family – Page 5 – Bad Parenting 101

The Potential Benefits of Dog Barf and Anal-Retentive Bed Making

Stolen from the Art of Manliness — Hospital Corner how-to stolen from the Art of Manliness

It was April 1st, many years ago. My mother had just left town without us, which never happened. I can’t recall where she was headed or why; I only remember going up to my room and noticing that something felt distinctly out of place.

Granted, my room was a perennial disaster, but my bed was a different story; I made that thing with the precision of a watchmaker. I pulled the sheets and blankets into crisp hospital corners, relentlessly smoothing each layer. I folded the top of the bedspread back and over a perfectly fluffed pillow, so not a single peek of the sheets was visible.

The bedspread itself was covered with the names of tourist destinations I had never visited, arranged in a step and repeat pattern, white on blue. Miami. Palm Beach. Orlando. San Antonio. Miami. Palm Beach. Orlando. You get the idea. For the final touch, I would place a little rectangular pillow at a 45-degree angle, with two opposing corners pointing at a couple of Miamis.

Perhaps this was a byproduct of all the years I had to sleep on the daybed. I’ve softened a little, over the years, but I still remake the bed when my husband is not looking.

On this particular day, however, one corner of the throw pillow did not point to Miami and, glancing at the calendar, I knew there was trouble. Sure enough, someone had short-sheeted my bed. Without a word, I quickly and quietly remade it, waiting eagerly for evening.

When my father tucked me in that night, I made a bit of a show crawling in and stretching my legs with a yawn. He eyed me suspiciously. “Anything wrong?” he asked. No, no. Just happy to be in bed. “Really? Everything is OK?” That’s when I learned that my mother had nearly missed her flight cooking up that little prank. Ah, sweet victory.

The most memorable April Fools’ Day from childhood, however, involved my brother and me tormenting our sister. Thanks to his music pedagogy class, the day started with a harrowing early-morning bassoon solo/wake-up call—is there any other kind?– followed by my offering her breakfast in bed, which I promptly tossed on top of her.

That got her up.

As she began her morning regimen, we headed down to the kitchen.

Lord knows how we came up with the idea, but we decided to make a concoction that resembled dog vomit. We filled the blender with peanut butter, yellow food coloring, raw oats, and a variety of other edible items. The result was surprisingly lifelike. Frankly, we were all unfortunate experts on the appropriate color and consistency, since our dog was prone to eat and upchuck just about anything from inside of a garbage can or under a rock. I have even seen her enthusiastically lap it up and repeat.

Vomiting Dog 00 by eoioje from reverent.org

We put a generous helping of this lumpy, gooey treat on a small piece of saran wrap, and set it on the carpet in my sister’s room.

“Oh, man! That is disgusting! Look what the dog did on your rug!”

We played it up, of course, nice and loud so the entire household was privy to our conversation.

My sister, already more than a little annoyed from the previous incidents, poked her head out of the bathroom, took a good look, and sighed. “Do you think you guys could clean that up? Please?” She sounded a bit desperate, as I remember, and I wish I could say that I felt a twinge of guilt.

“Of course,” I said, ostensibly heading down for some cleaning supplies.

“Just a minute,” my brother said, suddenly serious. “I’ve heard that dog vomit is very nutritious, and surprisingly tasty as well.”

I feigned surprise. “Really? Is that true?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” he continued, “but I was just listening to NPR, and a nutritional scientist was on the program discussing potential benefits of eating the regurgitated meals of domesticated animals.”

We debated for a while, after which I acquiesced to try it, and the discussion evolved to determine the proper substrate. We continued to deliberate as we went back down the stairs, rooting through the bread drawer and the corner cupboard of snacks. Finally settling on a hearty slice of homemade whole wheat—not the pickle juice variety, thankfully, that’s a whole other family legend—we brought the bread upstairs with a napkin and a butter knife.

“Mom!” my sister screeched. “Do you KNOW what they are DOING?”

If I recall correctly, this was about the time that the Shaklee saleslady arrived.

You might think that common courtesy would dictate an end to our charade, but the possibility of a larger audience only egged us on.

“Wow. Dog barf is surprisingly delicious!” I fairly yelled. “But seriously, when we finish, which Shaklee product will best remove the stain and odor?”

My only regret is that I missed the expression on the faces in the living room, as Mrs. So and So pretended not to notice and continued to hawk her fine products. I believe my mother did buy a bit more than intended that day, perhaps in an unspoken agreement to keep this story out of our town’s gossip circles.

The sad thing is, I’ve spent so much time reminiscing, I haven’t cooked up a decent prank to play on my own kids this year. And they don’t even have sheets to short under their duvets.

Any suggestions?

Déjà View

This is the story of abandoning my family for two and a half weeks one summer to do something ridiculously selfish and wonderful. It is also about gelato, meltdowns, memory, and déjà vu. Have I mentioned that already?

Here’s how it started. A photography professor of mine leaned across the aisle during a lecture. She told me that she was taking a group of students to Italy during the summer. “You should come,” she said.

I laughed a little hysterically, to the point where the exchange became awkward, and we tuned back to the lecture.

Up until then, I’d only slept away from my four-year-old two nights of her entire little life, and those were spent on the floor of a friend’s house a couple blocks away–clutching my phone all night, just in case. And I’d never been away from my two-year-old. I had to lay down with her for an hour or two every night to get her to settle and go to sleep. Though I had weaned her at 18 months, she had taken to digging in my belly button as a replacement soothing mechanism. She picked at me with her tiny talons until I bled. Scar tissue, it turns out, is surprisingly sensitive, but I wasn’t sure how to wean a child from belly-digging.

There are probably a few people reading this that will roll their eyes and mutter in that superior way about sleep training. In my defense, I did try it with the first child. After several unsuccessful attempts on my own, after reading a pile of helpful books, I finally hired a sleep consultant, and tried again. My child cried and cried and cried and cried. She did not let up for naps; she did not let up for nights. She would doze off occasionally, only to wake up ten minutes later and start again. I let her cry and cry until there was a hole in my heart the size of Saskatchewan. So after THIRTY DAYS, I gave up. I didn’t even bother to try with kid #2. Now, how was I going to leave my spouse alone with such a mess?

With all of this in mind, I mentioned the Italy trip to my husband, so he could have a good laugh as well.

“Maybe you should go,” he said.

Best not to ask twice.

Strangely, despite the enormity of the impending separation, I didn’t freak out right away. I had childcare issues to resolve, packing crises, film and equipment to procure, and a research paper due upon departure. I worried about all of that instead.

Then I got on the plane…and cried for a couple of hours straight. Not demure little teardrops, either, but swollen, hiccoughing, snotty, sobbing. My apologies to the bewildered man seated beside me. Eventually regaining composure, I spent the rest of the flight listening to language lessons and, undoubtedly, murmuring along with the patient Italian lady in my headphones. Again, apologies.

The first couple of days on the ground were a blur of disoriented jet lag, a breathless march from church after church to museum after museum. Honestly, all I really remember about Florence is the gelato. Limone. Pesca. Caffè. Cioccolato. Shop after shop, fresh fruit piled high atop the frozen tubs, a little melty on the sides from the summer heat. In between scoops, I was having an out of body experience with some really fabulous twenty-year-olds. I was completely untethered.

On day four, we headed off to a monastery in Tuscany, where the landscape did something wholly unexpected: it became familiar.

I had already seen this place, on coffee tables, in ads, in my dreams. It looked exactly like it was supposed to look, and I was unable to see it as a foreign place. Even as I was wandering this countryside for the first time, it was already a memory, part of the landscape of my psyche.

For days, I couldn’t make a picture because all of the photographs had already been made; making another would be superfluous. I focused on the long, lazy dinners–completely unknown to the parents of small children–the carafes of house wine, the late night walks filled with fireflies, frogs, and stars. I focused on the warm camaraderie of young strangers, who asked questions such as, “What is childbirth like?” “What are your irrational fears?” “Who do you secretly, shamefully lust after?” Or, “If you had to eat someone here, who would it be?” Those questions don’t often come up at pre-school potlucks. It felt so good to contemplate anything besides bowel movements, discipline, and sleep deprivation.

Since I would never forgive myself if I went home empty camera’d, I figured it was time to shoot something. And because I couldn’t make a new picture of the landscape, I tried instead to make pictures that looked like what I could see in my head. I attempted to capture on film my memories that were not really memories, that were not really mine.

After I returned to the States, I stumbled upon a passage that put this sensation into words:

“The very colors of the place had seeped into my blood: just as Hampden, in subsequent years, would always present itself immediately to my imagination in a confused whirl of white and green and red, so the country house first appeared as a glorious blur of watercolors, of ivory and lapis blue, chestnut and burnt orange and gold, separating only gradually into the boundaries of remembered objects: the house, the sky, the maple trees. Even that day, there on the porch…it had the quality of a memory…” excerpted from The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

A very belated thank you to those of you who made that trip possible. I had a strange and wonderful time.

The Daybed

I don’t say this to evoke pity. Please don’t read it in a melodramatic tone in your head, or season it with melancholy. Think matter-of-fact. It is what it is.

I was a bit of an accident.

I asked my mother about it, once, and she paused for an uncomfortable moment before responding. “Honey, by the time you showed up, we were so happy to see you.”

Even as a child, I knew what that meant. That explained the six years between my sister and me. It explained why nine years separated me from one brother, and twelve from the other. It explained why I often felt like a child in a roomful of adults, and why, for many years, the taller people in the house took some precedence. It wasn’t all bad, though. In general, they also took the heat and the blame.

When we were all at home in our little red house, we piled atop each other, and tensions tended to rise. My parents hastily carved out the attic to make two bedrooms, one for my brothers, and one for my sister and me. When my brothers began to chafe at those close quarters, the eldest retreated into the basement with a black light bulb and day-glo Easy Rider posters. Once my sister hit her teens, though, when it became increasingly awkward for us to share a room, there seemed nowhere else to expand.

After much debate, it was finally decided that I should move into what was essentially a throughway, a roomy passage between the kitchen and the bathroom. As one might imagine, I had extremely limited space for luxuries such as clothing or books. There was a shelf put in, and a small dresser crammed under the stairs. There was a window which peered at the garage, and I hung a few things on the wall, but because everyone trooped through this space during waking hours, I couldn’t have my bed down there. Instead, I was allowed use of “the daybed.” Never mine; just the. This was a couch-like thing which served as a cot-sized bed at night. I didn’t really mind. Mostly. It beat witnessing my sister’s eighth grade make-out sessions.

The daybed was very simply designed. Very nordic. Imagine a cheap door, taken off its hinges and laid flat on skinny, pointed legs. An egg-colored foam pad, about four inches thick, lay on top, covered with an upholstery apparently conceived in the seventies. It was a magenta paisley, crossed with a parade of stripes and shapes which have never been seen together since. It was poorly made, too, so the rough metal zipper was entirely visible along the side, and I often grazed the backs of my legs against its voracious teeth. More inviting were the two long, wedge-shaped pillows which served as the back of the couch during the day. These were covered with corduroy of a very specific blue hue, one I still associate with all things quiet and comfortable. I loved to run my fingers along the nap endlessly, with it or against being equally zen-like.

From the daybed, I would doze to the sound of the dishwasher, and wake to the sound and smell of the eternal percolator, a seemingly indestructible wedding gift from the fifties.

It was there that I lay through the German measles and the mumps; there that I listened to my mother read Watership Down.

One evening, my mother found the nuts I had stolen from the roasting pan full of Chex party mix in the basement. They were in an old bread bag, tied in a knot and tucked under the daybed. They might have escaped notice, too, had my mother not helped me put the sheets on that night. “What are you, some sort of squirrel?” she asked, but not too sharply. I was glad when she let it go, perhaps understanding how hard it was to get the good bits when your siblings are so much older and faster.

I remember lying on that daybed the night after the girl scout picnic in second grade, the one where I ate a hot dog stuffed with Velveeta and wrapped in bacon before grilling. I threw up six or seven times–a little daybed volcano–and have never eaten a hotdog since.

I remember lying there sniffling, lamenting my lack of space and privacy, when my medium brother heard me and tiptoed in. We were not a terribly affectionate family, nor emotionally adept, but he explained with such kindness and enthusiasm how he would make it feel big enough. I still feel deep gratitude for that night. He began to schlepp all kinds of things from his room, my sister’s, the kitchen, wherever. He filled that tiny place from floor to ceiling so I could be pleasantly surprised when he it emptied out again, and there would be room to roll over and even to stand with my hands outstretched.

But by far, my favorite memory of the daybed was a secret I neglected to tell anyone, lest I would have to share that, too. Ours was a frugal household, where finances dictated a thermostat set at a bone-chilling 58 degrees through even the worst of the South Dakota winter nights. But when temperatures outside settled well below zero, maintaining 58 degrees still necessitated occasional blasts of delicious heat. A major duct ran through the wall, all along the length of the back of the daybed. Who would know, with the blue corduroy pillows in place all day, what heavenly heat emanated from the wall behind me? I pressed my socked feet against it, snuggling like a cat to a sunny patch, and dreaming dreams.

These days, we set the thermostat at a balmy 62 at night, and I have a heating pad, which spares my spouse from my icy toes. But I think the comfort it offers is not simply a physical one. It is also a remembrance of those long, cold nights, pressed against the wall in my make-shift little roomlet. It is a reminder that there is always enough room for me, and more than enough of what I really need.

Man Shopping

I’m not talking about shopping for a man.

I’m talking about man-style shopping.

It’s not like I love shopping. I don’t squander vacation days noodling around in tchotchke shops. Bleah. Still, shopping is a frequent necessity, so I try to delegate it now and then. Sometimes that’s more of a nuisance than just going to the store myself.

I’m sure there are plenty of strategies I could learn from my spouse’s shopping methods–like how to get in and out of Target in 17 minutes flat, for example–but a few of his habits are completely mystifying to me.

1. Labels? Shmabels!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked my spouse to pick up something at the store, only to discover that I have to go back to buy the item I actually wanted. Maybe I could do a quick and dirty shopping trip, too, if I just threw random crap into the cart. Scallions are not shallots. Butternut squash is not pumpkin. And is it too much to ask to look for the word salted or unsalted on the butter? He’ll buy the orange juice with extra pulp, though he hates pulp, and it just goes bad in the fridge. If I mention “pulp free” the next time, he’ll wind up buying the kind with added calcium, which he won’t drink, either.

Sometimes the man reads half the label, which may be worse: “Less sugar,” it says right before “than Sunny D.” I try to explain the difference between fruit juice and fruit drink, but I can see his eyes glazing over like they do when I ask him not to put my favorite wool sweater in the dryer. Whatever.

Here's a clue: when fruit is spelled with two o's and an umlaut...it's probably not the real deal. — Here’s a clue: when fruit is spelled with two o’s and an umlaut…it’s probably not the real deal.

As a methodology, though, complete disregard for precision inevitably frees up a lot of his time. Not only is his shopping trip nice and quick, I’m probably not going to ask him to go next time.

2. Let’s buy enough for the Armageddon.

You might be wondering why I have a 50-pound bag of rice in the middle of my kitchen. Well, it’s because it doesn’t f*!&ing fit anywhere else. I completely understand buying in bulk, but wouldn’t twenty pounds of rice suffice? That seems like plenty. And is it really necessary to buy 48 rolls of toilet paper at once? Or 12 rolls of paper towels and a gallon jug of Windex? Really?

Last time we needed more bedding for the mouse cage, the man brought home a bag that was four feet wide and three feet tall. Why? Because it was ‘cheaper’ to buy a two-year supply. Little Stripey promptly kicked the bucket a couple of weeks later. Now what? Now the girls’ closet is impassable because a truck load of cedar shavings is sequestered there. Every time I trip over it, or try and squeeze around it to find some lost shoe, I give it a little punch. It feels pretty good.

What makes rule #2 especially confusing is that he hates having so much stuff. “Why are all of the cupboards and closets full of stuff?” he hollers. I bite my tongue, because the basement full of boxes is completely my fault. It’s not like I can cast the first stone.

3. Why go to the store if you could buy it online?

Left to his own devices, the spouse would buy absolutely everything online. It started a while back when it was cheaper to subscribe for a year of two-day shipping than to pay the delivery charge on the gigantic power tool he needed. After that, he began ordering everything from diapers to a shop vac to wine to batteries. That’s convenient and all, but paired with the first two rules, it means we get a lot of packages. Recently he gave me a packet with ten pairs of extra thick white sweat socks. What’s this for? I asked. “Oh,” he shrugged. “I thought they were men’s. It costs too much to ship them back, so I’m giving them to you.” Yeah, thanks.

I will admit that the wrong pot that he ‘amazoned’–the one we had to store in a dusty pile on top of the kitchen cabinets for five years–has recently become useful. That’s nice.

In the meantime, we need grape-flavored Children’s Tylenol, so I guess I’ll head to the store. Any ideas on how to use up a mountain of cedar shavings?

Charlie work for parents.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of Charlie work, it originated on an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and refers to the crappy jobs that no one wants to do–like cleaning toilets.

As parents, there are endless rewards and inspiring moments, and you can read all about them in a stack of Hallmark cards, or in one of those Chicken Soup-y books.

Then, there are the boring moments, like when your child is not quite sick enough–when pulling the shades and administrating tylenol is not sufficient–and you are forced to read Rainbow Magic Fairy books aloud all day long.

What remains after all the inspiration and the boredom is the Charlie work. This category includes diaper duty, of course, but the bad jobs continue long past potty-training days. Here’s the very tip top of my current list of Charlie work for parents. Feel free to add to my list.

Attending assemblies. Weirdly, I’ve heard some parents dig these. I don’t know why. They are always scheduled smack in the middle of the day, so you get to hunt for parking at drop off, pick up, AND assembly, but don’t have time to do anything useful in between except lament having to go. You are funneled into a malodorous multi-purpose room, where the floor clings to your shoes with the lingering remains of corn dogs and barf. Time to choose: scrunch onto the end of one of those long clammy tables, or duel for one of the last rusty folding chairs in the back? Choose wisely, because assemblies start late–REALLY late–providing ample time to reflect on “chicken fried steak” and canned peas. An eternity passes.

The room swells with more and more children that are NOT YOURS and are consequently far less tolerable. Someone is being gleefully squashed by their neighbors on the bench. As the collisions escalate, crying starts, triggering an endless lecture. Someone is making fart noises, and at least one or two small people have a sticky appendage lodged in a nostril at any given moment. Make a mental note to use hand sanitizer at the next opportunity. At last, the Principal waves awkwardly, taps the shrieking microphone, and makes the sign for “silent fox.”

The show commences.

Time grinds to a halt while everyone else’s kids do impossibly boring things that you can’t hear anyway. Then, when your own darling child finally lurches onto stage and does the most amazing thing ever, some asshole with a ten-inch lens elbows you out of the way and you miss the shot.

I’d like to see a greeting card for that mess.

How I ruined my kids’ chances of becoming President by microwaving their food in plastic containers before I knew better (plus a million other parenting mistakes)

Parenting was always hard work.

Except, perhaps, in Betty Draper’s world, where you hired someone to cook, clean, and raise your kids while you mooned about in your house dress.

That Mad Men model of parenting never appealed to me, though. I like being involved–hearing what my kids are thinking, helping them solve problems, exploring the world together. I’m certainly not advocating for a hands-off experience. Still, when did parenting become so fraught with pressure and competition? When did my goal to raise happy, healthy children devolve into sheer panic that my children will never achieve their full potential because I failed to be the perfect parent. I admit:

a) I didn’t wait list my children for a competitive nursery school before they were born.

b) Those eighteen-dollar, über green metal sippy cups from Switzerland that I gave my toddlers contained bisphenol A.

c) I’m monolingual. Mostly.

e) I avoid PTA meetings like the plague.

f) The robotics workshops for 3rd graders were completely booked up before I figured out how to log onto the registration site.

What’s going on here?

Am I really stressing out that my kids’ summer day camp might not be academically rigorous enough? Do I really believe that a single parenting misstep will impede their potential progress forever?

Worst of all, I worry about their school. Why is that? The basics are completely covered, and my kids are doing well. They have amazing gardening, art, dance, and computer classes. They have science fairs, field trips, carnivals, committed teachers and parents. Yet, whenever I talk with parents of children at other schools, I feel my blood pressure start to rise. I get school envy. Your kid’s class has launched a website? They are learning Italian? They went on a field trip to China? I am driving myself crazy. I keep losing sight of what is important here. These are kids. They are learning. They are creative. They are happy and growing confident.

At the end of the day, isn’t it more important to teach them to think for themselves and enjoy life? Isn’t that a greater gift than a childhood resume cooked up by parents hell-bent on making sure their child has no leisure time whatsoever? Play is important, too. Extended periods of unstructured time formed the basis of my childhood, and those were the times that I could choose my direction of inquiry; I could develop as the author of my own creative world.

Last year, I was weirdly elated when I dropped my girls off at a camp I like to call: “Lord of the Flies.” It’s just a hundred kids running amok, loosely supervised by pre-teens sporting color-coded bandanas. Campers are singing inane and vaguely inappropriate songs, making endless lanyards, and building forts out of fallen branches.

I think it’s fabulous when children are immersed in another language, taken on a trip, introduced to science, opera, and history. We seek those opportunities and seize them when we can. But in the meantime, let’s not forget to take some time to play and enjoy each other’s company. Life is good.

Learning to have an opinion

I’m not trying to sound pathetic when I say this, but when you are the mother of small children it is so much easier if you have no needs or desires.

Babies can be very sweet, and they can also be ridiculously helpless and demanding. Any ideas you might have about the purpose of evenings or weekends–or NIGHTS, for that matter–are best left repressed. Just go with the flow. If baby is hungry, baby gets fed. If baby needs a fresh diaper, by gum she gets it.

If you are at the playground and the bathrooms are locked you simply do not need to go to the bathroom.

If you are at the zoo and everyone is happy, then it does not matter that you forgot to eat breakfast. And lunch. Or that the only snacks you brought are teething biscuits and boobs. You just wait until you can pry your child away from the lemurs. It’s not like you’re going to die.

On the weekend, you dump the baby with the spouse and race to lay in groceries and supplies for the week. Who knows when you might next escape unchaperoned. It is so much more bearable to drop a small fortune on pre-landfill when no one is screaming or battling diarrhea in your orbit.

If your infant does not nap or tolerate being set down, any serious business just has to wait for the spouse to return. And if he happens to be in Japan like mine often was, you’re just fucked.

Around this time, a friend asked me if I had seen the movie Kill Bill. I laughed maniacally in her face.

“I’m on house arrest,” I explained.

She looked at me quizzically. “It’s out on dvd now,” she countered.

“I know,” I sighed. “It’s just that–” I cut myself short. How could I explain that even if I did manage to get the kid to sleep without dozing off myself, I was still going to have to get up two or three or five times during the night. I wasn’t about to squander the opportunity to restore my sanity on 111 minutes of choreographed violence. Chances are, if something was published, released, sung, built, or exploded between 2003 and 2008 I’ve never heard of it. You can ask, though, and I’ll do my best not to get huffy.

Now that the girls are six and eight, I am realizing that I have completely forgotten how to figure out what I would actually like to be doing. Not only is my spouse willing and able to step in, the girls can amuse themselves for an hour or so, yet I can’t decide how to spend my precious sixty minutes. Occasionally I figure it out at the end of the day, when it’s too late. Oh, yeah. It would have felt great to write and exercise, but I spent the whole day playing with the dollhouse and schlepping the kids around town. If I set clear goals, I could squeeze in dolls and exercise, right?

Lookout world. I’m thinking about formulating an opinion.

Why you may want to wait and have that baby AFTER art school

It’s too late for me, obviously, but you could save yourself.

Nota bene:

*Maternity pants do not look quite right with the art uniform.

*Morning sickness does not mix well with photo chemistry. Plus, using a ventilator mask only exacerbates the feeling that you are being invaded by aliens.

*It’s unwieldy and uncomfortable to schlepp lights, view cameras, tripods, stands, drawing boards, toolboxes, and power packs around with a basketball-sized babe lodged in your uterus.

*Being surrounded by photo students means you are pretty much guaranteed to see your child’s birth canal plastered all over somebody’s senior thesis show. That’s right. Imagine standing in a room full of 20 year olds staring at your vagina blown up to 30 x 40. Awkward.

*It is impossible to care about footnoting properly when suffering from post-partum depression.

*Babies do not amuse themselves and/or sleep soundly just because you have a gigantic critique the next day. EVEN WHEN YOU ASK NICELY.

*6 hour studio classes mean you have to sit on the nasty floor of the bathroom and pump during the break.

There are loads of other reasons, the most heinous of which I have gladly repressed. On the other hand, a baby provides a cheap and available model for many of your projects, and lots of sleep-deprived angst to channel into something creative. If you can drag school out for a few extra years, it just might work for you. Besides, during those moments when they’re not tired, cranky, hungry, or expelling something from one end or the other, babies are really quite charming.

Twenty-two and Half hours in Vegas

I recently got a hall pass to go on a date with my husband. We have been trying to see some live music for years. Together, I mean. That involves the following:

1. Finding a band that we both like.

2. Finding a date when they play in San Francisco.

3. Making sure no one has croup, lice, pink eye, or a surprise business trip to Tokyo.

We must have hit the wall a couple of weeks back, because well into a bottle of wine we bought tickets for a show in Las Vegas. We found a hotel. We booked flights. Mostly on purpose, though the next morning I was a little surprised when I got the email confirmations. For a second there, I guess we forgot we have children.

We flew Virgin America–normally my favorite airline–and settled happily into 7C and 7D. After take off, I ordered a light snack and a seltzer and started channel surfing. When a lovely flight attendant swished up the aisle, I put down my tray table in anticipation of my little packet of gluten free crackers. I was disappointed to see her stop instead at 6C and D, and start fawning all over those guys. To hear them better, she bent over and leaned in, placing her red wooly-slacked buttocks directly in my face. She then proceeded to let loose with a silent but lethal fart that had me digging around desperately for the barf bag. Hey, I’m on a plane here; it’s not like I can crack the window or anything. I can’t even run away because I’M STRAPPED IN. Have some pity. Bring me a bag of jelly beans or something.

This didn’t bode well. I opened my tab again and started ordering champagne.

Thank god everything went up from there.

Turns out, you can cram quite a bit into 22 1/2 hours. It was my first trip to Vegas, so I was mesmerized by everything cliché: fountains doing ballet, fuchsia palm trees, skies on the ceiling, music piped outside for a seamless city soundtrack, endless blinking signs for “hot slots,” as well as a variety of activities I’ll leave to your imagination. Next thing I knew, I was picking up my kids at 1:40 the next day, still wearing silver heels and a little too much makeup for the playground. Now it all seems like a dream, but it was a great one.

To my friend down the street, I am eternally grateful that you took my kids OVERNIGHT on a school night. I considered making you a t-shirt that read: “My friend went to Vegas and all I got were her two lousy kids,” but I wasn’t sure my girls would find that amusing. Since I’ll be footing the bill for their therapy for at least a decade, I’ll have to think of some other way to express my appreciation.

Please excuse my tardiness

If you know me, then you know I am not a terribly punctual person. Never have been. You may have figured that out even if we’ve never met, seeing as today’s post was supposed to go up last Wednesday.

What you may not know is that I have been SERIOUSLY trying to improve my behavior out of respect for you and your valuable time. Sadly, some of you will never believe me. My friend Jessica broke up with me because every time I tried to meet her, my car would not start–for three years. In hindsight, I probably should have made up a few new excuses, because the real reason obviously got old after a while. Mechanics stared at me blankly after starting the car 20 times in a row without incident, and frankly, my husband didn’t believe me, either. When I would call him in frustration, he would say super helpful things such as, “Did you put it in park?” Thankfully, one day when he needed to catch a flight overseas, he suddenly discovered there was an actual problem with the car. But, by the time he admitted he had installed the car security system improperly, Jess was long gone.

In the hopes of avoiding any such break ups in the future, I have decided to come clean and admit the extent of my struggle. I would also like to solicit your assistance, since my efforts to ameliorate this problem without it have been wildly unsuccessful.

Over the years, my tardiness may have appeared constant, but the underlying causes have shifted dramatically. Right out of college, I was completely strapped, so most of my scheduling issues were financial. For example, I probably walked the 60 blocks from my tiny apartment to yours. Luckily, that is entirely possible in New York; it’s just damned slow. I would also stand in line for eons to avoid the ATM withdrawal fees, save up all of my errands for the one day I took the subway, and travel back and forth across Manhattan rather than exit and pay again at Bleeker Street to go uptown. Furthermore, back in the stone age before online banking, I had to balance my checkbook to the penny. Once I started monkeying around with the calculator, I was unable to leave the house until I had resolved the missing 22 cents. It takes a lot of time to be broke.

Then I left New York and moved West. I got a decent job and managed to start paying off my loans, but my punctuality did not improve whatsoever. My excuses from that period were mostly ridiculously lame. Let’s just say I wasn’t above a fashion crisis, so this is the era for which I feel the most repentant. Feel free to let me know if I haven’t apologized sufficiently; I’d be more than willing to grovel a little in exchange for any inconvenience I may have caused you.

Once I started having kids, I essentially gave up trying to be timely at all. On a certain level, I no longer felt responsible for my inability to function on a schedule. Babies defy time management. One typical scenario: I finally have the baby washed and fed, and a bag packed with: wallet, keys, two changes of clothes, diapers, wipes, cream, changing pad, plastic bags, snacks, a tiny sweater, a hat, something to chew on, a couple of toys, a book, a sippy cup, extra socks, sunscreen, a burp cloth, and for chrissake, the one cd that will make baby stop crying so I can drive around without going off a bridge. As I am shoving this mountain of crap into the car, baby has what is affectionately known in parenting circles as a “blow out.” This is when she not only needs a fresh diaper, but a bath and change of clothes; and, if she was tucked under my arm, I do as well. Particularly big blow outs produce the “Cuba spot,” which is a blast of shit that shoots well out of diaper range–the continental area–to somewhere miles off the coast–like the back of the neck. When you have two kids, you can also have a double blow out, but the second one usually waits until everyone is strapped in and you have already lost your parking space.

Also, some babies cry all night long until you lose your mind. It is very hard to be punctual when all you want to do is pull over and curl up in the trunk for an hour or two. That explains quite a few years of my incoherence, also, though sadly, not the vestiges of it.

In all honesty, my kids are older now, and my excuses run more along the lines of: “Sorry. The neighbor kid came over and ingested poison. There was a little damage control issue.” Or, “Sorry. The rain stopped, so Leila’s soccer practice was no longer canceled but I didn’t have snacks for the team and I was in charge of carpool and then Josie’s musical theatre rehearsal ran a tad late but I couldn’t find the cat and couldn’t reach Lucy’s mother to do the pick up instead.” That sort of thing. It makes my eyes glaze over to even think about it, so I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear it, either.

In any event, in an attempt to assuage some of my guilt and–hopefully–most of your irritation, here is my friendly request: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LIE TO ME ABOUT WHEN I NEED TO SHOW UP. But whatever you do, DO NOT tell me that you lied, or I will adjust accordingly. Thanks, pal.

Cheers.

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