I Survived Black Friday and Teen Angst, All in One Night

I wrote this essay two years ago after being coerced by my then 14-year-old daughter into a midnight Black Friday run to Target.

I was not happy.

The good news is now she has friends who can drive her to wherever she feels compelled to go post-Turkey and I can remain at home on my couch drinking wine.

A win-win.

de1086df1000b12064e3dd511ed5571bIt started out as an attempt to humor my teenage daughter who had seen one-too-many Target commercials encouraging shoppers to prepare for Black Friday as if it was the Olympics of shopping.

Spurred on by the fun we had last year hitting a few stores in the early-morning hours the day after Thanksgiving, coupled with all of those savings she envisioned (she has tons of her own money and is indeed a thrifty shopper), my daughter was gunning to hit some big box stores late Thursday night.

But after a long Thanksgiving day filled with an early-morning run, cooking, cleaning and hours with my family, all I wanted to do by 7 p.m. was crawl into bed and read.

And that’s when she started to cry.

Not only did she want to go Black Friday shopping, my daughter wanted to go AT MIDNIGHT and was unwilling to negotiate an early-morning departure instead.

So between the tears and the fact that this child asks for very little, I found myself pulling into the Target parking lot around 11:30 on Thursday night, with said daughter and our neighbor — her trusty sidekick — and found a line of hundreds of people snaking along the side of the building waiting to get in.

I had envisioned that we’d saunter into the store, walk around and pick up a few sale items that were on our list and head home. I didn’t realize the commitment involved in the endeavor, bringing new meaning to “midnight madness.”

The girls jumped on the line, which they told me later went counter clockwise around the building from the entrance, along the back and reached clear to the other side. I parked the car in the packed lot and sat listening to the news and feeling cranky until they signaled me to join them some time after midnight as they approached the store’s entrance.

Red-shirted employees let about 30 shoppers in at a time in and so we had time to chat with one worker as we waited our turn in the chilly night air to join the masses inside. He told us that he thought there were about 2,000 shoppers and that while the first in line showed up about 5:30 p.m., the next bargain hunters enjoyed a few more hours with family until hunkering down around 7:30 p.m.

28eadbb0733581d44a1a58b78b28a8f4Not long after midnight, the first shoppers began exiting the building to applause, their carts filled with listing boxes of flat screen televisions. When one woman left with just a plastic Target bag in hand, it seemed almost as if she had squandered some magical opportunity to score an LCD.

As our Target friend wished us luck and let us into the store to join the throngs, we grabbed a cart and headed towards the back and immediately realized that unless we were gunning for one of the big screen TVs, we needed to ditch the cart to navigate through the sea of humanity pulsing toward the back of Target.

A quick stop at the pop up DVD selection set up among the bras and panties in women’s lingerie led us to our next line, about 30-people deep, to access the electronics cases. But because my daughter is anything but shy, she quickly ascertained from one of the employees overseeing the line that the item on our list could be grabbed from a nearby display, which we quickly did and kept moving towards the other end of the store.

After scooping up a few more items on our list and admiring, but resisting, all the doorbusters (Legos, crockpost and griddles), we made our way towards the checkout.

And here’s where I felt like I was back in Orlando, where the kids and I spent a few days doing the theme parks earlier this month. At first glance, it was a straight shot to the registers after we entered the cordoned off queue as instructed by yet another re-shirted Target worker. However, we soon found ourselves snaking up and down the aisles leading up the checkout, past endless selections of mascara, holiday-scented air fresheners and cleaning products.

And although we didn’t end up boarding a rollercoaster at the end of our walk through the line, I did experience a sense of disorientation that the half hour we spent moving from one end of the store to the other cost me about $374 when the very happy cashier rang me up.

Just like Disney, but at least with more to show for it and with significant discounts thrown in.

But the girls were elated as we walked through the giant lot back to our car. They had each picked up some DVDs and a few odds and ends as gifts for their siblings and relished the discounts and the sense of surviving the mayhem.

And when we got home, my girl gave me a big hug and thanked me for taking her and told me she had been waiting all year for her Black Friday adventure. She also assured me she wouldn’t force me to do it again next year.

And when I overheard her little brother asking her the next morning how her Black Friday shopping was, I smiled when I heard her say, “Awesome.”

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Parenting 101: The Good, the Bad and the Yucky

405091_466573723395477_1792569133_nAs a blogger, I try to balance sharing my life’s story with protecting the innocent.

Well, usually it’s the not-so-innocent who are howling about what I write here and looking for protection.

I want to be honest, to write about the yuckier side of life here, but I also don’t want those I love to feel thrown under the bus as I tell my version of what’s happening. And that’s really all it is, my side of the story.

But I’m a manipulator, too, because like everyone else I have an innate desire to paint the picture I want the world to see. I mean, it’s what Facebook was built on.

I want you to think that I had a passel of kids and then went through this super-crappy divorce but have come out the other end all enlightened and spreading joy and happiness throughout the land.

But that’s just not the case.

I am highly flawed. I often don’t know what to say in important conversations or how to course correct when situations veer wildly off-track. My knee-jerk response to challenging situations is to shut down. I just opt to do nothing and leave the issue woefully unaddressed. I avoid conflict like it’s tuna fish.

And I hate to apologize.

I’d like you believe that while there are the occasional blips in my house – like kids leaving crusty dishes in the sink or my freaking out over loud music while driving to school – overall my family is generally on solid ground.

But that just would not be true. We are on slippery ice and just when we find our balance, we see cracks threatening to spread beneath our feet. Stability can feel tenuous, at best, sometimes.

I wish I could tell you my recent whirlwind trip south to bring my college kids back to school was a bittersweet ending to a nice summer together. I wish I could tell you that the days leading up to it were filled with quality time together and that we all realized how much we loved and would miss each other.

But that would be a lie.

I was happy that the oldest two were about to disappear for three months. I had had enough of them this summer to see me through to Thanksgiving. And they, I believe, of me.

And by the end, I had stopped speaking to the oldest, who drove himself back a few days earlier. In fact, his dad and I brought his sister down and got her set up in her new off-campus apartment and we never even saw him.

We are that mad at him right now.

And I don’t know what to do, how to resolve the situation. How to wrap my brain around the idea that sometimes – regardless of how long you breastfed them or how many books you read to them or nagged them to practice their instrument or eat their broccoli – your kids will make decisions that disappoint you.

Maybe, as with so many parenting situations in the past that seemed so dire when I was in the thick of them – like when one kid refused to take Honors English or another returned home late one night bombed – time will help to make sense of the situation.

The passage of time and distance from the situation has allowed me to see that a child has got to want to be challenged academically, not pushed into it. And that kids are stupid and sometimes drink too much Fourloko.

So this trip did not result in any picture-perfect moments. There were no heartfelt embraces or Come-to-Jesus reckonings. It was more like, “Good-bye and good luck.”

On the bright side, I did spend the eight-hour drive home with my ex-husband and we had pleasant conversation. He even came into the house – for the first time since we split up for good four years ago – to use the bathroom and then fixed something that had been broken and ignored forever.

I mean, you couldn’t have told me these things were possible four years ago.

But then later that night, he sent me an angry text, assuming the worst of me about something unrelated. He couldn’t just call and say, “Hey, I noticed this, what’s up?”

He immediately went on the offense and sent a text that zinged a “WTF” at me.

But unfortunately, I just couldn’t deal. I thought about calling to talk to him about it. To assure him I harbored no ill will towards him and apologize, once again, for doing something that pissed him off. But I just didn’t have the energy.

I left it somewhere on the side of the road during the long drive home.

the college good-bye

I drove eight hours yesterday for the big college move. Again. He’s a junior and she’s a sophomore at the same school, and the novelty — at least for me — is wearing off.

And while things aren’t as shiny and exciting as they were two years ago, I can guarantee that the two-day excursion will still include a very expensive trip to WalMart, at least one meal at a fast food restaurant and chardonnay (that last part is for me).

It makes me think back to the big moment, two years ago, when I said good-bye to my oldest, and what a milestone that was in my life, and thought I’d share an essay I wrote in retrospect.

I’ll let you know how it feels to be an old pro when I return next week (I figure at this rate, by the time my youngest goes in 8 years I’ll be able to just send him by himself).

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There’s a picture pinned to the bulletin board in my kitchen — half hidden by silly greeting cards and bumper stickers that I’ve collected — which has become our iconic family back-to-school photo. In it, my two oldest children stand on the front stoop of our old house, a basket of late-summer impatiens drooping behind them, on the occasion of the oldest kid’s first day of preschool, just shy of his fourth birthday.

Pinned to the front of each of their shirts is a construction paper nametag that had been sent by the teacher to be worn on the first day of school. My son’s has his name on it and my daughter, who is only 17-months younger, is wearing the tag that had been sent for me to wear, but she assumed it was for her and who was I to burst her bubble? So I pinned it to her little white polo shirt and, if you didn’t know any better, you would have thought that it was her first day of school too, the way she puffs out her chest and looks directly into the camera, her lips forming the “ch” of “cheese.”  Her big brother stands beside her, looking away from the camera and grins at her, as if to say, “Can you believe this?”

That picture started a trend that we’ve continued on the first day of each school year ever since – even with the addition of two other children and when our world got a little rocky when the kids’ dad moved. Of course, as they got older, the kids would gripe about my “obsession” with organizing the first day of school photo op. Last year, that sweet oldest son, who looked at his sister with such love and excitement on his first day of preschool, actually flipped the camera the bird after I wrestled him to the front stoop to document the first day of his senior year of high school.

I kid you not.

Over the years, I have not been as diligent about documenting certain events that I did when the kids were younger. The Christmas slideshow is no longer an inventory of each gift the kids received and really, do we need to memorialize every Easy-Bake Oven or Harry Potter Lego set that comes into our house?

But back-to-school photos I strictly adhere to.

I got creative and copied that iconic first-day-of-preschool photo to make a card for my son to open after we dropped him off to start his first year away at college. It was tucked into a bundle of frames his sisters and I had picked up at Target and filled with family photos, all tied in a big bow and left on the desk in his dorm.

In the note, I reminded him of the occasion of the photo and how proud I was of the person he had become in the years since the picture was taken. I wrote in the note that I knew he would continue to excel in college as he had throughout high school and looked forward to watching what he would do next.

The whole family had driven the eight hours south to see him off and get him settled in this new chapter of his life. We hung his posters and made his bed and all took a ride over to the local Wal-Mart for extension cords and light bulbs. We walked around the sprawling campus with the rows and rows of imposing grey stone buildings and picked up his software for his major and the million-dollars worth of textbooks at the bookstore.

And when it seemed we could do no more, I left the bundle of photo frames on his desk and had him walk me and his sisters out to the car in the lot behind his dorm to say good-bye.

It’s that moment you’ve kind of been anticipating your whole career as a mom. The moment when you have to push your little bird, whose gaping mouth you’ve been lovingly placing worms into for years, out of the proverbial nest. It’s scary to imagine how hard he’ll need to flap to stay aloft. Or how empty the nest will seem without him.

We stood by the car and my oldest daughter, who had stood next to her brother so proudly on our front stoop so many years before, turned and wrapped her long arms around him to say good-bye.

Then my son stepped in front of me and I knew the moment had arrived to say all the things I had meant to say — like reminding him to floss daily and to say no to drugs and study hard — but all I could do was throw my arms around his neck and cry. Then I felt his back moving as he sobbed and was grateful that he, too, was sad. And it was then, that my younger daughter snapped our picture with her camera.

It’s the newest addition to our first day of school photo gallery and perfectly captures what it’s like to watch your child leave your nest. In it, my son’s back is to the camera and his head leans down towards me in an embrace. My face is contorted in an ugly cry and my arms hug him tight around his back with my left hand wrapped around the back of his neck, holding it the way I did when he as an infant.

We pulled apart and wiped our eyes and said our final good byes and I somehow navigated the car through the traffic-clogged roads surrounding the dorms and eventually back onto the highway. The girls and I sniffled a little bit more, and then settled in for the long drive home.

I sent him a text the next day to see how he made out his first night in the dorm and if he had found the pictures and card we had left on his desk.

“Yeah I got them thank you,” he texted back. “Sad card.”

His text continued, “When you get the chance, can you send me my basketball I left in the garage?”

And it seemed that his wings would work just fine.

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My kids sleep all day and play all night.

Welcome to the Habitrail

habitrailThere was a period of time, while growing up in the Seventies, that I wanted nothing more than a pet hamster or two. But more than the critters themselves, what I really wanted to get my hands on was one of those elaborate Habitrail systems that allowed you to create this maze of interconnected plastic tubes and pods through which you could watch your pets scuttle.

I don’t know what the appeal was for me: Maybe it was my whole fascination with The Borrowers and little creatures living in a big world or I just loved all the nooks and crannies that the Habitrail offered. I probably had a distorted idea of what caring for a pet hamster would look like, believing we’d be bonding and that the fur balls would be anything more than frisky poop machines.

I also would have settled for SeaMonkeys.

But unlike me when I became a parent, my mom did not easily succumb to the pleas of pet-starved children and I never got my hands on a hamster, never mind the Habitrail. I think later, as we grew older, one of my brothers might have scored a slimy something and there might have been a bird or two but rodents never made the cut in our house.

Which, I’ve since been told, is a good thing. According to other moms I know who have caved to their children’s pestering and adopted hamsters, the rodents make a racket all night long. They apparently are nocturnal creatures, sleeping all day and then as the whole house settles in for the night, they come to life and start to play, scurry and eat.

But last night, after I powered down my Kindle around 10:00 and turned out my light, excited for a solid night’s sleep, I realized that, in an ironic twist, I was now living with creatures whose internal clocks mimicked those of hamsters.

I was living in my own goddamn Habitrail.

While my 10-year-old and I were calling it a day, the three older kids – teens and a 20-year-old – were just getting going.

Down the hallway from my room, my 16-year-old and her pal who lives across the street were hooting and hollering all gansta “yo yo”s and “what what”s. Something big must have been happening on Instagram.

My 19-year-old daughter saw 10 p.m. as the perfect time to take a bath and settled into the tub after turning the radio up as loud as it would go.

When I lumbered out to knock on the bathroom door and ask her to turn it down, it became a comical “Who’s on first?” routine.

Me: “Turn it down.”

Her: “I can’t hear you.”

Me. “Because you need to turn it down.”

Her: “I still can’t hear you.”

Sigh.

I got back into my bed and then heard the yelling and pounding of last night’s episode of True Blood playing out in the den, located right under my room. By then, too tired from the exchange with the bather, I simply rolled over and texted my 20-year-old to turn the volume down. Within minutes, I heard the crinkling of plastic bags as he foraged through the pantry searching for some late-night snack that I’m sure remnants of which will greet me – Tostito bits dribbled on the kitchen floor and a milk-coated glass stuck to the bottom of the sink – when I head downstairs today.

The house is quiet now, in the early morning hours, but I’m sure to be tiptoeing around until my little critters start to stir in their cages some time around noon.

So I say to any parent who has a child begging to bring a rodent into the house, simply tell your child that while they can’t have the furry variety now, some day, if they play their cards right and become parents themselves, they’ll be the proud owners of creatures who spring to life at night and sleep all day.

It’s in their nature.

deal with it. period.

There are a lot of hormones pulsing through my house right now.

Between the pimples, bad moods and sweating (okay, maybe that’s just me), this place is a powder keg.

Now that I’ve moved into the land of perimenopause – a hormonal carnival ride whose dips and spins just won’t relent – and my youngest guy, at 10, is starting to feel his oats, we join the other feisty threesome who have been battling the hormone demons for years.

Since their dad moved out a few years ago, my two boys are now outnumbered by the ladies. We used to joke and say our dog Rudy would help balance the gender scales but now that he’s gone, too, the hormone levels have shifted around here.

The two boys, who are 10 years apart, have adjusted very differently.

My oldest son, who’s 20, is irritated by all the signs around the house that he is surrounded by women. He is freaked out by all the long hair that gets tangled in the shower drain, the tampon wrappers in the trash and the never ending loop of Vampire Diaries and Full House playing on our family room television.

While he was home a few weekends ago, he emerged from his den in the basement to discover the kitchen filled with women – me and his sisters and a few of their friends. He turned around in disgust, heading back down the stairs and grumbling about all the “estrogen around here.”

My prediction, I can feel it in my bones, is that the guy is going to grow up and have all daughters.  And then I shall laugh.

My younger son, however, has adapted quite well to often being the only dude around here. He knows all about periods and can quote the movie Pitch Perfect, and when I suddenly start taking off my top in the kitchen, he asks, “What’s wrong mom? Another hot flash?”

But that’s what I admire about him, he’s okay with all of the girl-stuff because he’s grown up surrounded by it. There are no mysteries here.

My youngest son is completely in touch, and okay with, his feminine side.

But my girlfriend recently said that she didn’t want to install the iPeriod app – that helps track Aunt Blood’s visits – on her iPhone because her three young boys often use her cell to play games.

She said she worried that if they discovered it, one of the boys would feel the need run into school and announce his mom was bleeding from her butt. Sound the alarm.

But I think if it’s just a part of your life, something your mom has to deal with every month, minus the gory details (because you don’t need to scar the fellas), it would be significantly less traumatizing.

Another friend just posted on Facebook that her son got dragged along for Spanx shopping with her, and while shopping anywhere is generally torture for boys, it’s good for them to see all the shit we women go through: Smoothing our lumps and bumps, waxing our mustaches and bleeding out our butts.

Being a girl is a pain in the ass.

But the sooner they know it, the better off all our boys will be.

Grrrr.

Ladies man.

the messy, messy girl

When I was a kid, my mom gave me a picture book that told the story of a little girl with a super messy bedroom – like banana peel-on–the-floor messy room – and how she had to come to terms with giving into her mother and cleaning it until it sparkled at the end.

I always thought it was weird my mom gave this particular book to me because there were no banana peels on my bedroom floor. Are you crazy? My siblings and I weren’t allowed to eat food anywhere but the kitchen and making your bed every morning was the norm.

I grew up with a mother that would wake long before dawn each day to clean our house.  I have no idea what she was doing those few hours while the rest of us were in our beds, all I know is that I would come down and find her showered, dressed and ready for the day.

But there were eight of us, plus pets, and I had spent enough time at a girlfriend’s house growing up to see six children’s worth of laundry pile up on their basement floor to know what happens when you don’t stay on top of things.

At some point, part of the daily routine for at least some of us kids, was to not only make our beds before school, but to give our bedroom floor a one-over with the vacuum. As I said, no banana peels here.

So of course, now that I’m a mom with kids and lots of beds that need to be made and rugs that could use some vacuuming, I’ve had to come to terms with my own level of cleanliness and decide what I can live with.

It turns out, that for as much as we sometimes question and rebel against earlier generations’ ways, I don’t like living in a pigsty. I make my bed every morning, take out the trash and run my dishwasher every night and like to keep the pillows on my couch zhoozhed (think Carson Kressley on Queer Eye).

Okay, I do have hoarding tendencies when it comes to paperwork and reading material and if you went into my bedroom right now, you’d fine a few piles of such on tabletops and maybe a couple on the floor (it’s tax time, people!).  But I try to keep it in control and not let it bleed into other parts of the house.

Enter: The Messy, Messy Girl.

I have a teenage daughter who’s lovely. She’s pleasant, will help out making dinner and can wield a drill and level with mad skill. She gets good grades, babysits often and works a few days a week in a local store.

But man, she’s a slob.

On her floor right this minute is a giant plastic bag stuffed with bedding used on a ski trip in January; two brown paper lunch bags containing Tupperware containers from school lunches last week; inside out sweaters, jeans, underwear and socks, socks, socks, all scattered in piles across the room.

It’s a fucking shit show, and while I support an individual’s right to live as he or she pleases, I am drawing the line at squalor in my own home.

We’ve been down this road before – where I’ve taken away her laptop and/or cellphone – and she does a big clean up. Then a few days later, it will be hoardersville again.

This morning, I peeked into my 10-year-old son’s room and found he’d taken a page from his sister’s messy book. There are clothes scattered all over the floor, his bed is unmade and there’s an empty can of silly string lying alongside an elbow pad and some USB cords.

But no banana peels. Definitely no banana peels.

the slings and arrows of motherhood

In my line of work, I have had to learn to develop a thick skin to withstand some of the verbal arrows that have been slung my way over the years.

And let me be more specific: when I use the term “line of work,” I am not referring to my role as journalist or ex-wife, but as the mother of three teenagers who I suspect might sharpen their tongues late at night to inflict cutting words and barbs to the unsuspecting.

Recently, I dragged my 19-year old son to a family counseling session to help us sort out some of the snags we hit when he returned home from college for winter break and was dismayed to find he was still expected to comply with the rules of our house. I needed a neutral party to bear witness and keep me from throttling him.

The therapist got him to admit that he respected me and all I do for our family and then gently coaxed him to share whatever else he might feel for me.

“Well, I don’t hate her,” he shrugged, and then went on to repeat that high praise at least once more during the session.

This is why I suffered through six months of breastfeeding and endured two rounds of thrush? Not to be hated? This is why I cut hundreds of hot dogs into tiny pieces to avoid choking and plodded through countless readings of Courduroy and sat shivering on park benches so he could fill his lungs with fresh winter air? To be placed on the cusp between somewhat likeable and barely tolerable?

But I’ve gotten used to the careless words children sometimes throw my way. In these parts, I have been crowned not only “meanest” but “worst” mother over the years. I also “don’t get it” and “don’t understand,” as if I arrived in the world cranky and in my mid-40s and this hasn’t been a work in progress.

Sometimes I think the girls can be the worst. I have been met with withering stares and told an outfit looked “crazy” as if I’d fallen into an episode of Project Runway, and an attempt to get in on ogling Zac Efron’s hotness with them was greeted with shrieks of horror as I was quickly reprimanded for being “gross.”

“Mom, you’re too old for that,” I was told.

My son headed back to school at the end of last week and came up to my bedroom to say good-bye and as soon as I saw him, I could tell by the look on his face he had had a change of heart.

We hugged for a while and as I heard him sniffling, was reminded that despite his hard, outer shell, the kid is super gooey inside.

Now he’s back at school and we’re practically in love as I tend to his needs — printer ink, textbooks — with a click of my mouse. He’s grateful for my help and I’m just happy to go to bed at night and not have to worry about whether he’s home or why the phone is ringing. And by the time he returns in May I’ll have had ample opportunity to toughen my skin, and my heart, for the long summer ahead.

This essay was originally posted on Patch.com on January 18, 2012.

stay-at-home-computer-mom

My kids hate my job.

Check that: my kids are dubious that being the editor of an online news source even qualifies as a real job when it’s happening from a desk in my bedroom.

To them, it makes no difference whether I’m writing about an arrest or if I’m posting “LOL!” on Facebook. As far as they’re concerned, my focus is on my laptop and not on them.

And it’s been a struggle this first year of working at home, trying to set boundaries and not letting my work bleed into time I should be spending with my family.

So one of my New Year’s resolutions, next to getting more organized about my finances and cutting down on my weekly wine intake, is to be more present with the kids when we are together – not listening distractedly as I check my e-mail or being glued to what’s happening on Twitter. To really be focused on what they’re saying.

I even saw a quote attributed to Buddha posted on Facebook (naturally) that I was inspired to share with the rest of the family on a chalkboard in the kitchen. I got out my fancy chalkboard markers and while a few of them watched in anticipation, I wrote: “I am awake.”

And the collective response from my people was: “lame.”

But in the week or so since I’ve written that, we’ve had a number of opportunities to talk about what it means to be “awake” to life.

For instance, the 9-year old insists on losing his new NorthFace jacket twice a week. By last week, he had misplaced the fleece during the big cold snap we had along with his new basketball sneakers, which coincided with the start of the season. After making him scour all the basements in the neighborhood and under all the furniture in our house, his sister found the sneakers in a metal bin in his room that is supposed to hold Nerf guns and other weaponry, not footwear.

Then this morning, the same finder of lost sneakers was running late, trying to slurp the last spoonfuls of soup for breakfast, and ran out of the house to high school wearing fuzzy socks and slippers. She called crying, mortified by her fashion blunder and even madder at herself for having been so discombobulated. This comes on the heels of rushing out of the car last night to play practice and dropping the iPhone – all of two-weeks old – that was on her lap onto the pavement and shattering the screen.

And I am just as guilty of not being present. It makes the kids crazy when I can’t remember something they just told me and I have been known to drive off and forget to take a child or two with me.

We all have complicated lives – with kids and work and dinners and dogs that randomly poop on your rug – and sometimes it’s hard to keep it all in check.

But I am determined to slow it all down, to appreciate this stage of my journey into the wilds of parenting.

So I’ve made a standing date with my high school girls each day after school. I close up my laptop and head down to the kitchen to greet them when they walk in and try to lure them into talking about their day.

I positioned myself down in the kitchen after school last week and they burst through the front door, looked at me and started up the stairs.

“Wait,” I called after them, “don’t you want a cup of tea?”

“Nah,” said the older one.

“We hate tea,” said the younger.

“But we could just talk,” I reasoned.

They slunk into the kitchen and sat down at the table begrudgingly answering my innocuous questions.  I turned my back to grab a spoon and they fled as if from an interrogation, and I thought, “These are the same people who feel like I don’t pay them enough attention?”

When I actually look at them they act as if I’m Medusa and they’re about to be turned to stone.

So let them hate my job and complain I’m always online. Even when I didn’t work I had my nose buried in e-mail and Amazon.

They can complain I don’t pay attention to them, but maybe someday they’ll see what the job gave them, like college educations, and that I found something that allowed me to provide that and still be a presence in our home and have tea in the afternoon.

The kids were sitting around the kitchen table recently and the three older ones were poking fun at my job and what it was exactly that I did and the youngest chimed in, “ She’s like a stay-at-home-computer mom.”

I’ve been called worse.

This essay was originally posted on Patch.com on January 11, 2012

the family bed

Since my ex moved out a couple of years ago, I’ve had a constantly rotating schedule of bed partners. Some of them steal all of the covers and kick me with their long legs, while others are so short that their presence barely registers in my king-size bed.

What’s that, you ask? Am I some type of little person-loving, Chelsea Handler type? Have I joined the ranks of the Moms Gone Wild divorced gals?

Sadly, or perhaps happily, it is usually one of my four kids who have staked his or her claim on the coveted spot beside me each night.  Often, I come home late from an endless municipal meeting to find my room darkened and a big lump where reading material and remote controls usually sit. My immediate reaction is irritation: I’ve got stuff to do. But then I look at that sweet, sleeping face and am glad it’s so close, even though it’s keeping me from Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, the kids don’t come to my room just for the great company I provide. I happen to have an amazingly comfortable bed. It’s like a big marshmallow, with the softest Costco sheets and a heated mattress pad for when the temperatures dip outside. There’s a ceiling fan to keep things fresh and a new flat screen TV to replace the ancient TV/VCR combo, with a Care Bears movie stuck inside, that my ex took with him when he left.

While I often just stumble upon the kids in my room, a lot of times my roommate du jour and I enjoy activities other than just sleeping side-by-side, like reading or watching one of the many fine On Demand movies available, like the seminal Justin Bieber classic, Never Say Never.

A few months ago, my 8-year-old-son asked, “Hey, Mom. You want to get into bed and watch Cougartown?”  Aside from the insane inappropriateness of him even knowing what that show is (youngest of four), how could I not have fallen for a line like that?

There was a time, in the early stages of my separation, that I worried that I was creating a weird mother-child dynamic and potentially unhealthy sleeping habits. But now, I just enjoy the company for the most part and the opportunity to spend that time together. The older two kids are already over the novelty of my boudoir and it’s only a matter of time before the younger two follow suit.

When they were younger, the kids very rarely slept in my bed. I’d occasionally scoop a crying infant out of its crib and let it nurse alongside me as I slept. And one time, my oldest daughter had one of those scary high fevers in the middle of the night that required monitoring. After cooling her down in the tub and filling her with Motrin, I brought her burning hot body into my bed where she created a small oven in the pocket between her father and me while we waited for the fever to break.

But emergencies and personal needs aside, three people sleeping in one bed is annoying. The little kid in the middle, who starts the night all cute and cuddly, becomes a swirling dervish of arms and legs once the lights go out. I need my sleep.

And I never understood the parents that went and slept in their kids’ beds. Haven’t we done our time in stiff, twin beds when we were children? Don’t we do enough for our kids during waking hours—crust removal, hair washing, butt wiping—to absolve us from working the night shift? Enough already.

Last week, I returned home at bedtime from a few days away with the oldest at college orientation while the other three kids stayed home, and we all cuddled on my bed shortly after I walked through the door. Because in our house there seems to be a constant need to claim things—calling “fives” on the TV remote or the last cupcake—my 8 year old “called” sleeping in my bed while the others had briefly left the room. Naturally, the 14-year-old returned and tried to do the same. They argued for a bit, and I suggested everyone slept in their own beds since they couldn’t agree and I didn’t have the energy for mediation.

They muttered for a little bit, and then my older daughter said, “Nick, you want to sleep in my room?”

And before I knew it, they jumped off my bed and went down the hall to her room. I walked by a little later to find the light already off and soft laughing coming from behind the closed-door.

For a moment, I was sorry to not be a part of the fun. But then I went back to my quiet room and snuggled in my big marshmallow and turned on Cougartown.

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