At Christmas or a short time thereafter a box arrived on the doorstep from my father-in-law addressed to his son.
Inside were two pairs of ordinary work gloves made of blue and red stripped canvas ticking and gray-colored leather; one was an adult-sized “Large,” and the other was a tiny replica meant for a child.
However, it was a letter tucked in with the pristine protective hand wear that was the true gift, for it bestowed the origin the family tradition of “workings.”
“Workings” being the term my husband’s grandfather had good-naturedly bellowed most weekend mornings after breakfast; a term his children (and later, grandchildren) understood to mean they were expected to dress for the weather, whatever it be, and join their elder taskmaster outside, where they would be expected to assist him in an endeavor that was destined (as it was loudly and proudly announced) to “save the universe.”
Usually, my father-in-law’s letter stated, “workings” were small tasks the elder gentleman thought convenient to share that morning with his diminutive workforce: Saving the world, one leaf pile at a time.
As I read the missive, I pictured “workings” as the ordinary tasks that always need doing: the raking of leaves, the weeding of gardens, the painting of fences, the organizing of tools.
I felt a surge of shame.
All the tasks that are woefully neglected at our house since the people over the age of six have proven incapable of keeping their eyes on those under the age of six and still manage to accomplish a task.
But it was winter: The wind was biting, the temperatures daunting.
And despite the urge to bundle up the kids and drag them outside in the snow to push something around with a shovel calling “WORKINGS” into the winter wind, the desire to stay warm and comfortable blocks forward momentum.
Oh, we of prematurely sedimentary ways.
I closed the gift box. I put it away. It left my mind.
Until just the other day when I awoke to the sound of the coffee grinder, slowly oozed out of bed and lumbered into the kitchen, lured by the aroma of fresh drip.
With my husband sitting behind his computer at the desk, and my son perched next to him plunking away of the keys of his own plastic laptop, I saw our 21st century equivalent of “workings” in action.
The scene reminded me of the shame and the box and the letter, and my winter desire to do something else: to plant something, to just dig in the dirt, to accomplish something together, not just silently side by side. There is so much to do; so many workings to share if we could only get started.
The wind is still biting, and the tasks that have piled up are enormous. One would need to grow a will the size of a walrus to keep the whirling dervish and the toddler busy AND still manage to make any progress. And I haven’t forgotten there are naps to navigate, a kitchen to clean and laundry to fold and put away.
But Ittybit knows what workings she wants to do; she wants to start planting. She’s got the seed packages ready and the scissors poised, just waiting for the final “OK, we’ll do it.”
I wasn’t so sure. I had just mopped the floor. And how would we keep the Champ from eating the dirt?
But she was adamant. “It will be fun …”
“OK, we’ll do it.”
And with that we gathered our supplies: “We’ll need egg crates, and potting soil, a teaspoon and water. We’ll need newspaper to spread on the table. We’ll need to roll up our sleeves,” I said as the things piled up.
“And we’ll also need gloves,” she said with a smile.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The way nature intended (patent pending)
My husband and I were perfectly happy with our standard-issue; single-setting; no fuss, no muss; fixed shower head. It was roughly the diameter of a half-dollar and probably cost the same way back in the '70s when it was initially installed in our rinky-dink little stand-up shower unit.
But then someone — a houseguest (and I’m not naming names, not even if you twist my arm) — decided that we needed something more exciting, more robust … more in keeping with the times. And that person bought us a super-duper 10-setting, pivoting shower head that, for a time, did everything except change the light bulb above the sink.
It had all kinds of spray options:
Simple massage
Nebulizing mist
Rain
Power rain
Full rain with massage
Directed pattern spray
Random pattern spray,
Aeration spray,
Twirling spray,
Pulsating jet spray
It was Class-ay!
After that, and this was a while ago, my husband and I started having the hassle of having to change the other's selection of shower spray to the water-dropping-pattern-ratio of spray we preferred whenever we were scrubbing up.
I had the added problem of having to turn the shower head towards the wall so as to keep the water in the tub, something my husband can't really do because he'd never be able to get all the soap of his body. I figure the fact that the shower head is the size of a salad plate and our shower is the size of a gym locker is the cause of that added adjustment.
Of course time and minerals conspired against us, and eventually no matter what setting we wrestled the shower head into, what we got for our trouble was Do-it-Yourself Carwash (Patent pending).
We eventually stopped adjusting the spray, but continued to adjust its direction. Neither of us wanted to sandblast the sheetrock or cause a wading pool to collect on the floor.
Lately though, I noticed the shower head has been providing a rather unexpected, but pleasant effect; big, soft, fat drops seemed to be falling lightly now in a concentrated area. I found the change to be quite refreshing. The effect wasn’t really comparable to nature, nevertheless I tend to equate it with a summer rain shower, and I imagine THIS is probably what the shower head designers had in mind all along.
Soon, the spray wars in our house began anew.
I mentioned this revelation to my husband as we begin the dance with the setting once again. He likes his shower to be injected with little needle spindles of water whereas I'd be fine if mine were dumped over my head in a sudden rush of water as if coming from the spigot of a pump. My newly discovered “Rain Drop” was a few clicks to the right of his “Sand Your Skin Off Blast.”
"You know, I kind of like the way the shower isn't all scrub your skin off anymore."
"Oh, that," he replied. "You didn't notice? I just wiped the crusty mineral build-up off with my thumb."
"Now that's class-ay."
But then someone — a houseguest (and I’m not naming names, not even if you twist my arm) — decided that we needed something more exciting, more robust … more in keeping with the times. And that person bought us a super-duper 10-setting, pivoting shower head that, for a time, did everything except change the light bulb above the sink.
It had all kinds of spray options:
Simple massage
Nebulizing mist
Rain
Power rain
Full rain with massage
Directed pattern spray
Random pattern spray,
Aeration spray,
Twirling spray,
Pulsating jet spray
It was Class-ay!
After that, and this was a while ago, my husband and I started having the hassle of having to change the other's selection of shower spray to the water-dropping-pattern-ratio of spray we preferred whenever we were scrubbing up.
I had the added problem of having to turn the shower head towards the wall so as to keep the water in the tub, something my husband can't really do because he'd never be able to get all the soap of his body. I figure the fact that the shower head is the size of a salad plate and our shower is the size of a gym locker is the cause of that added adjustment.
Of course time and minerals conspired against us, and eventually no matter what setting we wrestled the shower head into, what we got for our trouble was Do-it-Yourself Carwash (Patent pending).
We eventually stopped adjusting the spray, but continued to adjust its direction. Neither of us wanted to sandblast the sheetrock or cause a wading pool to collect on the floor.
Lately though, I noticed the shower head has been providing a rather unexpected, but pleasant effect; big, soft, fat drops seemed to be falling lightly now in a concentrated area. I found the change to be quite refreshing. The effect wasn’t really comparable to nature, nevertheless I tend to equate it with a summer rain shower, and I imagine THIS is probably what the shower head designers had in mind all along.
Soon, the spray wars in our house began anew.
I mentioned this revelation to my husband as we begin the dance with the setting once again. He likes his shower to be injected with little needle spindles of water whereas I'd be fine if mine were dumped over my head in a sudden rush of water as if coming from the spigot of a pump. My newly discovered “Rain Drop” was a few clicks to the right of his “Sand Your Skin Off Blast.”
"You know, I kind of like the way the shower isn't all scrub your skin off anymore."
"Oh, that," he replied. "You didn't notice? I just wiped the crusty mineral build-up off with my thumb."
"Now that's class-ay."
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Having sleepless nights over sleepless nights
The Champ’s room is empty save for a trundle bed bought for a handful of dollars at a yard sale and a corner dresser filled with clothes he’s still months away from fitting.
A beige towel — remaindered and untouched from the last overnight guest — lays folded on the chest’s blonde-colored top. It serves as a rough terry mattress for a smattering of keepsake toys with which he’s never played.
The tiny corner boudoir — more extension of hallway than bedroom — has been a concern since the moment the ultrasound technician detected his wand with hers.
Thus he’s never spent a night in his room. He rarely spends the night in his crib.
His clothes — the ones that do fit him — are straining a cheap chest of drawers pushed into the back of my closet. The ones he’s outgrown make their way to a bag tucked in beside it, presumably to be left, like an orphan, on the steps of a charity in a moment of eyes-closed-shut resolve.
My husband wonders if we’ll have to wait until he goes to college before we get our room back. His jokes have sharp teeth that he wraps in humor to dull the effect on my soft flesh.
I refuse to talk about it.
I don’t want to give voice to all that I am thinking:
* That we are showing a kind of deep seated favoritism to our boy since we shuffled our girl off to a room of her own when she was barely one year old.
* That he is my last child, and losing his baby-ness with each passing day.
* That things are progressing in the other house — the house that is not the home we brought our children into but the one in which they will grow up — and that means more change. It means moving our stuff into new rooms; reconfiguring, becoming unsettled to resettle. It means moving him into his own room; a real room — a room that rivals his sister’s.
I don’t want to be reminded that my babies are growing up even though the fact of it confronts me each morning at breakfast. Each day they get taller and taller, able to reach previously unattainable objects as they perch on tippy-toes.
Such happiness I feel in their accomplishment, and yet a somber tone sounds in my head '... soon they won't need me.' Not in the way it feels nice to be needed. When the night time feeding is over; when they’ve mastered the stairs and understand that the woodstove is HOT.
I’m probably going to be the mom who rolls her eyes and goes boneless when her kids want her to find their soccer gear … or get them a glass of juice when they’re mere inches away from the refrigerator.
The day is coming when we will have our room back. When we look at each other and have to figure out how to be alone again. How to just be us.
I don’t want think about that day if it means it will be missing the equivalent of the children’s weight in joy.
A beige towel — remaindered and untouched from the last overnight guest — lays folded on the chest’s blonde-colored top. It serves as a rough terry mattress for a smattering of keepsake toys with which he’s never played.
The tiny corner boudoir — more extension of hallway than bedroom — has been a concern since the moment the ultrasound technician detected his wand with hers.
Thus he’s never spent a night in his room. He rarely spends the night in his crib.
His clothes — the ones that do fit him — are straining a cheap chest of drawers pushed into the back of my closet. The ones he’s outgrown make their way to a bag tucked in beside it, presumably to be left, like an orphan, on the steps of a charity in a moment of eyes-closed-shut resolve.
My husband wonders if we’ll have to wait until he goes to college before we get our room back. His jokes have sharp teeth that he wraps in humor to dull the effect on my soft flesh.
I refuse to talk about it.
I don’t want to give voice to all that I am thinking:
* That we are showing a kind of deep seated favoritism to our boy since we shuffled our girl off to a room of her own when she was barely one year old.
* That he is my last child, and losing his baby-ness with each passing day.
* That things are progressing in the other house — the house that is not the home we brought our children into but the one in which they will grow up — and that means more change. It means moving our stuff into new rooms; reconfiguring, becoming unsettled to resettle. It means moving him into his own room; a real room — a room that rivals his sister’s.
I don’t want to be reminded that my babies are growing up even though the fact of it confronts me each morning at breakfast. Each day they get taller and taller, able to reach previously unattainable objects as they perch on tippy-toes.
Such happiness I feel in their accomplishment, and yet a somber tone sounds in my head '... soon they won't need me.' Not in the way it feels nice to be needed. When the night time feeding is over; when they’ve mastered the stairs and understand that the woodstove is HOT.
I’m probably going to be the mom who rolls her eyes and goes boneless when her kids want her to find their soccer gear … or get them a glass of juice when they’re mere inches away from the refrigerator.
The day is coming when we will have our room back. When we look at each other and have to figure out how to be alone again. How to just be us.
I don’t want think about that day if it means it will be missing the equivalent of the children’s weight in joy.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
If you're looking for me, I'll be where the sun doesn't shine
Daylight Saving Time always makes me want to go into hibernation.
It’s not that more daylight isn’t welcome or that I’m sad to see winter melt away. I’ll admit, every February 2nd, I’m the first person who’d like to send that infernal groundhog in Pennsylvania – the one that ALWAYS sees its little rodent-shaped shadow no matter what - to its maker.
No, by the time DST rolls around I am ready for warmer weather and a few more hours of light after the workday ends.
What I miss is that one single solitary hour of sleep.
I’m a creature of habit, until Eastern Standard Time rears its ugly head again and I get that hour back, I know I’m just going to be a growling, sleep-deprived monster that would just as soon go back to bed than revel in the budding flowers.
My husband, though, until recently, hadn’t quite figured out how to circumvent this beast, and often plunders right into its lair.
In our house, DST is usually heralded by a protracted disagreement between him and me over whether we lose an hour or we gain an hour in the Spring-Ahead scenario.
Each year he charges right into the argument that because the clocks go FORWARD we must GAIN time. To him going forward means to progress, and all progress must translate to gains or some other form of profit.
And each year I retaliate by calling him names like “Troglodyte” and “Doltish Buffoon,” whilst showing him how the clock actually works.
By the time he begrudgingly agrees that, "yes ... it does appear that when a person goes to sleep at midnight and the clock mysteriously jumps ahead an hour at 2 a.m., that hour seems to disappear from the sleep cycle," we’ve already missed more than an hour of shut-eye.
It matters not that we have the fight every year, nor does it seem to register that he ALWAYS concedes that I was, in fact, correct. The argument is still more a harbinger of spring than the first robin.
This year, though, we never spoke about the time. We didn’t bother setting the clocks back before we went to bed.
In the morning as we were waking up at our usual 7:30 he quietly reset each clock to read 8:30.
I got out of bed and changed the baby’s diaper without making any comment. I brushed the big kid’s hair with my fingers and pestered her to wear clothes that actually fit. When I made my way out to the kitchen I took the coffee he offered.
I puzzled a while over the quiet. Where was the rant to come? Perhaps he had finally understood that his instinct for this particular argument – as I understand my instinct for spelling the word CALENDAR – is always just plain wrong. ... I’ve learned over time it’s best just to go with one’s second choice, too.
But then I thought maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s a result of the recent economy. Maybe the fact that so much presumed progress has really translated to regression ... or recession ... or depression.
We have yet to see.
In the meantime, I get the kids ready to walk to the playground. It's been months since we've seen the swings.
After all, it’s not going to cost us anything but maybe an afternoon nap.
It’s not that more daylight isn’t welcome or that I’m sad to see winter melt away. I’ll admit, every February 2nd, I’m the first person who’d like to send that infernal groundhog in Pennsylvania – the one that ALWAYS sees its little rodent-shaped shadow no matter what - to its maker.
No, by the time DST rolls around I am ready for warmer weather and a few more hours of light after the workday ends.
What I miss is that one single solitary hour of sleep.
I’m a creature of habit, until Eastern Standard Time rears its ugly head again and I get that hour back, I know I’m just going to be a growling, sleep-deprived monster that would just as soon go back to bed than revel in the budding flowers.
My husband, though, until recently, hadn’t quite figured out how to circumvent this beast, and often plunders right into its lair.
In our house, DST is usually heralded by a protracted disagreement between him and me over whether we lose an hour or we gain an hour in the Spring-Ahead scenario.
Each year he charges right into the argument that because the clocks go FORWARD we must GAIN time. To him going forward means to progress, and all progress must translate to gains or some other form of profit.
And each year I retaliate by calling him names like “Troglodyte” and “Doltish Buffoon,” whilst showing him how the clock actually works.
By the time he begrudgingly agrees that, "yes ... it does appear that when a person goes to sleep at midnight and the clock mysteriously jumps ahead an hour at 2 a.m., that hour seems to disappear from the sleep cycle," we’ve already missed more than an hour of shut-eye.
It matters not that we have the fight every year, nor does it seem to register that he ALWAYS concedes that I was, in fact, correct. The argument is still more a harbinger of spring than the first robin.
This year, though, we never spoke about the time. We didn’t bother setting the clocks back before we went to bed.
In the morning as we were waking up at our usual 7:30 he quietly reset each clock to read 8:30.
I got out of bed and changed the baby’s diaper without making any comment. I brushed the big kid’s hair with my fingers and pestered her to wear clothes that actually fit. When I made my way out to the kitchen I took the coffee he offered.
I puzzled a while over the quiet. Where was the rant to come? Perhaps he had finally understood that his instinct for this particular argument – as I understand my instinct for spelling the word CALENDAR – is always just plain wrong. ... I’ve learned over time it’s best just to go with one’s second choice, too.
But then I thought maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s a result of the recent economy. Maybe the fact that so much presumed progress has really translated to regression ... or recession ... or depression.
We have yet to see.
In the meantime, I get the kids ready to walk to the playground. It's been months since we've seen the swings.
After all, it’s not going to cost us anything but maybe an afternoon nap.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Some ground rules for 'Goodwill Hunting'
Ever since college (when I was trying to make the nightclub money stretch as far is humanly possible) I’ve had a thing for Goodwill Hunting — the thrift store experience, not the feature film.
I mean, if you are a person who can enjoy the better part of an afternoon wading through racks and racks of color-coordinated outerwear (you’d never be caught dead in) to find an armload of bargains (now half-price because it’s Blue tag day) why would you ever endure a trip to the mall and empty your pockets for the sake of style?
It’s a sport unto itself. What woman, when asked about her Marc Jacobs’ anything, doesn’t absolutely DELIGHT in telling her inquisitor how much of a steal it was? The only thing better would be if she actually stole Marc Jacobs or fished him out of the trash.
I’m that woman, although I probably wouldn’t know Jacobs or Louis Vuitton if they tapped me on the shoulder to say ‘oui.’
But I digress.
Even when I had something resembling a disposable income I flatly refused to spend more than $15 for sweaters, $10 for jeans and $6 for t-shirts. Of course adherence to such an outdated formulary in the acquisition of new clothing components means that my wardrobe will always be “new to me.”
Now that I have children who are outgrowing clothes by the hour, Goodwill Hunting has even more meaning for me. I’m thankful that Ittybit, who is now fashion conscious, isn’t thrift phobic.
I can’t tell you how her wanting to spend her hard-earned “I-was-bribed-to-sleep-in-my-own-bed” money on new pajamas from Goodwill warmed my cold consumer heart.
But like all sports, Goodwill Hunting has some rules its players should understand:
1. DON’T SHOW UP EMPTY HANDED:* Need a new coat? Why not bag one (or three) of your old coats and drop them off in the collection bin?
While you’re at it throw in those pants you never wore, the paisley shirt you outgrew, and you might as well ditch the sweater you got last Christmas that had to have been a gag gift.
You can’t do much about the cosmetics counter mistakes that are filling up your bathroom drawers but you can absolve yourself of any and all clothing sins via tax-deductible donation.
*Of course in this vein, Ittybit – like all children – in an effort to get her hands on a new plush animal (that might have come straight from the CLAW machine at the local bowling alley) is keen on getting rid of the heirloom toys she has no current use for. “But I’m never going to play with that wooden pull toy (that was handcrafted by someone’s grandfather 100 years ago) THAT’s A baby toy!”
2. SPEND TIME NOT MONEY: There are bargains to be had if you are willing to spend time and look beyond and between the Circo and Massimo overstocks. If it’s not really worth $9 new, don’t pay $7 when it’s been dumped.
3. SHOP EARLY, SHOP OFTEN: Thrift stores are constantly getting new merchandise. You never know … you may be there one day just as those new fangled ride-on toys -- the very ones that snagged an Oppenheimer award and cost $70 each – are being donated by someone “whose kids just weren’t that into them.”
4. DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF: Your Neiman Marcus mistakes will always be pricier than your Goodwill gaffs. SEE RULE ONE.
Speaking of gaffs and Goodwill Hunting, I’ve never mentioned the time I quite literally ran into Matt Damon in Boston have I? I wasn’t watching where I was walking and nearly knocked him over. I apologized and he held a door for me. I thought he was quite a gentleman. But come to think of it, he never mentioned my sweater, which was new ... well, new to me.
I mean, if you are a person who can enjoy the better part of an afternoon wading through racks and racks of color-coordinated outerwear (you’d never be caught dead in) to find an armload of bargains (now half-price because it’s Blue tag day) why would you ever endure a trip to the mall and empty your pockets for the sake of style?
It’s a sport unto itself. What woman, when asked about her Marc Jacobs’ anything, doesn’t absolutely DELIGHT in telling her inquisitor how much of a steal it was? The only thing better would be if she actually stole Marc Jacobs or fished him out of the trash.
I’m that woman, although I probably wouldn’t know Jacobs or Louis Vuitton if they tapped me on the shoulder to say ‘oui.’
But I digress.
Even when I had something resembling a disposable income I flatly refused to spend more than $15 for sweaters, $10 for jeans and $6 for t-shirts. Of course adherence to such an outdated formulary in the acquisition of new clothing components means that my wardrobe will always be “new to me.”
Now that I have children who are outgrowing clothes by the hour, Goodwill Hunting has even more meaning for me. I’m thankful that Ittybit, who is now fashion conscious, isn’t thrift phobic.
I can’t tell you how her wanting to spend her hard-earned “I-was-bribed-to-sleep-in-my-own-bed” money on new pajamas from Goodwill warmed my cold consumer heart.
But like all sports, Goodwill Hunting has some rules its players should understand:
1. DON’T SHOW UP EMPTY HANDED:* Need a new coat? Why not bag one (or three) of your old coats and drop them off in the collection bin?
While you’re at it throw in those pants you never wore, the paisley shirt you outgrew, and you might as well ditch the sweater you got last Christmas that had to have been a gag gift.
You can’t do much about the cosmetics counter mistakes that are filling up your bathroom drawers but you can absolve yourself of any and all clothing sins via tax-deductible donation.
*Of course in this vein, Ittybit – like all children – in an effort to get her hands on a new plush animal (that might have come straight from the CLAW machine at the local bowling alley) is keen on getting rid of the heirloom toys she has no current use for. “But I’m never going to play with that wooden pull toy (that was handcrafted by someone’s grandfather 100 years ago) THAT’s A baby toy!”
2. SPEND TIME NOT MONEY: There are bargains to be had if you are willing to spend time and look beyond and between the Circo and Massimo overstocks. If it’s not really worth $9 new, don’t pay $7 when it’s been dumped.
3. SHOP EARLY, SHOP OFTEN: Thrift stores are constantly getting new merchandise. You never know … you may be there one day just as those new fangled ride-on toys -- the very ones that snagged an Oppenheimer award and cost $70 each – are being donated by someone “whose kids just weren’t that into them.”
4. DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF: Your Neiman Marcus mistakes will always be pricier than your Goodwill gaffs. SEE RULE ONE.
Speaking of gaffs and Goodwill Hunting, I’ve never mentioned the time I quite literally ran into Matt Damon in Boston have I? I wasn’t watching where I was walking and nearly knocked him over. I apologized and he held a door for me. I thought he was quite a gentleman. But come to think of it, he never mentioned my sweater, which was new ... well, new to me.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
A mother's day begins at the crack of covers
Cold. Air.
Ittybit has pulled the covers off my bedraggled head and now she’s screaming into the sheets.
"Mom. Get. Up."
"No. No. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! … I don’t want to get up. I want to lay right here. Like this. Until you go to college."
She doesn’t believe me.
I squeeze my eyes shut and drag the quilt up to my shoulders. I shove the rest of me under the pillow.
I can think of a thousand things I don’t want to do. Why bother getting out of bed to face them?
Her father snorts back a laugh. He’s been awake for hours.
Together the pair has been milling about the house breaking eggs and fixing coffee, waiting impatiently for the pair of lazy bones to get a move on. They’ve emptied the dishwasher, started a load of laundry. They’ve learned what happened in the world overnight and they’re beginning a list of what the day has in store.
Meanwhile, the boy and I have been ignoring the clattering of empty pots for at least 45 minutes now. Every so often he lifts his head - his face screwed into a puzzled look as if to say ‘Morning? Already? No. Can’t be!’ - only to plant his face back into the pillow and resume a pleasant snore.
"Mooooooooooooooom!" she chides, undeterred by my lack of forward motion. "… You are missing out on everything."
With the exuberance of youth and boundless energy, she tells me of all that the day could hold:
We could go sledding. … Or I could take a ski lesson. … We could go to lunch … or on a play date … or to the movies … or to the park.
"I know. We could go to Disney World.
My silence in the face of this revelation is not a deterrent to her.
"I’ve always wanted to go to Disney World," she chirps away to herself although I am listening.
I brood over the images now swirling in my head.
It occurs to me as she continues to sing the praises of a place she's never been, that if Disney World were a warm, dark cave filled with fluffy pillows and warm down comforters — if Mickey himself never so much as opened his mouth, not even for a muffled chortle — it would be a very happy place for people like me: People who not interested in seeing a marketer’s version of the Happiest Place on Earth.
People such as myself need to sit in the dark like mushrooms, for as long as we are allowed, and bask in the glow of anti-social oblivion.
We are people who sit on the edge of that one last straw, the one that threatens to fracture the dromedary’s back.
If we're lucky what we wait for is some little someone to peel back the covers, open the windows and chase away the dark.
Ittybit has pulled the covers off my bedraggled head and now she’s screaming into the sheets.
"Mom. Get. Up."
"No. No. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! … I don’t want to get up. I want to lay right here. Like this. Until you go to college."
She doesn’t believe me.
I squeeze my eyes shut and drag the quilt up to my shoulders. I shove the rest of me under the pillow.
I can think of a thousand things I don’t want to do. Why bother getting out of bed to face them?
Her father snorts back a laugh. He’s been awake for hours.
Together the pair has been milling about the house breaking eggs and fixing coffee, waiting impatiently for the pair of lazy bones to get a move on. They’ve emptied the dishwasher, started a load of laundry. They’ve learned what happened in the world overnight and they’re beginning a list of what the day has in store.
Meanwhile, the boy and I have been ignoring the clattering of empty pots for at least 45 minutes now. Every so often he lifts his head - his face screwed into a puzzled look as if to say ‘Morning? Already? No. Can’t be!’ - only to plant his face back into the pillow and resume a pleasant snore.
"Mooooooooooooooom!" she chides, undeterred by my lack of forward motion. "… You are missing out on everything."
With the exuberance of youth and boundless energy, she tells me of all that the day could hold:
We could go sledding. … Or I could take a ski lesson. … We could go to lunch … or on a play date … or to the movies … or to the park.
"I know. We could go to Disney World.
My silence in the face of this revelation is not a deterrent to her.
"I’ve always wanted to go to Disney World," she chirps away to herself although I am listening.
I brood over the images now swirling in my head.
It occurs to me as she continues to sing the praises of a place she's never been, that if Disney World were a warm, dark cave filled with fluffy pillows and warm down comforters — if Mickey himself never so much as opened his mouth, not even for a muffled chortle — it would be a very happy place for people like me: People who not interested in seeing a marketer’s version of the Happiest Place on Earth.
People such as myself need to sit in the dark like mushrooms, for as long as we are allowed, and bask in the glow of anti-social oblivion.
We are people who sit on the edge of that one last straw, the one that threatens to fracture the dromedary’s back.
If we're lucky what we wait for is some little someone to peel back the covers, open the windows and chase away the dark.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Running away never gets you that far
I didn't even know she was upset; she was chattering away as I was poking around in the paper bags my husband had brought in from their trip to the store.
Milk …
Orange juice …
Bread …
Eggs ...
She walked past me in her usual flair, with a kind of brisk pounding of feet and a dramatic flounce of hair as she trudged down the hall to her room.
"She's packing ... " my husband informed me a few minutes later as I was still putting away the groceries. "She says she wants to leave."
Before she stormed out I had heard her voice chirping away, flittering between octaves — "Ip ip ip ip ip ..." as I opened and closed the refrigerator door, "ip ip ip ip ip ip" as I folded another emptied bag and stowed it beneath the island with the other recyclables … "ip ip ip ip ip ip ip."
I really hadn't been listening.
I sigh and roll my eyes. It’s been a long day and I don't want to deal with another tantrum.
I finish stowing the food and found my way to her room. We bumped into each other at the door.
I was going in ready for a fight and she was coming out ready for flight.
She'd slung my old drawstring backpack over her shoulder, filled to the brim.
The bag was bigger than she was.
Her eyes will filled to the brim, too. The fight had gone out of me when I saw her eyes. She was earnest and upset.
I asked her to talk to me, to sit in her room and discuss what had happened. I took the pack from her shoulders when she tearfully agreed.
As we sat on her bed, a tiny lifetime of upset streamed out with her tears. Upset that seemed to go back as far as the hospital ... when she was born.
"I remember another mother — not you — a mother who was nicer to me. Who listened to me. Who didn't just SAY she was going to do something she DID it. That's the mother I'm going off to find."
I listened as the story brought her to my pregnancy with her brother, and how she really wanted a girl. ... How she wanted to share her room and her toys, and talk about girl things, and sing girl songs ... and how she got a boy.
"But I was happy because everyone else was happy. I wasn't happy though. I wanted a sister and YOU GAVE ME A BROTHER! My real mother would have given me a sister."
For a moment I felt sorry for her.
Poor unloved little waif who waits (somewhat) patiently for her mother to get up from behind her computer and get her a glass of milk, only to have to ask 13,000 times ... or 18,000 thousand, depending on whom you ask.
She was right. Everyone wants to hug The Champ.
They all say how cute he is, how funny, how patient, how loveable.
She feels invisible.
I look over at the bag she filled with clothes. There’s not a single toy. She's serious about leaving.
"I'm just a rotten egg," she wails.
It's difficult to assert yourself when you’re five.
I was five once, too. I even ran away twice. Neither time, however, did I get further than the mailbox on the edge of our lawn.
I wasn’t allowed to cross the street.
Ittybit isn’t as timid as I was. I suppose she’d find her way to Timbuktu if she has it in her mind to do so.
"You're not a rotten egg. You know that," I tell her ... hoping something brilliant will come to me as I'm feeling around for an answer that will make everything all right.
It doesn't. All I can tell her is I'm sorry she feels the way she does, and I'll try to do better. I remind her of how her brother lights up when he sees her ... not when he sees us but her. And I admit that she has every right to feel sad, and to even demand attention. Fair is fair.
"Why don't you come with me to the store. Your father forgot the lemons. You come with me. We'll get a special and some time to ourselves."
"O.K.," she said unsteadily. "I'll go, but what about my bag?"
"We'll just leave it for when we get back. I'll help you unpack."
Milk …
Orange juice …
Bread …
Eggs ...
She walked past me in her usual flair, with a kind of brisk pounding of feet and a dramatic flounce of hair as she trudged down the hall to her room.
"She's packing ... " my husband informed me a few minutes later as I was still putting away the groceries. "She says she wants to leave."
Before she stormed out I had heard her voice chirping away, flittering between octaves — "Ip ip ip ip ip ..." as I opened and closed the refrigerator door, "ip ip ip ip ip ip" as I folded another emptied bag and stowed it beneath the island with the other recyclables … "ip ip ip ip ip ip ip."
I really hadn't been listening.
I sigh and roll my eyes. It’s been a long day and I don't want to deal with another tantrum.
I finish stowing the food and found my way to her room. We bumped into each other at the door.
I was going in ready for a fight and she was coming out ready for flight.
She'd slung my old drawstring backpack over her shoulder, filled to the brim.
The bag was bigger than she was.
Her eyes will filled to the brim, too. The fight had gone out of me when I saw her eyes. She was earnest and upset.
I asked her to talk to me, to sit in her room and discuss what had happened. I took the pack from her shoulders when she tearfully agreed.
As we sat on her bed, a tiny lifetime of upset streamed out with her tears. Upset that seemed to go back as far as the hospital ... when she was born.
"I remember another mother — not you — a mother who was nicer to me. Who listened to me. Who didn't just SAY she was going to do something she DID it. That's the mother I'm going off to find."
I listened as the story brought her to my pregnancy with her brother, and how she really wanted a girl. ... How she wanted to share her room and her toys, and talk about girl things, and sing girl songs ... and how she got a boy.
"But I was happy because everyone else was happy. I wasn't happy though. I wanted a sister and YOU GAVE ME A BROTHER! My real mother would have given me a sister."
For a moment I felt sorry for her.
Poor unloved little waif who waits (somewhat) patiently for her mother to get up from behind her computer and get her a glass of milk, only to have to ask 13,000 times ... or 18,000 thousand, depending on whom you ask.
She was right. Everyone wants to hug The Champ.
They all say how cute he is, how funny, how patient, how loveable.
She feels invisible.
I look over at the bag she filled with clothes. There’s not a single toy. She's serious about leaving.
"I'm just a rotten egg," she wails.
It's difficult to assert yourself when you’re five.
I was five once, too. I even ran away twice. Neither time, however, did I get further than the mailbox on the edge of our lawn.
I wasn’t allowed to cross the street.
Ittybit isn’t as timid as I was. I suppose she’d find her way to Timbuktu if she has it in her mind to do so.
"You're not a rotten egg. You know that," I tell her ... hoping something brilliant will come to me as I'm feeling around for an answer that will make everything all right.
It doesn't. All I can tell her is I'm sorry she feels the way she does, and I'll try to do better. I remind her of how her brother lights up when he sees her ... not when he sees us but her. And I admit that she has every right to feel sad, and to even demand attention. Fair is fair.
"Why don't you come with me to the store. Your father forgot the lemons. You come with me. We'll get a special and some time to ourselves."
"O.K.," she said unsteadily. "I'll go, but what about my bag?"
"We'll just leave it for when we get back. I'll help you unpack."
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Home (show) is where the heart is
Sundays used to be all fun and games around our house. But to hear them tell it, the day had not gone well.
It had started out fine: She’d gotten up early to play computer games in the dinning room as her father busied himself with making breakfast and brewing coffee in the kitchen.
When I finally emerged, puffy-eyed from my down comforter-wrapped cocoon, at the late hour of 8 a.m. — drawn out by the dark, rich perfume of hot caffeine not the high-pitched shriek of excitement as computer animated teamwork had my husband and first born on the brink of breaking their all-time “Smooth Move” record — she had made a decision. She was going to spend the day with daddy.
But almost as soon as she’d decided to hang out with her dad instead of going on errands with me and her brother, things started to go downhill.
After all, her father wasn’t going to be sitting around the house all day playing games in Webkinz World or making mad scientist milkshakes from whatever was leftover in the refrigerator. He was planning on going to The Home Show to get ideas for the new house.
Still, he was optimistic. He thought the long trip from the parking lot to the arena would be made bearable by the promise of pizza and popcorn. He thought, as most men do, that toys big people like – such as car-tire sized shower heads – should have a magnifying effect on children.
“WOW! Ittybit ... LOOK at that flapper valve ... We’ll need a bigger flange to adequately address the inconsistencies in that flue baffle.”
But he is an adult who had been a child once, too. ... He could understand why her eyes might glaze over as they moved on to laminated flooring options, and why her voice slipped into a distinct whine as they passed one hot tub after another.
Father-daughter outings, especially if they are centered around home improvement activities, tend to have their bumps.
Both of them were disappointed, he hadn’t found the show useful in our endeavor to renovate a house … we didn’t need a hot tub or a high-end shower unit with surround sound and steam bath options. And the little miss didn’t really understand the joy of windows and gutter systems.
When they got home the complaints came fast and furious.
“It was boring.”
“She wasn’t cooperative.”
“They didn’t even have balloons.”
“It was packed with people.”
“He never took me to get pizza.”
“When I asked if she wanted pizza, she wouldn’t go.”
“Well I wasn’t hungry just then.”
“You were just being difficult.”
It was as if I wasn’t even standing there, pretending to referee.
“Well … was there ANYTHING about the day that you did like?” I asked, hoping to change the direction of the conversation.
“I did like that pet.”
“What pet?”
“You know, that weird pet thing that was black and white and looked like a squirrel but that guy was holding?”
“Oh yeah … that was weird. Do you remember what they said that thing was?”
“I don’t remember, but it looked like a lemur.”
“It DID look like a lemur, but it had a crazy name that sounded made up.”
And as they were laughing about why people were trying to sell exotic pets at a home show, they forgot about the whining and the dragging of tiny feet through a sea of sales kiosks. They forgot about the forgotten junk food and the lack of balloons, and they fired up the old computer to end the day as it started: all fun and games.
It had started out fine: She’d gotten up early to play computer games in the dinning room as her father busied himself with making breakfast and brewing coffee in the kitchen.
When I finally emerged, puffy-eyed from my down comforter-wrapped cocoon, at the late hour of 8 a.m. — drawn out by the dark, rich perfume of hot caffeine not the high-pitched shriek of excitement as computer animated teamwork had my husband and first born on the brink of breaking their all-time “Smooth Move” record — she had made a decision. She was going to spend the day with daddy.
But almost as soon as she’d decided to hang out with her dad instead of going on errands with me and her brother, things started to go downhill.
After all, her father wasn’t going to be sitting around the house all day playing games in Webkinz World or making mad scientist milkshakes from whatever was leftover in the refrigerator. He was planning on going to The Home Show to get ideas for the new house.
Still, he was optimistic. He thought the long trip from the parking lot to the arena would be made bearable by the promise of pizza and popcorn. He thought, as most men do, that toys big people like – such as car-tire sized shower heads – should have a magnifying effect on children.
“WOW! Ittybit ... LOOK at that flapper valve ... We’ll need a bigger flange to adequately address the inconsistencies in that flue baffle.”
But he is an adult who had been a child once, too. ... He could understand why her eyes might glaze over as they moved on to laminated flooring options, and why her voice slipped into a distinct whine as they passed one hot tub after another.
Father-daughter outings, especially if they are centered around home improvement activities, tend to have their bumps.
Both of them were disappointed, he hadn’t found the show useful in our endeavor to renovate a house … we didn’t need a hot tub or a high-end shower unit with surround sound and steam bath options. And the little miss didn’t really understand the joy of windows and gutter systems.
When they got home the complaints came fast and furious.
“It was boring.”
“She wasn’t cooperative.”
“They didn’t even have balloons.”
“It was packed with people.”
“He never took me to get pizza.”
“When I asked if she wanted pizza, she wouldn’t go.”
“Well I wasn’t hungry just then.”
“You were just being difficult.”
It was as if I wasn’t even standing there, pretending to referee.
“Well … was there ANYTHING about the day that you did like?” I asked, hoping to change the direction of the conversation.
“I did like that pet.”
“What pet?”
“You know, that weird pet thing that was black and white and looked like a squirrel but that guy was holding?”
“Oh yeah … that was weird. Do you remember what they said that thing was?”
“I don’t remember, but it looked like a lemur.”
“It DID look like a lemur, but it had a crazy name that sounded made up.”
And as they were laughing about why people were trying to sell exotic pets at a home show, they forgot about the whining and the dragging of tiny feet through a sea of sales kiosks. They forgot about the forgotten junk food and the lack of balloons, and they fired up the old computer to end the day as it started: all fun and games.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Motherhood magic: Being in two places at once
A small room in the Time & Space Limited warehouse contained all the magic a one-year-old could want: Crayons, markers, bottle caps, paper plates, wooden sticks, cardboard cylinders from spent toilet paper rolls and fistfuls of uncooked lentils that just begged to be tasted.
We were there to make musical instruments out of the recycling, however, not to play test kitchen.
For what seemed like hours, The Champ had been happily perched on a makeshift stool, drawing purple and red magic marker lines in an EKG-like pattern all over the paper-covered table in front of him.
When he’d filled his canvas, including the palms of both hands, he abandoned his instrument-making station — where his sister was still busy making guitars, kazoos and maracas — and moved into the corner where a handmade sand table offered tiny test drives of toy cars as well as fistfuls of fine-grain sand for the tasting.
With her own projects completed, Ittybit flitted from this room to the next, a larger open space where the band was setting up for its gig. She was so beside herself that she and herself were having some spirited conversation about what they would wear to the “rock show.”
Ittybit was still wearing tights and leotard from her dance class that morning, while Herself was itching to get into the pink flouncy dress, which had been packed for just such a special occasion. Though, neither could be still long enough to change.
I, however, was straddling both rooms, trying to take pictures and keep an eye on my progeny.
Her brother didn’t want to leave his little piece of heaven until he did leave it. When I poked my head into the room after snapping a few pictures of his sister waiting on the band, he was gone. I hadn’t seen him going past me so I head in the other direction: Toward out.
He wasn’t there either, thankfully.
I went back into the main space and stood staring blankly into the crowd of tiny jumping beans and their accompanying parents. It wasn’t until I looked above knee level that I saw somebody else’s mother raising her hand and pointing it downward.
She knew where he went.
As did the grandfatherly fellow who pointed in the direction of my little escape artist the next time I found myself without him.
I really miss the days when he’d happily hang out in the sling watching the world go by.
I digress.
Neither of my children want to miss anything these days, yet their interests never seem to be in the same room.
“When are the rockers playing,” Ittybit bleated impatiently as I tried to wrestle the popcorn away from her whirling dervish of a brother who is, in turn, trying to wriggle his way back to the floor and the trail of snacks that his sister accidentally spilled.
“Soon,” I tell her, using the word that has become my catch-all response for all queries beginning with WHEN.
I sweep the kernels into the box and hide it as The Champ moves back toward the sand table.
She sways back and forth when Uncle Rock bursts onto the “stage,” a cleared triangle of concrete in front of a bistro set-up of a dozen or so carpet remnants. She clapped her hands, wagged her hips and jumped up and down on her little piece of green shag.
Next Ittybit was up and running; out of the room and out of sight. When she returned she had her new best friend, a girl she’d met while I had been chasing her brother; the “Kitars” they’d made from a paint sticks and paper plates; and a desire to be center stage.
It’s a good thing the band didn’t mind sharing the limelight.
We were there to make musical instruments out of the recycling, however, not to play test kitchen.
For what seemed like hours, The Champ had been happily perched on a makeshift stool, drawing purple and red magic marker lines in an EKG-like pattern all over the paper-covered table in front of him.
When he’d filled his canvas, including the palms of both hands, he abandoned his instrument-making station — where his sister was still busy making guitars, kazoos and maracas — and moved into the corner where a handmade sand table offered tiny test drives of toy cars as well as fistfuls of fine-grain sand for the tasting.
With her own projects completed, Ittybit flitted from this room to the next, a larger open space where the band was setting up for its gig. She was so beside herself that she and herself were having some spirited conversation about what they would wear to the “rock show.”
Ittybit was still wearing tights and leotard from her dance class that morning, while Herself was itching to get into the pink flouncy dress, which had been packed for just such a special occasion. Though, neither could be still long enough to change.
I, however, was straddling both rooms, trying to take pictures and keep an eye on my progeny.
Her brother didn’t want to leave his little piece of heaven until he did leave it. When I poked my head into the room after snapping a few pictures of his sister waiting on the band, he was gone. I hadn’t seen him going past me so I head in the other direction: Toward out.
He wasn’t there either, thankfully.
I went back into the main space and stood staring blankly into the crowd of tiny jumping beans and their accompanying parents. It wasn’t until I looked above knee level that I saw somebody else’s mother raising her hand and pointing it downward.
She knew where he went.
As did the grandfatherly fellow who pointed in the direction of my little escape artist the next time I found myself without him.
I really miss the days when he’d happily hang out in the sling watching the world go by.
I digress.
Neither of my children want to miss anything these days, yet their interests never seem to be in the same room.
“When are the rockers playing,” Ittybit bleated impatiently as I tried to wrestle the popcorn away from her whirling dervish of a brother who is, in turn, trying to wriggle his way back to the floor and the trail of snacks that his sister accidentally spilled.
“Soon,” I tell her, using the word that has become my catch-all response for all queries beginning with WHEN.
I sweep the kernels into the box and hide it as The Champ moves back toward the sand table.
She sways back and forth when Uncle Rock bursts onto the “stage,” a cleared triangle of concrete in front of a bistro set-up of a dozen or so carpet remnants. She clapped her hands, wagged her hips and jumped up and down on her little piece of green shag.
Next Ittybit was up and running; out of the room and out of sight. When she returned she had her new best friend, a girl she’d met while I had been chasing her brother; the “Kitars” they’d made from a paint sticks and paper plates; and a desire to be center stage.
It’s a good thing the band didn’t mind sharing the limelight.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Holding back isn’t leaving behind is it?
February is an angst-ridden time for parents of the soon-to-be post preschool set.
In February, kindergarten registration looms large. It marks the beginning of a new era in the parental experience: The time when the real-deal school, now only two seasons removed, mandates its way into the lazy days of our lives. This new life will dump boatloads of homework on our kids’ (and, by extension, our) laps the weekend we plan on visiting the grandparents. It’s inevitable.
Our priority as a new human herder will shift from active learning to passive education.
Some of us were lucky and were able to stave off that initial march into the schooling factory because of a timely cutoff. Our kids just barely missed the arbitrary date of readiness. Others of us wrestled with the question and corresponding decision: Is my kid ready? Should wait another year?
We researched and researched. We stood, pencil poised, over checklists …
Can my daughter listen to stories without interrupting?
Can my son recognize rhyming sounds?
Do they understand actions have both causes and effects?
Does he understand there’s a morning, an afternoon and an evening?
Can she cut with scissors? Follow the rules? Share her toys? Manage the bathroom? Button and zip?
Do people understand when she speaks?
Can he look at pictures and make up stories? Identify the beginning letters of words? Sort by color, size and shape?
Does he recognize simple words like STOP and MOM when he sees them written out?
Can they count to 10?
We agonized over societal norms: Is it better to be older? Will they get bored? Am I holding them back? Am I coddling them? Am I giving them an advantage or am I pushing them out?
We parents also wonder if our kids are ready to be the one sitting on the bus or in the cafeteria alone? Will our kid be the one who gets tripped up by the outstretched leg of the bully? Will our kid be the one doing the tripping? Will our kid be forced to toe the line and color within them, or will they be allowed to use their imaginations? Will they be encouraged to question authority or kowtow to it?
Will we be THOSE kinds of parents who fight THAT unbeatable fight at every turn? Will we be the thorn in the side of the teacher? Will the teacher be one who has invested in her role or just playing a part? We’ve all had bad teachers. We know they exist in larger numbers than anyone cares to admit.
In these simple details do we hover? Do we let go?
We’ve all heard stories about members of the five-year-old set being reprimanded for not using green when they color in their trees.
I know. I know. The teacher has his reasons. There’s always reason. There’s always a test to gauge performance.
But it always makes me wonder what it is they’ve proved.
Kids seem to know better than most adults about rules and how to follow them even when they don’t. They have a strangely acute sense of fairness, even when they aren’t playing fair. They know tree leaves are usually green … unless they’re red or yellow or orange.
We are not the first parents to send our kid out into the world. Yet as I read through the checklist, I got the feeling that once our kids are ready for formal education, they’ve already learned all the things that Robert Fulghum explained in his book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
Perhaps the revised version, which keeps being rewritten by my mind — “All I Really Need To Know I Learned Before ‘No Child Left Behind’” — is what really has me frightened.
In February, kindergarten registration looms large. It marks the beginning of a new era in the parental experience: The time when the real-deal school, now only two seasons removed, mandates its way into the lazy days of our lives. This new life will dump boatloads of homework on our kids’ (and, by extension, our) laps the weekend we plan on visiting the grandparents. It’s inevitable.
Our priority as a new human herder will shift from active learning to passive education.
Some of us were lucky and were able to stave off that initial march into the schooling factory because of a timely cutoff. Our kids just barely missed the arbitrary date of readiness. Others of us wrestled with the question and corresponding decision: Is my kid ready? Should wait another year?
We researched and researched. We stood, pencil poised, over checklists …
Can my daughter listen to stories without interrupting?
Can my son recognize rhyming sounds?
Do they understand actions have both causes and effects?
Does he understand there’s a morning, an afternoon and an evening?
Can she cut with scissors? Follow the rules? Share her toys? Manage the bathroom? Button and zip?
Do people understand when she speaks?
Can he look at pictures and make up stories? Identify the beginning letters of words? Sort by color, size and shape?
Does he recognize simple words like STOP and MOM when he sees them written out?
Can they count to 10?
We agonized over societal norms: Is it better to be older? Will they get bored? Am I holding them back? Am I coddling them? Am I giving them an advantage or am I pushing them out?
We parents also wonder if our kids are ready to be the one sitting on the bus or in the cafeteria alone? Will our kid be the one who gets tripped up by the outstretched leg of the bully? Will our kid be the one doing the tripping? Will our kid be forced to toe the line and color within them, or will they be allowed to use their imaginations? Will they be encouraged to question authority or kowtow to it?
Will we be THOSE kinds of parents who fight THAT unbeatable fight at every turn? Will we be the thorn in the side of the teacher? Will the teacher be one who has invested in her role or just playing a part? We’ve all had bad teachers. We know they exist in larger numbers than anyone cares to admit.
In these simple details do we hover? Do we let go?
We’ve all heard stories about members of the five-year-old set being reprimanded for not using green when they color in their trees.
I know. I know. The teacher has his reasons. There’s always reason. There’s always a test to gauge performance.
But it always makes me wonder what it is they’ve proved.
Kids seem to know better than most adults about rules and how to follow them even when they don’t. They have a strangely acute sense of fairness, even when they aren’t playing fair. They know tree leaves are usually green … unless they’re red or yellow or orange.
We are not the first parents to send our kid out into the world. Yet as I read through the checklist, I got the feeling that once our kids are ready for formal education, they’ve already learned all the things that Robert Fulghum explained in his book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
Perhaps the revised version, which keeps being rewritten by my mind — “All I Really Need To Know I Learned Before ‘No Child Left Behind’” — is what really has me frightened.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
When the Golden Rule goes against the grain
It was a joke the adults got immediately. It was a novelty: a roll of toilet paper printed with the likeness of the 43rd U.S. President.
At nearly $10 a roll, it was an expensive bit of uncouth humor. But we come from a long line of Tax-and-Spend Liberals, most of whom were celebrating the end of the Tax-Cut-and-Spend Neo-Cons’ rule, so it wasn't terribly surprising to find this crass toiletry among our gifts this past Christmas.
And it might have remained merely a tasteless bit of memorabilia had we not run out of bathroom tissue."Mama? Who is that man on the toilet paper?"
And in one sentence a new era in our lives as parents barged into the room, not bothering to knock. She had cracked our code; and soon, I knew, the days of spelling things we didn't want her to understand would be behind us, too.
I looked around, exposed and embarrassed. I am confronted with the fact that my behavior is in direct opposition to how I want her to behave. This little joke, at this very moment, seems juvenile and mean-spirited.
"Well," I stammered, flirting for a moment with the idea of a lie. "That's our former president. To use his likeness as toilet paper is showing distain or disrespect."
"But he's not our president anymore,” she replied “Why don't we have images of Barack Obama?"
“We approve of him,” I stammered. “We wish to show him respect.”
She doesn’t understand. Everything she’s learned up until now has pointed her in the direction of The Golden Rule … an ethic of reciprocity … Do Unto Others.
It seems as if no other time in our history has the line between adult and child — prankster and parent — been so hard to distinguish.
Yet, it falls to me — a person of a certain age — to make sure that she is prepared to be an adult. It is my job to make sure she has the skills she needs to successfully maneuver through this life. She must learn how to play by the rules. She must learn the art of diplomacy and tact. She must understand what it means to care and how to turn the other cheek without allowing it to be slapped.
But she must also learn how to question the system. She must learn that being polite isn’t always preferred.She must learn that we live in a country where people have the right to live without fear of oppression, even if that right has morphed into a kind of crass protest. She should learn that with that right also comes great responsibility, and sometimes great personal harm, too. In making choices, we are not afforded the right to determine what people think of us. And we can’t always direct how they react.
So when I write about the little roll of toilet paper in my bathroom, stashed away now for emergency use, I know I run the risk of ruffling feathers, changing opinions and even incurring the wrath of harsh judgment.
I know I can handle that.
But what I never really counted upon was the fast work of Karma.
Let’s just say there’s a reason most people steer clear of harsh dyes and printing inks in their toilet paper.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Welcome to Hell ... social networking included
I’d like to introduce Jenny, Ittybit's virtual pet Webkinz.
Jenny's pseudo real-life counterpart, a stuffed dachshund toy, has been sleeping with Ittybit since we activated the plush pet.For those of you still blissfully unaware of this particular corner of hell; let me enlighten you:
These are -- for the most part (but not in Jenny's case, of course) – the crummiest looking stuffed animals ever manufactured. Many have stringy hair that protrudes in all directions, even if they’re supposed to be reptilian.
But the toy itself isn't the real draw; the $12-$14 you shell out for it also covers the cost of a secret code that allows entry into the Webkinz World, an online hub for video games that promote all that is wonderful and annoying about the interwebs including social interaction and consumerism.
All the things we love and hate about reality are realized in Webkinz World, too.
In Webkinz World you can get a job, earn cash to feed and clothe your little friends, and collect over-priced virtual stuff to decorate your intangible pet's imaginary house. You can play some games for hours on end, but other games are only available to players once a day. You can click on ads, shop in fake stores, put crazy-looking purchases in shopping carts and proceed to a one-click check out.
You can watch your imaginary money dwindle away as you buy $900 tables that don’t really fit into your pet’s tiny room anyway. You can work at the pizza joint for a few thousand hours and make enough dough to buy your pet an extra room.
You can even sell your pretend stuff back to the make-believe shop (which sold you the invented junk in the first place) -- no questions asked. You will have to resort to that once you get fired from your ghost job at the shoe store that the employment office set up for you because you aren’t terribly skilled at matching shoes, and you won't be making any tips in the replacement gig you got on your own by visiting the Arcade: It's hard to make pizza when the video game won't allow you to do two things at once.
Of course, you can't do two things at once in real life very well, anyway, so quit yer bellyaching.
There are benefits to living in an imaginary place.
In this virtual world you don’t have to deal with folks dressed in floral housecoats, wearing socks and sandals, trying to negotiate a lower price for the stuff you’ve dragged curbside for your twice annual yard sale. You can just get your money back for that apple you bought for $25 bucks regardless of when you bought it.
Of course, parents can learn a lot about their kids’ priorities when they activate an account and look over their shoulders as they go hog wild.
For instance, Ittybit isn’t terribly patient when the Web site crashes and I have to sign her in again (because she can’t read or spell her sign-in and passwords.
“MOM! I feel like I’m 25!”
“Why is that?”
“Because it’s taking so LONG!”
You also may find, as I did, that poor fake Jenny gets neglected. … That your precious little peanut barely even visits her online pal, or cleans her room, or puts her to bed at night. Instead she opts to head straight for the Arcade. And instead of buying healthy fake food for her pet she buys hideous furnishings for her already cramped room.
You may even find yourself going online late at night, trying to figure out what ails the poor pooch, whose icon is perpetually sporting an ice bag, by putting it to bed or feeding it some vitamins before you head to the arcade for a few rounds of Cash Cow yourself.
Not that that’s ever happened to me.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Perhaps I should skip riding that bike
In order to observe a clear example of what the opposite of athletic looks like, all one had to do was be standing on the top of a particular sledding hill, in a particular columnists’ home town, on a chilly Sunday in January and overheard the following conversation:
Big burly man in Carhart overalls: “Now … remember to steer.”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, already seated in sled with snow-suited child: “Steer? How do you steer a sled?”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls: “Are you kidding me?”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, holding on to the ground, trying to stop forward motion: “Well. There’s no steering wheel on this thing … there are no pedals I can see … Therefore I would say NO! I am NOT kidding you.”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls: “Really?”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, becoming increasingly panicked: “Really! Now, listen you: I’m sitting here at the top of a very steep hill, ready to hurl myself and my first-born child forward at a rate of speed I’ve never been comfortable with and I’ve just explained to you that I don’t understand the concept of steering a overturned plastic lid. Could you for once stop mocking me and explain how it is I’m supposed to get down there before it’s too late?
Big burly man in Carhart overalls, fully laughing now: “OK, OK. Just use your rudders.”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, now fully prepared to throw down the gloves: “Rudder? Rudder!? This is a sled not a boat … WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls, now gesturing with arms outstretched: “Use your arms.”
This is where I prove that communication, even under the best conditions, is merely an exercise in futility, and push off with both hands dragging behind me as if to slow down the ride. Predictably we skitter off sideways, rudderless.
Big burly man in Carhart overalls, after dropping Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom’s expensive camera in the snow, nevertheless, saves them from an embarrassing collision in the trees: “I meant put your arm down in the direction you want to go. If you want to turn left, put your left arm down. If you want to go right, put your right arm down.”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom, now mortified as the snickering from others gathered on the hill becomes audible: “Ok … OK. ..I’ve got it.”
And off we go …
To the left. …
I put my right arm down … and we still go to the left. ..
I lean toward the right. … and still we go left.
WHAT is GOING ON!?! I refuse to panic.
I look down and notice Ittybit’s arms and legs are off the sled and digging in to snow on the left side. She’s trying to help. I figure she’s processed the previous conversation and had decided to take steering into her own hands (and legs).
I bump her legs into the sled with my left leg and dig in with my right hand. Miraculously the sled rights itself and shoots down the hill, straight to the bottom, and slides to a smooth stop in the field.
Soon we’re climbing back up the hill for another turn, and to face the other smirking faces.
“It’s been quite a while since I’ve been sledding,” I say aloud to cheer myself up.
“It’s definitely not like riding a bike.”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls: “Now … remember to steer.”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, already seated in sled with snow-suited child: “Steer? How do you steer a sled?”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls: “Are you kidding me?”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, holding on to the ground, trying to stop forward motion: “Well. There’s no steering wheel on this thing … there are no pedals I can see … Therefore I would say NO! I am NOT kidding you.”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls: “Really?”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, becoming increasingly panicked: “Really! Now, listen you: I’m sitting here at the top of a very steep hill, ready to hurl myself and my first-born child forward at a rate of speed I’ve never been comfortable with and I’ve just explained to you that I don’t understand the concept of steering a overturned plastic lid. Could you for once stop mocking me and explain how it is I’m supposed to get down there before it’s too late?
Big burly man in Carhart overalls, fully laughing now: “OK, OK. Just use your rudders.”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom in down parka and rain pants, now fully prepared to throw down the gloves: “Rudder? Rudder!? This is a sled not a boat … WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”
Big burly man in Carhart overalls, now gesturing with arms outstretched: “Use your arms.”
This is where I prove that communication, even under the best conditions, is merely an exercise in futility, and push off with both hands dragging behind me as if to slow down the ride. Predictably we skitter off sideways, rudderless.
Big burly man in Carhart overalls, after dropping Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom’s expensive camera in the snow, nevertheless, saves them from an embarrassing collision in the trees: “I meant put your arm down in the direction you want to go. If you want to turn left, put your left arm down. If you want to go right, put your right arm down.”
Stay Puft Marshmallow Mom, now mortified as the snickering from others gathered on the hill becomes audible: “Ok … OK. ..I’ve got it.”
And off we go …
To the left. …
I put my right arm down … and we still go to the left. ..
I lean toward the right. … and still we go left.
WHAT is GOING ON!?! I refuse to panic.
I look down and notice Ittybit’s arms and legs are off the sled and digging in to snow on the left side. She’s trying to help. I figure she’s processed the previous conversation and had decided to take steering into her own hands (and legs).
I bump her legs into the sled with my left leg and dig in with my right hand. Miraculously the sled rights itself and shoots down the hill, straight to the bottom, and slides to a smooth stop in the field.
Soon we’re climbing back up the hill for another turn, and to face the other smirking faces.
“It’s been quite a while since I’ve been sledding,” I say aloud to cheer myself up.
“It’s definitely not like riding a bike.”
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Sometimes all you need is one small change
Lately I’ve been feeling as if people around me are cheerleading in a kind of Paul Revere fashion as the hours close in on another year. Their excited chant: “The New Year is coming! The New Year is coming!”
These harbingers of all things hopeful are hanging their optimism on the next digit in time.
For me a new year is only a moment not unlike any other moment wherein a person looks to the future and wonders at its potential … and then makes a liquid-y air-letting sound with their mouths and gives up hope.
What’s the point?
I rarely wait for the end of one year so that, in a wine-addled haze, I can resolve to be a better person in the beginning days of the next year.
But I’m not a cynic.
I try to change the error of my ways as it occurs to me, whenever it occurs to me, lest I forget. Not that it matters. I don't really change.
My diet doesn't get better, my clothes don't become stylish. I don't keep up with the laundry or count to 10 before I snap angrily at a child who annoys without intent. I speak my mind even when my mind is telling me to shut up.
I'm the same person I was yesterday, and the day before that and the year before that day. So forth or hence, whichever applies. Even in the New Year, despite the fact that I quit smoking 10 years ago, I know it will be the same me who tips back the glass and toasts tomorrow, a little older but none the wiser. I’m still going to see the glass as half empty.
I'm also one of those persons who THINKS I let things go when I merely tie my grievances to the longest leash I can find just in case I need to haul them back in when it's cold or raining or otherwise inclement.
I'm not particularly proud of this. I know I am a mule with the stubborn.
“Fester. Fester. Fester. Rot. Rot. Rot.”
Still … I hear the cheer. I am drawn to it the same way I am drawn to the fresh glut of media snippets instructing us how to actually stick to the resolutions we make. Just like they reported last year … only the talking head is someone we’ve never met before, and she’s wearing a blouse that implies she's in the know. I imagine she’s also got a matching handbag and she owns the secret of accessorizing. She’s a professional.
She gives me hope that maybe this year I can put the festering rot away.
Maybe this is the year I can give up my status as the sometimes spokesperson for PLUM -- The People for Less Unrest in Marriage – an imaginary think tank that hasn’t really risen to the status it deserves anyway. It’s merely acquiesced, which is not to say it has truly found agreement.
Acquiescing rarely means that no matter what the person with whom you’ve aligned your opinion thinks. It simply means you’ve given in; you’ve compromised but not in a healthy or constructive way. You’ve thrown up your hands and said: “Fine, whatever.”
As a parent, I find this a lot in my responses as well.
For instance, when Santa bought Ittybit an unfinished dollhouse for Christmas I knew that she'd want to decorate it. I could have guessed she'd want to color the roof and door knobs in marker or crayon, and furthermore, that she'd get tired midway through and start scribbling blindly.
Had it been my dollhouse, I would have left it alone. I would have wanted it to be clean and fresh and new -- the opposite of how I see my life and everything in it.
At that person, I couldn't help but to try and dissuade her from slapdash decoration. But she is not me. She has no qualms about her abilities. She sees opportunity and beauty where I see only the indecision and imperfection.
Soon I stopped lobbying for tasteful colors and decorator paint swatches, and instead tried accepting the true beauty in her patchwork of scribbles. Not to acquiesce.
After all, Santa didn't bring the dollhouse for me. He brought it for her.
These harbingers of all things hopeful are hanging their optimism on the next digit in time.
For me a new year is only a moment not unlike any other moment wherein a person looks to the future and wonders at its potential … and then makes a liquid-y air-letting sound with their mouths and gives up hope.
What’s the point?
I rarely wait for the end of one year so that, in a wine-addled haze, I can resolve to be a better person in the beginning days of the next year.
But I’m not a cynic.
I try to change the error of my ways as it occurs to me, whenever it occurs to me, lest I forget. Not that it matters. I don't really change.
My diet doesn't get better, my clothes don't become stylish. I don't keep up with the laundry or count to 10 before I snap angrily at a child who annoys without intent. I speak my mind even when my mind is telling me to shut up.
I'm the same person I was yesterday, and the day before that and the year before that day. So forth or hence, whichever applies. Even in the New Year, despite the fact that I quit smoking 10 years ago, I know it will be the same me who tips back the glass and toasts tomorrow, a little older but none the wiser. I’m still going to see the glass as half empty.
I'm also one of those persons who THINKS I let things go when I merely tie my grievances to the longest leash I can find just in case I need to haul them back in when it's cold or raining or otherwise inclement.
I'm not particularly proud of this. I know I am a mule with the stubborn.
“Fester. Fester. Fester. Rot. Rot. Rot.”
Still … I hear the cheer. I am drawn to it the same way I am drawn to the fresh glut of media snippets instructing us how to actually stick to the resolutions we make. Just like they reported last year … only the talking head is someone we’ve never met before, and she’s wearing a blouse that implies she's in the know. I imagine she’s also got a matching handbag and she owns the secret of accessorizing. She’s a professional.
She gives me hope that maybe this year I can put the festering rot away.
Maybe this is the year I can give up my status as the sometimes spokesperson for PLUM -- The People for Less Unrest in Marriage – an imaginary think tank that hasn’t really risen to the status it deserves anyway. It’s merely acquiesced, which is not to say it has truly found agreement.
Acquiescing rarely means that no matter what the person with whom you’ve aligned your opinion thinks. It simply means you’ve given in; you’ve compromised but not in a healthy or constructive way. You’ve thrown up your hands and said: “Fine, whatever.”
As a parent, I find this a lot in my responses as well.
For instance, when Santa bought Ittybit an unfinished dollhouse for Christmas I knew that she'd want to decorate it. I could have guessed she'd want to color the roof and door knobs in marker or crayon, and furthermore, that she'd get tired midway through and start scribbling blindly.
Had it been my dollhouse, I would have left it alone. I would have wanted it to be clean and fresh and new -- the opposite of how I see my life and everything in it.
At that person, I couldn't help but to try and dissuade her from slapdash decoration. But she is not me. She has no qualms about her abilities. She sees opportunity and beauty where I see only the indecision and imperfection.
Soon I stopped lobbying for tasteful colors and decorator paint swatches, and instead tried accepting the true beauty in her patchwork of scribbles. Not to acquiesce.
After all, Santa didn't bring the dollhouse for me. He brought it for her.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
How do you spell fun? We spell it S.K.A.T.E.
“She certainly knows what she wants,” said the manager of the Skate Factory. Ittybit was standing in front of her, rearranging the order of the games.
“No … I don’t think we should do the lesson just yet. … Let’s play some games first,” she told the woman, the roller rink’s manager and MC, who was standing in front of her holding a microphone, bemused.
It seemed appropriate to me: we’re always going ’round in circles but Ittybit is nothing if not decisive.
She’s known for a year that she wanted to have a roller skating party to celebrate the big F.I.V.E.
No manner of reason (or deflection) could dissuade her. It didn’t matter that she’s not a terribly agile skater or even generally interested in the sport.
All that mattered was that she attended a skate party at this place the year before and decided it had to be spelled F. U. N.
And spelling is big on her list of all-important things these days, as are playing games set to music and walking around on shoes that could cause her untimely demise.
What five-year-old wouldn’t love to strap on a pair (or four) of wheels and take a spin around the floor?
Well ... Me. I’d have rather gone bowling. But I’m not five. Neither is The Champ, but he was happy with her choice. Although his feet were a tad too small for the toddler skates, he was thrilled to walk around with the big kids and climb on the lap of anyone who sat down at an arcade game.
From his joyful squeals, I could deduce that he’ll like driving fast. (Not going to worry about that right now ... I’ll give it another year or 14 before I panic).
Where was I?
Oh yes, a roller skating party.
I said it over and over in my mind.
“What were we thinking?”
“Ice storm. Christmas. Looming nor’easter.
“No one is going to come.
“We’ll be like a handful of loose marbles, rolling around a big empty tin can all by ourselves.”
To be honest, my husband was a little more concerned about this than I was. I knew Ittybit only needs a party of one to be happy. Still, we thought we should prepare her for the worst just in case no one showed up.
We let her know that even if it was only the four of us, it was going to be the best birthday ever.
She looked at us like we’d grown a third head.
“Don’t worry. People will come ... it’s a S-C-R-J-F-P party.”
“You mean S-K-A-T-E.”
Of course she was right. People did roll in, some even came from considerable distances. Others brought their own skates. From the moment the music started, the hours just glided by. We cruised the floor like it was 1984. We did the Limbo and the Funky Chicken. No egos were bruised even though everyone fell. ... They got up ... and then they fell again.
Another thing we fell for, looming large and well lit in the arcade, was The Claw.
No matter what you call the thing (my favorite term is “Brother, Can I Have All Your Quarters” machine) it is more addictive than sugar to the kids.
My husband, trend-spotter that he is, had seen it coming when we’d preemptively gone to check out the place the previous week, and had brought a roll of quarters to keep their addictions fed.
The screams of delight when the fuzzy blue panda got snagged, and then the silly poodle with the purple hat, were deafening.
I’m sensing next year we might just as well rent one of those things and let the kids take turns trying to hook some stuffed animals.
Of course, with our luck, The Champ would be one of those kids; the kind who climb through the collection flap and get stuck inside the box with the toys. Then we’d be getting our own visit from the fire department.
Now THAT would be F.U.N.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Holiday logic and Murphy's Law collide
I've been laughing at folks who tell me being without electricity for five days last week effectively put us back in the 1700s.
I laughed because my husband's generative powers -- with his Ranger 2000 and a few dozen gallons of gasoline -- it felt more like we'd effectively revisited the somewhat affluent '50s: Our refrigerator is running, but there wasn't much else in the way of amenities.
For instance:
We washed dishes by hand;
We watched television; but not cable;
We were able to cook on a hot-plate;
And, as a result of limited light, we turned in early.
Yet, it's not nostalgic or idyllic or even "romantical," as our firstborn would say.
The laundry is piling up but will have to wait until the power returns or we can schlep ourselves to the Laundromat, which mightn't be soon since I've had a sore throat for two days and The Champ got some vomity illness that is inconsistently realized (usually in the middle of the night when the generator has quit or run out of gas) as I'm fumbling around in the dark.
And this, for all intents and purposes, means I risk having to wear my prom dress to work (If I could muster the will to drag my sorry-for-my-Self out of bed again) because the aforementioned lack of clean clothes, combined with the growing pile of vomity duds are divided by no way to launder them (until the power comes back online or The Champ musters enough vim to make it through a trip to the local Sit and Spin).
But that's not the worst of it.
When I was able to get a few minutes away to run a cart up and down the aisles at the grocery store with Ittybit, I somehow managed to lose the car key between the shopping and the buying and the pushing of a full cart out to the parking lot.
Yep. Lost.
Which means I had to get the husband to pack the vomity kid into the car and drive me the spare set.
Yep. He did.
After we got home, put away the groceries, I promptly found the keys in my sweatshirt pocket.
Yep. Found 'em. ...
Right where I'd jammed my panicking fists about a half-dozen times.
Still, I was hanging on to the corners of my smile. "One more day," I told myself. "We'll get the electricity back and the bad luck will turn on its heel and march back where it came from."
Should have known better.
Enter regularly scheduled doctors' appointment, wherein I learn that my insurance isn't of the variety they accept any more.
Turns out I had to pay the full boat right there and then and submit the claim myself. Even the lady in the checkout area looked shocked for me when she whispered the total: $180.
So much for health insurance.
I almost laughed when I got to work and learned our struggling company will - as of January - stop contributing to our 401Ks (that are only two years old) in order to get itself in better fiscal standing. Almost. Laughed.
So much for retirement.
There's more, but I won't bother you with it. It'll just make me wish I were home with my vomity boy and my silly husband and my ice princess daughter.
I'll just try and count the one blessing this week had in store for me: I filled the gas tank up from empty (for the first time in I can't remember how long) for under $20.
Let's just say, with the luck I've been having, I'm not going to be taking any long trips ... not even with an $18-fill-up.
I laughed because my husband's generative powers -- with his Ranger 2000 and a few dozen gallons of gasoline -- it felt more like we'd effectively revisited the somewhat affluent '50s: Our refrigerator is running, but there wasn't much else in the way of amenities.
For instance:
We washed dishes by hand;
We watched television; but not cable;
We were able to cook on a hot-plate;
And, as a result of limited light, we turned in early.
Yet, it's not nostalgic or idyllic or even "romantical," as our firstborn would say.
The laundry is piling up but will have to wait until the power returns or we can schlep ourselves to the Laundromat, which mightn't be soon since I've had a sore throat for two days and The Champ got some vomity illness that is inconsistently realized (usually in the middle of the night when the generator has quit or run out of gas) as I'm fumbling around in the dark.
And this, for all intents and purposes, means I risk having to wear my prom dress to work (If I could muster the will to drag my sorry-for-my-Self out of bed again) because the aforementioned lack of clean clothes, combined with the growing pile of vomity duds are divided by no way to launder them (until the power comes back online or The Champ musters enough vim to make it through a trip to the local Sit and Spin).
But that's not the worst of it.
When I was able to get a few minutes away to run a cart up and down the aisles at the grocery store with Ittybit, I somehow managed to lose the car key between the shopping and the buying and the pushing of a full cart out to the parking lot.
Yep. Lost.
Which means I had to get the husband to pack the vomity kid into the car and drive me the spare set.
Yep. He did.
After we got home, put away the groceries, I promptly found the keys in my sweatshirt pocket.
Yep. Found 'em. ...
Right where I'd jammed my panicking fists about a half-dozen times.
Still, I was hanging on to the corners of my smile. "One more day," I told myself. "We'll get the electricity back and the bad luck will turn on its heel and march back where it came from."
Should have known better.
Enter regularly scheduled doctors' appointment, wherein I learn that my insurance isn't of the variety they accept any more.
Turns out I had to pay the full boat right there and then and submit the claim myself. Even the lady in the checkout area looked shocked for me when she whispered the total: $180.
So much for health insurance.
I almost laughed when I got to work and learned our struggling company will - as of January - stop contributing to our 401Ks (that are only two years old) in order to get itself in better fiscal standing. Almost. Laughed.
So much for retirement.
There's more, but I won't bother you with it. It'll just make me wish I were home with my vomity boy and my silly husband and my ice princess daughter.
I'll just try and count the one blessing this week had in store for me: I filled the gas tank up from empty (for the first time in I can't remember how long) for under $20.
Let's just say, with the luck I've been having, I'm not going to be taking any long trips ... not even with an $18-fill-up.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Sugared snow dusts the houses of tradition
She was all ready to get started. She’d cast off her coat, hat and gloves and was eager to take a seat next to one of the fragrant gingerbread boxes dotting the centers of tables set up throughout the bakery.
“Which one is ours, mama?”
“Have patience, little might. They will tell us.”
It had been a long week of questions and concerns since some friends had signed us up to attend one of Zachary’s Pastry Shoppe’s gingerbread house workshop.
“When are we going to build the gingerbread house?
“Is it going to be just you and me?
“Can we invite more people?
“Can daddy come, too?”
“Are we really going to be able to take it home?
“Can we eat it?”
“How are we going to build it?”
I just shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea.
Though we’ve lived in various states of housing renewal during the past five years, none of us had any inkling of how to manufacture a confectionary cottage. And since I generally view consistency as the hobgoblin of baking, I felt it was probably best to go where the professionals can be on hand should a roof collapse or a wall cave in.
After all, weekend warriors such as myself, should never attempt heavy lifting –- even of the gingerbread variety -- without a spotter; safety first.
You can imagine my relief when I saw the houses had already been constructed, their sugared masonry perfectly cured, awaiting only finishing touches.
When I saw the bag of candy and the area of space needing to be spackled and shingled and decorated, however, I began to doubt all over again.
“We’ll be here all day,” I thought as my husband leaned back and cracked his knuckles, heaving a deep sigh of contentment. “This is what I’m talking about,” he says with confident bravado, no doubt assuming his years of home improvement with stand him in good stead.
I wasn’t convinced. I’ve lived in a renovation zone for nearly a decade without taping or trim.
When our friends arrived we were shown to our seats, at which point Ittybit started to sob inconsolably.
Turns out, no one answered her question about which house was “ours,” and when her friends sat down – one in front of each kit -- she assumed the answer was neither.
In moments that seemed like hours I was able to clarify the situation. Soon we were sitting, puffy-eyed but happy, next to one of the houses and a sweet little gingerbread girl, who’d quietly appeared next to Ittybit’s chair during the turmoil.
She opened the bag of building supplies and started looking through its contents as the bakers brought parchment-paper funnels of icing glue and specialty candy accouterments to our table. Carefully, she lined up all of her materials and asked if I might please spread some icing so she could get started.
Soon she was lost in her work, occasionally looking up at me with a polite request for more mastic.
She says please and thank-you a lot these days, keenly aware that Santa is watching.
She didn’t even mind that much when her father built a picture window out of pretzels on his wall, throwing off the symmetry she’d constructed on her side.
She never complained when her baby brother stuck a soggy gumdrop to the roof. She just handed him something he could unwrap and kept her nose to the grindstone.
She selected chocolate buttons for a chimney stack, and peppermint sticks for door jams. She’d carefully shingled the roof with Smarties and licorice whips.
She planted Marshmallow Christmas trees next to the doors as a landscaping feature, and affixed flower boxes made of chocolate truffles under the windows. She crushed up pink ribbon candy and sprinkled it on the roof … presumably ice that had formed from lack of proper insulation. She even cemented together a pile of pretzel sticks, presumably to feed the woodstove that she imagined to be inside.
She turned to look at the bakers’ example after she was a few candy pieces from finished, having barely tasted any of her building supplies.
“Oh, wow. Look at THAT chimney, daddy.”
“Yes. … but our house doesn’t have a fireplace inside … only a furnace. We don’t really need such an ornate chimney as that,” her father answered defensively.
“Well, after Christmas we should eat this house, move into a house WITH a fireplace, and then next year we can build another house that has a chimney like THAT one.”
“Let’s just finish this house for now,” her father tells her, licking a smear of frosting from his knuckles and eyeing the chocolate chimney, perhaps wondering if anyone would notice if it was one or two Kisses shorter.
From the smile on his face I know we’ll be back next year, probably armed with blueprints and an extra bag of chocolate, (for energy).
As holiday traditions go, I suppose eating the cost of a gingerbread house really isn’t that hard to swallow.
“Which one is ours, mama?”
“Have patience, little might. They will tell us.”
It had been a long week of questions and concerns since some friends had signed us up to attend one of Zachary’s Pastry Shoppe’s gingerbread house workshop.
“When are we going to build the gingerbread house?
“Is it going to be just you and me?
“Can we invite more people?
“Can daddy come, too?”
“Are we really going to be able to take it home?
“Can we eat it?”
“How are we going to build it?”
I just shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea.
Though we’ve lived in various states of housing renewal during the past five years, none of us had any inkling of how to manufacture a confectionary cottage. And since I generally view consistency as the hobgoblin of baking, I felt it was probably best to go where the professionals can be on hand should a roof collapse or a wall cave in.
After all, weekend warriors such as myself, should never attempt heavy lifting –- even of the gingerbread variety -- without a spotter; safety first.
You can imagine my relief when I saw the houses had already been constructed, their sugared masonry perfectly cured, awaiting only finishing touches.
When I saw the bag of candy and the area of space needing to be spackled and shingled and decorated, however, I began to doubt all over again.
“We’ll be here all day,” I thought as my husband leaned back and cracked his knuckles, heaving a deep sigh of contentment. “This is what I’m talking about,” he says with confident bravado, no doubt assuming his years of home improvement with stand him in good stead.
I wasn’t convinced. I’ve lived in a renovation zone for nearly a decade without taping or trim.
When our friends arrived we were shown to our seats, at which point Ittybit started to sob inconsolably.
Turns out, no one answered her question about which house was “ours,” and when her friends sat down – one in front of each kit -- she assumed the answer was neither.
In moments that seemed like hours I was able to clarify the situation. Soon we were sitting, puffy-eyed but happy, next to one of the houses and a sweet little gingerbread girl, who’d quietly appeared next to Ittybit’s chair during the turmoil.
She opened the bag of building supplies and started looking through its contents as the bakers brought parchment-paper funnels of icing glue and specialty candy accouterments to our table. Carefully, she lined up all of her materials and asked if I might please spread some icing so she could get started.
Soon she was lost in her work, occasionally looking up at me with a polite request for more mastic.
She says please and thank-you a lot these days, keenly aware that Santa is watching.
She didn’t even mind that much when her father built a picture window out of pretzels on his wall, throwing off the symmetry she’d constructed on her side.
She never complained when her baby brother stuck a soggy gumdrop to the roof. She just handed him something he could unwrap and kept her nose to the grindstone.
She selected chocolate buttons for a chimney stack, and peppermint sticks for door jams. She’d carefully shingled the roof with Smarties and licorice whips.
She planted Marshmallow Christmas trees next to the doors as a landscaping feature, and affixed flower boxes made of chocolate truffles under the windows. She crushed up pink ribbon candy and sprinkled it on the roof … presumably ice that had formed from lack of proper insulation. She even cemented together a pile of pretzel sticks, presumably to feed the woodstove that she imagined to be inside.
She turned to look at the bakers’ example after she was a few candy pieces from finished, having barely tasted any of her building supplies.
“Oh, wow. Look at THAT chimney, daddy.”
“Yes. … but our house doesn’t have a fireplace inside … only a furnace. We don’t really need such an ornate chimney as that,” her father answered defensively.
“Well, after Christmas we should eat this house, move into a house WITH a fireplace, and then next year we can build another house that has a chimney like THAT one.”
“Let’s just finish this house for now,” her father tells her, licking a smear of frosting from his knuckles and eyeing the chocolate chimney, perhaps wondering if anyone would notice if it was one or two Kisses shorter.
From the smile on his face I know we’ll be back next year, probably armed with blueprints and an extra bag of chocolate, (for energy).
As holiday traditions go, I suppose eating the cost of a gingerbread house really isn’t that hard to swallow.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Retailers may feel Scrooged, but the kids won’t notice
I’m standing under the warm glow of our new, seven foot-tall Blue Spruce Christmas tree, cursing.
The Champ just ran over my foot with the back wheel of his ride-on car. As the ache subsides I realize I should really be thankful he careened into me and not the newly festooned tree with its many breakable baubles.
The dressed up house, just one day before December was official, is not the norm for our family. Ittybit insisted we decorate as soon as the first flake of snow floated down from the sky. She’s got the Christmas bug, and, evidently, only miles of twinkle lights and crinkled tissue paper can cure it.
And although I agreed to open the door to a tree (Ittybit can be persuasive) I wasn’t prepared to be ushering in the Christmas spirit so early.
I knew this holiday season was going to be a tough one.
I watched nearly half of my 401k swirl down the drain with a stiff upper lip. I laughed this week as people in-the-know finally announced the recession that the rest of us had already known about for months. We’re all tightening our belts, even those of us who are still wearing our “fat” jeans.
Sometime last summer I vowed to start living a more frugal life: I pledged to buy fewer things, leave my plastic money at home and do more with less. It didn’t really happen. My monthly Visa bill hovered at the same balance every month. Even when gas prices dwindled something else -- usually small trinkets, purchased on a whim throughout the year -- filled the gap in the balance sheet.
Nevertheless, I stashed the stuff away like a squirrel stashes nuts.
“Oh, maybe my sister would like that?”
“That would be fabulous for my mother-in-law.”
“What is that? The kids will LOVE it.”
I thrifted and crafted though I am neither thrifty nor crafty; I visited Goodwills from Maine to Connecticut, and looked for treasures tucked in among the Target overstocks. Sometimes I got lucky. Other times I took the loss, returning the items in another donation bin along my travels.
Yet, when I cleaned out my closet last week as part of my usual “let’s make way for the excesses of our Christmas presents by donating the excesses of our Christmas pasts,” I found the evidence of my Christmas future in the small bags filled with tiny puppets, pencil sharpeners, slippers and socks. There are sparkly shoes and story books, toy cars and drawing pads. There are change purses made in exotic places by people who were paid a fair wage. There’s even a set of wooden blocks I couldn’t buy in a store for a small fortune let alone the pennies I paid at salvage.
No one could be more surprised than I was to realize that not only am I prepared for Christmas morning, but by the time the 24th page of December is peeled off the calendar I will probably be simultaneously hiding eggs for Easter.
I’m not trying to gloat. My holiday organizational skills this year are purely accidental.
After all, it doesn’t take a lot of planning to decide you’re going to attend Christmas morning dressed as a modified Ebenezer Scrooge.
There will be no big ticket items and no expensive gadgets. There will be nothing of the must-have gift varieties under the tree. Santa isn’t visiting anyone over the age of 12 this year in our house, and he’s not bringing anything that requires batteries or an electrical outlet. He’s only bringing things that require an imagination.
I look though the bags wedged in between my shoes and handbags, and immediately make a mental inventory of their contents. I smile. In my imagination, I fill the stockings and stack the boxes under the now, very real tree standing in our front room.
There is more than enough, and there’s more than meets the eye.
There will be no more trips to mall. We’ll spend the rest of our weekends sledding if the snow permits or baking cookies.
It may not be a good Christmas for retailers, but I’m sure it’s going to be a good Christmas for the family.
The Champ just ran over my foot with the back wheel of his ride-on car. As the ache subsides I realize I should really be thankful he careened into me and not the newly festooned tree with its many breakable baubles.
The dressed up house, just one day before December was official, is not the norm for our family. Ittybit insisted we decorate as soon as the first flake of snow floated down from the sky. She’s got the Christmas bug, and, evidently, only miles of twinkle lights and crinkled tissue paper can cure it.
And although I agreed to open the door to a tree (Ittybit can be persuasive) I wasn’t prepared to be ushering in the Christmas spirit so early.
I knew this holiday season was going to be a tough one.
I watched nearly half of my 401k swirl down the drain with a stiff upper lip. I laughed this week as people in-the-know finally announced the recession that the rest of us had already known about for months. We’re all tightening our belts, even those of us who are still wearing our “fat” jeans.
Sometime last summer I vowed to start living a more frugal life: I pledged to buy fewer things, leave my plastic money at home and do more with less. It didn’t really happen. My monthly Visa bill hovered at the same balance every month. Even when gas prices dwindled something else -- usually small trinkets, purchased on a whim throughout the year -- filled the gap in the balance sheet.
Nevertheless, I stashed the stuff away like a squirrel stashes nuts.
“Oh, maybe my sister would like that?”
“That would be fabulous for my mother-in-law.”
“What is that? The kids will LOVE it.”
I thrifted and crafted though I am neither thrifty nor crafty; I visited Goodwills from Maine to Connecticut, and looked for treasures tucked in among the Target overstocks. Sometimes I got lucky. Other times I took the loss, returning the items in another donation bin along my travels.
Yet, when I cleaned out my closet last week as part of my usual “let’s make way for the excesses of our Christmas presents by donating the excesses of our Christmas pasts,” I found the evidence of my Christmas future in the small bags filled with tiny puppets, pencil sharpeners, slippers and socks. There are sparkly shoes and story books, toy cars and drawing pads. There are change purses made in exotic places by people who were paid a fair wage. There’s even a set of wooden blocks I couldn’t buy in a store for a small fortune let alone the pennies I paid at salvage.
No one could be more surprised than I was to realize that not only am I prepared for Christmas morning, but by the time the 24th page of December is peeled off the calendar I will probably be simultaneously hiding eggs for Easter.
I’m not trying to gloat. My holiday organizational skills this year are purely accidental.
After all, it doesn’t take a lot of planning to decide you’re going to attend Christmas morning dressed as a modified Ebenezer Scrooge.
There will be no big ticket items and no expensive gadgets. There will be nothing of the must-have gift varieties under the tree. Santa isn’t visiting anyone over the age of 12 this year in our house, and he’s not bringing anything that requires batteries or an electrical outlet. He’s only bringing things that require an imagination.
I look though the bags wedged in between my shoes and handbags, and immediately make a mental inventory of their contents. I smile. In my imagination, I fill the stockings and stack the boxes under the now, very real tree standing in our front room.
There is more than enough, and there’s more than meets the eye.
There will be no more trips to mall. We’ll spend the rest of our weekends sledding if the snow permits or baking cookies.
It may not be a good Christmas for retailers, but I’m sure it’s going to be a good Christmas for the family.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
An Ittybity Gift Guide
If you spent Black Friday as I did — hunkered down over my computer screen, wishing the fairies of consumerism would just kill me already and put me out of my misery - you still have some shopping to do.
I mean, what are you to do when the last of the must-have toys was sold from the assembly line six minutes after the company manufacturing it leaked to news sources "Junior will likely revolt if it's not under the tree?"
Why, you improvise, of course.
So in the spirit of holiday giving, what follows is a list of gift alternatives that will probably break the bank, but who cares? The bank is already broken and you need to cover you posterior. And anyway, the kids and grandkids need to see something when they rub the sand from their eyes come Christmas morning.
Knitted Lab Rat, $62
The Crafty Hedgehog — etsy.com
www.etsy.com
Your little scientist will be dazzled with this knitted curiosity. The white rat is hand knit from an acrylic mohair blend, and his little innards are needle-felted by hand out of 100 percent wool. He comes pinned into a framed corkboard. As he is not glued down he can be easily removed for cuddling. Poor thing. If you throw in an additional $18 your knitted biology project will arrive in an actual lab tray.
Also available in Frog. Makes the perfect gift for the pacifist biology student on your list.
The Tickled Pink
Deluxe Nursery Set, $300
FAO Swartz
www.fao.com
You know what this means right? Now when you leave the house with your new little mother, not only will you have to schlep your kid's coat, hat, books, backpack, snacks, extra shirts, pants and various and sundry things … you're going to be toting double for your new plastic grandchild, too.
Because, this is the ULTIMATE doll set, and includes a custom made "Newborn Nursery Baby," stroller, diaper, backpack, four-piece dish set, piece hat and bootie set, snowflake snowsuit, comb and brush set, bed/changing table, bedding set, fleece gown and cap, fleece blanket, clip-on bunny pacifier and bunny rattle. And you thought real babies don't even need that much gear.
Wooden Cinderella Coach, $1,100
Woodentoys.com
www.woodentoys.com
This limited production rocking chair will be hours of pretend fun (as opposed to real fun) for your little Cinderella. And it will only set you back a couple of weeks' pay. Don't be cheap. It is an heirloom piece that will live on forever in the heart of a child.
It includes rockers, gourd seating and clocks. You can speed through any fairytale story and still get nowhere, but at least you'll know when it's bedtime.
Penny Pony Ride-On, $350
FAO Swartz
www.fao.com
Just drop the jumbo penny into the slot and hold on. The mechanical horse you know and love from visiting K-Mart will make clip-clopping and neighing sounds while swinging its head and tail.
It's a good investment, really. You'll never again have to empty your pockets of quarters and wait in the wind and rain to get to your Blue-Light Special.
Reborn Baby of the Month Club, $1,200
ShamrockLady — etsy.com
www.etsy.com
Are your snarky teenagers driving you nuts? Do you miss the days when they were cute and cuddly and didn't speak? I think at least one major news outlet has done a feature story on these eerily creepy dolls and the collectors who love
them.
Made to look like real newborn infants, these dolls have weighted bodies, micro-rooted wigs. You get a baby a month for six months: a newborn, a preemie, a micropreemie, at least one boy, one girl, one with open eyes and one with closed eyes. Just don’t let the kids tote these dolls around by their hair. You don’t want a visit from Social Services.
Makes the perfect gift for the kid who has dreams of running an illegal daycare.
Broken Bones X-rays, $27
Roylco
www.roylco.com
For kids who just can't wait for spring - when they'll fall out of a tree, necessitating a trip to the emergency room and will wind up with a set of their very own. Or for the more girly-girls on your list who otherwise may NEVER have to have any part of their bodies set in a cast.
X-rays are also available in animal anatomy for all those kids who plan on becoming veterinarians.
Deliverance Van, $260
Stephen Fabrications — etsy.com
www.etsy.com
The "sculpture" of a truck is just a rusty metal box with a deer antler on rollerskate wheels. I don't think I can improve upon this blurb, however: "I intended this to be a toy and halfway through building it, I realized it was dangerous and went with the danger thing. Delivery vans (vans in general) are creepy. So is this one."
Come to think of it, it's perfect toy for your least favorite nephew.
Lunch Lady Action Figure, $11
Archie MacPhee
www.macphee.com
Can't you just smell the fish sticks and Tater Tots? Nutrition may soon be coming to a school near you, but the lunch lady who serves it will always have a hairnet and see-through plastic gloves. Anything else would be un-American. The only thing that would make this toy better would be if the food choice stickers you can apply yourself had Scratch-n-Sniff technology.
Mmmmm. ... Lime Jell-O with mystery bits. Mmmmm.
Zorbit Double Wall Inflatable Ball with Harness, $2,000
The Kids Fun Company
www.unbeatablesale.com
It's a human hamster ball, folks! Even the ad copy says words like "maximize the thrill while eliminated unnecessary risks," just not in that particular order (or with the same spelling). It's perfect for any child with an overprotective parent, or anyone who just wants their kids to go play in traffic ... safely.
What if your kids prefer water play? You don't want to risk drowning do you? For the bargain price of $800, you can get Aqua Ball. (The company originally named the device Water Walker … but you know … sales were probably sluggish and Aqua Ball just sounds so much more entertaining.) After all, the Aqua Ball is guaranteed fun. (I'm not sure it's the money-back kind, though.)
I seriously doubt you'll be needing to look elsewhere for that perfect gift this year, but I'd still like to invite you to join me on Christmas Eve as I do my last-minute holiday shopping at the liquor store. I'm just going to ask for something in the back - something, say, among the recycling? The kids will be happy. They'd rather play with the box, anyway.
I mean, what are you to do when the last of the must-have toys was sold from the assembly line six minutes after the company manufacturing it leaked to news sources "Junior will likely revolt if it's not under the tree?"
Why, you improvise, of course.
So in the spirit of holiday giving, what follows is a list of gift alternatives that will probably break the bank, but who cares? The bank is already broken and you need to cover you posterior. And anyway, the kids and grandkids need to see something when they rub the sand from their eyes come Christmas morning.
Knitted Lab Rat, $62
The Crafty Hedgehog — etsy.com
www.etsy.com
Your little scientist will be dazzled with this knitted curiosity. The white rat is hand knit from an acrylic mohair blend, and his little innards are needle-felted by hand out of 100 percent wool. He comes pinned into a framed corkboard. As he is not glued down he can be easily removed for cuddling. Poor thing. If you throw in an additional $18 your knitted biology project will arrive in an actual lab tray.
Also available in Frog. Makes the perfect gift for the pacifist biology student on your list.
The Tickled Pink
Deluxe Nursery Set, $300
FAO Swartz
www.fao.com
You know what this means right? Now when you leave the house with your new little mother, not only will you have to schlep your kid's coat, hat, books, backpack, snacks, extra shirts, pants and various and sundry things … you're going to be toting double for your new plastic grandchild, too.
Because, this is the ULTIMATE doll set, and includes a custom made "Newborn Nursery Baby," stroller, diaper, backpack, four-piece dish set, piece hat and bootie set, snowflake snowsuit, comb and brush set, bed/changing table, bedding set, fleece gown and cap, fleece blanket, clip-on bunny pacifier and bunny rattle. And you thought real babies don't even need that much gear.
Wooden Cinderella Coach, $1,100
Woodentoys.com
www.woodentoys.com
This limited production rocking chair will be hours of pretend fun (as opposed to real fun) for your little Cinderella. And it will only set you back a couple of weeks' pay. Don't be cheap. It is an heirloom piece that will live on forever in the heart of a child.
It includes rockers, gourd seating and clocks. You can speed through any fairytale story and still get nowhere, but at least you'll know when it's bedtime.
Penny Pony Ride-On, $350
FAO Swartz
www.fao.com
Just drop the jumbo penny into the slot and hold on. The mechanical horse you know and love from visiting K-Mart will make clip-clopping and neighing sounds while swinging its head and tail.
It's a good investment, really. You'll never again have to empty your pockets of quarters and wait in the wind and rain to get to your Blue-Light Special.
Reborn Baby of the Month Club, $1,200
ShamrockLady — etsy.com
www.etsy.com
Are your snarky teenagers driving you nuts? Do you miss the days when they were cute and cuddly and didn't speak? I think at least one major news outlet has done a feature story on these eerily creepy dolls and the collectors who love
them.
Made to look like real newborn infants, these dolls have weighted bodies, micro-rooted wigs. You get a baby a month for six months: a newborn, a preemie, a micropreemie, at least one boy, one girl, one with open eyes and one with closed eyes. Just don’t let the kids tote these dolls around by their hair. You don’t want a visit from Social Services.
Makes the perfect gift for the kid who has dreams of running an illegal daycare.
Broken Bones X-rays, $27
Roylco
www.roylco.com
For kids who just can't wait for spring - when they'll fall out of a tree, necessitating a trip to the emergency room and will wind up with a set of their very own. Or for the more girly-girls on your list who otherwise may NEVER have to have any part of their bodies set in a cast.
X-rays are also available in animal anatomy for all those kids who plan on becoming veterinarians.
Deliverance Van, $260
Stephen Fabrications — etsy.com
www.etsy.com
The "sculpture" of a truck is just a rusty metal box with a deer antler on rollerskate wheels. I don't think I can improve upon this blurb, however: "I intended this to be a toy and halfway through building it, I realized it was dangerous and went with the danger thing. Delivery vans (vans in general) are creepy. So is this one."
Come to think of it, it's perfect toy for your least favorite nephew.
Lunch Lady Action Figure, $11
Archie MacPhee
www.macphee.com
Can't you just smell the fish sticks and Tater Tots? Nutrition may soon be coming to a school near you, but the lunch lady who serves it will always have a hairnet and see-through plastic gloves. Anything else would be un-American. The only thing that would make this toy better would be if the food choice stickers you can apply yourself had Scratch-n-Sniff technology.
Mmmmm. ... Lime Jell-O with mystery bits. Mmmmm.
Zorbit Double Wall Inflatable Ball with Harness, $2,000
The Kids Fun Company
www.unbeatablesale.com
It's a human hamster ball, folks! Even the ad copy says words like "maximize the thrill while eliminated unnecessary risks," just not in that particular order (or with the same spelling). It's perfect for any child with an overprotective parent, or anyone who just wants their kids to go play in traffic ... safely.
What if your kids prefer water play? You don't want to risk drowning do you? For the bargain price of $800, you can get Aqua Ball. (The company originally named the device Water Walker … but you know … sales were probably sluggish and Aqua Ball just sounds so much more entertaining.) After all, the Aqua Ball is guaranteed fun. (I'm not sure it's the money-back kind, though.)
I seriously doubt you'll be needing to look elsewhere for that perfect gift this year, but I'd still like to invite you to join me on Christmas Eve as I do my last-minute holiday shopping at the liquor store. I'm just going to ask for something in the back - something, say, among the recycling? The kids will be happy. They'd rather play with the box, anyway.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Twitter may really be for the birds
I was probably knee-deep in laundry or inspecting the insides of my eyelids last weekend when the social-networking site known as Twitter exploded into a frenzy of “tweets” decrying a new ad by Johnson & Johnson for its pain reliever, Motrin.
The hubbub was over the script in which a “hip” mom was complaining (in a chatty, conversational way) about the aches and pains associated with babywearing.
The transcript is as follows:
“Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion. I mean, in theory it’s a great idea. There’s the front baby carrier, sling, schwing, wrap, pouch. And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free. Supposedly [insert air quotes here] it’s a real bonding experience. They say that babies carried close to the body tend to cry less than others. But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t? I sure do! These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back? I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid. Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom. And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.”
The self-dubbed #Motrinmoms were reacting mostly to the tone of the piece, which was sort of valley-girl meets Dr. Sears devotee. (If you have access to the internets you might want to peruse Youtube for “Controversial Motrin Moms Commericial” to get the full experience.)
What they were ranting against was the perception that the makers of Motrin were calling attachment parenting admirers fad-chasing, whiners more interested in appearances than in mothering.
As a babywearing mother myself, I have to admit I was a little intrigued by the responses. Here are some of them. …
BethBader: Wearing the kid was as much as fashion statement as dark circles eyes, c-section scar and spit up. I was a GODDESS, I tell you.
JenKaneCo: if Motrin was smart they'd release a new spot where mommies are popping Motrin to deal with the strain of their corp. pandering
samrolken: #motrinmoms are missing the point. The big deal is: it makes #babywearing seem "too hard," it discourages future moms with misinformation.
Even after the company apologized and pulled the ad, the viral Twittering persisted; hundreds of posts continued to log criticism of both the company’s response and the media-crushing outcry of parents.
I suppose it was just too difficult to slow that train down once it had left the station.
The posts then turned to bask in the power of the Tweet -- a 140-character line of text you can upload from the internet or your wireless phone.
I’m not even sure why this has fascinated me so, to tell you the truth. I know there are more important things to rant about than what some company, whose goal is to sell me its $8 product that I can buy generically $4, says about parenting (as if anyone really has the corner on that market anyway).
I know there are more poorly executed ads. Remember the Snickers commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, which showed two men accidentally kissing while eating from opposite ends of a Snickers bar?
I could drone on for days about how much is marketed to children; how the cartoon packaging is always placed at kids’ eye level at the grocery store, making that much harder to get through the store without being THAT person who can’t control their kids’ outbursts. And how the “Iwant-Iwant-Iwants” that come as a direct result of this type of marketing, eventually wears away the resolve of even the most disciplined of parents.
But I won’t. I know when I say black someone else says white.
I’ll just say: Twitter might really be the best research tool for marketers yet. Or it may just be for the birds.
The hubbub was over the script in which a “hip” mom was complaining (in a chatty, conversational way) about the aches and pains associated with babywearing.
The transcript is as follows:
“Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion. I mean, in theory it’s a great idea. There’s the front baby carrier, sling, schwing, wrap, pouch. And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free. Supposedly [insert air quotes here] it’s a real bonding experience. They say that babies carried close to the body tend to cry less than others. But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t? I sure do! These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back? I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid. Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom. And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.”
The self-dubbed #Motrinmoms were reacting mostly to the tone of the piece, which was sort of valley-girl meets Dr. Sears devotee. (If you have access to the internets you might want to peruse Youtube for “Controversial Motrin Moms Commericial” to get the full experience.)
What they were ranting against was the perception that the makers of Motrin were calling attachment parenting admirers fad-chasing, whiners more interested in appearances than in mothering.
As a babywearing mother myself, I have to admit I was a little intrigued by the responses. Here are some of them. …
BethBader: Wearing the kid was as much as fashion statement as dark circles eyes, c-section scar and spit up. I was a GODDESS, I tell you.
JenKaneCo: if Motrin was smart they'd release a new spot where mommies are popping Motrin to deal with the strain of their corp. pandering
samrolken: #motrinmoms are missing the point. The big deal is: it makes #babywearing seem "too hard," it discourages future moms with misinformation.
Even after the company apologized and pulled the ad, the viral Twittering persisted; hundreds of posts continued to log criticism of both the company’s response and the media-crushing outcry of parents.
I suppose it was just too difficult to slow that train down once it had left the station.
The posts then turned to bask in the power of the Tweet -- a 140-character line of text you can upload from the internet or your wireless phone.
I’m not even sure why this has fascinated me so, to tell you the truth. I know there are more important things to rant about than what some company, whose goal is to sell me its $8 product that I can buy generically $4, says about parenting (as if anyone really has the corner on that market anyway).
I know there are more poorly executed ads. Remember the Snickers commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, which showed two men accidentally kissing while eating from opposite ends of a Snickers bar?
I could drone on for days about how much is marketed to children; how the cartoon packaging is always placed at kids’ eye level at the grocery store, making that much harder to get through the store without being THAT person who can’t control their kids’ outbursts. And how the “Iwant-Iwant-Iwants” that come as a direct result of this type of marketing, eventually wears away the resolve of even the most disciplined of parents.
But I won’t. I know when I say black someone else says white.
I’ll just say: Twitter might really be the best research tool for marketers yet. Or it may just be for the birds.
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