. Then came the floor. The floor was not level. Two months later, we hired a cement guy who came out, charged us $800 and fixed the stupid crooked floor. Then came the tragic coincidence of the water heater springing a leak, which required the purchase of a new one. In addition, we ended up with a with a new water softener. Next came the walls part one. Jim and our brother-in-law spent an evening building framework for the walls. Half of them. THEN: the plumber. OH, but for the plumber. The plumber came out once to move the toilet base. Next, he came out to move the pipes for the sink.

Then we got cheeky and ordered a goddamned washer and dryer. We have had them for a week, and are still unable to use them. Enter the plumber again. The acquisition of the washer and dryer created this mysterious need to re-plumb the entire fucking laundry room. We now have a brand new laundry tub that we didn’t really need in the first place, a maze of sparkly new copper piping, and, IRONICALLY a fucking useless brand new washer, and fucking useless brand new dryer. And a lot of copper piping I am not certain we needed in the first place.

The pile of unwashable laundry has grown nearly as large as the size of our rapidly increasing plumbing bill. It sits there as a reminder of why the first word out of my mouth needs to be “NO!” when my buy-in is requested for these projects.

It has been three months since my whirpool tub was delivered. Yesterday the plumber took the tub and set it over the drain to see where it would fit. Start the laugh track here. It appears that the tub that we purchased from Home Depot has three mysterious holes that shouldn’t be there. They render the tub useless. If we install this tub, our home will be destroyed and our dogs will die, and our gardens will wither. The whirlpool tub is not UP TO CODE.

There are no other tubs at home depot that have these holes. Some fucking yutz bought the tub, drilled holes in it, realized they had made an error, and brought it back to exchange it for a new one. THIS IS THE FUCKING TUB WE ENDED UP WITH. It needs to be returned. However, because it has been sitting in the basement for so long, I am not certain they will take the stupid NOT UP TO CODE tub back and give us one that is UP TO CODE.

Five months into the project this is what we have:

A wall-less cement floor that does not yet serve a purpose, but boy, is it LEVEL.

Two partial walls and a few holes in the floor for fixtures.

A lot of sparkly copper tubing, a new laundry tub that I did not want or need, yet somehow will end up paying for.

A brand new washer and dryer THAT ARE AS OF YET TOTALLY USELESS AND IMPOTENT.

A water softener that has yet to be installed.

A cluttered unusable basement full of dusty, unattached fixtures.

The GODFORSAKEN vandalized whirlpool spa tub that sits there and mocks me. It says to me “What a fool you were, Meghan, to think that your dream would come true without first causing you so much frustration that you would want to pull out your own hair, fistful by fistful, and then crumple to the floor in a sobbing heap.

Right about now, I want to make a homemade bomb in the garage out of fertilizer and send that whirlpool tub and all it represents, exploding violently into a million little pieces. I want to stop the project RIGHT NOW. Pay the plumber, do my goddamned laundry in a Laundromat for the rest of my life, and give that stupid wall-less room the FINGER every time I walk by it. That scenario, complete with a lifetime of Laundromat patronage, is more appealing to me than admitting I have had my ass kicked by this never ending project. That I am disappointed. That I feel bamboozled and foolish for allowing things to get this bad. That I should have said “No” several times throughout this process, and didn’t. If I could give it all back right now, I would. I no longer want that stupid whirlpool tub, because every ounce of fun and enthusiasm has been sucked right out of this process. I HATE THAT WHIRLPOOL TUB.

As you can see. I don’t deal well with disappointment. And I haven’t even gotten to the story about the pearls. Let it suffice to say that I have a strong resentment towards being led along with carrot-like rewards, only to be repeatedly frustrated and disappointed in the end. These are the times when a gift is not really a gift, but a means of emotional manipulation. Even when I do it to myself. This leads to me feeling tricked and disappointed, and somewhere in the recesses of my soul, feeling disappointed and tricked makes me angrier than anything could ever possibly make me.

Does a desire to drop a bomb on a once-coveted whirlpool tub and then scream obscenities at a semi-walled flat-floored open space in the basement indicate some kind of mental breakdown? I think the answer is yes. What do you think?

Easter People.

2006-04-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

If my parents were better at sharing their television set, they might well have saved the souls of their daughters from eternal damnation. It’s their fault, really. Their weakness begat our weakness, and now we are all going to H-E-Double-toothpicks in a fiery hand-basket. An Easter basket, to be specific.

Our parents insisted on watching the Twins play New York on television while we waited for Easter dinner to be served. Our eldest sister Julie was at the game, along with her significant other, Howard and her daughters Kate and Jane. My daughter was sleeping, which is PRIME loll-around on the couch in front of the boob tube time. But did they allow us to indulge in an E True Hollywood Story, or a made for TV movie on Lifetime? Oh, no. They had to assert their power over television, and watch the Twins get whalloped by New York, leaving Molly, Betsy and I to entertain ourselves at the table, which was set for dinner. Beautifully, I might add. The silver and crystal were laid out. The Beatrix Potter figurines were genteelly displayed at the center of the table.

We had nowhere else to go.

It started innocently enough. We started playing with the little bunnies that surrounded the floral centerpiece. This begged the question: Did my mother throw away the shoddily painted baby chick I made at community school when I was seven years old? The creepy one with the unsettling pink eyes…. Where was it, and why had she not included it in the Easter display? Offended, I began to rummage through the cabinets in the dining room buffet and began unearthing some Easter artifacts, including my pink-eyed chick, a violet decal-laden bunny cotton-ball dispenser and several other creations equally horrendous and unsettling. We proudly added each atrocity to the burgeoning menagerie.

We started to get a little cheeky.

Wouldn’t it be funny to sneak in a few Christmas decorations to see if anyone noticed? We added a Christmas donkey made of rope, and replaced a salad plate with one that read “Christmas 1997”. We added a pink-cheeked cherub. We muffled our giggles as we heard approaching footsteps, careful not to arouse suspicion.

We found our mothers red ceramic plate that reads “You are special today”.

There was no turning back at this point.

We fell all over ourselves with laughter, choking back hysterical tears. “Jesus!” I croaked. “We’ll set a place for Jesus! Jesus is special today!”

If being crucified and then rising from the dead doesn’t deserve the red “you are special today” plate, then I certainly don’t know what does. We set a place at the table for Jesus. Jesus got the red plate.

And there you have it, the moment we sealed our fates. If our parents had just let us watch TV like we wanted, I would not be worrying right now if that whole scene was technically blasphemy, and if my soul is destined for the fiery depths of Hell.

I really hope Jesus has a good sense of humor. That would certainly bode well for me and my eternal soul.

Firestarter

2006-04-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

I used to think that I had the power to make bad things happen by simply having bad thoughts about people. Kind of like Karma, but my own evil thoughts made bad things happen to other people instead of myself. The whole concept is like a double-whammy version of Catholicism twisted with warped reverse Karma. The real kicker being that my impure thoughts didn’t result in MY soul’s eternal damnation. Instead, my impure thoughts and feelings of rage resulted in bad things happening to other people. Bad things happened to people towards whom I was having feelings of anger, frustration, jealousy and what-have-you. I considered myself a “Firestarter” of sorts but instead of bursting into flames, people I was angry with would end up with strange serious injuries.

This started when I was 24 years old and recovering from a devastating break-up. It went something like this:

Era: approximately 1995.

The Characters: Me and J

Me: Totally washed up at the age of 24. I have been chronically cheated on and lied to. About 20 people I considered to be friends all knew all about it and never said a thing to me. I am humiliated and depressed and I trust no one but the close friends I have grossly neglected for the entire duration of this relationship.

I am a quivering pool of insecurity. I am ugly and no one will ever love me again. I let myself get fat. I am ashamed that I didn’t have the guts to end this sooner than I did. I live with my parents and I have no money. I hate all my clothes (this was before we all realized that high-waisted pants with big belts look good on no one). I work in a day-care center. I have no career aspirations. I still have not finished that independent study standing between me and my bachelor’s degree. My parents think I will never graduate from college. I have never experienced such rage, anger and humiliation in my life and I have no idea where to put these feelings. I hate him for betraying me and treating me like the sniveling needy spineless person I am. I also hate the stupid old woman he is cavorting around town with (she was 6 years his senior at the elderly age of 30). DAMN him for doing this to me!

J: 24 years old and in the midst of a mack-daddy transformation. Transformed from sweet, sincere, sensitive loving young man to soul-less cheating lying metrosexual before my very eyes. I was completely bamboozled. He got a job as a buyer of better dresses for a high-end department store, further supporting my theory that he was gay. He was gay and didn’t have the heart to tell me. Because, why else would he not want ME unless he was one hundred percent GAY? He started a relationship with a woman I suspect he started seeing before we broke up. She was 6 years his senior (30! Gasp!).

Subsequent Injuries: He broke his foot badly playing soccer and was stuck in a cast for several months. This limited his ability to womanize and gallivant around as a prototypical metrosexual. I was convinced my ire had led to his injury.

Two years later his girlfriend, the same one I suspect he started dating before we broke up, fell down the stairs at her sister’s house and broke her back. Her injuries left her paraplegic and in a wheelchair. This happened on my birthday.

Her injuries left me reeling with guilt. I was convinced that my deep-rooted feelings of rage had caused her accident to happen. How could I have been so hateful? What the Hell was wrong with me? I was overcome with anxiety until my friend Jen reminded me of something: THE WORLD DOESN’T REVOLVE AROUND ME.

Oh yeah. That’s right. I am an insignificant speck on a dust mite in the mattress of a total superior being. I am totally insignificant. I never thought that realization would be so soothing to my soul. I was liberated by the cold hard truth. The Universe spins with little or no regard to my feelings or my wishes. How wonderful.

I Hear You, Lenny

2006-04-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

I am sick and tired of politics. I should be excited that Tom DeLay is resigning, but I really don’t care. I am too exhausted and disappointed to care. I tend to disengage when disappointed, and I think I have officially disengaged.

This country is currently suffering from the most abhorrent sense of apathy I have ever seen. And it seems I have caught the disease. I am officially part of the problem.

As Lenny Kravitz would say: “Does anybody out there even care?”

I used to. Perhaps somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I still do. But it is exhausting to care. Especially when bad things happen everywhere and instead of outrage, all you see is blank stares. Total apathy. I want to say to the American people: “Hello!!! Anybody home?” Again and again, times when the only logical response is outrage, all I see are blank stares of apathy.

Our leaders lied to us about reasons for going to war. Does anybody care?

Men and women are dying every day in this war. Does anybody care?

There appears to be a scarcity of honesty and integrity in politics. People are bought for political favors. Money buys people. Power shuts people up when they should speak out. There is a screaming silence of disheartening lack of conviction on all sides. A deafening silence. Does anybody care?

Civil rights are being eroded in the name of conveniently twisted religious ideas. CIVIL RIGHTS!!! Does anybody care?

The line between Church and state is being eroded and blurred. Does anybody care?

Women’s rights are being dismantled, tiny bit by tiny bit. Does anybody care?

Hard working people like you and me don’t have enough to retire on. Does anybody care?

Hard-won public safety nets are being systematically eliminated. Who will take care of people who have worked their whole lives, and still have nothing? Does anybody care?

What kills me is the certainty that people will start to care only when it’s too late. As if we didn’t see any of this coming. The lack of foresight frightens me to the core. When it’s too late, there will be much hand-wringing, lamenting and wailing. There will be finger pointing. Then I will have to look in the mirror and ask myself what I did. I felt helpless and apathetic and wrote about it. Big Whoop.

Do our leaders not inspire? Is that the problem? Or is the problem that we have become a country of people incapable if inspiration? Are we no longer capable of vision? It seems we have been running on fear so long, we forgot about other kinds of fuel. Fuels like hope and ideas and intelligence and courage and integrity and compassion and tolerance. Fuels like inspiration. Does anybody out there even care?

Frankly, I am having a hard time mustering up the passion to care anymore. That concerns me.

I hope our next leader tells the truth. I hope our next leader inspires people. I want to be proud of our next president, and frankly, I don’t care if they are a democrat or a republican. I just want them to tell the truth, to be capable of complex thought, and to have the ability to stand up for principles, even when doing so is personally inconvenient. Not only inconvenient for them, but also when it's inconvenient for their family, friends and business associates. I want them to understand what it’s like to work hard. I want them to know what it is like to be less fortunate and to be willing to level the playing field. I don’t want simple fear-based answers and finger pointing.

I just want someone to help me get back to caring.

Lest not ye falter as thou hast faltered

2006-04-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Not being one to ever heed a warning based on the experience of another, I decided to find out myself why it is that people should not drink at the company party. Let your sinking ship not be a warning to me! The Titanic may have succumbed to an iceberg, but not I! Forward march! Crash, scrape, blub, gurgle, blub blub blub.

I am not discussing work on my blog. This post has nothing to do with my job or my place of work. I certainly did not attend a work party at my bosses house on Friday. I did not consume several glasses of wine. I most certainly did not blurt out “I have worked for you for eight years, and do you even LIKE me?” directly TO my boss.

You know what else didn’t happen? He definitely did NOT go inside and tell everyone what I had asked him, and there were NO Sally Field jokes all night long. Not a single person mocked me by saying “YOU REALLY LIKE ME!” I did not cringe at my own stupidity, and my boss definitely did not stop several times throughout the night to say “I really like you, Meghan.” as everyone laughed.

I am not so stupid as to not take the advice of a person who learned the hard way.

My filter. It is back in its proper place. I have a new found love and appreciation for my filter. I LOVE my filter. My crazy Minnesota nice talk-about-the-weather-and-safe-subjects-at-work-party filter.

God bless the filter.

When Little House Jumped the Shark

2006-03-30T13:20:00.000-08:00

My sisters, cousins and I share a strange fascination with Little House on the Prairie. We read all the books, we watched all the shows, we collect all the DVD's, and spend an alarming amount of time and energy on LHOP trivia.

The fascination may have come from the fact that there are 4 sisters in my family (no boys) and there are 4 sisters in my cousins family (no boys) and we felt that even though we don't live in a lean-to on the prairie, nor did we ever shove apples up our dresses, we had a kinship with the Ingalls girls.

We just can't get us enough LHOP.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when LHOP Jumped the shark. In my opinion, there were at least 20 episodes that included shark-jumping elements. Things like adding random orphaned children to the family every season. Things like..ummm...MOUNTAINS on the prairie (there ARE no mountains on the Prairie. The fact that although they claimed to live in Minnesote, the only time it snowed was Christmas and that one blizzard where everyone died. Perhaps this was because the show was actually filmed in CALIFORNIA and not MINNESOTA. It's really pretty hard to make California look like Minnesota. Damn hard.

Apparently other people noticed these things too. I just spent some time chuckling uncontrollably over at Jump the Shark.

I can't decide if the episode where Carrie apparently dropped a hit of LSD and leaps down the rabbit-hole complete with visions of giant bugs(Ah-LEEEE-SA!) was jumping the shark or pure 70's genious.

Here are some highlights:

-"I never saw this show, but I understand the last episode, where Michael Landon hacks the girls into little pieces and freezes the meat, is quite good

-It jumped the shark when they moved to the city. It was a couple of episodes after Mary went blind.

-JUMP: Move to the city. Exciting premise twist but now there's no little house on...
-FALL-OUT: Backpedaling, Albert, More kids, Blind guy can see, M Landon leaves, blowing up of Walnut grove.

-I loved this show, but it jumped so many times that the shark actually ate it. Here it goes...
-when you realize that Doc Baker never got paid by anyone, all he got were eggs and chickens for his work
- when Laura gets braces in the 1880's I mean was there a dentist on the Prarie or something or was chicken wire used?
- when Laura gets older she suddenly wants to become the towns teacher and so Ms. Bettle dissappears
- when Nellie leave and the Olsens replace her with a look-alike
- towards the end when the Engles adopt like 15 kids, and they are all crammed into that same shack that Mr. Engels built
- Mary's husband is blind, falls down, gets sight back, runs into a tree and reloses sight
- Mr. Engels hair is mysteriously professionaly frosted (little hair dresser on the prarie?)
- Laura gets married at the age of 12 to a guy in his late 20's!!!!
- the fact that you never saw one crop growing on the Engles farm for the entire run of the show (what was he plowing?!)
- The Engels and Olsens start their own restaurant in a town with a population of 20.
-Albert becomes a morphine addict! Albert burns down the school for the blind and kills Mary's Baby! The only redeeming thing he ever did was die... after much cringe-worthy whining. Albert, damned art thou!

-The all-time winner and champion of the Adopt-a-Brat syndrome. First, Albert, who definitely grated on my nerves, then later, about 3 or 4 more brats! What the hell was Ma and Pa's problem? Their own daughters, Carrie and Grace, were lost in this shuffle of stray kids, and NEVER GOT A GOOD STORYLINE! Poor Carrie and Grace.

-When Albert became addicted to drugs. They actually showed him vomiting on camera!!! I couldn't eat for a week after that episode!

-This show jumped when Laura suddenly grew up and became this oversensitive bitch. Over one summer hiatus she went from a sweet little girl to hell on wheels who wanted nothing more than to marry Zeldamo. Then when she finally bagged him, she spent the rest of the time screaming at him.

-For me, LHOP jumped when Pa failed to practice what he preached. Remember when they moved to the big city and were living above a bar? One night at dinner, Carrie (who my sister and I always called "the actress") dropped a dumpling in her lap and exclaimed, "Damn!" Needless to say, Pa and the crew were upset at how the big city had tainted their poor daughter's vocabulary. Pa voiced strong concerns over the use of such language. Now fast forward with me to when Albert is in detox and puking all over the place. During a brief break in the regurgitation, he tells Pa, "I'll make you proud of me, Pa." To this, Pa answers, with tears streaming down his cheeks, "I am proud of you. DAMN proud!" Maybe it happened when Michael Landon went gray, but somewhere along the line he decided to play the hypocrite and send this show right down the toilet.

-It seemed that everything that COULD go wrong for Mary DID! Not only did she go blind but ALSO she lost her baby when her blind school burned to the ground! Sounds bad enough, eh? Well, what REALLY made this show shark-bait was them showing the usually sensitive and caring Alice Garvey getting stuck in the middle of the inferno, pick up the helpless baby and SMASH THE WINDOWS USING THE HELPLESS BABY LIKE A BATTERING RAM!! Well, even though she appearantly was in a crazed panic, this HORRIFIC deed went IN VAIN since both she and her friends' baby died in the blaze! This was an UTTERLY gruesome and unnecessary plot device and went TOTALLY contrary to EVERY other action Alice Garvey had been depicted doing! Oh, and, since in Real Life, Mary Ingalls NEVER married or had children, it was SHEER fiction, too! NOWHERE in any of the 'Little House' books is anything even *remotely* like using a baby as a battering ram even HINTED at!

-Little house jumped when they ran out of stories and started repeating stories from earlier episodes.First Carrie fell in a hole,then Nancy fell in a hole.Laura was held hostage by a crazy lady who thought she was her dead daughter,then she's held by Robert Loggia who thinks she's his wife. Not to mention the whole Nellie-Nancy thing.And what about all those people who supposedly lived in the town forever yet were only in one episode?Oh,and both Laura and Charles had run in's with angels.Also Michael Landon making his real life daughter the new teacher (miss Plumb) really sucked.

-When Alice Garvey used Mary's baby as a battering ram during the big fire. I saw that as a kid and had nightmares for a week. A family show would actually use this as a plot ugh!
-Boy a lot of very funny people watched this show!!Enjoyed reading that stuff. But I had one comment about Alice and Mary's baby. I have a strange fascination with this espisode--I cry every time i see it and I have seen it plenty. But Alice DID NOT use that baby as a battering ram!! She was holding the baby in one arm and ramming her other elbow through the window. Check it out if you don't believe me!!!

-A whole episode centered on a crippled Mr. Edwards (Victor French) trying to kill himself was downright surreal when I saw it. Plus, did they ever explain in the later episodes how he suddenly wasn't crippled anymore??"

Little House fans are good people. Good People.