Give Us Dirty Laundry

Lh9_(5970963447)I feel sorry for the Cannings.

You know who they are. They’re the New Jersey family that made international headlines last week when their teenage daughter, Rachel, took her parents to court in an effort to get them to pay her school tuition, even though she moved out of their house in October.

Rachel accuses her mom of being the source of her battle with anorexia (she says she called her “fat” and “porky”) and her dad of inappropriate acts of affection (like kissing her on the cheek in public).

Her parents claim their 18-year-old daughter constantly overstepped the boundaries they had set for her – by staying out late, drinking alcohol and dating a boy of whom they did not approve. She’d also been suspended from her Catholic high school a couple of times.

The family appeared together in court last week, although they sat at separate tables with their attorneys, and the parents at one point were photographed mopping tears from their faces with Kleenex.

It’s just so sad.

That’s all I could think when I looked at those pictures online was how sad it was that the pretty common trials and tribulations of being and raising a teenager were now public fodder for online forums.

Scrolling through the long thread of comments under just one Star Ledger article on the case, I noticed posters were quick to point the finger of blame at just about everyone involved – from Rachel, to her parents to the family who took her in after she left home.

Even the Star Ledger was taken to task for posting photos grabbed off Facebook of Rachel wearing a bikini (which I did not find lurid but instead just a cute picture of her snuggling a seal during a family vacation in the Bahamas).

And because many folks who post comments online are the trolls of the Internet, lurking under the cloak of anonymity to spread vitriol wherever possible, so much of what’s being posted is mean and downright self-righteous.

Posters call Rachel “troubled,” the family “dysfunctional” and the father of the friend Rachel is staying with – who happens to be an attorney who’s fronting her legal bills – “creepy.”

One poster wonders about the Cannings, “If they were such a wonderful family how did they end up with such a self-absorbed entitled daughter who didn’t want to respect her parents?”

Another commenter posted, “The parents should have done a better job at raising this child, they were definitely a dysfunctional family.”

Ouch.

Have none of these holier-than-thou commenters ever lived with, raised or spent time as a teenager?

If they had done any one of those things, they would know that it is NOT easy. Who are any of us to judge?

I don’t know about you, but I would not want the intimate details of my family life – my struggles raising my teenagers in particular – splashed all over the Internet.

I mean, okay, I do my fair share of writing about personal stuff on this blog but I promise you, you don’t know the half of what goes on around here.  And that’s how it should be.

Believe me, I know just what it’s like to try to live with someone who’s under the impression that the number of candles on a birthday cake gives him or her the right to do whatever s/he pleases, house rules be damned.

I think the Cannings just wanted the best for Rachel and her sisters and thought they, in turn, were doing their best for them. Just like the rest of us.

I think that some kids are just more difficult than others and Rachel might be one of those.  I have some experience with that.

I had separate discussions with both of my daughters recently about the Cannings and thought it was interesting that neither jumped to Rachel’s defense. They were both kind of like, “What?”

“Every kid’s got, like, rules they have to live with,” observed my 20-year-old. “Nobody likes it, but that’s just the way it is.”

My younger daughter, who’s 16 and still at a stage where the less syllables she has to use in a conversation with me the better, just said of Rachel’s plight, “That’s stupid.”

And I agree, the Cannings’ disagreements with their daughter – ones I bet a lot of us have had with our own kids – just got out of control.

I hope they can figure out a way to work things out and that Rachel moves home because that’s where she belongs.

And if one of my kids tries to run away and live with a friend, to those parents I say: Please, don’t do my child any favors.

The ‘Shizzness’ of Being a Mom

P1000060It happened at the stroke of midnight, just a few hours ago, the vanishing of one of my two remaining teenagers. In the blink of an eye and the tick of a minute hand, my oldest daughter turned 20 while I slept.

She joined her brother, now 21, in what I guess could be categorized as young adulthood (with the caveat that both are very much still on their folks’ dime), leaving one teen in my life.

It wasn’t that long ago that I lived in a house bulging with three teenagers, the walls barely containing all the hormones and angst radiating off of my children, like the ever-present stinky waves that surrounded Pigpen.

Teenage angst emanates off my kids like the stinky waves surrounding Pigpen.

Teenage angst emanates off my kids like the stinky waves surrounding Pigpen.

And I have to say, I am surprised to find myself the mother of two kids that are in their 20s.

In a way, I defined myself as being the mom of so many teenagers. Their assorted issues dominated my thoughts and much of my time in therapy as I struggled to navigate the choppy waters of growing up. Again.

Worrying about how late to let them stay up on school nights and whether they were getting enough fiber quickly morphed into weekend midnight curfews and  battling underage drinking.

All the stuff that clogs the highways that get you from the Point A of childhood to the Point B that is adulthood, the things I thought I’d said good-bye and good luck to many moons ago, became a part of my everyday landscape: broken hearts, driving tests, SATs, pimples, high school sports, college essays, prom dresses, boutonnieres, after school jobs, queen bees, lunch tables, eyeliner and AP Calculus.

Just when I never thought any of it would end, we seem to have rounded a corner. The end, of this chapter anyway, is in sight. And that’s what has me feeling slightly melancholy on this 20th anniversary of the birth of my second child.

Three years ago, when I had a junior and senior in high school, and an eighth and second grader, it seemed like I’d never get through it all. There were days I thought I would drown underneath everything that needed to happen (see the long list above) and all the FEELINGS in my house.

And now here we are. Two kids away in college and another is well on her way. Pretty soon things like resumes, internships, roommates and first apartments will become an integral part of our vernacular.

Just when I was starting to get a handle on all the other stuff.

And honestly, it’s making me feel kind of old. Having half of my kids now in their 20s is actually making me slightly nostalgic for teenagers.

I know, crazy, right?

And then as if by luck, my 11-year-old son came into my room bright and early this morning to announce he was having a hard time breathing and let me return to a place I know best: being the mother of a child.

So for the umpteenth time, I ushered a kid into my small bathroom and turned the shower knob to its hottest setting and let the steamy mist fill the room. I slipped out to get him a pillow and blanket so he could get cozy on the tile floor, and we sat and waited for his breathing to ease up.

Later, after I set him up in my bed to watch Cartoon Network with some ice water and Motrin and called the school and the doctor, I told him I thought he had the croup again and suggested we try the nebulizer before heading out to see the pediatrician.

“Why aren’t you a doctor?” my son asked. “You seem like you know all this shizzness.”

And in many ways he’s right. Four kids and 20 years later, I am an expert on changing the most explosive of diapers, could diagnosis a croupy cough coming from three rooms away and have been known to breastfeed a baby while browning ground turkey for tacos.

I was that good.

And now, where has it gotten me?

Because just when you get the lay of the land, know exactly what needs to be done in a variety of situations, it’s time to get in your boat and set sail again.

Pretty soon I’ll be shoving off for parts unknown and will need to develop a whole new set of skills to survive all that waits somewhere just around the bend.

But until then, I need to go pick up all the Legos my little guy left scattered around the den before I made him go upstairs to take a good, long nap.

I’m keeping one foot firmly planted in childhood for as long as I can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing Teeth, Losing Kids and an Ode to the Minivan

The view during a snow shoe hike with a friend Sunday morning that took the edge off missing teeth and children.

The view during a snow shoe hike with a friend Sunday morning that took the edge off missing teeth and misplaced children.

Usually here on Sundays I do a little Week in Review thing cleverly disguised as just another post.

Really, I consider it a value-added day because not only do I usually tell a little story but I point out other posts I had written throughout the week that you might not have known existed, slipping through the Facebook cracks between suggested posts for Sparkle paper towels and what state people are told by a quiz they should be living in. Or maybe you just never got around to opening the email.

Just looking to help a sister (or brother, as is sometimes the case) out.

But after losing my fucking tooth last night, and really needing to make a very short story quite long, there wasn’t really room to tack on the requisite posts from earlier in the week. I mean, since this blog is written and posted on the Internet, there is actually an infinite amount of space, but I’m already pretty chatty — I use way too many words when writing these things, — and studies show that people reading anything online can deal with about 300-400 words at a sitting and until they click over to somewhere else.

I tend to run a little longer than that.

Anyway, now that I’ve really warmed you up and you’re practically begging for more (or conversely, ready to click over to Facebook), here are some of the very exciting things that have been happening in my life over the last seven days including the humiliating loss of a tooth, a rage against Valentine’s Day and a love story starring a minivan …

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photo-6That Time My Tooth Fell Out

I tend to have recurring dreams, with many of the same themes cycling through my brain, night after night.

There’s the one where I’m packing a suitcase or boarding an airplane. I always seem to be taking off and never landing. (READ MORE … )

 

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IMG_3118Valentine’s Day is Stupid

I am not a festive person. I do not come from festive people.

As such, I do not own colorful sweaters, necklaces that light up like Christmas tree lights or candy cane earrings.

It used to bum my children out that I didn’t want to create a cemetery in our front yard for Halloween or string twinkly lights in the front bushes in December. Isn’t it enough I buy costumes and put up a tree? Can’t they be happy with a wreath?

Seriously. (READ MORE … )

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800px-08_Chrysler_Town_&_Country_TouringPutting the Sexy Back in Minivans

You might have read here that I am on a quest to bring the minivan back.

I’ve been rocking my Town & Country rental all week.

Since I started driving my shiny white beautyfollowing a little run-​​in with a tractor-​​trailer, I’ve started thinking a lot about – given all the vehicle’s bells and whistles, not to mention roominess – why so many of us parents insist on driving around the suburbs in big rigs. (READ MORE … ) 

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IMG_3742Am I Stupid?

It happened again this week. For maybe the fifth time in his life, I left my youngest child some place he wasn’t supposed to be.

And he’s getting tired of it and frankly, I can’t say I really blame the kid.

Someone should take away my mom license. (READ MORE … )

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photo-4Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

There’s a house around the corner from us, set along a busy thoroughfare running through town, which has had stacks of books piled up on an enclosed porch in front for as long as I can remember. The entrance is lined with curtained windows through which passersby can see mountains of books surrounding the room, piled high into the middle of each window. (READ MORE … )

 

That Time My Tooth Fell Out

photo-6I tend to have recurring dreams, with many of the same themes cycling through my brain, night after night.

There’s the one where I’m packing a suitcase or boarding an airplane. I always seem to be taking off and never landing.

There’s another one where I’m driving to a city — along loopy highways — or taking a subway or walking along city streets and sometimes going into a building and getting on an elevator. You always know there’s going to be trouble when you step into an elevator in one of my dreams.

And sometimes I’m back in college, and more specifically, about to take a test I forgot to study for.

Often, I’ve had dreams about losing a tooth or two. A few weeks ago I dreamt I was in my bathroom rinsing my mouth out and felt something rattling around inside. I opened my mouth and my teeth fell into my cupped palm, crumbled bits and pieces that were almost sparkly, like diamonds. And I clearly remember the panic I felt having just had teeth literally pour out of my mouth and could actually feel the smoothness of the gum along my jawbone from which they slipped.

It was one of those dreams where I had to remind myself it was just a dream. I even remember becoming conscious enough to poke around inside my mouth with my tongue to ensure all my teeth were still there. And I remember the relief I felt to find them all intact.

So imagine my dismay last night when, after settling in to watching a movie with my daughter and biting into a piece of frozen chocolate, I felt something rattling around inside my mouth and spit a molar into my hand.

And if you think I was in a panic to find myself holding my own tooth, you should have seen the look on my 16 year old’s face when it registered what had just happened on the couch next to her.

“I feel like I should do something,” she shouted after I turned towards her with one hand covering my mouth and the other holding  the molar on my outstretched palm. “Are you bleeding? Do you need a towel?”

“Tell me if it looks bad,” I said and then lowered my hand and smiled.

“WHAT???!!!” she shrieked, and fell backwards onto the couch, laughing hysterically at the gap in my smile. “Your legit tooth fell out,” she blurted, her big blue eyes bulging at the sight of her mother’s jack-o-lantern grin.

The joke here is that I had put the chocolate – usually chewy morsels of caramel covered in dark chocolate and sprinkled with bits of sea salt given to me by my daughter for Valentine’s Day – in the freezer in an effort to slow down its consumption. My strategy was that it would take so long to gnaw through one piece – and I’d enjoy it so thoroughly – that a second would not be required.

Proving once again my complete lack of self awareness

My daughter, who’s been sick the last few days, and I had gotten takeout for dinner and were just settling in to spend the snowy Saturday night on our couch watching the totally adorable “About Time” with Rachel McAdams and her time traveling British love, which was possibly even sweeter than the dangerous chocolates I pulled out of the freezer. We each ate one and then I fetched two more and set one down next to each of us. I gave mine exactly 30 seconds to thaw and then gnawed some of the chocolate off the edge with the left side of my mouth.

And it was almost if those magical little bits of sea salt had made their way under a molar and popped the crown off its little nub base and sent it swirling into the abyss of my mouth, like Sandra Bullock spinning out of control in “Gravity,” except (SPOILER ALERT) without the happy ending.

After we got over the horror of what had just happened, my daughter and I proceeded to take pictures of me cackling and the gap in my smile, which we Snapchatted and texted to her siblings.

She even drew a big red circle around the gap and wrote, “Her tooth fell out … ,” which was really funny and I considered sharing the photo here until I realized that I actually do have boundaries when it comes to making myself look bad. This is, after all, the Internet and while I long for one of my blog posts to go viral, wouldn’t it be just my luck that it would be of a photo of me with a missing tooth?

(Cheetah-covered onesies are one thing but looking like I just blew in from my shack in the Ozarks is quite another.)

So I’m planning on lying low until my dentist gets around to calling me back to tell me when he can glue the thing back in. I’m supposed to take my son to a basketball game at a local university with other folks from town but don’t know if my ego will let me go through with it.

I definitely know my ego won’t let me go on the date I’m supposed to go on Monday night. All the personality in the world couldn’t cover up a potential love interest’s missing tooth.

I got into a bit of an online argument with my older daughter yesterday when she got annoyed with the pep talk I was giving her.

“You hold the key to everything,” I wrote in our increasingly snippy Facebook conversation. “It’s all about your attitude.”

“Shhhhh,” she wrote back.

When I Googled “losing tooth dream,” I found this interpretation: “This teeth dream theme is closely related to the idea of things falling apart, both literally and symbolically.”

Dreaming about the loss of teeth mostly symbolizes the loss of some type of control — over people or aging, all that kind of stuff. I think that’s spot on because as much as we try, we just can’t control most things in our lives. Things will break and fall apart – marriages, jobs, cars — and it’s how we respond that really forms the basis for how we live our lives. It’s really all about attitude.

In the meantime, I tried to leverage my tooth loss as a means for getting my daughter to make me breakfast this morning. We were lying on my bed together laughing about the whole tooth thing and I asked if she would go downstairs and make me something to eat.

“You and your ratchet ass missing tooth can go downstairs and make your own breakfast,” she said, trying to feel the gap in my mouth through my cheek with her finger.

And out of all the things in my life, I should know by now that teenagers were the most impossible to control.

 

valentine’s day is stupid

IMG_3118I wrote this post last year and what a difference 12 months can make (or maybe not having a job).

This year, not only had I purchased cards and candy well ahead of Valentine’s Day, I even was organized enough to send bags of candy to the two college kids in Virginia that even GOT THERE EARLY.

I’m never that together.

I also stumbled upon the aisle of boxed Valentine’s cards when I happened to be in Target in January, yes January, and called my fifth grader to tell him what was there and get ahead of the game.

“I’m not doing that,” he almost spat when I suggested he make a selection.

“But they have a million choices!” I told him. “Sponge Bob. Superman. Transformers.”

In the end, he relented to my prodding and picked NBA-themed cards.

I brought them home and they’ve sat on a counter in our kitchen until yesterday.

“Buddy,” I said to him last night. “Don’t you want to start working on your Valentine’s cards?”

“Nah,” he answered. “I’m not going to bring them in.”

So as it seems to happen so often in my life, my timing was once again way off. 

So if any of you parents are feeling frantic because you forgot to get your kid cards in time, as you’ll see below that I did last year, you can come on over and grab mine.

I have a whole box.

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IMG_3123I am not a festive person. I do not come from festive people.

As such, I do not own colorful sweaters, necklaces that light up like Christmas tree lights or candy cane earrings.

It used to bum my children out that I didn’t want to create a cemetery in our front yard for Halloween or string twinkly lights in the front bushes in December. Isn’t it enough I buy costumes and put up a tree? Can’t they be happy with a wreath?

Seriously.

But it’s the make-believe holidays that make me crazy. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Valentine’s Day.

These are the phony holidays created solely to get you to spend money on things that nobody needs, like Barbie Pez and ties.

So, imagine my chagrin when I found myself last night at Target searching for Valentine’s Day goodies for my two kids still living at home.

Nothing says “I’m a horrible procrastinator” like standing in the seasonal aisle at Target at 5:30 the night before Valentine’s Day, huddled with all the other working moms and clueless dads in front of the few remaining pink stuffed animals and Necco Wafers that all the organized parents hadn’t already scooped up last week. It was like landing on the Island of Misfit Toys: Valentine’s Edition.

But there I stood, thinking, “This is stupid,” while one young mom kept telling her preschooler he was a brat and another mom, who had three little kids hanging out of her shopping cart, employing the “f” word to stop the all their bickering. Right there next to the bags of miniature Snickers bars.

This was obviously not a happy time of day to be at Target (and man, I am usually really happy to be at Target).

Of course at this point, there is not one box of Valentine cards to be found for my 10-year-old son to bring to school the next day. No Dora. No Thomas the Tank Engine. Nothing.

I was talking to my younger sister, who is  like 14 years younger than me and has one toddler, on the phone while casing the joint and reported my findings.

“Go on Pinterest!” she says, and starts describing excitedly something she saw where I’d take my son’s picture holding out his arms and print it out and tape a lollipop to it. And I’m thinking, “Okay, I can do this,” and grabbed one of the remaining bags of lollipops from a bottom shelf.

I turned the corner and ran into a big display of Fun Dip cards that are pretty much the paper pouches containing the sugary dip and weird candy stick that kids can write classmates’ names on. I reached my hand out and hesitated for about two seconds, remembering then that you pretty much can’t send any food items into school anymore due to allergy restrictions, and then grabbed it anyway.

I’ll take contraband over crafting, all day long.

 

Am I Stupid?

IMG_3742It happened again this week. For maybe the fifth time in his life, I left my youngest child some place he wasn’t supposed to be.

And he’s getting tired of it and frankly, I can’t say I really blame the kid.

Someone should take away my mom license.

I dropped him off yesterday afternoon at the elementary school in town about a mile and a half away from our house for what I thought was a 4:00 basketball practice.

I even had a nagging feeling while doing so — because practices are usually on Wednesdays — but I checked my iPhone and, yup, I was in the right place at the right time, according to my calendar.

I waited as he slowly made the walk from my car to the gym door, a sulky trip since he was mad at me because in his mind, I was somehow the reason kids had homework. Yes, that’s right: I’m the culprit. He’s resisting doing his homework lately, which is really out of character, but he’s busy blaming me, his teacher and really just THE MAN for the nightly 30 minutes of work that takes him away from looking at one screen or another or bouncing a Nerf basketball off his bedroom wall.

I returned home to my laptop, which I spent so much time looking at while working for my former employer that now that I’m out of work, find myself automatically opening up and wondering what to do with myself.

About a half hour later, the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find my 11-year-old standing there on the front step, his big blue eyes brimming with tears.

“Did I mess up the time?” I asked, and he burst past me and stomped up the stairs to his room.

By the time I got him to unlock the door for me, I found him sitting on his bed rubbing his legs, which were bright pink from making the long walk home in his basketball shorts with nothing more than a sweatshirt on top.

Did I mention it was about 20 degrees in my part of New Jersey yesterday afternoon?

I held out some cozy sweatpants to cover his freezing legs and brought him downstairs to the den to lie down on the couch in front of the fire and tucked his favorite blanket around him and left him alone.

After he had some time to pretend to fall asleep, I came in with a big mug of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows and a big splash of half and half, just the way he likes it.

“How about you do your homework in here tonight by the fire?” I suggested, and he took a sip of his cocoa and nodded his head.

His body and his mood thawed and eventually, he was happily showing me how good he was solving the evening’s math problems.

I apologized for the hundredth time as he was getting ready for bed later that night.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, but really, it’s not. If his dad kept leaving him the wrong place, I’d be all like, “What’s his problem?”

What the hell is my problem?

So far, I’ve left him alone in the neighbor’s basement when he was about four while we all went out to deliver Thanksgiving dinners (he told me he jumped on their trampoline to keep busy until we got back), and at the wrong baseball practice that left him sitting on the curb until I returned some 90 minutes later. I even bought him a cell phone last year to avoid these mixups.

I’ve also left his older sister off the wrong time for a basketball game and left my oldest son, who was probably around 5 at the time, playing outside on the swing set in the backyard while I drove his two younger sisters to a babysitter for the day.

I remember looking into the back of the minivan through my rearview mirror about 10 minutes into the trip and not seeing his head, told him to sit up in his seat.

“He’s not here,” piped up one of the sisters.

Really, you didn’t think this was important information to share with me?

And I don’t know what to cite as the cause. Certainly, it can’t be because I have too many kids (since half are away at school right now). And it’s certainly not because I’m a working mom (because I am currently unemployed).

It’s not even because I was busy making dinner (since the kids went to their dad’s last night for that).

Methinks perhaps I’m stupid.

Which was confirmed earlier today when I loaded about three months worth of New York Times daily papers, all bundled and tied, into the back of my minivan to drop off at town recycling center on my way to the grocery store first thing this morning.

They’d been tied up and sitting on my mudroom floor for about a week and I just couldn’t look at them one more second.

I had noticed on our town website that there would be no recycling pickup on my usual day this week – Wednesday – because of Lincoln’s Birthday (I mean, what?) and the center would be closed as well.

But I forgot today was Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday. I’m all mixed up in the head.

So I went not once but twice to the recycling center this morning, sitting in my minivan and staring at the locked gate blocking the entrance while mentally composing the snippy phone call I was going to make to borough hall when I returned home.

And then I realized that it was Wednesday.

I drove home and saw my neighbor Susan had put a bunch of cardboard boxes out for recycling pick up and instead of texting her that there was no pick up today, I went and dragged a giant box out of my garage and added it to her pile.

So, what can I chalk this all up to? Super-early dementia? Dumb-dumbiness? I am alarmed.

However, since I was so encouraged to learn the other day that I wasn’t the only one hoarding baby teeth, I’m hoping maybe you guys can share some of your own not-so-stellar-moments in scheduling. Or parenting, I suppose.

I’d like to feel like less of a dope.

 

 

Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

photo-4There’s a house around the corner from us, set along a busy thoroughfare running through town, which has had stacks of books piled up on an enclosed porch in front for as long as I can remember. The entrance is lined with curtained windows through which passersby can see mountains of books surrounding the room, piled high into the middle of each window.

You couldn’t always see what was going on inside their windows until some trees in their front yard were blown down during Hurricane Sandy,  revealing the stacks of books and papers that push aside curtains and seem to take up a lot of the space in the house’s entranceway.

We’ve even affectionately dubbed the people who live there “The Hoarders,” and actively monitored their post-hurricane activity.

“Oh, The Hoarders finally got that tree out of there,” I’d say to the kids, or “Looks like they’ve got a lot of stuff out back in that garage, too,” my daughter observed one day.

The thing is, I don’t feel like I’m judging the people who live in that house and allow things to pile up — other windows in the house belie a propensity to accumulate — because I tend to have a hard time letting go of things as well.

I just do a better job of hiding it.

All of my magazines tend to pile up – Real Simple, Oprah, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People – spilling out of baskets in bathrooms and scattered all over the kitchen island.

Bills, mail and other paper detritus teeter in a giant bowl on a side counter in my kitchen and it’s so pretty, the bowl, painted black with a colorful rim and flowers along the bottom, which you rarely get to see since it’s always filled with permission slips and Pottery Barn catalogs.

Most surfaces in my bedroom are covered with stacks of self-help books, collections of essays on writing, camera parts and iPhone charger cords.

And the other side of my king-sized bed, when not occupied by a certain 11 year old, is a great place to store a couple of books, reading glasses and usually a dirty tissue or two.

But I don’t really have a problem with getting rid of all the reading material and plowing through the paperwork at least once a month. It’s more of a laziness issue, really, combined with a fairly high tolerance for clutter. But every so often I’ll walk around with a big, black garbage big and fill it with Ballard Design catalogs and Sexiest Man Alive issues of People and pay the lawn service and my gas bill (generally late because who can develop a system out of all those piles?).

But then there are the things that I could never part with, like pretty much every card I’ve received since college, Playbills (Rent!) and my children’s teeth. Oh, and some of mine, too — all four wisdom teeth plus a few incisors. It’s like I’m a character that would fit right into the Silence of the Lambs series, standing alongside Dr. Lechter and maybe stringing necklaces out of his victim’s teeth or something.

Total weirdo.

I’ve been holding onto various souvenirs from the past – old datebooks, postcards and notebooks filled with to-do lists and Easter menus from 2003 – stuffed in bags and boxes throughout my house for years. I recently pulled a couple of them up from the basement and was surprised to find a sheet of photos of me smoking a cigarette that accompanied an op-ed piece I wrote for my college paper circa 1988 about why I loved to smoke (really?) and extra copies of my wedding invitation floating around in a Ziploc bag. I mean that was like 24 years ago.

Like unearthing long-forgotten masterpieces, I found pictures my kids had drawn for me when they were small, potato-shaped figures with stick arms and floating faces with “MOM” painstakingly written beneath, more precious than any Picasso or Manet (can you tell I just finished reading “The Goldfinch”?)

It’s like I’m stockpiling artifacts for a museum dedicated to myself and my fairly ordinary life. Visitors will be able to inspect strips of sonogram photos, baby announcements, entries from my 1998 datebook including that my older daughter had Show and Tell on Sept. 28 and I got my hair done a few days later. Or even more foretelling, a card for my 27th birthday sent to me by a high school girlfriend, joking about the old ladies on the cover and wondering if we’d be like that “in 60 years,” who never made it past her own 45th birthday.

Just like the home movies I dug up a few months ago, it’s painful looking through all the memories, but when I can stand it, enlightening too. Looking through all the cards and notes I’m reminded how much my ex-husband and I loved each other and all the hopes and dreams I held not just for myself but for my children, too. And even though things didn’t work out the way that I had planned all those years ago, it wasn’t a waste but an important part of where I am today.

I’m reminded at how full my life has been.

So I’ll gladly give away that Banana Republic shirt that never fit quite right and clear books off my shelves that really don’t stand the test of time (so long, Mitch Albom). In the end those are really just things.

But after I’ve sorted through the giant Rubbermaid containers and assorted dust-covered cardboard boxes that are scattered about my den, I’ll carefully return all the items inside and hoist them back down to my crawlspace until it’s time for another retrospective of a very ordinary life.

Plus lots of teeth.

 

 

Snow Kidding

photo(102)My cell phone, positioned on the nightstand next to my bed and about three inches from my head, rang at 4:40 this morning and because I have this deep-seeded aversion to answering any calls coming in from 1-800 numbers, I let it go to voicemail.

I figured it was The Gap calling to tell me my payment this month is like, three days late. I could understand if I was three months delinquent in paying something. By all means, give me a heads up and maybe a little attitude. But The Gap gets snippy when you forget to pay within the allotted pay cycle and starts suspending your card and calling to strong-arm you and shit.

Don’t they know I’m well-intentioned? I just tend to put things off, like paying bills and getting things fixed. It’s a character flaw, to be sure. But I’m very friendly.

I would like to know how some people handle the stress of not paying their mortgage for like two years straight. I’ve got straight up PTSD from being a month late to pay The Gap.

Anyway, as I probably should have known had I not been dreaming about getting on an airplane (my go-to dream theme) seconds before the piano ringtone began to trill by my head, The Gap doesn’t begin its strong arming tactics until more traditional business hours and it was instead one of those Code Red calls from the middle school to say that school would have a delayed opening this morning because of the snow.

Wait, what? Snow?

Has it gotten to the point this winter that an impending couple of inches of snowfall doesn’t even register on our radars any more? That it’s snowed so much this winter that we only take note when legit blizzards are bearing down on us? That even the media takes a ho-hum stance and not its usual, “IT’S SNOWMAGEDDEN!! GET TO THE SUPERMARKET NOW AND BUY ALL THE MILK AND BREAD YOU CAN AFFORD.”

Well, that seems to be the case, because I had absolutely no idea that snowfall was imminent and I’d be enjoying the kids’ company a little later than usual this morning.

And for maybe the thousandth time, I am thankful that I work from home. I’m glad I’m not supposed to be up and dressed for a meeting in an office 45 minutes away, and can instead have a proper conference call in the comfort of my leopard onesie while cooking up some French toast for my stragglers.

Of course, it could be worse. I saw a post on Facebook yesterday from my college girlfriend who has been trapped inside her Brooklyn apartment this week with her two little guys because of the wickedly-cold temperatures here in the Northeast, unable to let off some five-year-old steam at the playground. Or another mama I know in the Chicago area whose kids have been home from school for days because of the weather, coating her living room floor in dress up clothes and stuffed animals.

My guys will gone by mid-morning and I’ll be able to return to my regular routine of checking my e-mail and Facebook every 8 minutes and wiping the kitchen counter.

I’ll still be rocking the onesie, though. There is snow on the ground, after all.

 

 

 

 

Guilty As Charged

photo(104)I don’t know if it’s the Catholic in me, the mother in me, the daughter in me or just the woman in me, but I spend a fair percentage of each day feeling guilty about one thing or another.

Whether it’s my reluctance to buy into purchasing organic products, the poison I pay a service to put on my lawn to keep it green that is probably leaching into my children’s drinking water, or that I am morally and ethically opposed to wet cat food although it would probably make her a lot less fat, I feel bad about a lot of stuff.

And so I made a list:

  1. Cheating during spin class
  2. Not drinking enough water
  3. Drinking too much wine
  4. Not doing Kegels
  5. Hitting the snooze button
  6. Not writing in my journal
  7. Blowing off writing for sleep
  8. Watching three episodes of “Scandal” in a row
  9. Spending $300 every time I go to Target even if it’s just to return something
  10. Not reading as much to my younger children as I did with their older siblings
  11. Only getting past Chapter 2 of A Wrinkle in Time with my youngest child
  12. The 500 pages left to read in Middlemarch
  13. The brown sugar I put in my oatmeal
  14. The half and half I put in my coffee
  15. Knowing more about Kelly Ripa than Edward Snowden
  16. The 20,000 (legit) emails in my work inbox
  17. That my children had to live through a divorce
  18. The amount of money I spend on my hair annually
  19. All the unread books on my nightstand
  20. Not sending birthday cards
  21. Having a closet full of grey, black and camel-colored clothing
  22. Those 10 extra pounds that climbed on for the ride a few years ago
  23. That I don’t read the whole newspaper like I used to each day
  24. Buying plastic water bottles
  25. My carbon footprint
  26. Leaving the water running while I brush my teeth
  27. Not flossing every night
  28. The half-finished sweater lying in my crawl space I never finished knitting
  29. Wanting to be as thin as Kelly Ripa
  30. Not cleaning the kitty litter box every day
  31. Being freaked out by online dating
  32. Making my kids feel like they don’t measure up
  33. That I ever wished my kids would grow up
  34. My  constant struggle with forgiveness
  35. Judging a book by its cover
  36. My big ego
  37. My bouts with narcissism
  38. Not going to Mass
  39. Letting my fourth child off the Catholic hook
  40. All the chicken nuggets and mac-n-cheese I’ve fed to my children over the course of 20+ years.
  41. This list

What makes you feel bad? Tell me so I can feel better.

 

 

 

 

 

Being a Mom Never Ends. Dammit.

IMG_2049There are some things about becoming a mother that nobody ever tells you, and I’m not talking about how funky your bottom is for a while after giving birth or that your newborn will probably cry so hard at some point it will briefly not make a sound or that some day that same baby – with whom you spent countless hours up in the middle of the night trying to console – will tell you it hates you. Guaranteed.

No, those are the little tidbits you don’t even consider when you are pregnant with your first child and fantasizing about all the fun things you’d do together some day like visiting museums and joining up for mother-daughter yoga classes.

It’s not fucking happening.

No, the most critical piece of information that anyone who’s gone down that parenting road ahead of you has neglected to mention is that it never stops. There is no end to the job.

Which is funny, because I was under the impression when I took the position that it would be about an 18-year assignment.

You kept all of their fingers and toes in check, fed them the occasional vegetable and made sure they could read and they’d eventually go off to college and you’d get back to whatever it was you were doing before they arrived on the scene.

Like, having fun.

What I’d like to travel around the country and tell expectant parents is that they are signing up for a life sentence. Once that little sucker pops out into the bright light of day, there would be no turning back.

You are in it for the long haul.

(Someone should actually put that as a warning label on a box of condoms. Like how Trident used to use the “4 out of 5 dentists agree” line: “Four out of five parents agree that they should have used a condom.”)

I’m being reminded of this lifetime commitment this week as I watch one of my kids struggle with rejection and feel helpless, unable to make anything better. I keep going over in my mind what more I could have done, something I could have said that would have altered the course of events.

Because of course as parents we want to make the road of life less bumpy for our children. That’s why we cut their steak for them long past the point that they can manage a knife themselves or let them go into school a little late when they’re feeling needy or hand them a $20 bill for gas instead of making them dip into their own limited funds.

We want to shield them from life’s challenges, the many disappointments.

And when they do grow up some day and start making their way out into the world, you’re still connected. It’s like this thin filament that stretches as far as they go but is anchored to your heart. And when they feel pain and sorrow, you feel the zap of sadness, too.

No one told me how much I’d love them and that – even though they’d fly off and start their own lives – they’d always be my babies.

Shit.

So, when I wasn’t fretting about one of my many children this week, I did have this to say:

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photo(95)Broken

The day my husband of 18 years moved out of our house for good, the mirror that had been hanging quietly over our bathroom sink slipped from its nail and crashed onto the floor below.

I had been out of the house while he packed the last of his ties and running shoes, and hadn’t been home long after he left when I heard a thud overhead and the sound of breaking glass. (READ MORE … )

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photo(97)The Divorce Diet

Looking for a sure-fire way to drop 5 to 10 pounds fast?

Forget what you read in all the magazines or the ads you see on TV.

My advice is to get a divorce. (READ MORE … )

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IMG_0582What About College?

Anyone who has seen the Hungtington Learning Center commercial on TV — “Face it! I’m not getting into college!” – has had the pleasure of hearing a dramatic scene taken from the pages of my own life. (READ MORE … )

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