Why I'm going to the mall on Christmas Eve

Today, I'm going to Stanford Shopping Center. Not for Christmas shopping, because I'm kind of on the done side of that. No, I'm going because I need to be alone.
That sounds really weird I know. The mall, despite the rain, is going to be packed with last minute idiots who procrastinated because they think they can buy for 15 people and NO ONE is going to be at the mall.
Husband and a couple of other friends have said to me, "Do you know the mall is really full on Christmas Eve?" Despite the fact I worked in a mall for oh say five years, they don't realise that I am deeply aware of the fact that I'm exceptionally aware that the mall is packed on Christmas Eve. The fact is that I had to deal with drunken men showing up at four pm and saying they are starting Christmas shopping for their entire family (parents, in laws, children, wives etc) just then. I would tell them the mall closes at five and they'd laugh and say that the mall would stay open for them. And I would stay open for them. And I would say (since I was the lead on Christmas Eve which meant I was technically in charge), "Unless you plan to spend $5000 in my store, no I'm not." I'd get that indignant noise and a vague threat of telling my manager which I'd remind them that all of the employees of all the store actually want to go home and be with their families for some strange reason on Christmas Eve. We'd actually get a few assholes who were pissed off that we weren't open on Christmas Day because it inconvenienced them because they started their shopping at three pm on CE. Um, you had 11 months to plan this, what the fuck are you waiting for?
No, my Mom is here and she will take on Boy for a few hours so I can have time alone. I want to be where I don't have to make small talk or have to say "don't touch that" to Boy. Husband has to work so he's going to be indisposed until six. Even though Husband pointed out that last Saturday I had a pedicure so shouldn't that be considered time alone, I don't. Sitting in a chair while a polite Asian woman works on my feet asking questions she doesn't actually want the answer to isn't being alone. She would like me to ask her the same questions back so that she can increase the size of her tip. (If you think this is cynical, next time you go for a pedicure or a hair appointment even at the high end day spas around here, see what the conversation steers you to. In the end, you get a sob story from the facialist about how her grown daughter and her family are moving in with her because her husband lost his job. It is so she can get a bigger tip. The fact that maybe her son in law had a high paying job but they pissed most of it away on fabulous vacations and expensive cars instead of saving it for the down payment on the house they had on a variable rate mortgage that went through the freakin' roof doesn't come up.)
I just want to go away. Be around people without having to make a relationship with them even for an hour. Sure, there are a couple of things I need. I need hair care since my hair and scalp have put a massive veto on the cheap stuff I bought at Target. And there are a couple of things that I know Husband liked I got for him for his birthday that I would like to pick up for a stocking stuffer. The places I'm going to patronize aren't going to be packed with frantic faces desperate to impress someone (but on sale of course).
I want to eat a meal where I'm not trying to keep a small child from running around the restaurant. To read a magazine article or something off my iPod that relaxes me rather than stresses me. Drink my hot chocolate without having my arm yanked so it rains on my clothes.
Merry Christmas to me.

"Enjoy it now because the time is so short..." and other stupid things people say

I wish I could smack the next person who gives me that smile and says about having a three year old, "Enjoy the time you have with him because this time is just so short." Or my other 'favourite' which is "You should ignore the doctor and have another child." Really?
It happened yesterday while I was out shopping. The sales clerk - who had to be around my age or if she wasn't, really looked older than she should - and I were chatting while she was ringing me up. We both have three year olds and she was saying the line about enjoying this time with them and how she thought I should have another one. When I demurred, she said that she nearly died with her second son but decided to have the third one. And if that didn't stop her, why should I not have another one?
Politely, I told her that I would rather be relatively healthy with my one than extremely ill with two that I couldn't take care of. I didn't want to remind her that of course being a Mom was grand for her - she got to escape her kids for a few hours a day by working. It's easier to appreciate your kids when they aren't driving you nuts 24/7.
What I really want to tell these busybodies who mean well or just don't know when to back the fuck off the subject is...
Sure, tell me how to enjoy this time when I spend it cleaning up the last mess my son did while trying to kill himself. The water he sprayed all over the floor in the kitchen when he moved the chair in there so he could play with the attachment because I was busy trying to clean up the water on the floor in the bathroom that he poured in the floor while he was standing in the sink. Why was he in there? Because I was peeing in my bathroom. I know, how silly of me to leave him alone for two minutes but I hadn't peed in two hours and my bladder was going to burst. What a selfish thing to do.
Oh, and by the way, enjoying the time is great when you've had sleep but I haven't slept eight straight hours more than four times in three years. Don't tell me that I can sleep when he sleeps because when he finally goes down at night, it's the only time I have to get my house clean and put away all the toys that ended up under the couch. It's the only time I have to catch up on wrapping packages and writing out birthday cards to friends and family. It's the only time I have to talk to my husband and watch the three shows I DVR'd to save my sanity from endless Caillou, Dragon Tales, et al.
No, my son isn't ADD or ADHD or any of those alphabet soup things. He's a kid with far more energy than his middle aged Mother can handle. He's too curious about the world and I am constantly trying to keep ahead of him in a house that isn't built for a curious toddler. The locks are a joke so I'm constantly chasing him back into the house from the backyard with its dangers and trying to keep him out of the garage with the tools my husband has decided do not need to be put away. Short of locking him in a large dog kennel, I'm going to be a heartbeat away from wondering when he's going to really do damage to himself.
So, no, I'm not enjoying this that much. I do not want to do this again. At least, not without a buttload of cash for a nanny to do the chasing.

Getting beat up

Not in the physical sense but it feels an awful lot like it after awhile. Maybe that's what all those depression hurts ads mean.
The last two months have been a bitch. Between Husband and I going round and round about the money issue, Boy has been not adjusting to his new preschool as quickly as his school would like him to. They had us in about two weeks ago to discuss putting him into an evaluation with Stanford university to find out what his issues are. We know that Boy is a little behind his peer group when it comes to speaking. His vocabulary is behind other kids but it isn't something that actually worries me. Husband yes, me no. But we made the appointment knowing the insurance company covers almost bupkis of it.
The meeting with the psychiatrist wasn't as horrible as I would have thought. She is going to watch Boy at his preschool and then in two 2 hour sessions, evaluated him for a variety of things - IQ, fine and gross motor skills, etc. It will be more to pin point anything that might be amiss in his little head. Based on our just over an hour with her, she has some basic ideas of things that might be going on from what we've told her. She refuses to give us speculation because she wants to see Boy in action.
You can't help as a Mom to wonder what your part in your child's quirks is your doing. Was it the unpasturized brie I had in my second trimester? Did I not exercise too much or too little? Should I have forced him to sit through Baby Einstein though he kept looking at the vids and at me like I was on crack? What did I do wrong?
I've told a few friends what I'm going through and I've gotten pretty good support out of it. It's not like I want to advertise that Boy is being evaluated for possible defects. Even though we all know that if there is something miswired in a kid's head, there are some who will shy away from bringing their kid into your kid's circle lest they catch it. And there is something about having the unsolicited advice of those who feel they are the arbiters of all knowledge on child raising. Ugh.
So you can imagine how I felt bitch slapped by Hollie when she sent me a sharply worded email telling me that I needed to get Boy's hearing tested - that she has told me this a few times and why will I not listen to her? Right now, the last thing I need - and even she has acknowledged this in said email - is to be even more stressed out but there she goes. I politely told her we'd look into it in an email back. Let's just say there will be no return phone calls to Hollie for a few days because I'm just so very hurt by what she wrote.
Is she right? Sure. Boy probably should get a hearing test. Just to rule out the possibility that he's got some hearing issues. My ears are burned out from all the freakin' times I've listened to the Caillou theme song. He's listened to it even more than I have.
But what cheesed me is that she really didn't seem to read the email I sent closely. She seems to think that this is something the preschool is doing rather that an outside agency. That we are paying out of pocket $1500 that we don't have to find out if our son has Asperger's or an IQ of 190 or something. That it is through Stanford University which isn't exactly Beau's College of Yungins and Rubber Goods. I wanted to explain to her in longer sentences that Stanford University is sending a psychiatrist on staff with their childrens' center to the preschool to observe for an hour Boy doing what Boy does. Then we are going for one day over two weeks for two hour sessions to test Boy on various skills to eliminate things to figure out what is going on in Boy's little head.
Why didn't I? Because one, I hate confrontation and two, I'm too damned polite. And three, Hollie is stressed out by having just moved back in with her parents after living on her own for 18 years so she can finish her doctorate dissertation and holding down a part time job in her field that is really new to her. The last thing I want to do is piss her off when she's not thinking straight and lose my other best friend. I'm floundering enough in my life without the easy chat I once had with my other best friend but to lose this one would leave me even more adrift.
What would I have preferred? Just tell me that you're thinking good thoughts and to talk to the pediatrician about possible hearing tests. After I get all the test results back in three weeks from the psychiatrist, then bring up the whole why don't we eliminate the hearing issue thing again. It is really aggrevating to have to deal with this attack when I'm feeling fragile as it is. You want your friends to help but some times, you feel like all you get is needles thrown at you. Or darts. Or worse.

Overwhelmed

I read a great article in Cookie magazine about a parent who talked about being overwhelmed by all the stuff the school threw at parents early in the year. Stuff like fund raising and volunteering for field trips before the kids could remember where they sat in class each day.
Boy started his new preschool this month and I found a couple broadsheets from Scholastic book services waiting. I remember those from when I was a kid and loved them. Boy I think is too young to get into them or care about them. I probably will order a couple of books for him to try to get into. There a couple of fund raisers in the offing that we'd been warned about so I'm just waiting for it all to begin.
A good friend sent me an email soliciting my purchases for his son's school. He emailed to apologize to me that it was being sent out on the first day of school and they were getting high pressure already to make sure that their child sold a lot. First prize is a weekend at a local resort that he said was marginal at best. He'd rather the money go back to the school. I bought two magazine subscriptions to magazines I buy at the grocery store anyhow.
It's not just school that seems to feel the need to pressure you to participate. I belong to a Mother's Club and there was a fundraiser this summer that they asked people to participate in. My plan was to drop off some things for it but I couldn't get Husband to buy in and help me with assembling everything so the event passed us by. I didn't volunteer to staff the event because we had plans for the weekend that precluded my actually being able to get involved.
Come Monday morning, an email went out that praised lavishly all that had been involved and a not-so-subtle slap at those of us who didn't do anything. How wonderful those who were willing to go out of their way to help with the fundraiser and how these are such terrific human beings (the allusion that those of us who might have other things going on was that we might be less than delightful people). The lovefest continued for a few days then faded like a red dress in the Mojave desert in July.
The Mother's Club has emails that go out a few times a week from various members about how they want donations to the charities they work for or with or how we should be buying tickets for dinner dances or raffles or plays that will benefit this or that. And some times, there is a follow up that chides us for not buying the $30, $45, $50 or more dollar ticket. Or sending that check in to help a family in dire straights during the holidays.
Coupled with the never ending phone calls from the charities that I some times feel were a mistake to give to in the first place that want me to help them during this dire crisis of the week it seems that the whole world is filled with beggars with their palms outstretched. Give, give, give. We need it more than you possibly can use it. The oceans are dying! Children in this impoverished nation will die if you don't help us! Education is suffering because of the Governator! Your son's favourite PBS shows will disappear because we are spending a fortune on anything but quality programming on PBS channels!
So where do we draw the line? Every time I have to answer to phone to silence it so it doesn't waken Boy in midnap, I'm confronted by a telemarketer who knows my name since I gave to the charity before who doesn't take my polite, no, I can't as an answer. I know their job is to tap me for as much as they can. And yes, I do feel bad when it's the beneviolent order of widows and children of fallen officers but it's hard to deal with when they say they are sending me stuff because they know I'll kick down $100 or $50 or $25 or $10 for the packet they send.
Economic times are hard all over the US. A good friend confided that her husband lost his job during a takeover and now they need to figure out how to survive on their savings until he finds work again. (Before someone says pithily that she should go back to work, some families have chosen that childcare be given to one member of the family and the other gets the joy of escaping their kid(s) for the joys of a job) We are economizing because Husband has decided we spend too much money (translated: I spend too much money on trivial things like food, Boy's clothes, things on sale that would make great gifts for people down the road etc but neglecting to remember how he spent $250 on some little thing that he played with once then put in the closet because it wasn't what he thought it would be. Again). My grand 'allowance' each week is roughly a quarter to a third of what I was spending before. Husband has said I should "think" about what I'm buying and whether we really need it. I felt like asking him if we really needed to get another tech gadget when he went to Fry's last weekend but I refrained. Instead, I simply withdrew a smaller amount of money than I would usually spend each week and that is all I will spend each week. When the money is gone, the money is gone.
It works pretty well. Husband has said I can use more if I need it and I've told him that with Boy's birthday party and his parents' visiting, I will need to extra money to buy his parents' favourite drinks and lunch items as well as the dinners that I will have to create for them. The cold fish stare followed by a comment that his parents didn't need the amount of drinks that I was buying since they didn't drink all that (Husband isn't home most of his parents' visit so he has no idea how much or how little his parents' consume) and did I really need to buy drinks for the party? Couldn't everyone just have water, juice and milk? What we have in the fridge?
The fact that we have nearly 25 people coming over with different needs makes it tough for me to get through to Husband that no, three of the kids are lactose intolerent and two of the kids can't have juice after noon and if we are having burgers and dogs, we should have have condiments and chips to go with them....
Money is an issue. So why do we have to be guilted into spending money on other people who don't have much either?

Why we don't go on vacation

Since Boy turned two years old, I've been asking Husband to go on a short vacation. A family vacation. Not to anyplace expensive (like Madrid or Malaysia) or anyplace unrealistic (like St Petersberg of the African savanna). Local to a certain degree. Not Disneyland (I don't believe it is cost effect to take any child under the age of six to Dland - they aren't tall enough for the vast majority of the rides and some scare the crap out of them). But to Legoland. Or Yosemite. Or to visit friends in Phoenix. Or to Bryce National Park or Grand Canyon.
But his answers always seem to be kind of ridiculous. "Boy is too young to enjoy (fill in the blank)." "What is there that is worth seeing?"
In Husband's mind, the best vacation is going back to his hometown and hanging out with his friends. He's already said that next summer, we will go back to his hometown and hang out with his best friend and his best friend's young family. Which means Boy and I will hang out with the wife and kid while Husband and his best friend go off to the best friend's fishing shack for three days of drinking and general stupidity. A howling great time for them, but seriously boring time for the Mommies who will spend their time chasing toddlers and trying to guess when they will get to eat a meal. Or he wants to go to Vegas without Boy but of course, in his mind, that means my Mom will have to take care of Boy for five days which is about four and a half days too long.
My in laws moved from where Husband grew up to where my Father in Law (FIL) grew up because they could buy more for their buck. They have a big piece of land with a nice house in the middle of nowhere. They didn't grow up in happy households and left home as soon as they possibly could, joining the military. While my Mother in Law (MIL) left the military after ten years to raise Husband, my FIL stayed in, growing increasing unhappy. The more unhappy he was, the more he and MIL drank.
When Husband and I were dating, my MIL gave me a photo album of Husband. It was 50 pages long but there were maybe 10 pictures of Husband and the rest were dizzy pictures of drunken revels. They would have a party any night that FIL didn't have to work the next day. Because there was little money in the house, their family vacations were spent at home with days of cleaning up and nights of drunken revelry. If they went anywhere, they were car trips from where they lived in the Midwest to where FIL grew up. Hours spent in a car with smoking parents who were upset about the expense.
Even before Boy was born, we would visit my in laws and our week was spent in the house doing nothing. My FIL would work on his classic truck or go down to the local garage to help out. My MIL would work around the house or go to her women's club meetings or sit around smoking and reading. After awhile, I would get stir crazy. It wasn't like I could walk into town (the town a half mile away consists of a general store, two churches and a post office) to find amusement. Or any local sites. I suggested one time we drive to a famous landmark two hours away in a famous town which we did. My FIL spent the entire drive grim and angry. It was off season and almost everything was closed. His attitude was that since I proposed it, I should have done the research in finding things to do there.
I grew up with a Father who had the attitude if someone came to visit us, we should get out to show them the area. He also believed that we should enjoy the area within 300 miles of our home as much as possible since we lived in California. My early memories are of being carried out to our station wagon late at night on Thursday night and driving for a couple of hours on our way to one of my parents' friends homes. We'd stop half way, have sandwiches, then drive on to their houses. We'd spend the weekend having fun before driving home on Sunday so Dad could get to work on Monday. I saw Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Sea World, the redwoods, etc before I was ten because we'd have friends and family visit and my Dad would pack us all up so we could see everything.
Boy is nearly three years old. We've seen the redwoods only because I insisted. I had asked that Husband ask his parents to stay an extra week so we could go to Yosemite since Husband has been wanting to see it since he moved to California almost a decade ago. The blank stare from Husband. My in laws are coming for their customary one week (you can sent a watch by it). No trip. It'll be five days (day one is a travel day in and day seven is a travel day out) of them being inmates of our home. FIL will do odd jobs around the house Husband can't or won't do. MIL will go buy books then sit in the house reading our library of books. She might accompany me to Target to buy things for Boy or to Costco. But for the most part, there isn't a whole lot else that they have in mind to do. Husband works the entire week they are here and sees very little of them.
In retrospect, the idea of Yosemite with them is ridiculous. They complain of their physical problems that restrict them from doing anything like walking around to admire the park. My MIL has found excuses since Boy was nine pounds to not hold him. My FIL has a bad back so he can't sit in a car for that long. Despite the fact I was born with congenital issues with my legs and I have arthritis in my back, I keep on keeping on. My friends know that I can walk for 45 minutes without a problem but I have to rest for at least 15 minutes so my legs and back can get a break. I refuse to let my physical problems slow me down.
My Mother has proposed to spend some money she is getting from an inheritance on a family vacation. An Alaskan cruise next year. She is willing to pay for our cruises and a couple of nights of hotel stays before and after the cruise. We have to cover airfare and all our extras on the ship. I mentioned it to my in laws (without telling them about my Mom paying for a bulk of it) and they said NO! Husband says they are worried about the expense. Even if my Mom covers the most expensive part of it. Husband has shown little interest in an Alaskan cruise ("what is there to do?") which frustrates me.
Finally, in a fit of frustration, I told my Mom about all of this. She also remembers the vacations we took to Virginia City, Tombstone, Yellowstone and Tillamook cheese factory. They are part of her memories as well as mine. She can't understand Husband's reluctance to go out and spend some of our savings on a trip. I agree that he would rather spend $500 on a gadget than spend it on a trip to Legoland or a long weekend in Yosemite. It's not as if he doesn't have a lot of vacation time - he gets two weeks and this year, has used two days. (Yes, it's August and he's used two days. If he'd gone to his hometown like he wanted to for his best friend's 40th birthday part he would have taken an entire week off.)
So, my Mom has decreed that next year, she will take Boy, her and I on a trip to Alaska on a cruise even without Husband if he finds he can't get away from his job. And we'll go visit friends in Phoenix. And go to San Diego to Legoland and Sea World. Which I'm over the moon about.
I was six months pregnant when Husband said he didn't want Boy to have the childhood he had. He wanted to make sure he was home more than his Dad was. He was going to be more affectionate than he parents were. He wanted Boy to have a better childhood than he did. I took that as a sign that he wanted to make sure that great memories were a part of it.
Now, I find that he's pushing back by not wanting to do things based on his own desire not to do them. Boy would have memories of vacations consisting of us visiting his Grandmom (my Mom) every couple of months for 48 hours before driving back so Daddy could get back to work. Or going to Grandmom's house for a four days because Mommy wanted to go visit. It's good that he'll have these great memories of spending time with his Grandmom but I want him to have memories of seeing things that were interesting and grand.
Why is a vacation so hard?

Down into the rabbit hole

I have a Facebook account. I got it because Husband has one and a few friends had one. Mostly I abuse it for Scrabulous and it's successor, Wordscraper. My friends and I play against each other for shits and giggles.
But, I made a mistake. I didn't think that I'd end up finding myself down the rabbit hole of the past. I found old friends from high school. Most of which I wanted to find again. Some I wanted to tell how I felt about them and how I never had the courage to tell them when we were young that I thought they were amazing human beings. Others I just wanted to share a few good memories. One wanted to rehash a relationship he had with one of my high school best friends and what went terribly wrong with her. It was a little more painful to have to lay out this young woman's life in detail because I didn't know how to tell him that he was being played then and he still lets her play him now. I have no idea what became of her after the age of 19 when I cut her loose. I couldn't deal with her using people and expecting me to clean up her messes.
And from that man who is now in his 40s, married with kid, I find another friend who was a basket case. Her family life was sordid at best. She was unloved at home, as was her tortured psyche sibs, and desperate for attention. She was like one of those kittens or puppies at the animal adoption fair that is really trying to get your attention but seems to be just a little off. One of the last baby pets to be in the basket at the end of the fair and you adopt her then you find out that she's going to be the pet that isn't going to share you with anyone.
The story that says the most about her was one that I was told in high school from a friend. He was a year younger than me (she was a year older than me) and we were sitting around a camp fire on one of my yearly end of summer beach dos I threw. Don said that she had come on to him heavily when he was 15 and she 18. They had been at a party, drunk on cheap beer (Mickey's Wide Mouth I believe) and he had decided that if she wanted to have sex, so be it. So, they scampered off to her room where he started to have sex with her.
"She lay there like a board," he said, annoyed. "She just didn't want to be there."
So he got up and left her, unfinished. She said some things about him so in retaliation, he spray painted something unkind on the sidewalk in front of her house. A single word, quite blunt in his surmise of their few minutes of fumbling intimacy, that her parents took literally months to finally try to erase from their sidewalk.
It took me a half hour of thinking to decide if I wanted to admit her friendship on the arms length joys of Facebook. Right now, I've got a 'friend' on Facebook that hunted me down that I shared a post lay off class with who just never learned to get over his anger that he had been let go. He took it personally that he jumped on the tech bandwagon late in the game and didn't end up being a millionaire overnight. It never occurred to him that he was let go, as I was, along with 40K other people in our company. It can't be personal at that point. You're just a number to the leaders.
But in the case of this young woman that I shared 18 months of school with, there was more than annoyance at listening to tales of how screwed they got by a company. This woman had a rather complicated and tragic past (her youngest brother, adopted, reminded of it constantly by their distant parents, manufactured his version of his biological parents and when he finally hunted them down at 16 and found out that they were junkies, he came back to the only home he knew and took his own life). Would I find out after I had accepted her request for friendship now that we're in our 40s that she is still a broken human being?
I said yes.
She's still broken. New information poured in. She's still single. Recently re-singled. She has the classic sign of a single woman in her 40s: cats. Thankfully, she lives several states away so it will be tough for her to show up on our doorstep with a cat carrier or three to visit. Part of me wonders when she'll send me a note to say hello and ask about the high school best friend (that she also considered her best friend) that I cut loose at 19. Part of me wonders at what point am I going to have to find a cyber restraining order for her. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll just send me pieces of flair.

Past will come back to get you

I've been starting and not finishing a few posts. They are saved somewhere in here and I'll probably end up deleting them because the righteous anger than started them has dissipated like steam in the desert.
Right now, I'm contemplating my past.
I'm on Facebook. I got dragged in by Husband and some friends. I play Scrabulous with friends, talk smack with others, have a little green patch I update daily. And I'm discovering a past I thought I had left behind.
But, you never leave your past behind, do you? You can change your name, your look, your location but you still find yourself a little haunted by who you once were. Then you get to a certain point in your life where you realise that you don't care about the person people thought you were. And you are willing to say hello to the people you liked, the people who you should have told that you thought were fabulous or the people that you moved away from emotionally and socially when you were a teen.
I've connected with people who have known me nearly four decades. It's strange to have conversations with people who have settled into the familiar of our old home county with lives less ordinary. To chat amicably about people who made your life difficult in your youth and wonder what became of that pain in the ass. I get contemplative in this world.
There are people who I wasn't close to in high school but whom I admired. When I connected with them via Facebook or Classmates or whatever, I have told them that I admired their spirit, their sense of self, their sass. They are surprised, some times even a little touched, that I even felt that way because they had a sense of self that was completely hidden from view. One of the women I recently connected with on Facebook said she hated going to school in our little white washed world. She considered herself a great actress for pretending to enjoy life day to day in a world where she was paprika in a field of sea salt. I understood but in a different way. She's a success in her life but I detected a small sense of apology that she wasn't married or had any kids to show for our four decades of life. I told her that it's not that important as long as you are happy with the life you're in.
Another friend I connected with on Facebook dated the two girls I was best friends with. One for a matter of months and the other for two years. We chatted for several days via email about how one was vanilla with a sprinkling of jimmies and the other was just nuts. The nuts one seemed to linger in his mind the longest and therefore, our conversations. I told him I had to cut her loose not long after we graduated from high school because I couldn't be the person she wanted me to be. Her life was too damaged and she wanted me to be the person to fix it all up so she didn't have to take responsibility for it. But after awhile, I couldn't deal with her pleading for me to pick her up from yet another stupid error she made (like having her battered old sedan towed away because she parked it in a no parking zone 15 miles from her house but 100 miles from where I lived). It was hard enough for me to figure out who I was going to be away from the cage of the small town I grew up in without having to be a Mother to a woman/child.
This guy who had been her boyfriend for two years had run into her a couple of years after graduation and said she had found some peace in her life with a guy in the Bay Area. She apologized for the flaming hoops she had put him through and he said she seemed to be happy for once in her life. I think there is a part of him who was still enraptured by the sprite quality she liked to use to ensnare people. Having been her best friend for three years in high school, I knew her routines well.
She has gone deep undercover. I've tried to hunt her down to no avail. I found the other best friend (who I also axed that fateful summer after high school simply because she and I were geographically challenged and that she wanted me to put my graduation trip on hold so I could amuse her for three days after I had told her that there was no way I would do it). She is living a life similar to the one she was living when we were young. She is engrossed in a world of make believe with her husband who she met via her ethereal sensibilities. Another damaged soul who survived a Dad who had a local celebrity status and a Mom who alternately basked and hated that glow because she wanted it on her own. This Mom would send out yearly letters to other friends' parents about how her family was doing so beautifully - how her eldest son was working in the kitchen of a top chef (rather than say that he was a dishwasher at a restaurant because he had flunked out of community college) or how her youngest son was researching alternative forms of education (rather than say he flunked out of high school and wanted to follow Phish in a VW Eurovan).
Tonight, I happen to see that Facebook had found some more of the names from my past. People I have always wondered where they had gone to. I'm too timid to find out if they would take an email from me since they held me in great disdain when I was a high school student. One I would love to tell that a cartoon he drew for our school paper really helped me get perspective in life and helped me deal with my teen years better than I might have done otherwise.
In fact, I think I will...

Barely breathing

I can't be sick! I'm a Mommy!
There is no good time to be sick when you're a Mom. Especially a stay at home Mom. Especially a stay at home Mom who has a husband leaving the country for a week.
Boy threw up in the car the day before Husband left for overseas. The day Husband left for his trip, I started feeling the signs of a cold coming on. But since Boy was starting to feel better, I figured that it would be a short lived illness. Besides, my Mom was coming up the following day so she could watch Boy for a morning while I slept off a Tylenol Cold pill.
Don't I wish it was that easy?
Boy got a raging cold. He was coughing, runny nosed and was running down for him. M was pissed off that Boy was coughing at school even though he had been fine all morning. Boy had spent all night coughing his little lungs out and seemed to be doing fine. But alas, it wasn't so.
After six days of lack of sleep (I'd averaged about two hours of sleep each day), my body finally just broke down. I couldn't move on Thursday morning. My Mom took over Boy while I lay feverishly in bed. For the previous four days, I had been so congested, nothing I had taken had been able to break up the blockage in my head. In one day, I managed to go through three boxes of tissues. I was so listless that just moving from bed to bathroom was painful. So having to get up four or five times a night to comfort a miserable Boy was asking an awful lot.
Friday morning, after picking up Husband at the airport, we went home. Boy was over the moon at seeing his Father's return. After Husband had his shower, he took on Boy. I passed out, trying to get my nose to let me breathe. That night, my head started to clear a smidge. Enough that I was able to get a small chance at rest.
I still need more sleep. But Boy has been feeling needy so he requires Mommy at night still. Too hard to sleep with him when he decides he has to sleep in the middle of the bed and spread his legs out so I have to sleep at the end of his bed. But if I walk away, he cries pitifully until I come back. Husband finally took over so I could rest.
How do you be sick and be a Mom? You're not suppose to be sick, ever. But when you are, there is that shell shocked feeling and the shell shocked look on your family as they realise they have to figure this one out on their own.
Ears are popping. Thank God. Maybe I'll be able to get clear sinuses next.

System breakdown

I'm slammed with the flu and a head cold. I feel like ten sacks of shit in a three pound bag right now.
For the last month, it's been one thing after another. Family visits. Disagreements with M about Boy. Husband laying down the law about household spending but going out to buy a new expensive toy for himself and not cashing checks. So it's not wonder that Boy's cold jumped to a new ship and mutated.
My in laws came for a visit - the usual one exact week visit they do. God love 'em but they really come to sit and read in a different environment. They watch Boy for a couple of hours one night so Husband and I can have a meal in peace but for the most part, I'm chasing Boy around. My Father in law is happiest with the various things that have fallen apart in our house that he can fix. They didn't bother to watch the Weather Channel or check online to see the weather forecast which would have helped them pack reasonably. They packed for cool weather. It was ragingly hot. So they had to buy some short sleeved shirts and shorts which they left behind. More stuff that I have no space for in my house.
A cousin came to visit for a day from out of state. She and her husband were staying at a hotel closer to the City which meant one less thing that I had to think about but I had expected them to come by after lunch. They arrived at ten am. Our landlord had come over to fix some odd things in the house with his son and they left to pick up more supplies. What should have been a half hour took them three hours blocking my car in the driveway to I couldn't take my cousin out to lunch (since I had nothing to prepare for them since I had planned only to make dinner). My landlord sounded annoyed that I called asking him to quickly return to move his car out of his driveway.
We have orientation at Boy's new school next week. Hallalujah. If I'm lucky and can get Boy potty trained by August, Boy can start school without a problem. If I'm not successful, I have a new list of places that won't be a rip off to take Boy to. Boy needs an environment that will help him take his energy and channel it correctly. That will continue to intrigue his brain which clearly isn't happening anymore at M's school.
I've been running on adrenalin for the last three weeks. Dealing with Husband deciding to buy a new toy for himself that meant that I had to rethink buying ahead for Christmas (I see something interesting on sale, I buy it and hide it so that I can give it later). Boy needed a new car seat so $300 later, we were even further in debt. And don't start with me about the taxes.
So my system, a few days after the in laws left, decided to collapse. Husband was on a plane overseas and I just barely was able to keep up with Boy. Thank God I've got my Mom a couple hours drive away who can help me out.

Mother's Day is over - get back to work!

I almost had an entire night of uninterrupted sleep. Boy came into the guest room where I was dead to the world after he couldn't rouse his Daddy from the marital bed.
"Mommy."
I dragged myself out of bed, followed the little striped body back to his room and hoisted him back into his Big Boy Bed. He snuggled beneath his comforter and into his pillows, clutching his sippy cup of water. As usual, I checked to see the status of his diaper. A little pee, nothing to drag myself out of bed to get a fresh diaper for. He sucked down his water and then fell to slumbers, his small feel shoved into my rolls of fat for warmth. After a couple of minutes, I got up, went to the kitchen to get him another half cup of water to put in his room before going back to bed.
Around six am, he came in, found my back to him then went in search of Daddy. He apparently crawled into bed with Husband and snuggled into him. Then after a few minutes of conversation, went to sleep until about 730am when he announced to Husband, "Wet." Not just "my diaper is wet, Daddy, please rectify the situation" wet but "my diaper is hypersaturated and your bed is now wet, Daddy." Boy didn't exactly scamper off his soggy place but lay there for a few more minutes before clambering off the bed with Husband feeling the grim truth.
I heard them awaken, Boy asking plaintively for more soy milk and Thomas the Tank Engine with Husband saying, "Shhhh, Mommy is still asleep" and closing the door to the guest room. Even though Husband for some reason will close the hall door when I'm asleep in the master bedroom or Boy's room (which share a common wall with the living room so I hear everything anyhow), he doesn't when I am slumbering in the guest room. So hearing Boy shout "Thom-US!" at the top of his tremble voice echoes down the hall and through the hollow core door the room.
Half asleep and half awake, I managed to get to quarter to ten before rousing myself to get ready for the day. In 45 minutes, Husband and I managed to get clean and fresh plus getting Boy into some nice clothes before heading out the door to join some friends for an impromptu Mother's Day brunch at a restaurant. Afterwards, I headed home to drop my boys off and headed off to the movies so I could do what I love best: lose myself in someone else's world.
In a former life, I went to the movies frequently. I worked retail so I could go during the bargain matinee shows and embrace the world on film. Living in LA is surreal in the fact you can be watching a Woody Allen flick on DVD (or at the time I lived there, on VHS) and the next day, be asking Diane Keaten if she would like to have her purchase wrapped. After awhile, you learned to just treat the people you just paid $6 to see on the screen (this was a long time ago) like the ten other people who you helped before them.
The theatre was holding 20 people for the movie (in the top ten ranked this weekend so it wasn't a stinker flick) when the lights went down. For two hours, I enjoyed myself immensely. The reviews for the movie weren't great but it was one I had been wanting to see for awhile. It's one we'll own on DVD simply because I really enjoyed it. Sorry, Mick Lasalle, I know you didn't like it but I did. We agree to disagree.
Afterwards, I picked up groceries at Safeway then headed home. Husband took us out to dinner at a burger restaurant where Boy managed to run off a few times making dinner as usual a challenge. We came home and life went back to its usual Sunday night rituals:
I gathered all the recycling in the house and put it on the curb in its green box.
I shredded documents and got all the brown paper bags of recycling to the curb.
I got the yard waste in the big green rolling bin to the curb.
And I gathered all the trash and dirty diapers and put it in the trash can. And rolled them to the curb.
That's when Husband asked if I needed any help.
As he does every week.
When I was eight months pregnant, I waddled out the door every Sunday afternoon, taking all the recycling and trash to the curb to the astonishment of my neighbours. They couldn't believe that this pregnant woman was doing all this without her husband's help. Of course, Husband was with a company that sent his ass out of town every week so most of the time, he wasn't home. And when he was, it wasn't something he really thought about or was thorough about. (We'd end up with full bags of trash in the house and the following week, he'd gripe about how our trash can was too full - duh.) I think the one time he took trash out during my pregnancy was the day before I went in for my C section.
So as much as the holiday gets the Hallmark moment gloss of being a day where Mom is queen, life isn't that way at all. There are not a lot of breakfasts in bed and dinners out. Most of us get an awkward brunch with our Mom and Mother in law as they try to decide who is the better Grandparent. While they decide where your kid's propensity for flicking mashed potatoes at them is from, you're wondering what to make for dinner that night. And you are making dinner that night. It's not your husband throwing a filet mignon on the barbeque and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, it's you figuring out if you made lemon chicken Friday or was it the week before?
Mother's Day is over. I'm back to work.

Celebrity eco warriors

In the last year, I've been reading more helpful comments from the celebrity eco set. For years, I've been amused with the extremes of Ed Begley Jr and Leonardo Di Caprio's Prius when he's not out with his posse scouting the chicas. But now, I have to admit that some of the soap box meanderings are getting on my nerves.
I'm usually the one who goes a little overboard with the recycling. I make sure to dig out the soap box or the shampoo bottle Husband threw in the trash to put in the recycling bins. Recently, I went to the 'net to find out who takes the deep fryer oil I have so I can make sure it gets to be biofuel (no one wants to cop to it). Lately, I try to only do my errands on days when Boy has school at the academy so that I can conserve fuel in my SUV.
But, seriously, some of the advice is contradictory and some times, not really realistic, that these eco celebrities are mouthing off in the magazines or on tv.
Some time ago, I read that Cameron Diaz believed that you should not rinse off your dishes before popping them into the dishwasher. And I'm sure that she and her staff do that. But they also probably have a much better dishwasher than I do. Because when I've missed a bit of stickiness on my dishes, it requires me an extra 15 minutes of scrubbing in the sink after I've run the dish through the dishwasher because it's now baked on. How much water is getting wasted now?
Another piece of advice I got from another mag and a celebrity Mom is that I should have a stack of a dozen dishcloths for the sole purpose of wiping up messes rather than go through the Costco sized Bounty paper towels that I buy for that purpose. So I tried that. I ended up going through all dozen in half a day and having to do an extra two loads of laundry that week. Sorry, landfill, I'm putting Boy's Huggies and the Bountys in you. Which means more water gets 'wasted' and I'm using more laundry detergent (sorry, the eco stuff doesn't do a great job of getting orange strawberry banana juice out of towels). Next?
It's sort of difficult for me to take with a straight face all the eco celebrities who spout of on the environment and what they are doing to protect it when I sort of wonder if they are really practicing what they preach. I'm sure they tell their staff to do so but what happens when Celebrity X goes off to Larry King Live to preach during April's eco awareness month? Do they come home and dig through the trash to see if their maids only used cloth to wipe up messes rather than that Costco container of Bounty like I do? Do they really send their nannies out to buy the eco friendly diapers at Whole Foods and think that the nanny is changing them all the time? Or that they use those cloth diapers religiously so that the maid can wash them? Or have the service pick them up?
Real life is a far more challenging proposition when you don't have a staff.

Exhausted from the effort

Do you ever get those days when you're just so tired from pretending that you can be superwoman but you just can't?
I'm having one of those days.
Once again, I'm left holding the bag trying to figure out Boy's future while Husband blithely goes off to work to bring home the pancetta for our little family. Our house looks like a disaster zone and I need to clean it (yes, I really am a traditional Mom - no nanny share or weekly maid service for me) before Boy's white socks turn black from the crud on the floors. And I get to start calling around to other nursery school programs to try to figure out where to send Boy if M's academy continues to vex me that will take on a child with high spirits and a lack of interest in potty training. Oh and I have to try to potty train Boy.
Keeping from breaking down is one of those things I am going to try to do. I would love to do nothing more than curling up under the duvet and crying my eyes out. But there is something vaguely self indulgent about it.
Besides, Boy just handed me his Mother's Day gift he 'made' at the academy. And he's personalizing it with a pen I left out from jotting down the names of schools I have to check out for Boy's future. Losing my grip would seem...churlish.

Cleopaetra, Queen of Denial also works at a preschool

M is Boy's nursery school director. Despite the impressive pedigree she unfurls at you at first meeting of having advanced degrees in child this and that, she seems to have lost her love of the kid. As I've told other Mommies who are at the school that I'm friendly with, I think M is phoning it in. There have been too many incidents that give me pause for thought. It's also my raison d'etre for getting Boy ready for a new preschool in the fall that I won't have to sweat Boy's happiness with.
Boy took awhile to like the school. He loves the teaching assistants (who are really just glorified babysitters since none have a degree in child development or anything) and he likes many of the students there. But he doesn't like M. She constantly tries to convince him that she loves him by grabbing him for a hug but you can see Boy is tolerating it. Sure, he's not the most articulate of the little overachievers at M's school but he's pretty easy to read.
I didn't like M from the get go but because we were unaware of the hoops we had to leap through to get Boy into a program for two days a week to ease me out of insanity, we had to settle for the one Boy's best friend was in. Valentine had put her son in the school a few months before and when we first arrived for the looksy, her youngster was wailing inconsolably. M was really ticked off that little George clung to me like ivy on a wall.
"No, no, no," she said, prying a wailing George out of my arms, "he has to get over this. He knows me. He has been around me for three months now."
I kept my tongue by not telling her that I'd known George for a few months longer and he was very comfortable with me. She was the expert.
Boy was with Husband and comfortable because he had Daddy, Mommy and his "Johge" near him. But now, this lady had taken George away from Mommy so he was agitated.
Later, as both Boy and George ran around outside, M told me the reason Boy was agitated was because I was wound up tighter than a clock. She said once he was there, he would be fine.
Fast forward three months and eventually, Boy did get used to the school. Not M.
We are seven months into Boy's tenure at the academy (as she calls it) and the more time I spend with Boy there, the more I realise that this isn't the right enviro for him. He's gotten more articulate; he knows his alphabet and numbers well but he isn't getting structure. There is a laisssez faire attitude the staff has about being there. Until the newest instructor started who lives around the corner, staff would arrive 10 minutes after school began. M would arrive some times five minutes late but mostly about 20 minutes late.
(Of course, if you're five minutes late, M chirps quickly that you owe her $10 because you were late. Because M is a really mercurial person, I pay rather than remind her that she should be paying me for all the times her staff is late and she's late. I just want her to shut up so I can leave.)
The only time M has really anything positive to say about Boy is when he's either been entirely docile (as her favourite students tend to be) or if he's managed to hurt himself pretty badly. He's an active kid so it's expected. M tells me a story of how it happened and I hear from one of the other kids about what happened to get Boy to the point where he hurt himself. When he smacked another kid in the head, I didn't get to ask what was the lead up to it. The child he smacked tends to be a bit of a whiner who spends the better part of the day curled up in M's lap making mewling noises (he's the youngest of five kids and his Mother always looks like she could use a good antidepressant with a cosmo and a gift card to Good Vibrations). M was incensed. She said that Boy should be evaluated for behaviour problems.
Sure, Boy has his issues but he's 2 1/2. They aren't exactly the souls of negotiation and patience. Boy tends to get physical when he thinks someone is a git. He was mad tonight because a pretty girl tonight he had extended his attentions to was ignoring him. He pushed her. We told him that was wrong. He glared at her Father. Even with George, who is his best friend, he has figured out how to deal with him. If George has gotten in one of his "all that I see is mine" moods, Boy will play with an item and distract George long enough to grab what he wants. If George gets petulant, Boy will mess up George's hair. Boy has shoved or hit George twice when George hit or shoved Boy.
Picking a setting for a two year old is hard. Up here in NoCal, you tend to have to choose schools that are prohibitively expensive (or as a friend puts it, the school you put your kid in because you feel guilty for not spending any time with them) or the cheaper schools that require you to just give them a check on time. Almost all require some sort of getting in line (either literally or figuratively) before they consider your kid for their school. And if you're not aware of it, you are, as my late Daddy said, SOL.
So, we have M and her interesting ways that we want to move Boy out of. Hopefully I won't have to write about anything else on her.

Rough week to rough weekend

No good deed goes unpunished, so the saying goes. And thus it goes.
Last week, Valentine's home was going through a small remodel. Okay, for the last two weeks it's been going through a small remodel while Valentine winds up her second and last pregnancy. Call it nesting instinct, but she is making sure their home is perfect for the birth of their new baby. The house has been covered in dust as things are added and subtracted around their abode but last week, they had the painters in to repaint the entire interior of the house.
She asked if she park her son and his nanny with us for the week while they painted. Not a problem, I thought and okayed it. Boy loves his best friend and Valentine's son goes to the same nursery school program twice a week that Boy goes to and two days a week, he goes to another program. That meant that we had our guests from one until six pm.
Maybe having his best friend around for so many days and for so long, despite the fact that they both napped for two hours of the five they were together, was too much for him. The week and now the weekend, Boy has spent acting out, sleeping badly and being more needy than normal. When he played with his best buddy, they were all laughs and trouble together. I would understand if his little buddy was acting out but it was Boy who did most of the troublesome things. He climbed onto the dining room table and threw some vases my Aunt gave me onto the ground, smashing them. Crayon art decorates the walls of Husband's office. He smeared God knows what onto our television.
Even though his little buddy only camped out at our house on Friday for four hours and decamped at 430pm for his own paint fumed home, Boy continued to act out. He became tantrumy in the evening and began hitting. Today, he fought as hard as he could, hitting me, when it came time to nap. He was exhausted and needed his sleep but he was determined to throw all the stuff on his chest of drawers on the ground and stomp on them.
And tonight he also decided to strip his bed. Off came his duvet, his three body pillows, his two bears, two head pillows. Last night, in an act sure to bring me into his room, he stripped off his pajamas and diaper.
I understand what he wants. He wants Husband or I to sleep with him. To give him our undivided attention. To give him the security that seemed elude him for some reason. Normally, he nods off and we don't have any problems with him. But, all week, it was waking up after four hours at night and coming to get me so I could get him his milk, water whatever. I would, generally it's in his room, and tuck him back into his bed. But he would come back and get me. Over and over again. He wasn't happy until I was curled up next to him while he kicked me for the next few hours as he slept.
Husband was getting beyond pissed tonight as Boy challenged him. Right now, Husband is curled up next to Boy who is asleep finally. I'm curling up in the guest room with a magazine and a couple Tylenol PM as soon as I finish this.
Ahh, the joys of toddler stress.

The pink placard is for waddling women

I read recently that California is trying to work a law saying that women in their last trimester of pregnancy and first quarter of parenthood should get a special blue placard to hang off their windshield. To be honest, I'm not sure what to feel about this. Part of me is amused. Part of me is really disgusted. Part of me thinks this is a great idea.
When I was great with Boy in utero, I had legs that could have fed a small community for a year. Normally, I have super skinny legs (about the only things on me that are) so having legs that had substance was a dream come true. Having the ache and want to give out on me all the time was not. So I see the point of the idea.
But, considering how women are constantly hammered with the idea if you gain too much weight during pregnancy (like more than 15 pounds), you are jeopardizing your life, your baby's life etc. So we have to exercise like fiends rather than sit back and enjoy it like our Mom's generations did. What will giving me the pink (and I'm just hypothesizing here on the colour) do for me? Give me the option of parking my car near the store for a convenience so that when I see my doctor in a few days, he can remind me that I've put on a lot of weight so I should exercise more?
Outside of Cali, there are states that actually have taken this and pondered it. Then implemented their own parking considerations. A friend lives in Pittsburgh and outside of the grocery stores, near the disabled parking spots are special spots for parents. You can park there if you're great with child and until your child is old enough to toddle along without too much hovering. My friend has said she's seen women abuse this with their five year olds jumping out of their vans rather than the whirlwindness of a toddler. But I think this idea makes more sense than taking up spots by disabled people for women who are not technically disabled.
It's also kind of insulting when you get right down to it that we're being lumped into the disabled category. Kind of condescending. You poor dear. You're just a big old mess that we should give special privilege to because you are so huge right now or carrying that baby bucket. I'm not saying that disabled people are getting a pat on the head and being looked on with pity. Some disabled people abuse that whole thing in very unique ways that suck. But I think a Mommies tend to milk the whole thing a little much.
We're human beings. But really, Mommies, don't you think that getting a pink placard is maybe just a little too much?

Running ragged

I'm recovering from viral conjunctivitis. To break it into a more bite sized understanding, I had pink eye that was from a head cold. My immune system, which has been slowly but surely becoming less effective since Boy's birth, was finally unable to cope with something as 'simple' as head cold and it mutated into pink eye. Apparently, there are quite a few people who are going through it - one of my childhood friends has had it twice since August. She's the Mommy of a seven year old and a nearly two year old with a husband who is trying to figure out where he's going to settle in his job, in what part of the country.
While sick, Husband stepped up and took care of Boy. He spent an entire weekend taking Boy out of the house, finding things to do during the ugly weather we've had for the last two weeks. I tried to sleep off the illness and not worry about the fact our house was a pig sty and needed cleaning. There were baskets of dirty laundry that needed to be done. And to top it off, the two toilets in our house decided to die within a few hours of each other.
Husband called the plumber who came out two hours after our call. Instead of sticking around so that he could direct the plumber to what was going on and monitor things, Husband left with Boy so I could get rest. It didn't connect to him that I couldn't sleep while waiting for the plumber to arrive. Instead, I brushed my teeth, took a shower, did a load of laundry so Boy could have some clean jammies and put on some clothes rather than my ratty pjs. There was no hair styling, just clean, wet hair. Plumber came, surveyed the situation, left for the closest hardware store, returned and fixed everything within 45 minutes. Then there was a half hour of discussing really great jobs that I could do from home. The fact that my eyes looked like I was smoking crack for the last week they were that blood shot had eluded him. It made me wonder if men in general are oblivious to anything unless it smacks them in the head.
Of course, when Husband got home, he was upset that I wasn't asleep and that I hadn't gotten more than a half hour of rest. The laundry thing really made him angry but he bit his tongue as I reminded him that we were running out of towels, underwear and Boy's pjs. If Husband wanted to go to work in his running clothes, so be it. So Husband shut up long enough for me to finish off four loads of laundry so he'd have clean clothes for the big meeting he had with a big customer on Monday.
I think all women appreciate when their mates step up when they are sick. A lot of my Mommy friends tell me their stories about how they can't get their husbands to watch their kids long enough so they can put something on the table and listen to the husband whine about how hungry he is. There is still the prevailing notion among men that even though we might be staying at home to take care of our kids, we have a whole lot of time on our hands to cook meals, clean the house, do laundry. They don't always understand that the kids want our attention every single second. Not every child is amused with an hour of watching The Wiggles. (God knows Boy isn't) My Husband was ready to shoot Boy by the end of the weekend.
Being the Good Wife, I took over the Boy Duty at the end of the weekend. I spent the week getting up with Boy at two am when he was overcome by night terrors. Husband got to stay up late playing with his computer, sleep until he was ready to get up to exercise then head to work. I forgo naps so that I could make sure that dinner had a little start before Boy woke up from his nap. So you can imagine my irritation when Husband had the audacity to complain when I accidentally woke Boy up when he was drifting off to sleep while I was trying to put away the destruction Boy leaves our house in with all his toys. Husband hates tripping over Boy's toys (thus the monthly 'cull' he does of Boy's toys - he goes through the stuff in Boy's toy box in Husband's office to decide what Boy doesn't want which ends up in trash bags in the garage with a vague direction from Husband that I should 'do something with it') which is why as soon as he takes Boy into Boy's bedroom for his sleep, I start straightening up the house.
I know that we're not suppose to vent our frustration but seriously, it's a bitch some times.

Touching bases

I know that my usual ranting about being a Mom has suddenly screamed to a halt but lately, I've been reflecting on the past. I don't know what the catalyst is, but I'm letting it run its course.
There have been a lot of people in my life that have been a part of it that are no longer in it. Friends that I lost touch with. Friends that chose to walk away. And every so often, I wonder where some of them are. Because I miss them. Because I'm curious about how they've evolved X number of years later. Because I want to tell them something I didn't and should have told them then.
In the last few days, I've been looking up info on various people. Two very close male friends who dumped me when I got married and when I had Boy (respectively - the reasons they chose to discontinue being as we called it, my gay husbands). A former coworker who shared an enthusiasm of mine but broke off our friendship when I 'won' the game she thought we were playing (I had a job that paid better then I got married). An ex from college who fundamentally changed my life then left me because he couldn't get into my pants. A friend from high school who made me feel good about myself when so many were making me feel like a fat freak of nature. Another friend from high school who was constantly pulling my cookies out of the fire because I was so naive.
The coworker was what we would call high maintenance. She came from a well off family and lived in a nice part of town with her parents. She was in her mid 30s when I got married and told me she refused to leave her parents home until she could find a place where she didn't have to share walls, had a great view of the ocean all for $600 a month. Dragon Queen, as her other friends called her, would regale us with stories of her relationships with guys she'd meet through her latest enthusiasm but they never seemed to extend beyond a few weeks. DQ is now living in an apartment not far from where we used to be wage slaves. There is no ocean and I have a feeling she is sharing a wall.
Gay Husband 1 is living about five miles away from DQ. When he graduated from university two years before me, he fell into a job in our field completely by accident. At the time, he was working as a cashier at a local supermarket chain making decent coin. He took a two week vacation from the job and literally, was handed a job working for minor ducats in our field. He wasn't sure he could survive on minor ducats and just before the end of the two weeks, a miracle happened. There was a strike and he was co-opted into a union job that paid him MORE than he made as a cashier. He quit his apron job and spent 6 months making major money. When the strike ended, he spent a month making minor ducats before he got a job making money. He was at the same job 10 years later when he cooly gave me back the key to Husband and my house and told me that instead of coming to our wedding, he was in the same town partying with his posse. I was shattered.
Gay Husband 2 has managed to completely fall off the radar. I found his parents but he's somehow eluded my various searches. We were former coworkers who comforted each other through his coming out, various disasterous relationships we both had, changes of habitat and such. But once I told him Husband and I were starting a family, he said he wouldn't be friends with me since I could no longer dedicate myself to him solely. And he was as good as his word.
My X married less than a year after dumping me to a woman he met three weeks after dumping me. He invited me to his wedding and was actually upset I refused to go. We stayed friends as long as he could feel better about my being depressed about his never going to be mine. (Actually, he called all my friends after he told me he was getting married to make sure I wouldn't kill myself. They all called to bet on when they would divorce. Oddly enough, I said he'd never leave her since they would be wealthy and she'd screw him in the courtroom.) They bought a house down in SoCal and I finally told him that our friendship was bullshit and that was it. He's now living an hour away. I hope he never sees my listing on a social networking site we're both on.
The two friends in high school - both guys - were both really popular. I was this fat, bad perm wearing, brace faced girl with glasses who was the girl the guys came to for girl advice. My Dad had to ask his boss' son to take me to my prom. I just wasn't that attractive or that sure of myself (I have an Asian Mom who is petite - to her I was Godzilla in a Jessica McClintock dress). These two guys treated me with a certain amount of respect and gentlemanlyness that other girls got - the girls who wore the in jeans that I couldn't afford or fit into (okay, my parents were cheap about buying me clothes). I wrote them emails through Classmates telling them that I hope life had rewarded them for the kindness they exhibited in high school to the misfit that I was.
(Husband doesn't believe I was that big of a misfit. I can't find my yearbooks to confirm what a mess I was and my senior portrait makes me look like a supermodel. I had to tell him the story about how I went on a school trip where I was sitting in a room with three guy friends shooting the bull and one started telling about how he was having sex with a girl I knew. In graphic detail. One guy looked up and saw me slackjawed. He stopped the discussion, asked that I be escorted back to my room so I wouldn't be offended. I wonder what happened to him? What was his name? Kevin? Andrew? Geoff? I was one of the guys. With boobs that were overshadowed by my stomach.)
I think as we get older, we either forget or romanticize the past. The sharp edges get softer and the rose coloured glasses make a moment seem sweeter. No, I haven't forgotten how X dumped me and how he asked me to go Christmas shopping with him after he got married so he could use me as a sizing model for his wife's clothes. I bet this would've shocked her to know that I picked out her ensemble he bought her for their first Christmas as young marrieds. Or the fact that DQ really hated the fact that I bought a mutual friend dinner who was still in school after I was making sweet money - DQ complained that I couldn't afford it until I showed her my pay stub showing the amount I made in six months - what she made in a year - and she lost her nut. Or the last, horrendous confrontation GH2 had with me where he raved at me to the point where I could feel my uterus cramping ominously so I packed up my car of the stuff I had at his house and left without a backwards glance.
No, I'm not going to forget the slights. And I'm not going to be contacting them. (Though I wish I could tell GH2 that DQ finally moved out of her parents house.) Let's just say I'm curious to say where life has taken them in the last decade. Or so.
The other two friends from high school, well, if they never email back, I'm fine with that. I just hope they get my message and are feeling good about something they did once that was unselfish in a selfish time.

What becomes the broken hearted?

I am fortunate enough to have two best friends: Eloise, who I have known for over 20 years and Hollie who I've known for 15 years. They are the best friends a gal could have. They are my touchstones to sanity when things have been completely out of control in my life.
The differences in our lives have never mattered (we all come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, cultures, religions) until a few years ago when I got married. Eloise had been with her boyfriend at that point for nearly 10 years whereas Hollie had been single for most of the last 10 years with sporadic dating. It took awhile for them to adjust to my life as a married chick but they sprung back. With Eloise, I think it made her a little more aware that her boyfriend's never ending line about how he didn't need a piece of paper to tell the world that he loved her.
Once Boy came along, the divide grew between me and Eloise. It was about that time that Eloise found herself becoming more oppressed by her boyfriend, Ken. Ken is an artist. Or in his mind, an Artist. He does big, expressive canvasses and I think his stuff veers between Jackson Pollock and Matisse. He believes that you give it all for art and you don't take a job to settle. You dedicate yourself to the art - and take side jobs to pay for it until you Hit It Big. So for the last 10 years they've lived in a duplex that looks like it'll collapse in a good earthquake that they bought with money they didn't have scrabbling for the dollars to pay for the mortgage, the various fixes that they patch because if they get just enough to fix it, Ken uses the money to buy something he 'absolutely' needs for his latest art project.
Ken is a good guy but single minded. He is obsessed with his own needs and believes completely in art. I've had some interesting conversations at gallery openings about the art displayed that wasn't his. For some reason, he takes my critiques seriously (maybe because I do know the difference between Monet and Warhol) so he doesn't have a huge problem with my friendship with Eloise. Passion is where he works from - be passionate or don't bother to talk to him.
Eloise is a far less intense individual. She is more of a country mouse to his city mouse. Her art is more on the side of native art. It's very good and better than 90% of the stuff you see at art and wine festivals. She would make more money off it if she would do these festivals but Ken has talked her out of it saying that the art should be in galleries which isn't her cup of tea.
She is also a realist. They have a mortgage and bills plus her 10+ year old car needs hundreds of dollars of work every couple of months. She has a job working at a museum that doesn't cover everything, but it's steady and gives her insurance. Ken thinks she is a sell out. He has gotten angry with her for not telling her bosses that she cannot work on the days of his gallery openings so she can stand by him to tell her that of course, the canvasses will all sell. Which they don't all sell.
In the last three years, Eloise has become distant. I can't get her on the phone more than a couple of times a year. In the last year, I haven't talked to her more than twice. And always when Ken is not home or if she's out running errands. She didn't send a birthday card to me or even a Christmas card. Which is out of character. I figured she had written me off because I had told her that I had my doubts about Ken's relationship with her.
Then she called today. She was grateful that I hadn't written her entirely off. She and Ken were breaking up - but Ken didn't realise it. Ken thinks that the couples therapy they are starting will help her realise how she needed change for their relationship to work. The fact that she has done everything within reason to keep his dream alive is beside the point. Some time this spring, she is going to move out of their duplex but she needs to figure out where she wants to go with her life. Find her path.
What do you tell someone who is just figuring out that she has spent the last 15 years with someone who still doesn't understand her? Who refuses to understand her? Who is still a hurt 14 year old boy who can't understand why his Dad is calling him a 'pansy' for looking at art books rather than building a go cart?
There isn't anything to say. You just have to let them talk to you. Let them come sit on your couch and play with your kid, eat cookies with Coke and say nothing or everything.

Working Mommy is exhausted

My friend Valentine went back to work after taking the Christmas to New Year's week off. She has one child, a boy around my Boy's age. They are best friends. She is a research scientist for one of the big biotech firms around here and puts in a boatload of hours each day. Her job is really intense and really interesting (even though I don't understand half of it).
During the week off, she let her nanny take the time off to visit the nanny's family in San Diego. Valentine was in charge. She was cooking, cleaning (the cleaning lady was also off during that week) and taking care of her son. On the first day back at work, she emailed me saying that it was too hard to do all those things and she was grateful that her housekeeper and nanny were back at work (the cleaning lady comes by once a week). Her actual sentence was "thank God the nanny is back to do this!"
I had a good laugh and told Husband about it. He asked, "Does she realise that this is what you do every day?" We both know she didn't even think about the fact that my life is about cleaning, cooking, watching Boy and trying to keep Husband happy. Valentine is the woman who constantly asks me if I'm sure I don't want to go back to work. Of course, every time I've been at a party with her friends, they all are overachievers with South American nannies/housekeepers who can't understand why I'd give up all that Gloria Steinem and company fought for.
On another note, Nosy Nancies can be male.
Today, Boy and I were out running errands that we couldn't do during this weekend's nasty storming. As we went out to buy Boy new jeans, he decided to dump the contents of his sippy cup all over his sweatpants. It appeared that he had peed through from the front to the back of his crotch. After telling the cashier that no, my son didn't get ignored in his request for potty time but that he had spilled his sippy cup all over his crotch (and getting the 'likely story' look from her), Boy and I went out to our car. As I hoisted him out of the cart into the car, a man sitting in the car in front of us spied Boy's wet front and rolled down his window as I returned from putting the cart in the cart corral.
"Your son peed his pants."
"He poured the contents of his sippy cup onto his sweats."
"No, he definitely peed his pants."
"No, he poured water onto his pants. He thinks it's funny."
"It looks like he peed his pants. You should change his pants."
"I'll get right on that."
The man looked less than pleased at my dry final comment. I got into my car, started it up and reversed out of the spot. Boy was waving his almost empty sippy cup around like a little mad man was we drove out of the parking lot. I wished that the windows on our car were less tinted so Nosy Neil would've seen what boy was doing.

When you don't say no to a kid (poor Britney and Jamie Lynn)

Britney Spears' latest cry for help is getting a lot of media attention but no one has the balls to put the girl into a tough love detox program. She needs to get off the booze and drugs that she is self medicating herself into whatever state she wants to be in. She also needs a long couple of years with a psychiatrist who will tell her that she needs to just figure out who she is and what she needs from her life - except for a normal relationship with her parents. Because it sounds like she ain't gonna see that from them
I feel bad for the young woman. I have a hard time typing those words because she is really isn't a young woman. She is a little girl screaming that she wants to be loved completely but the whole world but finds that it isn't filling that emptiness in her soul. You want to slap some sense into her then give her cookies and milk and make her take a long nap. My fear is that because no one around her is willing to get her the help she so sincerely needs and the next time she is in the headlines, we're going to see she has overdosed and killed herself. And everyone will say they could see it coming - from her inner circle of leeches to the public.
Her kid sister with her teen pregnancy isn't doing much better. She's watched her sister spiral out of control and now, she has started her own legacy of insanity. It's almost like she wants a child so that she has someone who will love her. Because she believes that a child will love her absolutely but doesn't understand how wild being a parent is.
But then again, neither does Britney. She has never been a child let alone been told how to be an adult. She is acting out on a life that she doesn't understand. She has two children - the most important production that she has ever created - that she figures will fill the void in her that no one has been able to fill. The thing is your kids can only fill so much of that void. Filling the rest is up to you. She needs someone to take her by the hand and tell her that it's all right to be angry at your parents for not being parents but you have to let it go some time.
Hopefully someone can get passed the enablers and leeches that are allowing her to kill herself to drag her out of her mess. Get her the help she needs. And I don't mean Scientology funded help. I mean the kind of help that Tom Cruise says isn't good for you, glib bastard.