momtrolfreak

Top 10 Things That Made Me Want to Put a Bullet in my Head on Thursday: Preschool Field Trip, Part II

1. I really should have just turned around and gotten back off the bus the minute I saw the prominently displayed "BODILY FLUIDS CLEAN-UP KIT" next to the driver's seat. No good can come of this, I thought. My own kid has been known to be the carsick type. We used to carry around a box of ginger snaps in our car--we called them "car cookies." (Ginger snaps help alleviate motion sickness--I once got through a sailing trip in british Columbia as a child by eating nothing but ginger snaps). For this particular trip, I knew enough to JUST BE SAFE and bring Frog a change of clothes and a plastic bag. I figured, even if we didn't need the plastic bag for that, I could put it over my own head if things just got too annoying to bear. I was dreading this field trip from the moment I found out where we were going. But I persevered. I'm reliable, you see. And it's a damn good thing I was on this trip. because you know, being a control freak can come in handy, sometimes. It's entirely possible that 50 preschoolers and their caregivers did not get in an accident because I took a stand.

2. Pre-field trip, I was planning for this to be a funny post about how 'horrible' the field trip was. But the field trip quickly progressed from "mildly amusing" to "OH MY GOD." Our bus was so filthy on the outside that you literally could barely see out the windows: not good news for my little frequently-carsick dude. (don't worry, though, puking is not why it was a bad trip). Little did I know that the exterior of the bus was a physical representation of the bus driver's psyche. This guy--a balding, overweight, grumpy hispanic man in his 50's, I'd say--started out by grumpily demanding that the teacher go back into the school building to print out mapquest directions. We were going from basically Lakeview to Lombard. All you really had to do was get on Lake Shore Drive, take it south to congress, turn right, and follow that until it turns into the Eisenhower. Instead, he got off at Navy Pier and proceeded to wander aimlessly around downtown Chicago, the stop and go traffic making all of the kids and some parents more than a little green, since we couldn't even see out. Shouldn't a bus driver for a company that is contracted to take kids on field trips sort of KNOW HIS WAY AROUND? From halfway back on the bus, I had to yell navigation (this was after we stopped him from getting off the bus to go inside a 7-11 in downtown Chicago to ask directions). This guy was not smart, and he wasn't apologetic about his cluelessness either. He was MAD that we knew which way to go, almost. We were very polite, I promise. At first.

I navigated him onto lower wacker (since we were already in the bowels of the city at this point) and we started taking the long winding underground tunnel that leads to 290. He didn't believe this way the right way to go and kept trying to veer left to go up the ramps to the surface streets, and we'd yell, "Nonono, stay right!" Then he came thisclose to running a red light. If four of us hadn't screamed "red light...that's red....RED LIGHT!!! STOP!!!!" he would have blown right through it. Finally we get on the right highway, and we're headed out to Lombard (again, why we couldn't have gone to any number of play palaces or children's theatres in the city is BEYOND me. This was supposed to be a special presentation that was worth the trip. We'll get to that).

So then he MISSES THE EXIT, even though we have a parent up front reading him the directions, telling him, "GET OVER TO THE LEFT!" You know WHY he misses the exit? I look up, and I see in his rearview mirror that he is TALKING ON THE PHONE.

WHILE DRIVING A SCHOOL BUS.

WHICH IS ILLEGAL IN ILLINOIS.

And he's not using an earbud, either, he's HOLDING an iPhone up to his ear with his left hand, driving a school bus of PRECIOUS PRESCHOOLER CARGO down the highway at SIXTY MILES AN HOUR with ONE HAND ON THE WHEEL.

I gestured to my son's teacher, who had arranged the trip (I was halfway back to the rear of the bus). "What the hell?" I mouthed silently to her, and held my hand up in the universal symbol for phone call, using my angry eyes, and pointed at him. She was appalled and leaned over to tap him nicely (she's nice) on the shoulder and request he hang up. HE IGNORED HER. Now, I thought maybe he was not so good with the English, but my son's teacher addressed him in both English and Spanish (She's fluent) and he ROLLED HIS EYES (i saw in the mirror) and ignored her. I was incensed. She looked back at me and shrugged, like, "what can I do?" She was clearly uncomfortable being more aggressive. Fortunately, my recent meditation stint hasn't changed the fact that, when needed, AGGRESSIVENESS IS MY SPECIALTY.

I unbuckled myself from mt spot next to my 3 year old son and his buddies, and made a beeline for the front of the bus. I tapped the guy on the shoulder. Firmly.

"SIR," I said, loudly enough that at least half the bus got quiet to listen (I had to make sure I was heard over the engine noise, kids screaming, etc). "YOU NEED TO HANG UP YOUR PHONE RIGHT. NOW. YOU CAN NOT SPEAK ON THE PHONE WHILE YOU ARE DRIVING A BUS FULL OF 50 SCHOOLCHILDREN. HANG UP NOW." He kept talking. We were a little bit stuck in traffic at this point, not going as fast as before. He keeps talking.

"DO NOT IGNORE ME," I said.

 I hear him say, in perfect English into the phone, "Some crazy lady is giving me trouble." "I AM ABOUT TO GIVE YOU A LOT MORE TROUBLE IF YOU DON'T HANG UP THE PHONE," I said. "THE PARENTS ON THIS BUS WILL CALLL YOUR BOSS, THE SCHOOL WILL DROP YOUR COMPANY'S CONTRACT, and THEY WILL FIRE YOU. YOU HAVE NOT SEEN TROUBLE YET. HANG UP THE PHONE." He does.

(lest you think I overreacted, the teacher, both assistant teachers, and all the other parent chaperones thanked me later for taking a stand). 

He then proceeds to deliberately slam on the brakes more harshly than needed every time he stops. Two kids do throw up from the stop and go, the herky-jerky (with an emphasis on "jerky) driving (hooray! my son was not one of them!). 

[SIDE NOTE: I leaned forward and gave one of the pukey kids a piece of gum to get rid of the taste. Immediately somehow word on teh street was that FROG'S MOM HAS GUM. I had 45 kids wanting gum, and NO, i DID NOT bring enough for the whole class. Dude, ROOKIE MISTAKE, right? Everybody knows you don't hand out a snack. Plus, then I realized the kids might choke on the gum and then his mom would be all, thanks for killing my kid. I told him he had to sit up straight while he chewed it. Then i told the other kids THAT WAS MY LAST PIECE and IT WAS MEDICINE GUM FOR HIS TUMMY. Whew, fiction comes in handy.]

He missed another exit. We finally get off on the right exit after several turns. He parks abruptly, opens the door, and we disembark, with him actually giving me the stink-eye in the mirror as I walk to the front with my group of kids. I give it right back.

3. We were 15 minutes late. They held the show for us, but what that meant was that 50 or so preschoolers had to sit strappped into the seats on a bus for an HOUR (what should have been a 30 minute trip), then immediately have to sit still AGAIN to watch a 45 minute show, then sit still again while they are served lunch, and then have to sit still on a trolley to go to a tour of something I wasn't sure what at this point, and THEN and ONLY THEN could they come back and get FOUR tokens to ride rides and play games at the Enchanted Castle. We had to actually WALK THEM THROUGH the arcade to get to the show when we first got there. Pure torture for them, bless their sweet little hearts. They were so patient.

4. Because we were late, we had to sit in the back and far left side of house, behind 6 other school groups of ADULT-SIZED teenagers in puffy coats and hats. Meaning, our kids could barely see or hear what was going on. Even I couldn't keep up. It was something to do with African folk tales. We took them in phases for potty breaks (I didn't care if they needed to go to the potty or not, it was torture to make them sit still for that long). The show was fine (one guy was pretty awesome but the other 3 were awkward and quiet and unenergetic and just made me keep thinking, I AM SO GLAD I DON'T DO KIDS SHOWS ANY MORE), but not worth that trip. Not that anyone could have known that in advance.

5.  Then they served us lunch. Pizza, sugar cookies, and PEPSI. Yes, they brought a tray of individual cups of PEPSI to our table. Seriously sometimes you think people have never MET children. Even in my early twenties, back in my "i don't like children" days, I would never have thought it was okay to serve soda to a 4 year old. We sent the pepsi back and asked them kindly to bring us just some pitchers of water and some dixie cups. That worked just fine. For some reason the children were as dehydrated as if we'd just spent 40 days in the desert.

6. I had a talk with the other parents, and we all agreed that we weren't comfortable getting back on the bus with the same driver. The other class' teacher said, "Yeah, but what can you do? We have no choice." "No,", I said, "there's always a choice." I made a decision. I spoke with our teacher and nicely told (we have a good relationship, so I was not yelling at her, I was HELPING her solve the problem) told her that I was flat not getting back on that bus with the kids I was in charge of (this made it easier for her to take action--she can't throw her weight around as a CPS employee, but if a parent refuses...something has to be done. Nobody can fire me for refusing to get on the bus, you know? And it's not just my kid....I was in charge of the my good friend's son as well...I wasn't about to have to tell her, "Well, we knew the guy was crazy and reckless, but we had no choice but to ride home with him." And really, a stink needs to be made big enough so that this guy is not allowed to drive buses anymore. he was incompetent, reckless, illegal, and with a bad attitude. He should not be in charge of the safety of children. I felt a societal responsbility to do something. I don;t want anyone to be fired, but the guy can be moved to something else--mechanic, bus washer (clearly not his strong suit), something. Just not driving around people's children.

So I sort of...well, I went on strike. I went a little "Norma Rae" on they ass. I spoke with a few of the other parents, who agreed that they too would refuse to board that bus. One said during the ride she was actually figuring out how best to position her body in the case of a crash, because she was certain the guy was going to crash us all on the highway. How can I cushion my child's crash with my body, she was thinking. Another mom told me she was already envisioning the evening newscast with our crash on it. I'm not exagerrating this. We were scared. 

I offered to be the one to talk to the school or the bus company or whoever it was if it would help. As luck would have it, though, we'd had one class parent cancel and stay at her job but still send her son on the trip. Kismet: her job was in the school office, and she had a vested interest in making sure we all got back safely. We put her on the case and she took care of it, using suggestions I had made (refusing to pay for this trip if they didn't send someone different, threatening to pull the school's contract with the whole bus company for the rest of the year and beyond, assuring them that we Do have choices, that we can have parents come out with their cars and get the kids, and saying that they are lucky we didn't just call 911 and have the guy pulled over).  At first the company offered to comp the fee for this trip. Not good enough, it's not about the money, we said. Finally they agreed to send someone new.

Now that THAT particular Hell was taken care of, we could move on to Fresh Hell.

You know the phrase, it'll be a cold day in Hell....? Well, it was.

7. I screwed up. Our teacher is a Vegan, and so is one of the girls in the class. Vegan girl's mom had for some reason not packed her a lunch (because, you know, all Chuck E. Cheese-type places have Vegan cuisine, right?). The poor girl sat there salivating for 20 minutes while her friends ate pizza. I thought she was lactose intolerant or just picky or something. No one told me she was Vegan. The cookies came and we had to stop the two peanut-allergy kids from eating them, just in case, but I let Vegan Girl eat two of them because I thought she was merely Lactose Intolerant Girl. Oops. The teacher's hummus, which she was going to share with Vegan Girl, was misplaced somehow, so she ended up being able to order something from the snack bar for both of them. Somehow they had VEGGIE BURGERS! Amazing. They had exactly 2 minutes to scarf it before we were herded onto the trolley.

8. The trolley driver was super nice and friendly and we loved him. Trolleys, however, don't have seatbelts of any kind. They're just wooden park benches riveted to the floor. Awesome. We went on a four lane road--only for like 5 minutes, but holy crap all of us were chanting under our breath, dontcrashdontcrashdontcrash. Because really, no seatbelts on a four lane road. It's bad enough that we had a crazy bus driver on a bus that only has regular lapbelts (after we're all so safe about the carseats we pick? come ON. They have busses with preschool restraints across the chest area, but this wasn't that. Thanks, bus company).

9. So then we get to what has been touted to the kids as

A STOP ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD!!!!!

So of course they're all, like, YAY!!! and then,

WHERE

IS

THE

TRAIN???

Seriously. My kid was not happy. We were dropped off on what was just some lady's driveway and walked one house over to what actually was the very interesting "Peck Homestead." I felt so bad for the tour guide when we ushered in our little rugrats: she looked like she might pass out. "HOW OLD ARE THEY?" she said. She'd spent the day giving tours to large groups of African American high school students who were probably quite well-versed on the history of slavery in America, the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, etc. She had no idea what to say to our group.

"So.....uh....a LONNNNNG time ago, before your....uh...GRANDMOTHER was born.....in AMERICA....there was something called....SLAVERY. Who knows what slavery is?"

A.D.D. boy in our class: "MY MOM SAYS SHE IS MY SLAVE."

(I wish I was kidding. I know that's too "perfect" to be true, but it really truly is. Yikes. He really said it)

The tour guide vamped and actually did a pretty great job of explaining, given the circumstances. But it's a challenge.

To wit:

Slavery is when you lack freedom (what's lack? what's freedom?) and before the civil war (what's sybil? what's WAR?) they had to wear shackles (what are shackles?)...okay, well, then the President (BARACK OBAMA!!!!!! several of them cheered)...uh, no,,, a president from a long time ago (dude, they're four....barack Obama WAS elected a long time ago...his inauguration date was a fourth of their lives ago).

Anyway, painful. I kept wishing I really had packed a flask of vodka. I am not even much of a drinker. I was actually thinking a nice doobie would have come in handy. My head was killing me.

10. We get back to the Enchanted Castle. LIGHTS! NOISE! MILDEW!!! The children are handed four tokens each. They try to scatter. I have to keep three children alive and NOTLOST for the next thirty minutes. This was somewhat easy with the two that knew me--my kid and my friend's kid--not only because they know me and know I MEAN BUSINESS when I say to stay near me and be a good listener, but also because they were wearing YELLOW SHIRTS. Because WE ROCK, MashugaMom and I. Yellow is easy to find. We had not coordinated this but it was super easy for me to follow aruond two yellow shirts. Not s'much for the dark haired girl I barely know (and who does NOT know I mean business) whose parents had dressed her for the field trip all in EARTH TONES. She matched the damn carpet. I could NOT keep track of her. I kept panicking and then would realize she was standing RIGHT NEXT TO ME. She might as well have been wearing head to toe camouflage gear painted to look like flashing video game machines. She could disapppear in a heart beat, it was like I was trying to keep track of fucking Predator. To make matters worse, the Play Area (netting to climb and tubes to crawl in and slides, oh my!) they'd all been salivating over during the play turned out to be CLOSED. And half the rides/games for their age group had "out of order" signs on them.

We got the potty break accomplished, our tokens spent on lame-ass games that barely moved, unfortunately, and the kids were, surprisingly, MORE THAN HAPPY to get back on the bus. ANY BUS. DEAR GOD LET US SIT DOWN AND ZONE OUT. Fortunately, when we emerged from the strobe-flashing Hell Cave that is 'Enchanted Castle' into the blinding sunlight, we were greeted by a shiny, new-looking, squeaky-clean yellow school bus with a young, SMILING driver. The windows were slightly cracked, and as we pulled away from the Hell Castle, a slight breeze wafted in the windows.

Air never smelled so fresh.

He got us back to the school with no detours, no phone calls, and in 30 minutes. I seriously could have kissed him.

When I arrived home with an exhausted Frog in tow, I found a bottle of pre-mixed COSMOPOLITANS at my door with a thank you note from MashugaMom for "keeping her kid alive." She didn't even know the half of it yet. 

I unscrewed the top before I even took off my coat, made a snack for the two of us, and sat down with Frog to veg out and "decompress" from our trip. Cosmopolitans taste delicious, by the way, with goldfish crackers and a showing of The Land Before Time. In case you were wondering.

What Fresh Hell Is This?: Field Trip, Part I: The Prologue

On Thursday this week I will be taking a vacation day from work to submit myself to the pure torture that will be chaperoning my son's field trip to some Child Crack Castle up in the suburbs somewhere. I am not sure why my son's teacher, in her infinite wisdom, has decided that we must drive 45 minutes outside our MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREA, where you can not swing a dead cat without hitting numerous activity lands, play centers, and children's theatres, on a school bus with 23 three, four, and five year olds, for DID I MENTION FORTY-FIVE MINUTES ONE WAY, to go to this particular play land with some sort of wonderful show that may or may not have to do with something historical, I just do not know. I love doing activities with my son, and will even frequently take him to places with other children in them so that he can, like, learn stuff alongside said children, but this place, the website for this place we're going on Thursday, it looks an awful lot like Chuck E Cheese. It's NOT Chuck E Cheese, but it looks like it. It has rides, and tokens, and video games, and Bright! Flashing! Lights! and Loud! Noises! and even godhelpme an ANIMATRONIC STAGE SHOW and right about there is where I blacked the fuck out while looking at the site. Really, you know I don't go to places like Chuck E. Cheese. How did I get tricked into volunteering to chaperone this field trip when it's at such a place? It's entirely possible that I will walk in the door and immediately either black out or clap my hands over my ears and scream "DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP THE NOISE IS LIKE STABBING IN MY BRAIN OH GOD HELP ME!!!!!!! <sob>" which I think might freak out some of my son's friends. When I chaperoned their trip to Wrigley they rode a bus but it was like, four blocks, and then we sat in the cold and rain for two hours. It was a blast. Really. But now? I'll be lucky if I don't get puked on. If I hadn't volunteered to chaperone, I could totally just have my son be mysteriously absent that day and take him somewhere fun by myself, but nooooo, I had to be a Good Mom and sign up to chaperone. I will be wasting a DAY OF MY LIFE standing in what is essentially Chuck E. Cheese. Oh, and it has something to do with Black History Month. Which I'm all for, but riddle me this, Batman: what does this...

..have to do with the Underground Railroad? Which of these animatronic jester-dragons is playing Harriet Tubman?
 

Psyched! The Musical

Hi! I'm back! I know I spend an awful lot of time apologizing for absences....are you beginning to feel like I'm a bad boyfriend? It's not you, it's me, I promise. It's not that I'm just not that into you. It's that I'm 31 flavors of crazy right now. (Ha, "right now," she says...like it's temporary).

I won't bore you with excuses. However, suffice it to say that:

1. I started therapy. Therapy Good. My therapist is a great fit. She's just the right balance between being sympathetic and tellin' it like it is. I highly recommend getting you a therapist, if'n you don't have one already. Everyone should have one. Just like TiVo.

2. She confirms that my OCD is probably genetic and is very real and legitimate. She said I "might" want to look into drugs. She gave me a recommendation for a psychiatrist who could talk to me about that. No pressure, she said. I'm not gonna do that for awhile, because a) you know how in college if you smoked pot AND drank a lot, you weren't really sure which one fucked you up more? well, i don't want to start therapy AND drugs and suddenly be all sane n' shit and then not know which part fixed me, right? and b) dude, I LIKE my OCD. It comes in handy. I am, like, sooooooo efficient. Seriously. I'm worried that my work would suffer if I took pills. Or that I'd accomplish less personal stuff in my free time. Or that I'd gain weight, or have icky sexual side effects (like not wanting any, which would suck since I just started reading The Mominatrix's Guide to Sex --I can't let all that good advice go to waste!). Or that my creativity would plummet. So, yeah, I'm-a hold off on that front.

3. I had a slew of Facebook friends pile on me for even THINKING about the drugs. And then I thought, dude, get out of my business! and then I thought, wait, if you want people out of your business, don't freaking put yer business on the interwebs, dumbass. So I had to do some thinking about that. And then someone said to me, You know, you should blog about the whole journey with therapy and drugs and OCD and your mental health in great detail, because, I mean, look how well it worked out for Dooce, her readers feel much closer to her because they know that stuff. And I considered that perspective, but it seemed to me that if I went that route with even one iota of "this will get me more readers" in the back of my mind, then that would be a really bad reason to do it. It'd be like having a baby just so you can buy a Bugaboo stroller. (I'm talking to you, Lincoln Park). That worked for Heather because she was speaking her Truth, you know, and she was pretty much the first person to do that to such a wide audience on a blog, so she took a big risk there (and remember that whole getting fired thing? her risks are not without their consequences). So, you know, that was the right path for her, and I'm the Queen of Oversharing, but it has to be for the right reasons. So I still have to decide how much of that "journey" I want to share. When I tweeted about it before (my tweets are set up to automatically populate to Facebook), it was just because it was amusing (in my humble opinion) that the therapist said I should consider drugs for OCD, and my immediate thought on hearing that was, I need to research the side effects for all the drugs they make for OCD. See? Funny, because it's OCD? Funny, right? Eh? Eh? But see, I tweeted something I thought was amusing, and then people got on my case about it, and that made me step back and go, huh. Why am I sharing this stuff?

4. And then I tweeted a few times about becoming a vegetarian, and some people jumped all over my ass about that, too, and I was all, DOUBLE-YOO TEE EFF, social media, GET OFF MY ASSSSS. But again, totally brought that on myself. So, eh.

5. Vegetarianism, by the way, is so much fun to research. There are ALLLLL sorts of websites and books you can read about it. If you want to go all OCD on something, I highly recommend becoming a vegetarian. Neverending supply of shit to look at (and worry about! like whether you're getting enough vitamins & minerals and protein and stuff. More on that later).

6. And then we went up to the Wisconsin Dells for a few days, which was really great. Just a total vacation from Life. No cell phone, no tweeting (and believe me, there were MANY things I could have tweeted, the Dells are one big Holy Shit WTF waiting to be tweeted 24/7). I played in the waterpark with my son, and we splashed and rode waterslides and shot each other with water cannons and of course I have to tell you I totally now have to do a post wherein I companre the waterparks for you. See because I can't talk or think or write without four new to-do list items coming up on my agenda. It's a sickness, people.

7. Oh and then I volunteered and was appointed to the Advisory Council of the Buddhist Temple I belong to, because if you've got OCD, you can't just GO to the temple and SIT THERE and MEDITATE, oh NO, you have to VOLUNTEER to show up EARLY and clean the BATHROOMS and do DOOR DUTY where you GREET people and you are EXPECTED TO SHOW UP ALL THE TIME. Why oh why. What is it with the ambition? Why can I not just the chill the fuck out. I am the most type-A buddhist I know. It's nutty.

8. But it's turned out to be a great thing because I can't just be all, eh, I'm sleeping in and eating pancakes; it forces me to do something for MYSELF. Somehow, by volunteering to be SELFLESS, it actually forces me to do something SELFISHLY that makes me fel good about myself and takes care of my inner peace issue. So. That's a good thing. Also a good thing that I'm a vegetarian now, since I don't have to worry about lightning strikes while in the temple, and I don't commit any faux pas at communal breakfast by asking a monk to pass the bacon.

9. Now I'm going to write something for number 9 because I realize I'm close to ten and that is a nice solid number to end with, and since I'm OCD I now of course have to make this a list of ten things. Oh, I'll write about the fact that I've also gotten back into writing my novel, which I spent all day Saturday working on. 5,000 words. After not touching it for three years. So yay! More on that later.

10. <---see? a nice, solid number.

So, in short: I'm back. I think I'm back. Thank you for not dropping your subscription (according to my stats, you're all still there). If you did drop your subscription, you've been replaced by someone else without me even noticing, so HA. That'll teach ya. Takes more than that to hurt me. If you really want to take ME down, you gotta do something drastic, like....like leave a wooden train track on the floor so that when I'm scooting around on my knees picking up toys with you, I will put my knee on top of it and nearly dislocate my kneecap. (This was really fun, when I almost let out a slew of curse words IN my son's classroom at pickup time. I'm never helping him clean up again. Too dangerous.) If you want to know how to take me down, though, just ask my three year old. He's got booby traps set up everywhere.

So...what have you guys been up to? No really. Tell me.

Readysetgo.

Make Like a New Leaf and Get Outta Here

Sorry I’ve been away, but I’ve been sick. Like, REALLY sick, can’t breathe, throat on fire, superbiotics needed capital S-I-C-K sick. I haven’t really felt like sitting upright for days, much less typing. I’ve been sleeping and reading, sleeping and reading. I’ve had a lot of time to THINK. This is not something I have, much. And it was a nice thing, because right before I got sick, I had sort of a mini-nervous breakdown when my kid half-fell out of his BRAND NEW loft bed that thank God is only half-height (just high enough for a little play area underneath, and it’s not even one I can sit upright in, so hey, not that high), but still, he went to reach something and fell out and I had these lightning reflexes and caught him behind my back, with my right hand twisted up and back, and sort of near-dislocated my rotator cuff in the process, but thank God I caught him, he was seriously UPSIDE DOWN, head was 2 seconds from Floor Impact, and he learned his lesson and I yelled “goddamnit!” for no reason whatsoever except surprise and fear and then I put him to bed and apologized for my bad word and he sucked his thumb and sniffled (it had scared him, too), and then I went in the living room and sort of collapsed in a puddle of tears on the floor, because my arm really hurt and remained a physical manifestation of that nightmare moment and also because, you know, the bed SAYS RIGHT ON IT that it’s for ages 6 and up, but we thought,  oh nooooo, our kid is almost 4 and he’s super athletic, he started walking at 8 months, so he’ll be fiiiiiine,  so we got him the bed and Oh. Em. Gee, if he falls out and breaks his neck it will be ALL MY FAULT because I am a horrible mother who did not follow the guidelines and gave a not-even-4-year-old a loft bed, and also put him in flammable pajamas and cut the tags off of his pillows which is against federal law and by the way, sometimes I leave the bathroom when he’s in the tub, and IIIIII’MMMMMMM A HORRIBULLLLLLLLL MOTHERRRRRRRR <sob> . Seriously, I was pathetic.

My husband picked me up off the floor and held me for awhile and told me I am not a horrible mother, that there are crack ho’s who raise perfectly respectable children, and ours will be fine, too, despite both our occasional failings. (and the crack). He also said I might want to look into therapy. And, you know, trying to work some free time into my schedule. Which seems to be the antithesis of free time, to have to schedule it, but I think he’s right because in my life “free time” is not a concept that just happens organically. I almost had some, when grad school ended, but I somehow thought that would be a FANTASTIC time to start a blog.  So. For the record, I blame you.

Anyway, I’ve been doing some soul-searching while I was sick – I know, I know, it’s sooooo done, right? Soul-searching in January, turning over a new life, like I’m the first person to have a freaking new year’s resolution?—but still, I’m doing it. Something’s gotta give.

So my husband’s idea—and this is pretty radical, I know, especially if you know me? He might have gotten killed for even suggesting this, depending on my mood—his idea is that maybe I try to turn off the computer once in awhile. As in, at the end of, um, the work day. Like ordinary people do. See, I telecommute 3 of my 5 work days, and when you telecommute, there are days (for me at least) where you sit down at 7am and you don’t remember to eat until 2pm when you realize you have to pee. And then you pee and eat really quick, and then it’s back to it. And when I’m at the office I HAVE to leave by 4:30 at the VERY LATEST to HOPEFULLY make it in time to pick up my kid before his school closes and they call DCFS on me (And, incidentally, charge me $5 PER MINUTE I am overdue. As they should, I mean, you should not be late to pick up your kid, but yowch. Not that it’s happened to me, but I know others. You know, BAD MOMS who are late to pick up their kids. As I NEVER would be. Those bitches).  So there’s an end to my workday on those days. But telecommuting days? I work right up til 5:15, then rush to pick up my kid (only a 5 minute walk) and then we come back home and if I’m busy, I just go right back on the damn computer. It’s crazy and stupid and not the idea of motherhood I want to conform to. 

So clearly, something needed to change.

So I tried turning off the computer last Monday. 5pm, and *click*.

Off.  

And I had a very nice evening. I picked up my kid and wasn’t even close to being late, so I let him play on the playground for five minutes (it’s cold, so that’s all he got), and then we had a nice leisurely walk home, I got dinner on the table in plenty of time because I wasn’t multitasking trying to check e-mail while boiling pasta, and we ate a nice meal, he went to bed on time, and after I put him to bed—when I usually go straight to the computer—I READ A BOOK. No shit.

But then on Tuesday I got sick, and then by Wednesday I was feeling like Death so I went to the doctor and I had, oh, a sinus infection AND strep, and it was so bad that I MISSED going to a business trip in beautiful LaJolla, California, where it was 60 degrees and sunny while here in Chicago it was, um, FIVE. I did not get to play tennis, or have amusing conversations with board members, or drink really good wine and eat really fabulous meals and sleep in a fancy bed at a resort with no Human Alarm Clock in the other room and no Human Noise Machine snoring next to me. Ohhhh, no. I got to stay home where it is DID I MENTION five degrees, and sniffle and do the neti pot over and over and take antibiotics and mucinex and a prescription decongestant and on top of all that, still have to be Nice Mommy in the evenings and all day Saturday while my husband worked extra hours.

So I think maybe the universe is telling me, I can be on the computer whenever I want to, dammit.

Except, now, I realize, just from the niceness of that one evening, that I really liked not being all crazed. I liked "shutting down." I still snuck peeks at e-mail on my phone (heh, heh...I was seriously in the bathroom with my phone getting a quick fix. E-mail is my meth.) But that's kind of okay, because when I check e-mail on my phone, I'm less likely to respond RIGHT THAT SECOND unless it's an urgent work thing. And I'm also not capable of ALSO checking Facebook, Twitter, and any number of parenting boards I pop into when I'm bored. When I check e-mail on the computer, I might do "the rounds" of those other sites--and seriously, if I'm selling something on ebay and there are 4 days left, do I really need to know how many people are "watching" my auction? I'm telling you, it's a SICKNESS--whereas on the phone it's 30 seconds, 'm in, I'm out, done.

So that's something I'm going to allow myself. But I'm going to try to stick with the computer part. Except it's Sunday and I'm sitting here writing this. D'oh. Fail.

But that's ok, because it's like therapy. Next session, we will talk about my crazy OCD tendencies.

So let's just pretend I paid you $90 for this, shall we?

 

On Going Missing

A woman I was once close to, with whom I traveled to the Dominican Republic and to Malawi (in southern Africa), who probably saved my life on two occasions and was with me for what some might argue was a near-death experience on another, has gone missing in Haiti.

I'm not asking you to do anything about it. I just have to process it. And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is, I suppose, to come along for the ride.

As a matter of fact, she might be fine by now and I just haven't heard the news yet. I hope that's true.  

As part of my current job, I used to run a philanthropic organization that, without getting too specific, organized trips to do free surgeries for children in areas of need. We went a couple of times to the Dominican Republic and several times to Malawi, the dubious claim to fame of which is that it is "one of the world's least developed countries."

The first time Keri saved my life we were sitting in our sad little hotel room, eating a long awaited meal after having arrived only hours before. After two and a half days of travel to get there, a harrowing final flight in which we lost pressure in midair and had to turn back around and land in Johannesburg and then get back in that same (unmarked, plain white) airplane the next day, after arriving and having all our luggage dumped on the tarmac for us to pick through, after checking in and finding a dead spider under my pillow, we were jet lagged and dehydrated and giddy and while eating mediocre food that at that point tasted like manna from heaven I got to laughing so hard that I actually inhaled a bite of food, and THUNK! it stopped my windpipe right up, as clearly as if I'd corked a bottle of wine. I went white. I made no noise. I tried to cough to expel it, but nothing happened. I still had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard in my punch-drunk state, that at first Keri must have thought I was just laughing so hard no sound was coming out. Then I felt myself making the "international symbol for choking" (hands to throat--I remember thinking at the time, oh my God I'm going to die immitating Chris Farley), and Keri was on me like white on rice, quickly did the Heimlich--or something, she stood me up from the edge of the bed where I was sitting and she did something, I'm not sure what, actually--and the food was out. I coughed my head off. Tears were running down my face. I had a sore throat and almost no voice for the next three days. In Malawi, there is no calling 911. If she had not been in my room, I probably would have died. I was very, very lucky that I was traveling with her, and that she was in my room, and even luckier that she was a nurse.

The second time Keri saved my life  was not quite as dramatic. We were traveling home from that same trip, and I had, on the last day, after 10 days in the O.R. in Malawi, and getting run-down, and working 14 hour days, and being really careful about water and such, at some point I must have let my guard down, and I contracted some sort of food- or water-borne illness. I have never been so sick in my life. I'll spare you the details, but just imagine the worst stomach flu or food poisoning you have ever had and multiply it by, oh, a guhjillion. Keri got me on antibiotics right away; she just carried all these meds on her, all the time. Thank God. They didn't kick in right away (and I had trouble keeping them down long enough to work, because I couldn't keep anything down), but who knows how bad off I would have been otherwise. She got me on the plane from Malawi to Johannesburg, then Joburg to Heathrow. I kept it together for most of the flight to London, until they walked through the cabin with the pesticide canisters (when you leave Africa, they--it's hard to believe this is true, in the 21st century--they actually DELOUSE you. The flight attendants stand at the front of the plane with what looks like a sterno canister in their hands, they reach up and pop the top off of it like it's a grenade, and then they hold it above their heads and slowly walk toward the back of the plane while a fine white mist fills the air. They don't even make an announcement about it sometimes, so the first time it happened I nearly lost my shit). This time, I had been hurling for days but was doing ok on this particular flight as long as I remained really still and breathed through my moise and there was no turbulence, but the smell from the canister put me over the edge, and I hightailed it for the bathroom again. I was so sick I couldn't even come back out. They actually landed the plane in London with me bracing myself, on my knees, in the bathroom at the back of the airplane, with a flight attendant yelling at me from his seat across the aisle. In Heathrow I sat, crying and leaning over a trashcan, in the main terminal, while Keri procured an assortment of crackers (would it fucking kill the British to sell saltines just this once? I thought) and some sort of juice. I literally could not stand, I was that sick. I laid with my head in Keri's lap and slept during our three hour layover. Keri is Canadian so we were to part ways at Heathrow. She took the chance of missing her flight so that she could walk me to mine. She talked to the gate agents about my condition, showed her credentials, and somehow got me on an earlier flight, with three seats together in a row so I could lay down flat and sleep. She gave me an eye mask and told the flight atendants not to bother me. I slept for 8 hours straight and somehow made my way off the plane when we landed. I almost kissed the ground, I was so happy to be home. When I went to the doctor the next day in Chicago, he said that the antibiotics had 'saved' me. He gave me a shot of something else, for good measure. Three days later was the only thanksgiving I've ever had where I ate nothing. It took me three weeks to feel somewhat normal.

A place like Malawi is no place to be having brushes with death. You have no idea how much you rely, in the so-called "first world," on things like streetlights and the ability to call 911, until you have a car accident without those things.

I was riding in the middle of the cab of a beat-up pickup truck. It was midnight, and the sky was black as pitch, the kind of black you can only get when there are no lights nearby, where you can look in front of you and not even see your hand, where your eyes seem to try to reach out of your body, straining to identify something, but if you look up you can see layer upon layer of fields of stars, as if you're wearing 3-D glasses. THe kind of dark, I'm convinced, you can only experience in Africa. 

Our host (the head surgeon at the tiny, one-story hospital) had had us to dinner at his house and, though he was a bit tipsy, was driving us back to our hotel. Cabs were not an option: you could sometimes get a gypsy cab outside a hotel, but there were no cab companies to call for a pick-up. We pulled out of his gravel driveway, and one of his hired household help closed the tall iron gate behind us (it was not a "nice" house--you simply have to have a gate to protect your home). I had no seatbelt, but at least I wasn't sitting with the men who were simply crouching in the back of the pickup bed in back. We were driving down a totally unlit street when our right side mirror suddenly shattered and little pebbles of safety glass showered those of us in the cab. We all screamed at once, before we even knew what had happened. We had been sideswiped by an oncoming jeep. It hadn't had its headlights on so we only saw it a second or two before it hit us, not long enough to have time to swerve. Our host didn't stop the car.

"You don't stop on the road at night here," he explained in his clipped British accent. "They might have done it on purpose to get us to stop."

"To do what?" I asked.

"Rob us, of course," he said. "Maybe worse." He kept driving.

If it had been a head-on collision, he explained later, we would have been dead for sure. No one else would have traveled down that road until daylight. We would have bled to death from our injuries in the middle of the street. Wild dogs were around (and the news had recently told of children being mauled--or disappearing--in nearby villages because of attacks from either a wild dog or a hyena or something). We had no cell phones.

"And of course even if we somehow were discovered and taken to hospital," he expained with a chuckle, "half the surgeons in the country are in this lorry!" Ha, ha.

Ha.

Keri and I had a stiff drink back at the hotel, though we had to be up at 5am the next morning for prayers at the hospital (it was run by a Christian organization) and then scrubbing and prep. We talked about our plans for kids (neither of us had them, then), our desire to adopt, our marriages (she was newly hitched), other travels, the cases for the next day. She was considering moving stateside but didn't want to miss out on the maternity leave in Canada.

Keri is an amazing woman: capable, strong, hilarious, great under pressure. She put me in my place in the O.R. (and outside of it) more than once, and there are not many people who can do that. When the funding was cancelled for the philanthropy, we fell out of touch, I think because she had hard feelings that I had somehow wanted to get rid of the project (not true, but I suppose I didn't fight as hard as I could have for it, either. The writing was on the wall, I knew the Board wasn't going to keep it because they had to cut funding somewhere, and to keep arguing after months of preliminary lobbying on my part would have been an exercise in futility). I haven't spoken to her in years, but I just heard from a colleague that she was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake and no one has heard from her since.

I hope that wherever she is, if she's in need, that there is someone with her that is as capable as she has always been, someone that can look after her the way she looked after me. I have no way of helping her, from here. I've given my money to the Red Cross and a few other small organizationson the ground in Port Au Prince, I've watched the news to try to spot her (silly, but...she's got long blond hair, she'd kind of stand out). She might be fine and I just haven't heard. If she's fine, she's working to help people 24/7, I am sure. It's who she is. Her need isn't any greater than anyone else's, there. There are so many tragedies. But I hope she's fine.

I hope she's fine.

Momtrolfreak’s Unauthorized Guide to Taking Your Preschooler to DisneyWorld Without a Breakdown or the Use Of Psychotropic Drugs

 

(this one's gonna be long, kids; grab a snack. For those of you who are thrown off by something on this site that may actually prove to be of use to someone, I can only offer that I will not do it very often)

GENERAL DOs and DON’Ts

1. DO take inventory of all your luggage before leaving your house, so that your LARGEST RED IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS suitcase is not left behind, so that you do not get all the way to the airport and then have to turn around and go home to get said suitcase, thus tripling your cab fare to $100 total.

2. DO borrow a booster seat from your friend for the cab ride. DO NOT, however, expect to be able to use it on the plane. Carseats are approved by the FAA, but boosters are not.The FAA hates people over the age of 2. Fuck you, preschooler, says the FAA. I hope you choke on a peanut while craning your neck to see out.

3. DO get a cabbie who drives fast enough to get you back to the airport in time.Ours was a Palestinian Steve McQueen, seriously, the guy should be a stunt driver in da movies.

4. DO marry someone who is smart enough to bring, on the second trip, a garbage bag and some wet wipes for the Inevitable Preschooler Puking Incident that will, occur from too much time spent in a herky-jerky cab. (Thank you Aquaman)

5. DO fly Delta so that if you do happen to arrive only 27 minutes before takeoff, they are nice enough to let you check your luggage and get on the plane.  Also, DO exploit the fact that YOUR THREE YEAR OLD WILL MISS HIS FIRST TRIP TO DISNEYWORLD in order to beg your way ahead in line and into the military and airline employee security line.

6. DO NOT get your hopes up that, when your connecting flight is canceled, the now-three-hour layover will mean that you will get Chick-Fil-A in the Atlanta airport, because of course you idiot you are there on SUNDAY.

7. DO exploit OH NO THIS IS MY PRESCHOOLER’S FIRST TRIP TO DISNEY to beg your way higher up on the standby list for the replacement flight.

8. DO NOT freak out that your spouse always decides to spend his time at airports loudly brainstorming ways to improve current TSA procedures, loudly employing the terms “BOMB” and “TERRORIST” within earshot of numerous TSA employees.

9. DO bring Afrin nose spray, antibiotics, Mucinex D, neti pot, Kleenexes, and SHEER WILL to counter waning sinus infection before flight, so that your head does not explode during takeoff (TSA frowns upon exploding sinuses these days almost as much as exploding underwear).  If your sister can have a full bowel resection and still make this trip, you will not I REPEAT WILL NOT be deterred by a sinus infection.

10. DO NOT expect to go on the Log Flume when it is 30 degrees in Florida. Doing so may result in the Log Flu. I hear it’s nasty.You shit splinters.

11. DO pack your coat. DO NOT think, “Oh, I’m a Chicagoan, I won’t need a hat/gloves, because I am hard core about the coldness.” DO realize that in Chicago, 30 degrees feels warm only by comparison, and because it is not, as in Florida, a DAMP cold. Also, in Chicago, you are rarely on a rollercoaster generating your own wind chill.

12. DO NOT think too hard about the fact that Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson look and act and sound an awful lot alike (white face, odd nose, strangely asexual, white gloves...eh? eh?)

13. DO NOT be disturbed when your mother says, “Ohhh, I love Peter Pan’s Flight! I did it on Darvoset once!” Even though your mother doesn't even drink because half a glass of champagne on New Year's Even has been known to make her melt onto the passenger door of the car, laughing and crying at the same time. DO worry that this is what will happen on Peter Pan's Flight.

14. DO use the complimentary “Mickey’s Magical Express” service that lets you check your bags at your home airport and not see them again until your hotel room.

15. DO NOT assume that they will end up in your hotel room any time soon. They disappear for about 6 hours after landing. It’s alllll part of the magic, folks. Still, better than lugging them around.

16. DO NOT rent the strollers in the park. If you think you will need a stroller, bring your own cheapie fold-up one. The strollers in the park are $15 a day to rent and they are SUPER uncomfortable. My kid could not sit in the thing, and he’s 3. It was hard plastic (all the better to hose off, I guess) and the opposite of ergonomically designed. He ended up actually upside down trying to curl up for a nap. Either bring your own stroller or be sure that someone in your party is ok with carrying the 3 year old around on their shoulders a LOT.

 

17. DO bring an iPod to wear when you ride “It’s A Small World” for the second through tenth times. This way, you do not amuse yourself by changing the lyrics:

You can use a gun, you can use some pills,

You can use a knife, just as long as it kills,

Why did I come along?

I hate this fucking song,

It’s a small world, kill me now.

There is no line for It’s A Small World, so you ride it a lot while you are waiting for your FastPass entry time on the more popular rides.  So, you know, if you don’t want your ears to start bleeding, I recommend either an iPod, or, like, Meth.

18. DO familiarize yourself with the FastPass process. It saves you a lot of heartache, as preschoolers are not that great at standing in lines.

19. DO get there when the park opens in the morning, at least for Magic Kingdom. They do a whole show, the train arrives with Mickey and pals aboard, they sing, they dance, they throw pixie dust, and then they open the gates with fanfare. It’s very special and the kids luh-HUV it.

20. DO get there early and then head straight to the BACK of the park you are doing that day. For Animal Kingdom, head straight for the safari ride. For Magic Kingdom with a preschooler, head to Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain Railroad, or Peter Pan’s Flight. For Epcot, do Soarin' or the TestTrack. Ride one, get a FastPass for another. Work your way toward the exit. Crowds will be much easier to handle this way.

21. DO, at least one day, eat lunch at Gepetto’s Restaurant, next to the It’s A Small World ride. Along one wall there are tables that have windows that look down into the beginning of the ride, and it’s very cool for the kids to wave down at the people on the boats while you’re eating.

22. DO prepare your kid for rides that may scare him/her. For instance, with my family’s love of Halloween and the like, my sister Margot had reserved a ride with Frog on the Haunted Mansion ride. We took him on first, giving him some coping skills, telling him if something jumped out at him he could “RAWR” back at it with his dinosaur claws up. He loved this and spent the whole ride rawring. As soon as we came out, he went in with his aunt and uncle, who would not have been able to help much if he had flipped out from fear. Apparently they got stuck in the part of the ride where a spook pops out of a barrel, so it popped out repeatedly in front of them, and Frog spent ten minutes going, “RAWR! (pause) RAWR! (pause) RAWR!” Good times.

23. DO NOT be alarmed when you hear “cast members” (all employees are referred to this way) welcome a new cast member and tell others “he’s with the mouse now.” Yes, it’s a cult. Just know that going in and it won’t bother you.You will be much happier if you just get it over with and drink the Kool-Aid on Day One.

24. DO stay on property if you can. We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge, in a 2BR villa (note: villas do not offer late checkout, you must be out by 11am, so if you want a late checkout to facilitate naptime, get a regular room). The lobby of the Wilderness Lodge is awesome. Oh, and it’s lovely when everything is decorated for Christmas. If you’re not Christian, go after they take down the holiday decorations and stop playing holiday music (January 10^th).Wilderness Lodge is cool because it looks like it's constructed entirely out of Lincoln Logs.

25. DO pick at least one day to do WHATEVER your kid wants to do. We did this our second day. It really, really makes them happy, and gives them a sense of control that somehow helps you with the rest of the week when you drag them all over the place trying to make everyone happy. While the rest of our group did Epcot countries on Day 2, we knew Frog would not be interested in the cultural immersion portion of that (he doesn’t even get what a country IS), so we let him pick the day’s itinerary. We did Small World seriously like 5 times in a row, Peter Pan’s flight 3 times, Dumbo, then Tomorrow land to do racecars, rockets, Buzz Lightyear, and the tour train, then we did a park tour on the old-timey railroad, then played in the playground in ToonTown.  We had snacks and potty breaks when HE wanted to. It was pretty much the best damn day of his entire life. The next day we went back to setting the itinerary, but he didn’t complain because he’d gotten his fill of calling the shots the day before.

FOOD:

Overall, the kids’ food sucks, which was a big surprise to me. I mean, it’s about kids, right? But all parks serve the same stuff for kids: microwave (weirdly coagulant) mac n cheese, cheese pizza, hot dog, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The first day we ordered the peanut butter and jelly. It was a Smuckers pre-made one individually wrapped, with individually wrapped baby carrots pack, an individually wrapped pack of grapes, and a milk carton. There was nothing fresh.  Good that there were sides that weren’t fries, so kudos for that, but wow. If your kid will eat grown-up food, you may want to occasionally go that route and just have him/her share off of your plate. Come to think of it, most of the adult food is not much better: meatball sandwich, fish planks, chicken nuggets, pizza, etc. If you have a fridge in your room, I recommend getting some groceries. Save your money for eating out at night. There is no restriction on bringing sandwiches or whatever into the park. Oh and there are water fountains everywhere, so you can bring a water bottle to refill. The only problem with that plan—which I followed on Day 1 but then abandoned—was that the water in your room and in the parks tastes like Florida water. As in, slightly fishy or sandy or something. It’s just...off, somehow. So we ended up buying a case of bottled water and keeping it in the fridge, and each morning I’d tote one in my purse into the park.

KNICKKNACKS:

I highly recommend telling your kid up front what the plan is for gift shop buying. I saw a lot of little kids begging for purchases. Mine was all about the rides, thank God and was super bored the one time we went in a shop, BUT we also told him at the beginning that we would buy him three things. One toy at the beginning that he could buy with his own money, one balloon, and one thing at the end.  He had $12 of his own money saved up (presents from grandparents, chore money, etc). He bought a small die cast monorail that he took EVERYWHERE and put on anything straight as a monorail track. Great purchase.

The balloon we got on the way OUT of the park on the 2^nd day (for what it’s worth, you can let the air out to pack it, and then have it reinflated at your grocery store for like $1. Which is good because the balloons are TEN BUCKS.).

The last gift was a stuffed Mickey Mouse that his grandmother got him. This does not include, however, the AUTOGRAPH BOOK that you can buy anywhere in the park. Have this handy with a pen, as the characters show up unexpectedly. If you get there at opening, you can get a bunch of autographs before there’s much of a line. Frog warmed up to the idea of autographs on Day 3 and became something of a stalkerazzi at that point. We were begging him to go on a ride but he was determined to get Pluto, Daisy Duck, and then “Chimp and Dale” as he calls them, all in a row. By the way, only try to get autographs when the characters are set up for such. If they are walking around or dancing at a street party, they strangely do not have on the right "hands" for holding a pen. I plan to use this at work: Sorry, I don't have on my policy-writing hands today, oh well.  (Another bonus to getting there early is that you can ride the horse-drawn trolley that goes up and down main street). Oh, and he also got an owl from his great-aunt (it was her Christmas present to him), and then his grandmother bought him a tiny mouse-ears hat to go on the owl. So, so cute, the tiny mouse-ears hat. 

NAPS:

We did naps all but one day. I took the nap, too—I needed it. Oh and, we don’t co-sleep at home but I have to say, I had a really nice time co-sleeping with my kid on vacation. He is sooo warm and cuddly. The day we skipped the nap did not go well starting around 6pm, and we had to bail on our dinner reservations that night (the rest of the family went, we had a party of ten). He didn’t flip out, we just could see he was not going to hold it together for an 8pm dinner reservation.  Motivate your child to take naps by saying he can stay up to watch the FIREWORKS only if a nap occurs. You have to do the fireworks at least once. The castle is all lit up and it’s soooo pretty. Frog was on my hip watching the fireworks and whispered in my ear, “Oh, Mommy, they turn into starrrs.” Totally worth the price of admission.

DINNER OUT:

There are some cool restaurants to try out. Make your reservations the second you arrive in your hotel room the first night, things fill up fast.  I recommend the Japanese Restaurant at Epcot’s Japan (they cook in front of you at the table), the Kona Café at the Polynesian Resort, the Whispering Canyon restaurant at the Wilderness Lodge (only for lunch or dinner, though—breakfast there is not good at all. It’s a themed restaurant with obnoxious waiters who tease you, enormous drinks, all-you-can-eat milkshakes (yes really), and occasional stick-pony races around the restaurant for the kiddies. Oh, and be sure to ask for ketchup).  Also, there is a restaurant at Hollywood Studios where you sit IN a car and watch old b movies like you’re in a drive-in. I forget the name. Very cool though, reminds me of Pulp Fiction’s Jack Rabbit Slims. DO NOT eat at the NBC Commissary at Hollywood Studios. We ended up somehow with no other choice, stood in a massive line for an HOUR and got mediocre, lukewarm crap. Inexplicably, they “theme” their meals. There are only eight things on the menu:

“LOST” fried fish (ok, this makes sense, an island, gotcha)

“UGLY BETTY” Cheeseburger (um…eat it and you get fat and zitty?)

“GREY’S ANATOMY” Chicken Curry (um…I’m getting confused now…)

“EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION” Asian Salad (W.T.F., are you SERIOUS?)

There are two desserts,

“Desperate Housewives Chocolate Mousse” and “All My Children Strawberry Shortcake.”

 

I am at a loss here, people.

Just…take my advice, and make reservations for dinner. This will also keep you from enduring, after an hour in line, the person in front of you asking to SEE THE RECIPES for everything on the menu because someone in her party has egg and milk allergies. I’m sorry, but you had an hour of line-standing to ask that question. He manager went and got “THE BOOK” and brought it up and they spent seriously I am not kidding 20 minutes going over the recipes and devising work-arounds. If you have any allergies, MAKE RESERVATIONS FOR DINNER. The chefs will COME OUT TO YOUR TABLE and make you something SPECIAL. Do not go to a place called a COMMISSARY and hold up the line asking how GREY’S ANATOMY CHICKEN CURRY CAN BE MADE EGG FREE. DO NOT ORDER THE EXTREME MAKEOVER CHICKEN SALAD WITHOUT THE SESAME SEEDS, THE DRESSING, or the SOY. “ ASIAN SALAD, HOLD THE ASIAN” does not make sense.

WHAT TO DO AT EACH PARK WITH A THREE YEAR OLD:

I did a lot of research into what was and was not appropriate for our target age group. There are tons of things to do at each park, but I am listing below only the things you’ll want to do if you have a three or four year old in tow.

NOTE: AT all parks, there are an awful lot of 3-D rides and movies. If your kid isn’t into 3D, gets motion sick, or won’t wear the glasses, make sure to pay attention to those. We fall into the category above, so we did not do anything 3D.

HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

Do not go to Hollywood Studios with a preschooler. It is a waste of your time. Do not go there. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Close cover before striking. Not available in all states. We dragged him there one evening (see Commissary fiasco above) and felt horrible as we wandered around with nothing for him to do. Finally we took him on the Star Wars ride, a cool flight simulator, but it was pretty herky-jerky and we were lucky we got out of there with a reprise of the Inevitable Puking Incident from our cab ride earlier in the week.

MAGIC KINGDOM (divided into a couple of areas):

RAILROAD  stops at the front gate, Frontierland, and ToonTown. A full circle of the park takes 20 minutes. It’s a great way to get around quickly when your feet hurt, but if your kid is like mine, it’s just as thrilling as any of the “real” rides.

HORSE-DRAWN TROLLEY – super cool to ride this. Slow but cool, one-way trip. Great views of the castle. You hop on right at the main entrance, in the square.

Adventureland: Swiss Family Treehouse, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean (now refurbished with animatronic Johnny Depps, nom nom). A small waterfall drop in the dark could scare some littles. Frontierland: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: If your kid is fearless and over 40 inches. Test him out first on the Barnstormer kiddie coaster in ToonTown to gauge his fear factor.  Mine did this the last day and clenched his teeth through the whole thing and said he didn’t like it, but 30 minutes later he cited it as his favorite ride. So. Also, Tom Sawyer Island is AWESOME. You take a raft over and then kids can just explore. There’s a fort with guns where you can get all conflicted about your kid pretending to be a sniper, until he tells YOU to try it and you really find that you very much enjoy pretending to shoot the obnoxious people standing in line for Thunder Mountain Railroad. Avoid the Country Bear Jamboree, it is somehow both boring and creepy at the same time. It’s almost exactly like going to Chuck E Cheese. If that isn’t enough to scare you off, then nothing will.

Liberty Square: The Hall of Presidents now has President Barack Obama standing among George Washington, John F Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, etc. That is so super awesome I just don’t even know what to say. Barack side by side with Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves…gulp. Yay America, you’ve come a long way, baby. Also here is Haunted Mansion (see above for coping techniques).

Fantasyland: It’s a Small World, natch. Also Peter Pan’s Flight, Dumbo ride, Cinderella’s Golden Carousel, Pooh’s Playful Spot (I know, sounds dirty, right? But it’s just a great play area with a treehouse that for some reason has a sprinkler system. MY house doesn’t have a sprinkler system). AVOID: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (sounds innocuous, but it’s the converted Mr Toad’s Wild Ride and apparently it’s terrifying).

ToonTown Fair: A great place to meet characters and get autographs. You can tour Minnie’s house and Mickey’s house (they do not live together. I thought they were married? Huh).  Ride the Barnstormer (kiddie coaster) and there’s a water play area called Donald’s Boat (was not turned on, see aforementioned 30 degree weather).

Tomorrowland: SPEEDWAY, super popular, make it there early in the morning. Space Mountain has height restrictions, 44 inches, so we didn’t do that, but I remember it being very, very cool, if you have an older child. Tomorrowland Transit Authority is a really child ride that take you on a tour, very boring but not for a 3 year old, he loved it. Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger spin (do not let your child control the movement of your vehicle, you will have an Inevitable Puking Incident of your own. Have him stick to shooting the laser gun at the bad guys). Astro Orbiter is a rocket-go-round, with AWESOME views.

EPCOT:

Spaceship Earth is the ride inside the big ball. It’s chill and has a great planetarium thing at the end. When you get off, there’s a driving video game. DO NOT DO Mission Space. You might want to check out Test Track, but it never had wait times under 150 minutes when we were there so we never got to it. Ellen’s Energy Adventure is supposed to be funny but it’s 45 minutes so we skipped it, as we are amusement park commitment-phobes. The Seas with Nemo & Friends is a nice relaxing ride with scenes from Finding Nemo.  At The Land (the place with the awesome cafeteria with organic food and hydroponically grown produce), you MUST ride Soarin’, and the very chill “Living with the Land.” If you’re with a preschooler you can avoid the “World Showcase” entirely.  Although, if you do venture over there, check out right smack dab halfway around the lake (where the ferry landing is) there is a model train set up with a Swiss town, very cute. 

QUICK ANECDOTE: In “Paris,” we walked past a crepe stand, and overheard the “Cast member” saying “No no, I am sorry, sir, we ‘ave only ze crepes.” To which the tourist replied, “LOOK, I don’t want a crepp. I want cotton candy. You know, fluffy pink stuff? COTTONNNN CANNNDYYYY.” More apologies from cast member.  Kind of crazy that we Americans are assholes even in FAKE FRANCE.  “America,” in this instance, was literally 30 feet away, so walk your fat ass over there and get your cotton candy there.

ANIMAL KINGDOM:

There are two shows here that are GREAT, like, I WOULD PAY FOR THEM GREAT): Festival of the Lion King, and Finding Nemo—The Musical. Really amazing production values; I was shocked. Great talent.

 

Preschoolers will like Kilimanjaro Safari, Forest Exploration Trail, The Boneyard in DinoLand, Fossil Fun Games, TriceraTop Spin. There’s a DINOSAUR ride that’s a bit risky scary-wise, with a height requirement that Frog was a tad too short for so I can’t comment but my mom says there’s a T-Rex that makes even adults almost crap their pants. So maybe not.  

FINAL TIPS:

• If you are alone with your kid (no extended family), they will let the whole family stay in line for a ride, one parent rides while the other stays with the kid(s), and then gets off and switches out with other parent (i.e. without going to the back of the line).
• If you stay on property at any Disney resort, there are “Extra Magic Hours” for the parks that change each day. Some days Magic Kingdom opens an hour early. Another day Animal Kingdom stays open an extra THREE HOURS for guests (though be aware that the safari does not happen after sunset).
• If you have a GIRL, you may want to book a character breakfast or lunch (Cinderella’s Table, etc). The girls seemed to be very into this. Also, if your daughter owns a princess dress (or two) already, BRING IT so she can wear it to the park. Otherwise she will see ALL THE OTHER GIRLS wearing THEIR princess dresses and she will feel left out and want you to buy her a dress THERE, which is like $70. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Also, there’s this thing where you can go to a “princess salon” where they slick your daughter’s hair back into a super tight bun, sprinkle pixie glitter all over her head, put MAKEUP on her, and attach a tiara with fake sparkly hair. This results in your child looking like a common street prostitute. AVOID. Also, do not let your child wear her high heeled glass slippers to the park. Duh, you think, but I saw three girls hobbling along in pain like bound-footed geishas. AVOID AVOID AVOID.
• You can get your kid a button that says “First Time!” and she’ll get more attention from cast members. If it’s a birthday, you can get a button that says that, and then seriously everyone she passes will say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY SALLY!!” and she will feel like a celebrity. It’s a bit creepy, actually, after awhile, for everyone to know your kid’s name, but you know, up to you.

I have to admit, I’ve always sort of rolled my eyes at the idea of Disney, choosing to be all cool and “above it”--but I have to say, this was probably the best week of my kid’s entire life. It’s really, really nice, from his perspective, to be in a place where everyone greets HIM instead of his parents, you know? No one frowns when you walk into a restaurant with a kid. Every dinner feels like a special occasion. It’s…nice. It’s a really, really nice vacation from reality. As we walked out of the Magic Kingdom that last day, we said “Goodbye, Castle!” and “Goodbye, Main Street!” and my kid got a little teary-eyed and then I seriously got choked up. He looked at me and said, “Mommy, I love it here. When we have to go on an airplane back home I will be so sad to go to my city.”

I felt the same way. The real world—especially one that is gray and only 3 degrees today—kinda blows when you have literally been spending your days in Fantasyland.

Frog bidding farewell to the castle, with blanket and Kangaroo in hand for comfort.

Growing Up So Fast It's Scaaaaaary

I may have mentioned before how Halloween is a High Holiday in my house. I come from a long line of women who for whatever reason love Halloween more than any other holiday. Christmas is fine, we enjoy the giving and the togetherness, but nothing gets us excited like a bunch of bats and some candy apples. It's entirely possible that the reason I became a professional actress was my love for playing dress-up. My sister Margot really takes this to extremes: you know how people volunteer at holiday-time? Every Halloween, she volunteers... AT A HAUNTED HOUSE. Where other people do Christmas in July, she does Halloween in April. When she was getting her degree in sociology, her thesis was on the phenomenon of slutty Halloween costumes for young women, how the whole point of the holiday was to be a "Naughty nurse" or an S&M version of Rainbow Brite (therapy, anyone?). She doesn't conform to such stereotypes herself, of course: her costumes generally forgo sexiness and flattering cuts in favor of cleverness. She also usually makes her boyfriend coordinate with her. This year, she wasn't allowed to volunteer at the haunted house as usual because her doctor said that, post-surgery, her immune system wasn't strong enough to allow her to safely interact with that many members of the public who may or may not have H1N1 or god knows what else.

So, as she couldn't go to the haunted house, she decide she'd just BE a haunted house. She got a big ol' box and cut a ton of tiny windows and painted it black and lit it from within to make the windows glow and walked around inside it, with--and this is the best part--ghost sock puppets on her hands, coming out of the haunted windows. This, my friends, is what I call commitment.The large box also provided her with the necessary germ-free bubble that allowed her to venture out to a party. Is clevah, no?

So it goes without saying that the sister of someone so dedicated cannot just half-ass this holiday. You can't be a cafeteria catholic if your sister is a nun. Well, I guess you can, but you'd have a disconnect, and you'd have a hard time figuring out what to get your brother-in-law for Christmas (I mean, God? The ultimate Guy Who Has Everything). So even if I wanted to, I cannot phone it in. And I wouldn't want to even if I could. I, too, love Halloween. LOVE. I love the candy buying and answering the doorbell and commenting on the kiddies' costumes, I love picking out a pumpkin and carving it up and almost gagging at the seeds being so gross, and I love mulling for months over what we're going to dress as, and wandering around Lincoln Park (because the big brownstones have the coolest decorations and the best candy, and because trick or treating in a high rise is totally lame), even if it means bundling up and/or just suffering with wind-chapped cheeks and purple fingers clutching that treat bag, because by God, Halloween ROCKS.

One of the BEST things about having a child--and I acknowledged this as a benefit early on, about five minutes after I found out I was pregnant--is that I totally have an excuse to dress up now. Not that I didn't still dress up before, but I was never able, pre-child, to get Aquaman to dress up WITH me, to do any semblance of a "theme" together. Now I can. Bwa hahahaha.

Likewise, one of the best things about Frog going to a Jewish preschool (besides delicious hamentaschen and challah) was that they did Purim, so we got NOT ONE BUT TWO HALLOWEENS!!!

Aquaman tries to get me to wait until it is ACTUALLY OCTOBER before I start shopping for costume ideas. Silly man. He's right to try, because clearly, when I start in August, it means that I buy something in August. And then possibly change my mind a few times, so that every Halloween, we've ended up with two or three different costumes for Frog. You know, for different purposes. The kid has more costume changes than Lady Gaga. It's a little ridiculous, I'll admit. I have a problem. There, I said it. But that's not going to keep me out of Party City and off the Costumes Express website next September.

See, he's just so damn cute. His first Halloween, we went first with a little comfy lion costume. He was only 6 months old or so and still really chubby. I had thought, ok cool, he'll be a lion and then I can be Dorothy and I'll make Aquaman be the scarecrow, DONE. But then I trolled around for Dorothy costumes and "sexy dorothy" was not gonna be appropriate for, well anything, and the only other option was "Plus Size Dorothy" and that was the frumpiest piece of shit I've ever seen in my life. I seriously think it was made out a vinyl picnic tablecloth. Either that of grocery bags from Aldi.

Anyway, we got his picture made in the lion costume (I don't usually post photos of my kid's face here but he looks nothing now like he did as a baby, becasue he was a pretty fat baby, so woo-ha, caution to the wind):

 

And that was really cute but then I had nothing to coordinate with it. And I needed to coordinate because a) there was a neighborhood fair and parade to go to and b) there was my office Halloween party to go to and c) it's a sickness. So I sold the lion costume on craigslist and searched for something else. Enter the pirate:

 

Arrrrrr. But that smile lasted about 2 seconds before we discovered the hard way it was too itchy and stiff.  So, we went to Old Navy and tried on a nice, comfy, soft chicken costume: 

Oh the humanity. Even at this tender age (get it? tender? chicken tenders? eh? eh?) Frog had an overdeveloped sense of injustice. I'm keeping this photo for use in his therapy sessions later on.
It's just as well, as I had no idea what I was planning to wear in order to coordinate with a chicken costume.

So, we finally ended up with a bat costume.

To coordinate with the bat, I was a vampire. Easy peasy since I'm really white and have straight dark hair so pretty much, all I had to do to be a vampire was wear black and put on a choker and some red lipstick. Et voila! I do not have a photo of the two of us in theme, this is yet another victim of the fact that my husband, though an art teacher, takes craptacular photos, so I do all the photo-taking and therefore am never recorded in pictures. Huh, kinda like a vampire.

The next year, when he was just under 2, I scoured the thrift stores for the raw materials to fashion a tiny adorable Luke Skywalker costume. I was rather proud of this one. I was Princess Leia to coordinate:

 

 

The next year, I lowered my standards because we actually closed on our sale and our purchase of the condo and moved on October 31. It was unavoidable. This is like if a normal Christian person was forced to move on Christmas Day, seriously, there was some gnashing of teeth up in here. Our wonderful new neighbor (also room parent of my son's daycare class, known to you as The She-Kramer or MashugaMom) picked Frog up from school that day and took him trick or treating with her son while we set up his bedroom, paid the movers, etc. He wore a lame-o doctor costume, though even then, it was a theme, because his friend was a firefighter, so it was an emergency services thing. And he looked adorable in his scrubs and white coat, though I have no photos. 

This year, he actually started having his own opinions, so I had a blast "shopping" with him online for ideas of what we should. Unfortunately he's effing THREE so his opinions changed on a daily basis. Finally I cut him off, no more mind-changing, so in mid-September (extraordinary willpower to hold out so long) we ordered our costumes online. He wanted Star Wars. I got him the Luke outfit (not from Tattooine like before but Luke as an X-Wing Fight Pilot in the orange jumpsuit), and I had to re-purchase the Leia costume, at his insistence (I'd sold the previous one on craigslist, dammit). Together, we succeeded in convincing Aquaman to be Darth Vader.

Only problem was, when the box arrived, Frog was insistent that he HIMSELF was going to be Darth Vader. Uh....crap. So I (BECAUSE I AM BRILLIANT!!!) came up with a test. If he could wear the Vader mask for five whole minutes, he could be Darth Vader. It's amazing I got a photo of this....

because it literally lasted about six seconds. I AM EVIL GENIUS.

Luke wins!

 

And Aquaman got to hide behind his Darth persona, though he did have a quite a bit of flair when the wind picked up:

 

We're storing the Darth and Leia rather than passing them along this year. There are too many other characters he might want to be, now that he knows what Star Wars actually is, and I am not buying the same costume again. "We could wear this same theme every year," Aquaman said hopefully.

Honey, please. Have we met?

So, I was really just planning to do a little retrospective here, a funny and lighthearted review of our Halloweens so far, but in digging out these old photos, something different happened. I got totally choked up. My little munchkin was so, so fat and smiley as a baby, in that lion costume, and now he's, look, i know he's only three but he seems SO OLD. Look how skinny the body is that's stickin gout from under that Darth Vader mask. Three and a half years has gone by in the blink of an eye. Aquaman said to me the other day, "five more blinks just like this and he'll be in college."

Uguh. 

He's already so mature sometimes, telling me "I KNOW that, Mommy!" when i try to tell him, um, anything, or getting upset with me and slamming the door of his bedroom (he did this so much one evening--I found out later, he hadn't napped at school, eureka!--that I actually went in there and calmly threatened that if he did it one more time Daddy was going to take the door off its hinges and he would not have any privacy. This actually worked, thank God.). He's such a teenager already, I feel like I have missed the baby part altogether. I totally get why people have another baby right about now; you want that age back. I really do. I have GOT to find a way to do less, to not stress about work so that I'm not doing it in the evenings when I should be enjoying family time, etc. Grad school being over with is a huge weight off, one less thing that takes me away from my kid. I have writen before about this: choosing "good mom" means beign a bad student and bad employee; choosing "good employee" means bad mom, etc. You are never succeeding at all of your roles at one time.

I find myself enjoying the times when my son is sick because not only do I get to stay home from work with him (Aquaman and I fight over who GETS to call in!) but my little boy becomes littler, more cuddly. Stays still for longer. Lets me cuddle him tighter. Stays still long enough for me to smell the top of his head.  I had to go across country for a business trip a couple of weeks ago, and the first night when I called home and my son got on the phone, the smallness of his little voice took my breath away. He sounded so tiny. My husband got back on the phone. "Oh my God, he sounds like such a baby!" I exclaimed.

"He IS a baby," my husband said. "We just don't realize it anymore."

I forget that he really IS still small, that time hasn't run out.  He may have gone from pudgy, smiley infant in a lion costume (and chicken costume, and pirate, and bat costume) to skinny, gangly boy who has his own opinion about what he'll wear, but his childhood isn't over yet.

I still have a chance to soak it up.

I just need to find a way to get more hours in the day, or slow time down a bit.

May the Force be with me.

Dinosaurs, Dolphins, and Hippogryphs, oh my!

So, a few weekends ago we went to Brookfield Zoo to see the animatronic dinosaur doohickey. Frog loves dinosaurs and even knows the names of some of the basic ones--he's just started being interested--and I thought he'd get a kick out of it. Well, you know, it was okay. I do love the GENIUS warning signage (see above) in which a moray eel-like dinosaur manages to look cheerful in silhouette whilst chomping off some poor child's hand. Honestly, I thought the whole thing was pretty lame, because though they were molded nicely, their movements were jerky and the ones that you could "control" were done via buttons that had two steps: "Choose motion (like wagging the tail)" and then "execute command." Have these people met children? Nothing worked right because kids just came up and started smashing buttons and yelling IT DOESN'T WORK!! And it was hot and broad daylight and blah (yes, my compaints include 'hot' and 'broad daylight'--I think perhaps I would not have fared so well in the dinosaur's perfect natural habitat). Also, they did not have a section where you could go in an outhouse and sit on a toilet and then have a T-Rex rip the roof off. I mean, come on. Where is the creativity?

Frogboy was a little nervous about some of the big gest dinosaurs. The coolest one, in my opinion, was the brontosaurus-like creature by the central pond, and you don't even have to pay extra to see that one. Apparently they do it at night too which might have been a better atmosphere for ME, but I think Frog would have had a heart attack. I mean, he's pretty brave (case in point: he got a flu shot on Sunday and DID NOT CRY--the nurse said he was the youngest kid she'd ever given a shot to in 17 years to not cry--so take THAT, Home Depot cashier lady).  He is, however, scared of the dark now (thanks to Quincy on Little Einsteins who said in a recent episode, "I'm scared of the dark!" And now Frog says, "I'm scared of the dark!" Annnnnd fuck you, Quincy).

In other news, we also hung out with "Aunt Jackie," who is the twin sister of his Buddhist godfather, Jack. For the time being, at least, she has become proxy-godfather because we see her more often because Jack sold his soul to the Devil (read: Microsoft) and moved to New York. ("Temporarily," he says. Puh-shaw, say I.) So Jackie works at the Shedd Aquarium, and we got to go for free and do some really cool stuff, like go behind the scenes to see up top above the big main tank where the turtle is (!!!) and also see a preview of the new animal behavior show. It is very glitzy and sort of reminiscent of "Cirque du Soleil" and though parts are kinda cheesy (my main problem was with the porpoise-like, totally unflattering costumes worn by the trainers--and also the sour faces on some of the trainers who clearly were thinking, "Uh.....I am a MARINE ANIMAL BEHAVIORIST FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHY AM I DRESSED LIKE A PENGUIN?!?!?!") But here's the thing: though some people have a problem with going all "Hollywood" with the show and think that it should be bare-bones education like before, the truth is that NO ONE WATCHED IT BEFORE. I guarandamntee you that they will sell more tickets with this new show, and that means that more people (including children) will fall in love with the animals and want to protect them and the planet they live on, WHICH IS A GOOD THING. Because my son was RAPT for this whole show. And last time we went, he wanted to leave the dolphin thing after 3 minutes. So there you go. Also, can I just say, walking penguins are the cutest thing I've ever seen. There's a whole number where penguins come out and walk RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU and if you do not squeee over this you have NO PULSE. 

Last but not least, we dragged Frog along on the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry. We got free passes because we are members, so we took Frog's Fairy Godmother (who shall remain nameless because she hasn't picked a pseudonym yet) with us because she is a Harry Potter FANATIC. It was cool being at the big ol' museum after hours--it was our Night at the Museum, we kept joking, except without Ben Stiller or rabid monkeys. So we walk up to the ticket-taker people and we're already in a party mood, because it's cool to be there after dark, and the guy busts out with this very John Oliver-like British accent, and he looked like John Oliver too, and he say, "Ha-loooo, ah you heyah to see Harry Pottuh?" Without even thinking, I employed a similar British accent (from my bag of many) to confirm that yes, we were, and he interrupted me: "Are you making fun of me?"

Uguh.

I really wish that I had had the quickness of wit to come back with, "No, are you making fun of me?" but alas, I just stood there, dumbfounded. Then it turned out we were early so I had to stand there and make small talk with him for SEVEN MINUTES (it's a timed entry kind of thing) all the while trying REALLY hard not accidentally use a British accent again. Because you see, I am pretty good at accents. I was an actress for years. I have been British and Irish and Polish and any number of things and the only accent I can't do, so far, is the particular mixture of Australian/Greek  that a former coworker used to have. Try as I might, I can't get it just right. The exhibition, by the way, is kind of lame. It's mostly memorabilia in glass cases, not really the "total immersion experience" they make it out to be. It was not "just like being at Hogwarts." But you get to sit in Hagrid's big chair, and you get to throw a bludger at a goal, and......well, there you go.

Who wins, then? I'd say, Shedd Aquarium, as I was thoroughly entertained, they were real animals, and they were the only one of the three attractions that did not FORCE me to exit through a(n extremely overpriced) gift shop (a seven dollar bookmark, MSI? REALLY?!??!!). Oh and, they didn't make me feel bad about mimicking someone's accent. But I still maintain his was a fake accent, too. No really. So. Ack. 

He's Just Not That Into You (aka Doctors Suck)

I'm visiting my little sister this weekend. You know I must love her since it is something like 157 degrees down there right now. She has Crohn's Disease, and has been having some issues with it of late, involving near-surgeries and nights in the E.R. and cocktails of different medications and a trip to the Mayo Clinic that lasted over a week because though it was intended just as a rubber-stamp before getting her surgery (a bowel re-section: doesn't that sound fun?) done in Atlanta, it ended up being a nightmare in which they discovered that she had these mysterious blood clots lurking that might have killed her if she'd had the surgery because they'd be dislodged and go to her lungs annnnnd scene. So, yeah, near miss there. It's kind of astonishing how much of medicine, in this day and age when we can go to the freaking moon and fly in the air in giant rickety tin cans and send pieces of paper through the air using fax machines, which are themselves sort of obsolete (oh my god I am old enough to have witnessed the rise AND FALL of a major piece of technology holy god), ANYWAY, that in this day and age so much of medicine is comprised of the following three sentences:

• "Hmm. Let's see if this works:"
• "Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one!"
• "Fuck. We really screwed that one up. Sorry about you being dead 'n all." 

It's just a series of near-misses and guessing games. What on earth do you DO during eight years of med school and fellowship and whatnot, just try to get better at GUESSING? It's incredibly frightening. Do they just hand everyone one of those Magic 8 Balls and say, "Shake it and then look. Here's your white coat. Good luck."

I mean, I work with doctors and most of them are awesome and near-genius and to boot, have great senses of humor and really truly care about their patients. But none of them are working on my sister. Only jerks who change their mind at the last minute and don't think to review CT scans, apparently, are working on my sister.

Do I sound bitter? Well, yeah, you're fucking with my little sister, asshat. And while you're at it, how about RETURNING HER CALLS. It's not DATING: She shouldn't have to call and leave her number and then wonder, four hours later, if it's too soon to call again, if you're going to think she's a nutjob for bugging you. Are you just not that into her? Is that it? Is she not your type? Do you like another patient's intestines better? I will kick your ass. CALL MY MOTHER FUCKING SISTER.

So she'll have this bowel resection on Tuesday, right after they take pretty much a dustbuster and suck the blood clots out of her on Monday. Awesome. She's doing this about three weeks before the start of grad school at her dream school, in her dream program, which is awesomeness on a stick except she'll be drugged up now and it drives me crazy that she finally ditched the stupid job and we were so happy she got into this school and now it's all getting potentially fucked up.

My mom has come back from Scotland or Norway or wherever the hell she was, to take care of my sister after the surgery. Anyone flying back halfway across the globe kind of makes it seem like an even bigger deal. Like, if everybody was in town, fine, you can pretend it's just a precaution, or just like a wisdom tooth being taken out or something, but if someone had to return early from a trip around the world because of this, we should probably all be freaking the fuck out, right? Because in my experience (read: novels) whenever someone returns early from a trip, it's a big deal, because they had to, like, crawl through a bayou fending off alligators, or stow away on a cargo ship, or get in a hot air balloon, or something. It seems dramatic. And I suppose my mom could have left it to my dad, except that my dad says helpful things like "your so-called 'disease'" as if she jsut has indigestion still after two surgeries and is just sorting being a hypochondriac and when my sister was in the hospital LAST time, for an emergency situation involving something pesky like not being able to digest food, my dad asked her what she needed. She asked for magazines and toothpaste/toothbrush. Dad brought bubblegum flavored kid toothpaste (she is 27) and two mylar balloons that said "Happy Birthday!" and "It's a Boy!"

Her hospital stay did end up inspiring a joint compilation with me, over the phone, of activities one can engage in when bored in a hospital room. One of them is to take a bottle of baby oil and, from the comfort of one's hospital bed, squirt it on the floor in front of one's doorway, right before annoying family members come to visit. Namely one's father. (YOU have to time it right though so you do not give a concussion to any of your actual caregivers. That would just be self-destructive.) We will be developing a "care package" containing many of these items, which my sister will offer on her website as soon as she starts it. She has a really cool name for it and has already bought the URL, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, but suffice it to say that it is better than what I came up with as a Crohn's website, which was www.ifeelshitty.com.

So now pretty much all she can eat is meat, cheese, and dairy. Which is weird because before, those were things she couldn't eat. They keep changing the rules. I mean, you might THINK that a steady diet of cheeseburgers and milkshakes would be A-OK with just about anybody (I could do at LEAST two weeks on that), but after about a month you really want to blow your brains out, apparently. Who knew. She craves, like, lettuce. She is sooo skinny that it freaks me out. In fact, I am just a tiny bit freaking the fuck out at all times. It would have been a lot easier for me if she had done all this Health Crisis Shit back when we were younger and we didn't have much of a relationship because then theoretically I would have CARED but not been, as I said, freaking the fuck out. Add to that my whole CONTROL ISSUE and being in Chicago while all this is going on in Atlanta, where I can't actually walk in and throttle the doctors who are ignoring her calls, is a little, um, aggravating.

I also want to be there to support my mom as she supports my sister. My mom thinks she is being REALLY GREAT at hiding how much SHE is freaking out, which is cute. It's kind of like when Courtney Love thinks she is being really great at pretending to be sober, or when Lindsay Lohan thinks she's doing a great job at pretending not to be suddenly 45.

I have offered to donate blood in case my sister needs it but I think she keeps not asking the nurses if she will need it, so I'm gonna be really pissed if she needs blood and they didn't bank mine ahead of time and I have to go all True Blood on her and just open a vein or something. I have also VERY SELFLESSLY offered to be the donor if she happens to need a Fat Transplant. I feel that my muffin top qualifies as a vestigial organ, and I will gladly give it to a family member but if she won't take it then I WILL FIND SOMEONE.

(If you are interested in being a recipient, please comment below. I will not even charge you and you won't have to do one of those things where, because you are desperate for some else's fat, you lure me into a hotel room and slip me roofies, then I wake up the next morning in a tub of ice with a bad scar anda a bottle of pain pills, with a lipstick-written note on the mirror about how my kidney is missing. So, you know, super convenient for you).

F*ck Me Gently With a Chainsaw: In Which I Recap #BlogHer09 Whilst Simultaneously Equating it With the Film ‘Heathers’

 

 

*photo & quotes courtesy of imdb.com

 

 

“Dear Diary,”

As you can see from my pre-BlogHer post, I was kind of freaking out that my arm candy, Penny, had mistakenly thought that the SocialLuxe Lounge was on Friday and had gotten a sitter for THAT night, and thus was tragically unavailable to accompany me to not-win my BlogLuxe “Guilty Pleasure” award on Thursday.

“Hey, Martha Dumptruck. My date for the prom kinda flaked out on me. I was wondering, If you weren't doing anything that night, maybe we could rent some new releases and pop some popcorn.”

Having not been a girl on the town in quite some time, I was somewhat nervous (read: paralyzed) by the thought of having to socialize with a bunch of people I didn’t know, many of whom might be people I DID know, but I wouldn’t KNOW I knew, because they don’t look like their blog avatars. For instance, get this: Mom-101 is not a two dimensional 50’s lady, BlackHockeyJesus isn’t black (though there was a neverending supply of wine, so he might be Jesus), and Schmutzie’s face has a lower half. Who knew?

So I knew I could conceivably commit a ginormous faux pas (my life is comprised almost entirely of moments when I say something snarky and the person I am speaking to freezes and I say, “He’s standing RIGHT. BEHIND. ME. Isn’t he?”), and not even know it, because I don’t know what anyone really looks like. And they’ve all met before so they DO know. I could have been talking to the IRL equivalent of my entire Google Reader page.

It was like going to a huge masquerade ball where everyone but you has x-ray vision.

“You blow it tonight, girl, and it's keggers with kids all next year.”

So I go, and I wander around briefly. I get my hair ‘did’ by the straight-hair lady and it looks so good I wonder if I can get away without washing it for the whole weekend. And maybe the wedding I have to go to next weekend. Too much? Maybe. And there was good food.

“Grow up Heather, bulimia's so '87.”

But I’m scared to eat any appetizers because I have this one slightly crooked tooth that acts as a magnet for food, especially green food. You can SHOW ME a piece of broccoli from across the room and it will end up in my teeth. So, no food.

So I got a manicure. This kept me busy for awhile. Then I went and fetched my enormous “swag bag.”  Which weighed as much as a human so it was almost like having arm candy, except for the lack of sparkling conversation.

I was then having a shitty, shitty, time, so I took matters into my own hands. I ripped off the bandaid. I went up to a four-top where two impeccably dressed women were seated. I said something witty. I (sincerely) complimented a dress. I introduced myself properly. Now look: I am reasonably good looking. I was dressed nicely. I am no Martha Dumptruck. And yet, I was dissed. Oh, sure, they ‘allowed’ me to sit at their table, but they turned away, in towards each other. As if my half of the table had just fallen off the face of the earth. (Except when it fell back onto the earth long enough for them to ask me to take their picture, and then they walked away). Whuh. Tha. Fuck.

Veronica: “I'm on my way to a party at Remington University... No, my life's not perfect. I don't really like my friends…It's just like - they're people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit.”
J.D.: “Maybe it's time to take a vacation.”

[Edit: In a huge lesson in the area of 'YOUR BLOG IS PUBLIC,' I have actually now been contacted by BOTH of the aforementioned "Heathers" and I have to say, they are LOVELY. They both have excellent blogs--you can find them in the comments below--and are great ladies. As it turns out, they were mortified by the situation of knowing almost no one at the party, and what came off as "Heatherishness" was actually shyness. They were not the "in crowd" I thought they were. Lesson learned. My perception has less to do with how they acted, probably, and more to do with my middle-school baggage. ANYWAY. They both live in the Chicago area, how great is that? So I get a second chance. I am having a playdate after work today with one of them! How insane is THAT? Her son is just one week older than my son. I'm not telling you where we're meeting, because we're all, so, like, famous 'n shit, we don't want to be worried about paparazzi. So anyway, I just want to publicly say, even though I did not identify them personally in the original post, that I'm sorry I took it personally and I really am happy that they walked away because that's how I met my Sex and the City gals. And now I'm getting to meet THEM, too, so it's all good. See how wonderful women can be? Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.)

So, out on the market again, I nursed my emotional wounds and decided to do a better job next time of scouting out my prey. I was having horrible middle-school flashbacks of no one to sit with in the cafeteria, and I knew that if I was going to make the next two days WORK, I had to figure something out.

And there they were. Imagine them with me, in slow-motion, if you will: A lovely, bouncy-haired pair (you got caught up on the words “bouncy” and “Pair,” didn’t you? Well, they had those two, but let’s stay on track, shall we?) of slightly-younger-than-me, non-baby-toting ladies dressed in fabulous evening attire, standing up at a tall table and laughing their asses off. My new BFFs. I don’t quite remember what I said to them, but I walked right up and I am certain the phrase “YOU MUST HELP ME, I KNOW NO ONE” was used. They immediately accepted me, we chatted, and I felt within minutes as if I’d know them for years. These two glorious, beautiful, hilarious women, Kate and Monika, would become my BFFs for the next two days. They waited with me while I confirmed I was not, in fact, a winner of the BlogLuxe category. They told me I was robbed even though they’d never read my blog. We waited together for henna mehndi tattoos and then complimented each other’s hands for the next two days. They let me put my shit in their hotel room, for fuck’s sake. I had a whole corner of their room designated for my shit. I practically had my own key. They were JUST. LOVELY. And we had a blast together. I cannot remember the last time I was that drunk without getting laid. After SocialLuxe, we stood on the street corner at Lower Wacker together and cheered like lunatics when the President’s motorcade drove by (he left at the same time we did, only without a manicure).

“Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie.”

These amazing girls from Cincinnati rescued my sorry ass from what would certainly have been BlogHer hell. It was awesome that I was dissed the first time around (yeah, that’s right, BITCHES, take THAT!), or I would not have found them. Actually, it was awesome that Penny couldn’t make it, because I would have talked to her the whole time and then had to start over again on Friday morning. Which leads us to…

 “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?’

I go about my morning on Friday, not realizing that I never ate dinner the night before. I am hungover so I also do not have breakfast. I stand in a ridiculously long line to pick up my badge, fretting the whole time that they won’t have it and I’ll have no proof of buying it (I was able to attend only out of the generosity of Genie, who had something come up and sold me her pass a few weeks before the conference). They do have it. Hallelujah. I miss the first session. I get there right as they are starting this speed-dating thing. It’s too much for first thing in the morning with the first hangover I’ve had in two years. I step back out. I ridicule myself silently for being like a little squirrel who tries to get close to the nuts but can’t really get up enough courage to just grab them out of the Big Scary Hand.

Inside the room, two enormous concentric circles of women are rotating in opposite directions at one-minute intervals, laughing and yelling, with the occasional baby hand stretching out of the perfect circle, like the errant limb of a confused dancer from a Busby Berkeley-choreographed 1930’s musical.

Okay, deep breath. My partners in crime were still sleeping off the previous night’s activities (“sleeping in” is still in their vocabulary, those sweet child-free princesses), so I figured, I’ll try out the first session on the “Mommyblogging” track, something about Finding Your Tribe. I am, in fact, a mom who blogs. Natch, right?  

I walk in and my senses are immediately assaulted by eight shades of pink, fourteen crying infants, five ladies handing out bags of “Strawberry Shortcake” swag, and a parrrtriiiidge in a peeeaar treeeeee. Whatever my tribe is, this ain’t it. The woman next to me glances longingly at my apparently sought-after, endangered-species-list-enrolled bag of smelly pink dolls. “I don’t belong here,” I say, and I hand her the bag. I back slowly out of the room.

I had not, in fact, found my tribe.

“The only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.”

I am phoned by Dorothy Tucker from Channel 2 and asked to meet at 10:30am in the lobby so she can interview me about being at BlogHer. I assume this is related to a similar request from a Chicago print media person who wanted to interview me about the FTC thing, as I have a rather outspoken disclosure policy on my blog. I agree to meet her. She doesn’t show. Then she calls me from the exhibit hall. I go down there, but she talks for 30 minutes to some marketing person (while I look like an asshole media whore who is begging to be interviewed and want to make a sign to wear that says à THIS CHICK CALLED ME ON MY PHONE, I SWEAR). Then she tells me she wants to interview me at my house sometime in the coming week. Fine. (Later, she sets that up, then cancels it. Good lord. I feel like I need a personal assistant. It shouldn’t be so hard. I have a cell phone and e-mail and a Twitter account. Setting up an interview with me should not have me feeling like I am on Amazing Fucking Race).

Heather Duke: “Veronica, you look like hell.”
Veronica Sawyer: “Yeah? I just got back.”

I attend Blog to Book, an awesome session on getting published. I’m interested in that from both a non-fiction blog perspective and also from a fiction novel (that I’ve had in the works for a while) perspective, so it was fascinating to me. Good connections made. I find myself wishing that in addition to a “Mommy” Track and a “Business” track there would also be a “CRAFT” track. Very few of the sessions touched on the craft of writing. Almost none of the sessions had working wi-fi. AT A BLOGGING CONFERENCE. I get frustrated with the laptop and take notes on a little steno pad like I am Lois Lane.

“Chaos was what killed the dinosaurs, darling.”

That night, I change into fancy clothes in Kate & Monika’s room (see? They are so awesome) and we head out on the town. We get there early for one party in the lobby and sit quietly, drinking our wine, on the edge of the fountain. We are quickly overtaken by hordes of crazy women vying for free shit, because there is a rumor that THERE BE VIBRATORS IN THEM THAR SWAG BAGS. DUDE. You can buy your own vibrating vagina bunny for fucking $15. Batteries weren’t even included. Can I have that clump of my hair back now? STEP. OFF. BITCH.

“What is your damage, Heather?”

We go to the EA party at House of Blues and have a LOVELY time having REAL cocktails (like, not only beer and wine) and excellent food, trying to figure out if there’s anything we can safely all eat given Monika’s mushroom intolerance and my shellfish allergy. We decide it’s safer to just stick to booze.

“Great pate, mom, but I gotta motor if I wanna be ready for that party tonight.”

Monika and Kate go to the Lush Cosmetics party which is trés chic but I am not on the list, so I head over to the Mommy Needs a Cocktail party and engage in some semi-lame wandering around and the worst vodka-lemonade I’ve ever had in my life until I meet A REAL LIVE TABLE FULL OF BLOGGERS WHO ARE MOMS BUT DO NOT HAVE BABIES ACTUALLY ON THEIR PERSONS AND WHO ARE VERY VERY FUNNY AND WHAT’S MORE THEY LIKE ME THEY REALLY LIKE ME. I’m scared to name them here because I was very drunk by this point and I am sure I will leave someone out. But here goes: @alldressedup, @spuddybuddy, @shelly_overlook,, @omg_youguys. We bonded for REE-UL. And later, @bernthis. When they were headed out I reunited with Kate at the Sparklecorn party (to which I was also not invited, but they owed me because they stoled my bling. Just kidding.). We danced to eighties music and I was in LOVE.

I also got to meet Marinka, and on and on. People I read every week. And I got to attend an amazing storytelling session in which I talked shop with Schmutzie, and BHJ, and Neil Kramer, and Amy Turn Sharp, holy crap. Too awesome to explain.

Ooh, and the week wouldn’t be complete without getting to piss off the panelists in the Sponsored vs Unsponsored “Room of Your Own,” but come on, both panelists had the same opinion, so somebody had to speak up on the other side of the coin. I could have been nicer, but I told them their whining was annoying and misguided, and that it’s just false that it’s boys picking on us because we’re girls and they think we’re stupid (yes, that was what the panelist had said).

“The extreme always seems to make an impression.”

One woman who shall remain nameless BECAUSE I AM NICE practically yanked the mic out of my hand to complain that Obama was the cause of the FTC troubles, but was kindly informed by, like, everyone who knew how to read that it had actually started during the Bush administration. Good times.

“Some people need different kinds of convincing than others.”

I’m sure I made some enemies then, but I also made some friends as there were many, many people in that session who agreed with me, that blogging usually is (or usually should be) about writing, not about getting free shit.

Veronica Sawyer: “All we want is to be treated like human beings, not to be experimented on like guinea pigs or patronized like bunny rabbits.”
Veronica's Dad: “I don't patronize bunny rabbits.”

I also got to meet Tim Gunn, which was awesome, especially since I got to stand in line for a long time with @leeofmwob and @debwilliams, friends I made from the sponsorship session. And I got to meet Carson Kressley as well. But you know, neither of those lovely men is really, um, oozing with masculinity. After two and a half days of OD’ing on estrogen, I found myself wanting to have some masculine interaction.

Geek: Ah, oh, uh! I like to suck big dicks. Or, uh... Mmmm! Mmmm! I can't get enough of 'em!

No, not that kind, you slut: you know, like, a baseball game, or Home Depot.

“This isn't just a spoke in my menstrual cycle.”

There was so much estrogen, in fact, that my period started a whole week early. I shit you not. I texted my husband, “Thank you for holding down the fort this weekend. You are SO getting laid tomorrow.” Or at least that’s what I thought I texted him. He replied back, “WHAT IS LAIF?”

I guess I should just be thankful I didn’t send that message to my dad or something.

So let’s see, to recap:

·         I met tons of people I admire.

·         I smoked a pack of cigarettes in two days, even though I quit five years ago (don’t worry, I haven’t had one since Sunday and now I have a nice sore throat to pay for it).

Veronica's Dad: “Will someone tell me why I smoke these damn things?”
Veronica Sawyer: “Because you're an idiot.”
Veronica's Dad: “Oh yeah, that's it.”

·         I pissed some people off.

·         I drank a shit ass ton of alcohol.

·         I lived on nothing but appetizers, booze, and bar mix for three days.

·         I handed out cute business cards and people squeed about them.

·         I made some amazing friends that are already keeping me from working with their insanely funny Tweets.

Maybe next year someone will be excited to meet ME “in real life.” At the very least, I will know people when I walk in the room. Which is good, because I have no arm candy in NYC.  I spent a lot of time at BlogHer09 trying to figure out where I fit in, and that made it an awful lot like middle- and high-school. In the end, I found at least two crowds that I could bounce between, and that's great. I can be different things at different times. I don't always write about my kid. Sometimes I write about random crap that pisses me off, or advertising, or my extended family. As long as I am writing my own truth (or some version thereof), it doesn't really matter. It's my real life.

“Dear Diary: Heather told me she teaches people "real life." She said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, You're beautiful.”

I have already registered for BlogHer10. And I’m making a pledge here and now: if I meet you the first night, and you are cool, I will TOTALLY LET YOU KEEP YOUR SHIT IN MY ROOM.

BlogHer? I don't even know her. You BROUGHT her, YOU Blogher. #blogher09

I'm gone bloghering, folks.

Still at ye olde deske jobbe and the Social Luxe Lounge started 14 minutes ago. I think I'm scared to go now because Penny just told me she thought it was tomorrow night, and got a sitter for THEN, and now she's not sure she can come NOW, which of course is not her fault and has no bearing on her undying love for me especially after all those nice things I said about her in my last post (dude, I only said that shit so you would come to my party...iiiiii meeeeeaaannnn...heylookoverthere!). Anyway, it seems maybe she is not, in fact, bringing her J.Jill-ass self to be my arm candy, so now I'm faced with going to a big party where I know ZERO people. In my head everyone is all Bladerunner wearing bluetooths (blueteeth?) and typing on their laptops and looking at me through those flashy-light eyeball-cover crazy-eighties sunglass thingies like they wore on SYTYCD last night (also see: the glasses the dude from Reading Rainbow wore when he was on that Star Trek show). And I'm the only one with nothing to do to distract myself and there are no games on my phone and it's not an iphone and i don't have a poken and oh my god it's going to be just like that time in middle school when i wore short sleeves on the first day of sixth grade and that boy made fun of the peach fuzz on my arms and said "you have more hair on your arms than I do!" and i had a good comeback for age 13 if i do say so myself (said that seemed to be a problem with his masculinity, not my arms) but even still, clearly i was scarred as I am THIRTY FIVE YEARS OLD and i remember it like it was yesterday. Actually, i remember it like it was tonight. And OH SHIT, here I am, wearing a SLEEVELESS SHIRT!!! fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Nobody talk about hairy arms, okay? I hope to god there is good booze at this thing.

Okay, here i go. I'm leaving. Nor eally! Maybe I will win my category! that would be cool. Except then I will have to maybe speak in front of people. Aww, I didn't even tell my husband I was nervous and he just texted this: "Have fun at yr conference-remember you were a top 10 actress in Chicago in sun times and you light up a room with your presence and i love u." HOw sweet is that? Okay, calmer. Being a top five finalist (thanks to you guys!!!!) is cool, it's its own reward.<---marvel at my correct usage of it's and its. Yeah that's right, that's an MAE candidate. Watch and learn, people, watch and learn.  At least it won't be like at the Oscars when they announce the NON-ME winner and there's a video camera all up in my business. Wait, RIGHT?!?!?!??!?!

OH! and just in case i don't have time to do full blog posts during the next two days at the conference, you can click a button over there----> to follow me on Twitter. If you don't have a twitter account no matter, it's free and takes two seconds. OR you can just look at the portion of my twitter feed (the most recent 3 posts) on the side bar, also over there ---->

...did someone say 'bar'?

gotta go.

ack.

Papa Don't Preach

Father’s Day has always been fraught with complications for me. To be more precise, fathers have always been fraught with complications for me. My father, in particular. Not a good vibe there, during ye olde childhoode. My dad and I get along now, surprisingly well, though there were years in there (eight to be exact, including my wedding) in which we did not speak at all, not once. By my choice. More on that some other time. But I think I’m so spoiled by how awesome my husband is, in so many ways, these days, that I forget how generally crappy a lot of other husbands/dads are. I mean, you know, we've had some pretty bad times, and there were times I've wanted to murder him, sure, but mostly? and recently? I feel really lucky.

So.

To the love of my life, fire of my loins:

Thank you for thinking I was a cute young thing, lo these many years ago in high school drama club, and for changing your dating paradigm (a. choose homely girl, b. kiss her, c. invite her best friend to prom like a total jerk) in order to be with me.

Thank you for marrying me even though your mother pretty much thought I was a heathen for not being born again and blamed me for your lack of relationship with Jesus (not having noticed, apparently, that you’d either slept through every church service for fourteen years or spent the entire sermon flipping through the hymnal so you could add "...in the bed" to the end of the all the titles: Jesus Loves Me In the Bed, He is My Rock In the Bed, Fill Me With Your Spirit In the Bed. Good stuff).

Thank you for wearing that god-awful tux I picked out even though it made you look like a butler with tortoiseshell glasses and a ducktail (actually, considering the ducktail and glasses, you should be thanking me for marrying you. Oh wait, you do that, all the time).

Thank you for not totally freaking out when I decided after fourteen years of marriage that wait, I did want to have kids after all.

Thank you for being there. For me, for our son. For supporting me while I go through grad school one class at a time for three effing years. For not once, not ever telling me, “You really should have gotten that Master’s out of the way BEFORE you had the kid.” For not once, not ever complaining about being on solo parenting duty pretty much every Tuesday night for three years so I can go talk about writing and literature. For telling me constantly how brilliant I supposedly am. For telling me what a good mom I am when I feel like a shitty one, and for forgiving me and stepping in to save the day when I actually AM a shitty one.  For reminding me, speaking of which, not to curse in front of the boy.

For telling me to turn off the computer and come look at the sunset.

Or to come watch So You Think You Can Dance.

For never questioning my purchases.

For putting the boy to bed every night while I go to the gym or take a shower or write.

Thank you for being super excited along with me about FrogBoy’s first tae kwon do class, as we both frosted the hallway windows with our breath, laughing about how freaking cute he was kicking and shouting "keeyah!".  And thank you for even BEING at the class to begin with, for doing things WITH us. I noticed you were the only dad there. The other moms were catty about our adoration from the sidelines (they themselves being too jaded to watch their four year olds in class) and acted like The Heathers, but I realize now that it might have been because I was the only one there who had my husband with me, at 4:30pm on a Friday. (And only one child, no baby crying to be changed or toddler begging for Cheerios, or both. Clearly I am a whore who must be punished.)  

Thank you for being involved with our son’s preschool, and for doing adorable little carpentry activities with him and his friends when it’s your turn to visit the class, and for making him feel special when you let 'Onnnnnnly FrogBoy' touch the hand saw, because he had “the training” to use it correctly.

Thank you for giving me your honest opinion always, but still knowing when you really just need to tell me I’m right. Or to say nothing and just massage my shoulders until they release from their current disguise as earmuffs.

Thank you for buying groceries this Thursday, and for any other time you’ve done that. Because even though I write this cereal down on the list:

...and you inexplicably get this cereal instead (and yes, the size difference is accurate)...

...forgetting that I fucking hate generic cereal and what's more, that they don't MAKE cabinets big enough to hold a box that big, WHAT. THAFUCK...

...but still, I didn’t have to buy the groceries my own damn self. Thank you for that.

(But Sweet Lord, I’ve never seen so much candy and chips. This is not a frat house.)

Oh, but thank you for buying my favorite ice cream.

Thank you for being handy to the point that you not only "DIY" a kitchen for me, but paint it too, and draw portraits of me when I am pregnant and/or in high school (those being the only two times I’ve been willing to sit still for it), and barely complain a bit, even when I tell you your color choices for paint look like shit and I meant candy apple green, not the color of O.R. scrubs, and good god are you colorblind?  For putting up with my attitudes.

For reminding me when I feel fat that my period is in two days, so it's just that I’m just bloated and crazy.

For reminding me when I’m a total bitch that my blood sugar is low because I skipped breakfast.

For sweeping in to handle it when FrogBoy vomits or wants to eat yogurt. Because honestly I don't know which of those is more disgusting.

Thank you , thank you for all the times you’ve been ‘in the mood’ but have taken one for the team so I could sleep.

Thank you for your sense of humor; for never calling time with our son “babysitting”; for learning to be good at gardening because I suck ass at it; for holding my hand during--and calling me a bad ass after--my un-anaesthetized c-section, even though you yourself were freaking. the fuck. OUT.; and for pretty much doing the dishes and laundry ever since.

Thank you for laughing your ass off at the blog posts I read to you, and not looking at the ones I don’t.

Thank you for always answering the question, “Does this make me look fat?” correctly.

Thank you for telling me after I finished breastfeeding for good that there was No Such Thing as an imperfect set of boobs.  And for buying four heads of cabbage for me to put in my bra when I weaned. And for saying stupid things to get my mind off the pain.

Thank you for holding me while I sobbed on the kitchen floor the night before I had to send the baby to daycare the first time. And for telling me my first morning back at work that I looked great, even though I can see from the photo we took of "FrogBoy's First Day of Daycare" that my eyes were puffy, my hair looked like ass, and my cleavage was Not Appropriate for Children Under the Age of 13, much less an office environment.

Thank you for allowing me just occasionally to tease you for not being able to say “tortilla” correctly (“torteelya” is just so fucking cute I can’t stand it).

Thank you for trying to stay in shape and healthy, even though it’s hard, and for working constantly on the cigarette thing, and even when you are smoking, thank you for never doing it inside, and for wearing a different shirt so our son doesn’t smell it on you.

Thank you for always brushing your teeth and putting on deodorant. Seriously. It's amazing how many people don't do this. 

Thank you for listening intently while I describe my friends' problems, or my own work frustrations, and then being OUTRAGED right along with me, even if you have no idea what the fuck I am talking about.

Thank you for finally learning that that's all I want: the empathy. For not trying to fix it all anymore.

Thank you for being the kind of husband I can leave at home with the kid for a four day business trip and not have to leave ANY instructions on how to do anything in the house or with our child.  And for not getting angry when I give you instructions ANYWAY.

Thank you for being the strong silent type, but still, sometimes, sending me e-mails like this one from last week:

hve a slow productive day unaffected by others

states of minds and actions-

(trying to do the same today 2).

 Luv u

…that I receive at the exact moment I need them.

Thank you for waking up early sometimes and coming home just as I am waking up, with an iced latte in your hand just for me.

Thank you for being you, and for working so hard to be the man you are,

the husband any woman would love to have,

and the father most people only dream of.

If you could just, you know…less farting, smaller cereal boxes? And we’re golden.

Just kidding.

Golden already.

Happy Father’s Day, 'AquaMan.'

(Thank you for redefining the "F" word.)

I love you.

--'Momtrolfreak'

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Give me the latte and nobody gets hurt

I'm ashamed to admit that yesterday, on the way home from work, while on a conference call on my cell phone (yes, I used an earbud thingie, chill out), I was so desperate for an iced grande decaf latte that I actually parked my car, tore a page out of my dayplanner, jotted a note, and--all while listening to PhDs talking about Very Important Issues--walked into a Starbucks and silently handed this to a barista:

 

For just a brief moment, as we made eye contact over the top of my sad-ass little slip of paper before she had read it, I think I saw a glimmer of fear in her eyes, as if I was some sort of Robber Mime, coming to silently but forcefully divest her of her coffee sleeves and Torani syrups.

Is this really the person I've become? Standing in a Starbucks in a well-off neighborhood, too busy to even speak to the woman who makes my $4 coffee? Actually, in that neighborhood, the only thing that would have stood out about that scenario was that the person on the other end of the line wasn't my caterer. Plus, it was a $6 coffee--I tipped her two bucks out of embarassment. And hey, the smiley face adds a touch of humanity, yes? Eh? Eh?

Step away from the Tamiflu and walk out of the Pharmacy

Hallelujah, huzzah, whoopee! My husband's Mexico trip has been canceled.

Now I've gotta find a craft I can make out of a lifetime-supply box of surgical masks.

Bikini?

Monte-flu-ma's Revenge

 

My husband is supposed to go to Mexico on Thursday.

Yeah, that's right, you heard me:

MAY-HEE-CO. El pais de la influenza.

He has no choice, it's a trip for work. My husband never but never gets sick, so there's probably no worry....except he just always brings everything home to me and the kid. So he'd be fine and we'd be the ones mutating into pigs. And honestly, I'm more worried about this than I was about the whole cocaine war, probably because it just seems a lot more likely that you could get sick than beheaded. I mean, in most towns. Tijuana, I don't know.

And you know, as illnesses go, "swine flu" is not the most glamourous thing to die of. As my friend Penny said, "I don't mind getting sick as long as I don't have to tell people I have swine flu." It sounds like something that would take out the entire crew of Pigs in Space. Swine flu, drug war...now all we need is a hurricane and some locusts and we'll be all set.

I'm hoping that Monday will bring news that the trip is canceled. I have no reason to be suspicious of Mexico; they've never been anything but nice to me. Even that time on our honeymoon when I was a contestant on the resort's "game show" and had to fellate a bottle of tequila and chipped my tooth the very first night. They didn't have any dentists, but they DID have a lot of bartenders who were very nice and kept me boozed up the whole week. Oh wait, it was all-inclusive, so that wasn't special treatment. If you're going to have a chipped tooth, though, I highly recommend tequila. It really seemed to help.

Saucy Children's Toys

We were in the Wisconsin Dells last weekend (first time at the Chula VIsta Resort and very impressed! Cheaper than Great Wolf/Kalahari, clean, and great for younger kids, with really nice rooms) for my son's third birthday, and let me tell you, I have been to the Caribbean and several places in Mexico, but if you want to feel good about your pasty, extra-ten-pounds-carryin' self in a bathing suit, get thee to Wisconsin. If one must wear a bathing suit in public, I highly recommend surrounding oneself with citizens of a place where the State Food is the fried cheese curd. I looked like Heidi Fucking Klum in comparison with most of these people. I may buy a second home up there so I can mow my lawn naked.