April 10, 2007

Bad Real Estate Agents, Bad Mothering

In exactly two hours and 47 minutes, our crappy real estate agent will be no more.

Nothing drastic. I mean, we're not having him whacked or anything of that nature. His contract is simply expiring, much to my extreme joy.

Thanks to everyone who made agent recommendations last week. While we're not going with any of those agents, since they're not as familiar with our area as we'd like, it was in researching those agents that I found our next ones. I somehow managed to surf into a website listing the top real estate agents, per St. Louis zip code. And that's who will be listing our house tomorrow - the agents who have sold tons of houses in our zip code. Now that we know what questions to ask an agent, we've got some confidence that they'll do a lot more for us than our current crappy agent.

The excitement's renewed, so much so that I gutted my kitchen cabinets and packed three boxes tonight. B. and Clara Jane did some work on her room to declutter, and this is all so mind-numbingly dull that you really shouldn't care about it other than perhaps you won't be subjected to boring real estate blabber for much longer.

You know what's more interesting than boring moving talk? Kid's yoga classes. We're taking one tomorrow. Clara Jane hasn't been in a very Zen place lately, and I can't keep giving her nighttime cough syrup just for my own benefit. Perhaps the yoga will clear the clutter and daily stress from her mind. Or at least give her the opportunity to pretend to be a dog - at least a downward facing one. Clara Jane's current favorite hobby involves pretending to be a dog, but I refuse to put a leash on her, no matter how much she demands is.

Seriously. She's been demanding a leash and wants us to "walk" her. Considering how tired I am of dirty Pull-Ups, the urge to let her go walkies outside is sometimes hard to resist.

In other excellent parenting news ... Clara Jane has two new favorite songs. "Alfie" by Lily Allen and "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse. Yes, this is from a parent who doesn't allow her kid to watch "The Doodlebops" or "The Wiggles". None of that crap in my house, but let's listen to tunes about weed-smoking little brothers and twentysomething soulful alcoholics 20 times a day! And sing along! Loudly! Perhaps in public, at the coffeehouse, where today she kept telling me, "I want to hear the song where the boy goes 'nooooooooooo nooooooooooooooo noooooooooooooo!'"

"Oh, you mean the song about being a drunk, Sweetie?"

"Yeah, Mommy! That's the one."

But I'm taking her to yoga! Free yoga! Healthy, economically sound, centering yoga! Which she'll do while I sit on a couch and drink coffee.

Posted by Robin at 09:11 PM | Comments (9)

April 01, 2007

Savior Dad

Parenting a 20-month-old is hard. They are, without question, the most difficult creatures ever created. But damn, they're cute.

When Clara Jane Jane was around 20 months old, she:

My friend Beqi has a son, E., who's almost 20 months old. I adore this child, but he gives me flashbacks to those days. He's more physically wild, whereas Clara Jane's wildness manifested in the use of profanities and dancing in public to artists who embarrass me.

E.'s learning, as all 20-months-old are. And Beqi's one of the most attentive parents I've ever encountered. In fact, the day we met, I was thinking, "Wow. She's got her hands full, but she's on it." Because she is. E. pushes another kid or throws a toy, Beqi's right there, usually before the push or throw has been completed. Sometimes, I think she can read his mind and knows what he's going to do before he does it. That's how on-the-ball she is.

Few things irritate me more than parents who let their kids run wild. Because left to their own devices, kids will run wild. But if a parent is obviously trying, it makes all the difference in the world.

This morning B., Clara Jane and I met Beqi and E. at the coffeehouse, and all was right in the world, as is usually the case when we're at the coffeehouse.

Or so we thought.

There was a little girl, seven or eight years old, who Beqi and I have seen there before. She recognized the father, but I didn't. Most of the times I've seen them, he's dumped the girl in the play area and retreated to the front of the coffeehouse.

I've never talked to him, but Beqi has. The girl was adopted, and the one time she talked to him, he described himself as being her "savior" because he and his wife rescued her from the abject poverty of her native country.

Okay.

I have no problem with foreign adoptions. None at all. In fact, had I not been able to get pregnant, B. and I were considering that option for ourselves. What I do have a problem with is anyone self-describing himself as being someone elses savior/rescuer/knight in shining armour.

An old friend of mine suffered from severe bipolar disorder. She met her husband in a bar when she was 19 and going through one of her first manic episodes. Years later he gave her a charm for her charm bracelet - a knight's helmet because, as he told her, "I'm your knight in shining armour." She was pleased with the gift, but it gave me the cold chills unlike anything else.

No one gets to describe himself in that manner. No one. It's scary when it's in a romantic relationship. In a parent/child relationship? Strikes me as being sick.

So today. The coffeehouse guy dumped his daughter in the play area and sat nearby, not acknowledging her for the hour+ that she was playing.

This girl is one of the most timid, shy children I've ever seen. She played with Clara Jane a bit, but mostly kept to herself before encountering E., who did what 20-month-olds are prone to do: he greeted her with a shove. Beqi responded by jumping up, telling E. that's he's not allowed to shove, apologizing to the girl, and removing E. from the scene before he could do it again.

But it was too late. The father was in his daughter's face, yelling at her and thumping her on the head with his finger for ... wait for it ... not standing up for herself.

B., Beqi and I sat there, completely astounded at this display. He was so loud and angry that people on the opposite side of the coffeehouse stopped to see what was happening.

Now, let's break this down a bit:

1. Timid older child encounters toddler who's still learning the finer points of social interaction.

2. Toddler's mother intervenes immediately.

3. Savior Dad commences yelling and thumping hissy fit directed at his child because she didn't stand up for herself.

Hmmmm ... perhaps, just maybe, this child doesn't stand up for herself because, oh, I don't know, she's being raised by a abusive motherfucker with a god complex! I'm not a child psychologist, so I don't know. Just a hunch.

Oh, but that wasn't the end of it. After E. settled down, Beqi put him back down, and he approached the little girl, who had remained silent and expressionless through it all. When E. approached, Savior Dad leaned over the counter, wagging a finger in E.'s face, and yelling his disciplinary shit at the toddler.

How Beqi kept from beating the ever-living fuck out of this guy, I'm not sure. She informed him that she was taking care of the situation. To which Savior Dad responded by shrieking something about getting the hell out of there (gee, break our hearts, whydontcha), grabbing his daughter, grabbing his Mountain Dew, and storming out.

Proof positive that the caffiene in soda is much more mood-altering than that in coffee, which makes people happy and non-confrontational.

He stole the coffeehouse's soda glass, which pisses me off, too.

But oh, it gets better! Once he stormed outside he bitched to the guy who maintains the coffeehouse's yard about us. Later, he called to complain, telling the staff that if "those parents" are ever there again, he won't be giving the coffeehouse his patronage.

Now that takes some balls. He commits what amounts to verbal and physical abuse upon his own child, screams at someone else's toddler, storms out, but won't render the complaint in person, to the people who witnessed his outburst.

The coffeehouse staff asked us if we'd mind moving in so that he'll never, ever come back ever again. Turns out, he's not well-liked by the staff, to the point where they bicker over who's going to get stuck waiting on him.

For the rest of the day, Beqi, B., the staff, and I cracked multiple jokes about calling in complaints about each other. I think it was one of those situations where if we hadn't joked, we all would have been crying on behalf of that poor child. If he's treating his child like that in public, what the hell's going on at home?

So many things about this gall me, and I've been stewing in anger all day.

I think of my single 40-year-old friend who will be such a wonderful mom. I've seen how she's grappled with arranging her career, location, finances, and life to make her chances of being able to adopt higher. This woman, who has treated my child with so much love, who's willing to adopt a foreign child, or a child with disabilities, not because she wants to be anyone's savior, but because that's how loving and generous she is. And yet, because she's a single woman, it's going to be more difficult for her to adopt.

I think about another dear friend of mine who wants a baby, and who will make a wonderful father. Despite being with his partner for almost as long as I've been with mine, adopting's going to be extremely difficult for them because they're both men.

And yet here's this abusive, manipulative, screaming jackass, who was allowed to bring a child into this country and into his family by virtue of little more than being in what's viewed as a "normal" relationship. I'm sickened, and I wish that little girl had either of my friends in her life, giving her the love and respect she deserves.

Beqi made a good point - we can't save every child. If we could adopt every child who's been mistreated we would, but we can't. The best we can do is take care of our own.

Which makes me look at my relationship with my child. She's been tough this week, as you know if you've been reading for the past few days. Yesterday and this morning I told B., "I don't know why but she's stomping on my last nerve." That's a hard thing to admit about your own child, and it's even harder to deal with. Every day, I'm stunned by the amount of patience parenting requires, patience I never knew I had.

I'm not the perfect mom by any means. There have been times when I've overreacted, spoken too sharply, or taken my frustrations out in a less-than-adult manner in front of my daughter. But I've never done what I witnessed today, and I'm confident that I never will. Yeah, there's some self-righteous parenting smugness, but at what price? The price of the child who has a shitty parent?

I can't imagine how the rest of the day was for that girl. I hope that once he calmed down, maybe her dad realized that he'd overreacted. Maybe he apologized and they went to the nearby park to blow off the steam, have a little fun, and get their day back on track. I don't think that's the case, though.

There was so much anger in him, so much he directed it everywhere. I couldn't tell if he was angry at his daughter, Beqi, E., the coffeehouse staff, B., me. I think he was just angry, period, and he was willing to direct that anger at whoever wandered into his scope.

I wish I'd done things differently, instead of my stellar reaction to the situation: sitting on the couch, hands jammed under my ass, jaw hanging open, looking back and forth from B. to Beqi with my eyes bugged, while making sure my daughter didn't wander into the line of fire. When I get really angry, I can't speak, and I was at tht point. The most I could have said, had I tried, would have been something like, "You! Dad! Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean! Bad daddy! No!"

B. reminded me later that it was right for us to not intervene too much, because this guy was obviously unhinged, and you just never know when someone who's unhinged will run you through with a Mountain Dew straw. Beqi made the excellent point that, if we made more of a confrontation, his daughter would have been the one to pay for it. And I know they're both right.

However, if I see him again, and he's treating his child the way he treated her today, I'll be dialing 911 so fast it'll make his jacked-up Mountain Dew heart rate look slow.

I've grappled a lot with how aggressive I want to teach Clara Jane to be. I don't want people to walk all over her, but I don't want her to grow up feeling angry and entitled. She's a pretty mellow kid, all told. When pushed, she walks away. If someone takes the toy in her hand, she walks away and finds another toy. I've often wondered if I need to teach her to stand up for herself, or if maybe she's got the right idea. She knows how to roll with the punches. That's who she is. B.'s always said that any kid we have, especially girls, will take a martial arts class or two, just enough to learn how to defend herself with discipline and respect. I'm all for that.

I wonder how peaceful that little girl is going to be when she's grown. I'm going to wonder a lot of things about her for a long time.

Clara Jane's no longer stomping on my last nerve. I have a feeling it's going to be a long, long time before I feel that way. She's learning, and it's my job to guide her as she learns, no matter how frustrating it is. I wasn't put here to save her. She, like every child, didn't ask to be brought into this world. B. and I made the choice to bring her into the world and we owe it to her to teach her the skills to navigate it. Not bully her into it.

Posted by Robin at 04:12 PM | Comments (10)

March 29, 2007

The Pinnacle of Excellent Parenting

I'm down in my back today, and I have no idea how this happened. Perhaps the strenuous act of getting out of bed is what caused every muscle on my right ribcage to wedge between my rib bones. That's about the time the pain started - pain that's resistant to Alieve, but slightly responsive to Alieve and chardonnay. I took Clara Jane to daycare, hobbled around Target for a bit, and laid across the basket of my cart while the check-out clerk glared at me. I told her to get the fuck over it and get a stockperson to find me a truss.

Since Clara Jane was covered for the day, I came home, eased myself back into my pajamas, fired up the heating pad, and spent several hours lying on the couch, watching bad TV, knitting, and smelling the flesh on my back burn.

But soon, 2:30 arrived and I had to worm my way back into real clothes, get behind the wheel, and fetch the child. Then there was the time to fill before her father got home from work, in which I wanted to play with her. Really, I did. But I also did not wish to snap in two like a brittle old woman.

Pre-parenthood, I was one of those parents who swore my kid wouldn't watch TV. Ever. We were going to have a ceremony in which we burned our Tivo with the placenta in the woods. Okay, not really. That's the Alieve and chardonnay talking. But really, I was anti-TV.

That lasted about 11 months. I do limit how much she watches. Despite her demands, I'm not giving in to her desire for "Wonder Pets" 24/7. I already have that playing on loop in my brain; I don't need it playing on loop in my living room.

Here's some video I took last night, before I injured myself, of Clara Jane, watching the very age-appropriate Sesame Street.

Here's a photo I took of her tonight, while I was logging my 21st hour on the couch.

What can make this child so filled with joy?

Whatever could fill my child with such obvious joy and glee? Why, watching over and over and over and over the same 15-second ad for A Night at the Roxbury on TBS 2384 times in a row, thanks to the magic of digital video recording techonology - watching it long enough to master the Will Ferrell/Chris Kattan head-bob. Watching it long enough that I was able to maintain my prone position on the couch for a good 20 minutes longer than I would have, had we not had access to "What is Love".

Good parenting. Sticking to my values. That's what it's all about.

Posted by Robin at 09:15 PM | Comments (9)

March 28, 2007

The Hobos Return

Yes, I know I wrote nearly two weeks ago about taking the train to drop my kid off with my parents, and nary a word has been mentioned about her since. This was the longest she's stayed with them - ten days. Long enough that my dad asked my mom, "Do you think something's going on with them and they're not telling us?" Not possible, as I have to tell eveyrone everything about my life. I'm not sure what he had in mind, but it's fun to speculate:

Of course, none of the above happened. Well, B. did rake a bunch of mud in our backyard, but it was just barely orgistic. Some dog-humping occured at the same time, otherwise, it was very chaste mud work. Fact is, time just got away from us. We didn't make a return plan right off the bat, and the next thing we knew, it had been a week. Didn't help that I planned Saturday's much-needed alcohol and estrogen-fueled shindig. Plus, we got so much work done while she was gone. Like sleeping.

Seriously, B. finished several major house projects. I did a ton of packing, mostly involving Clara Jane's stuff, which I can't very well pack while she's home without psychologically scarring her for life. But we did miss her terribly. I wanted to jump a train on Sunday to fetch her, but it wasn't economically smart, so I went on Monday afternoon.

Now, B. and I are smart people. Most of the time. One of the things that's prevented me from making these trips to my hometown via the train is our single-car situation. Either B. would have to take off work to drop us at the train station in Kirkwood, or he'd have to spend hours transferring buses from his downtown office to the suburban station to pick up our truck after I leave.

Gee, here's a thought: what if B. buys a ticket from the downtown Amtrak station, located blocks from his office, rides to the Kirkwood station, where he will exit the train as I board? Just enough time for us to kiss goodbye in passing. Grand total for this jaunt? $3.30, and it adds 100 points to my Amtrak frequent hobo card.

It only took us three years to devise this plan. Brilliant!

(Yes, I could depart from the downtown station, but it's a pain in the ass to get to. And it's not pretty like the Kirkwood Depot, nor is it Kaldi's-adjacent like the Kirkwood depot. In other words, I'm the most yupped-up punk rock hobo in history.)

Monday afternoon, coffee and book in hand, I waited at the pretty depot for the train bearing my husband. He jumped off the train, walked me to the car that didn't contain the Girl Scout troop all hepped up from their visit to "Princesses on Ice", gave me a smooch, and sent me on my way for four hours of solo iPod/knitting time.

Not the case. The train, thanks to the Girl Scouts, was damn near full. "Make a friend!" the conductors say when the seats are rapidly filling. I like making friends! I decided an older woman would be my new friend, primarily because I happened to be by her seat when I realized everything else was full.

She, however, didn't wish to be friends. She avoided eye contact with me and scooched as close to the window as possible. When the time came for her to eat the cold Church's chicken legs she'd hauled onto the train, she turned with her back to me, like I might snatch a drumstick out of her maw.

She was not Train People, so I didn't feel the need to be Train People with her, either. I pulled out the iPod, cranked up the new Arcade Fire as loud as I could stand it (which means the chicken lady most certainly could hear it) while working on a new sock.

It's probably this attitude that led me to making a mistake in the sock that required me to unravel the entire three hours of knitting I did on the train. It's also probably responsible for the constant buzzing in my right ear.

Was Clara Jane glad to see me? Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. So glad, I can't even begin to describe it, other than the say that the talking didn't stop for next next 14 hours. She didn't want to go to sleep, and she let me cover her entire face with lipstick prints. The feeling was mutual

Tuesday morning, my dad took us to the fancy train station in my hometown:

Clara Jane & My Dad

And we set out across this great state. Again:

Watching Missouri fly by.

Clara Jane fought sleep the night before and woke up with huge dark circles under her eyes. I hadn't brought earplugs with me because the two reasons I wear earplugs at night - my snoring husband and my snoring basset hound - weren't with me. I hadn't planned on sleeping with the windows open. My parents live near the train tracks. Do you know how many trains pass through their town in the wee hours? Four. At least, that's how many I heard. Either that, or they were nightmare trains, warning of the day to come. When we boarded the train at 9:30 AM, we were both ready for a nap, but none were to be taken.

I was a bit concerned during the entire trip about the rather unkempt man in the seat catty-corner behind us who stared at me for roughly 2/3 of the trip. The other 1/3 was spent emitting a slurpy, wet hack while singing The TB Blues under his ragged breath.

Clara Jane was a bit obsessed with the large woman - and when I say "large woman" I always mean larger than me. This means any woman I describe as "large" is going to be in the "I can't believe I don't fit into Lane Bryant clothes anymore" to "Holy cow! The Discovery Health Channel just gave me my very own show!" category. Keep in mind I don't intend this in a derrogatory manner because there but for the grace of God waddles my fat ass.

Anyway, the large woman in the seat in front of us wore head-to-toe blue-backed leopard skin. Drapey blue blouse, covered in leopard spot with a matching skirt. Leopard-print purse. Leopard-print luggage. Leopard-print cell phone that played "Secret Lovers", just like that one cell phone commercial, at least eight times in the two hours we shared the train with her. Even her hair - jet-black mixed with streaks of orange - resembled a leopard.

The first time Clara Jane and I walked past this woman during one of our many trips to the snack car, Clara Jane looked at her and said, "Mom, this woman looks just like a leopard!"

Luckily, Leopard Lady took this as high praise. Leopard Lady was sweet to Clara Jane and let her feel the silky sleeve of her leopard-print shirt. She's good Train People, even if she did make me feel a little like we were on the Big Cat car of an old-fashioned circus train with Atlantic Starr.

Instead of going to the pretty Kirkwood station, we opted to go all the way to the downtown station, where B. would meet us with the truck. We'd drop him at work and take ourselves home. Or so we thought. That was before it took us an hour to get from Kirkwood to downtown St. Louis (Miles traveled in this time: 15. Obviously, we weren't on the bullet train. We weren't even on the musket train.) I was fighting sleep, and Clara Jane was fighting me. Hard. Why? Because I wouldn't let her accost the back of Leopard Lady's seat with her feet. "Leopard Lady's been so nice to you. You shouldn't kick her. Besides, leopards are predators and I'll bet you're tasty."

By the time we arrived at the downtown station, I handed my four bags over the chain-link fence to B. Then I handed him his daughter over the fence. Then I went back on the train and told them to take me to Chicago, pronto.

Well, I did everything but that last part. B. took the afternoon off work and I fell asleep roughly thirteen minutes after walking in the house, which included the time it took to empty 24 ounces of Amtrak coffee from my bladder. I've heard rumors that Clara Jane fell asleep shortly after me, and we were both out for three hours.

I had nightmares about tubercular leopards.

Posted by Robin at 08:51 AM | Comments (8)

March 07, 2007

The Day I Decide to Let Tom Waits Dictate My Parenting Style

We're nearly three weeks into age three, and it's still the most bizarre experience. I swear, most of the time when I look at my daughter these days I think, "Who are you and what did you do with Clara Jane? Did you eat her?"

I have such a headache I can't even begin to articulate ... nothing. It's not like anything huge or massive is going on. Well, other than overnight my baby turned into a teenager.

Did I mention that my head hurts?

I did have some practice in dealing with people who act in the manner in which my child has been acting. I didn't realize it at the time, though. For many years one of my best friends was severely, often untreated, bipolar disorder. Who knew that would prepare me for parenthood? It's a lot alike, what with one minute heaping me with praise and love, and the next minute punching me in the gut.

Here's a brief overview of today. Not that it's been much different from any typical day around here since The Three-Year-Old devoured my sweet child.

Morning: Hey! Let's go to storytime at the library! Great! Everyone adores this idea. But wait ... let's pee on the potty twice before we go. Awesome! Then let's run around naked for two hours!

Well, she ran around naked. I, for once, was fully clothed - in real, presentable, going-out-in-public clothes, no less - and ready to go to storytime. She hauls out 3/4 of her entire toy collection and piles them on the table.

"Clara Jane, do you want to get dressed and go to storytime, or do you want to stay home and play with your toys?"

"I want to stay home with my toys."

Fine.

Thing is, I didn't want to stay home. I wanted to have a little smidge of time in public, where grown-ups might be. Preferrably grown-ups who can look at their children, shake their heads and say, "Holy shit, I'm tired. I love my kids but ... holy shit, I'm tired."

Afternoon: I talked her into going to the coffeehouse. There's something wrong with that; I'm the parent in this situation. I shouldn't have to talk anyone into anything. What I say, goes, right?

Of course not!

Now, I must cover another issue that has me so confused because I can't keep up with the constantly-changing rules. I never know the rules regarding singing. Sometimes, like at naptime, I am required to sing. Other times, like when we're driving to the coffeehouse and "Ol' 55" by Tom Waits comes on, and I do as I'm required by natural law and wail it at the top of my lungs, I'm told in no uncertain terms to shut the hell up!

Not that my child said, "Shut the hell up, Ma!", but I could tell by her tone when she requested repeatedly that I cease and dissist that she was thinking it.

Granted, I've set a bad example, I'm sure. When she sings all the lullabyes in her lullabye book, I'm all kinds of happy. You try listening to that little voice singing "Brahms' Lullabye" from the backseat and restrain yourself from wild, weepy praise.

On the other hand, singing "The phone ... the phone is ringing! The phone ... we'll be right there!" from The Wonder motherfucking Pets for 13 straight hours a day? No so much wild, weepy praise. Wild, wailing cries for mercy, yes. I can see why the child is confused regarding the singing rules.

Anyway, the coffeehouse. Two blocks from the coffeehouse, she says, "I don't want to go to the coffeehouse. I want to go to storytime." I explain that no, she made her choice when she opted for Naked Toy Crazymaking Time at home.

Apparently it's a bit soon for lessons this complex, judging from the whining, shrieking hysteria that ensued...

...which promptly ended the second we walked into the coffeehouse and ordered a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Which brings me to yet another point. Are you confused yet? Well, you should try it from my perspective because my God, this is how I live every day of my life these days! The food issues. This kid used to be the best eater. At 18 months, the entire kitchen staff at a local Vietnamese buffet came to the dining room to get a gander of the bald-headed American pho-eating baby.

Her current diet:

Where was I? The coffeehouse, also known as Clara Jane's Pooping Place. She's doing really well with going to the potty when she has to pee. At least, she is this week. Next week is anyone's guess. As for pooping, she will only poop in two locations: at home, and at the coffeehouse. At least she's predictable.

Did I mention that I couldn't get her to leave the coffeehouse today? You know, the coffeehouse she adamently didn't want to visit? Yeah. We had the same battle regarding leaving as the one involving our arrival. Once again, I'm wondering who's the parent. Certainly it's not me because if I was the parent, there would be rules and they would be followed. Someone's dropped the ball big-time with this kid.

What's that? Oh, right. It's my c-section scar, burning like sweet death. It does that when I try to pretend that I am in no way involved with the pooping, whining, shreiking child who just gave your child the stink eye.

Was there a nap this afternoon? What the hell do you think?

Did she consume any dinner? It was chicken pot pie. Do you see that on her list of consumables? Of course not. If it was peanut butter nut yogurt French fry pie, the story would be different.

After the dinner battle, B. went to the bathroom to run bathwater. We were anxious to see if Clara Jane would melt when she came into contact with it. She slipped off to her room while I sat at my desk, resting my head against the screen of my monitor because frankly, it was the closest place to rest my head.

That's when the oh-my-God-I'm-injured-and-dying screams started from her room.

We met halfway in the living room, Clara Jane wailing and clutching at her eyes. Eyes ... how could she have injured her eyes?

Oh my God I left my blood sugar testing supplies in her toybox and she's gouged lancetes into both her eyes!!!

Wait ... I've never taken my blood sugar testing supplies to her room. At sometime during my freakout, she informed me that she'd bumped her mouth and that I'm a complete dumbass.

This tiny bump at the center of her upper lip, which produced about as much blood as I use in those blood sugar tests, required the entire family - dogs and cat included - to gather in the master bedroom while Clara Jane wailed, moaned, groaned, writhed, sobbed, gagged, choked, and screamed at me for attempting to comfort her.

"I'm ... so ... sad! Nothing ... makes ... me ... happy!" she would scream as she flung herself onto the mattress. Again and again.

After half an hour of this, I just stopped trying. I rolled onto my stomach, buried my face in my pillow, and just laid there. It was 7:30 PM, and I had reached my limit.

Minutes later, B. began listing all the things that make Clara Jane happy. Turns out, the mere mention of praying mantises is all it takes to bring her back from the brink.

She opted not to take a bath. Again, not sure who's making and enforcing the rules, but it sounded like a good idea to go with what she dictated.

A snack was made - peanut butter and jelly on whole-wheat bread, cut with a flower-shaped cookie cutter per her request - and my presence on the couch was required for a pre-bedtime viewing of Jack's Big Music Show. Not good for my headache, which had reached the point where I was trying to recall the symptoms of brain aneurysms, but the snuggle time was good for my battered spirit.

As soon as the show ended she looked at me with her peanut butter-smeared face and said, "I'm ready for my bath now."

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

B. put her to bed. He's also been the one to go to her during the three times she's screamed for him in the past hour. I'm pretty sure there will be at least one more wake-up, sometime around 2:18 AM when my brain finally snaps and I find myself under her changing table, reenacting one of my other favorite Tom Waits songs.

Posted by Robin at 08:08 PM | Comments (12)

December 19, 2006

Good Mother Points

Here's something I bet you didn't know about me: I get horrifically, violently motion sick. I may not throw up every single time, but I can promise you that unless I'm in the driver's seat, I'm not feeling so hot.

When I was younger, the motion sickness was limited to vehicle rides. I could do just about any ride at any amusement park without incident, as long as it was fast. But as I've aged, it's gotten worse. Seriously. I can't even spin in my desk chair without getting a little taste of my last meal.

Not that this surprises me. The motion sickness is hereditary, and my dad's even worse than me. My mom didn't learn of this affliction until she was eight months pregnant with me, wedged into a Volkswagen Beetle with her parents and my dad, driving down a hilly, curvy Ozark road when he bellowed, "Let me out!" and proceeded to puke up the equivilent of a Volkswagen Beetle on the side of the road.

There's a restaurant off the backroads in the Ozark foothills that we sometimes frequent when we visit my parents. Do you know how we know we're getting close to it? My dad has to pull over and vomit on the side of the road within a mile of arriving. When Dad pukes, we know Mennonite fried chicken's just around the bend!

I guess I should be grateful that, although I inherited the motion sickness, I didn't inherit my father's ability to vomit so loudly that it registers on the Richter Scale. So loud is his vomiting that once, when I was a teenager, the noise woke me up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night from the opposite side of the house. It's such an all-encompassing, rumbling, cross between a downshifting 18-wheeler and a hippopotamus either in the throes of death or passion (or maybe both) noise that once, my mom and I huddled in my room and laughed at my dad's puke noises, just because they're so completely absurd.

But this isn't about me being a bad daughter. It's about me being a good mother.

Nothing makes me sicker faster than merry-go-rounds. Having missed the motion sick gene, Clara Jane loves them more than chocolate-covered candy canes dipped in crushed potato chips. So, merry-go-round rides are B.'s domain. I can't even watch them ride without getting sick.

Today, because I am an idiot, I took Clara Jane to the mall. Not to shop, mind you. I wanted to take her to that park, but it's a bit too cold, so I opted to take her to an indoor play area at the same mall where her father takes her to ride the pukey-go-round. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the wing we entered ended right at ... that's right ... the merry-go-round.

And she was so excited and happy. So thrilled, and she'd been so good. I couldn't say no.

Did I mentioned that as we entered the mall, I chugged about 1/4 of my large eggnog latte?

B. always lets her have three rides, so I slid my $5 bill - a brand new one, so I couldn't even use the incorrect change excuse, not that she'd understand it - into the token machine, took a moment to recall what my therapist advised for motion sick situations, checked my gag reflexed and got on.

Clara Jane picked her horse, and I braced one arm around her, resting my other arm with my purse dangling from my elbow on a neighboring 10-point buck. I centered my feet, fixed my eyes on the top of Clara Jane's head after I spotted all the nearby trash cans, and took slow, deep, slow breaths as the horrible ride began.

I expected the turning, of course. What I didn't expect was the left half of my body moving up with Clara Jane, while the right half of my body jerked down, my purse hung on the buck's footrest.

And there I stood for three full rides. Round and round. One side up. Other side down. Eggnog latte at the top of my throat, ready for takeoff.

I can't even say more about it. Just recalling the wretched experience makes my stomach turn.

One of these days, when Clara Jane hates me, thinks I'm embarrassing, and takes great delight in laughing at the noises I make when I vomit, I'm going to remind her of this day.

Posted by Robin at 10:55 PM | Comments (6)

December 11, 2006

Goody Bag From Hell

I'm feeling much better today, even though by all means, I shouldn't.

I barely slept last night. When my brain misfires, it likes to stay up all night, sometimes in spite of the artificial chemicals I pump into my body to convince it otherwise. The good part of all this: I was showered, dressed, and out the door around 8:15 AM, which is unheard of for me. I grabbed a nutritionally sensible bagel and a huge cup of coffee for breakfast and started knocking errands off my massive list. Then I spent the afternoon working on Christmas gifts. So engrossed in my work that I forgot to eat lunch, get anything to drink, or pee.

Through all of it, I was still anxious and edgy. I didn't want to be home by myself, so I stayed busy until time for B. to come home. The edginess continued for the first hour we were home, but then 6:00 hit and ... normal. Just like that. For an hour and 45 minutes, I've felt fine. I've tried to conjure up the panic by trying to recreate the thoughts that set off the attacks, but it's not happening.

I did a little math today. Remember a few months back, when my doc diagnosed me with premenstrual dysphoric disorder? Made perfect sense, and I'm surprised it took us so damn long to realize - duh - my anxiety and depression tend to appear shortly before my period. So she put me on one of the birth control pills that stop periods. Lo and behold, this current spell, along with last month's spell occured during the week I would be having my period, were it not for the magic period-stopping pills.

Pass me a fork. I'm going to remove my uterus myself.

Anyway, that's not what I want to write about today. I just felt the need to give you good folks an update after all your empathizing and such, which I appreciated.

I was thinking about this before I read any blogs today, so I had a chuckle when Tracey at Maternally Challenged wrote about the mommy wars. Specifically, the unspoken competition to be The Best Mom in the Class, a title that's won, it seems, via cupcakes. The Washington Post even had something to say about this very topic today.

My woes aren't about cupcakes. Cupcakes, I can handle.

Clara Jane's daycare holiday party is Thursday, and because I'm an idiot loaded up on mind-altering drugs, I signed up to bring "non-food treats". Why did I sign up for non-food treats? I have no fucking clue, considering that the "food treats" column was right there!!! next to the "non-food treats" column. For God's sake, I was a food writer! A culinary teacher! A caterer! I know food treats. I guess I felt the need for a challenge. I don't have nearly enough things in my life to make me feel inadequate, after all.

I hate to say this, but I was appalled at the non-food treats in Clara Jane's gift bag last Christmas. Cheap, dollar-store crap, none of it age-appropriate. Let's have a choking hazard Christmas! Now, I don't want to be that mom, the one who complains about the damn goody bags. But seriously. These goodies were a notch above a bag of glass. I swore, when I signed that sheet, promising to bring non-food treats, that I would take it a step up, go beyond the cracked plastic ornament from Dollar Tree.

This quest was top of the list this early morning. I had in mind what I wanted: quaint little gifts bags loaded with stickers, holiday pencils, perhaps little books, something crafty, and maybe a tasteful ornament for eight children, preferrably under $15.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find holiday stickers, pencils, little books, crafty crap, and ornaments? We're talking grail proportions, People.

I wandered around the large, boxy mega-store, wishing I was having dead toenails removed instead of wandering around a large, boxy mega-store two weeks before Christmas, and I found diddly shit for the little munchkins. Add the anxiety and sleep-deprivation to the mix, and I found myself constantly asking myself, "Would I kill a parent who gave Clara Jane a _____________ in a goody bag?" Because I knew that if I didn't ask myself, the kiddos were likely to wind up with goody bags filled with thus:

Three stores later, here's what we have:

Good, no? Until I called B. and he informed me that there are 12 kids in her class, not 8.

I might as well give the children shattered glass bulb ornaments. Well, I might as well give shattered glass bulb ornaments to eight kids in her class at let the other four feel like little forgotten - albeit unbloodied - losers.

The whole time I was on my two-hour, three-store nutfest, I kept asking myself, why? What's the point of this? There's no rule that I have to sign every single sign-up sheet presented to me. There are plenty of other moms in the class and the kids always have way more than enough. Last year, I signed up for fruit. Bought a small crate of Clementines and called it good. The kids were happy. I was happy. Everyone was happy.

There's a set of twins in Clara Jane's class. They were born to much older parents; it took me about a year to realize that the man I thought was their grandfather is actually their father. I overhear their mother all the time, talking about the umpteen activities the family's in. And yet, for the Halloween party, she presented overflowing, Martha Stewarty gift bags that didn't contain metal hooks or live fish. Totally over-the-top, and I hate to admit the momentary pang of inadequacy I felt for taking nothing more than the big bag of candy I'd signed up to bring.

Is that why I partook in the two-hour, three-store nutfest? To make myself feel better because the twins' mother raised some imaginary bar and I fell short? To make myself feel better for judging the twins' mother for the pains she took to assemble those astounding goody bags?

They're goody bags for two-year-olds, for crap's sake!

My goody bag days are done. From now on it's a box of Clementines, maybe some cherry muffins on her birthday like last year, if she wants them. I'd rather use my energy to do something directly with my daughter from now on.

Posted by Robin at 07:38 PM | Comments (8)

December 03, 2006

What Every Mother Wants to Hear

Upon awakening Saturday morning Clara Jane said, "I had a dream last night. I dreamt I was playing guitar."

Just as long as it wasn't for some crappy emo band, more power to you, Kiddo.

Posted by Robin at 05:15 PM | Comments (7)

November 30, 2006

Day Thirty - Last Day! Real Content!

Ice has been falling from the sky since 8:30 this morning, minus taking off the noon hour for lunch. This is what my front porch step looks like:

Ice. On the step. Tread with caution.
So sparkly. So terrifying.

Awhile back, my Yooper mother-in-law made wise about us "southerners" closing schools when we have an inch of snow, while they function just fine with 3,847 feet of white stuff on the ground. To which my mother replied, "Ever try to drive on a two-inch sheet of ice?" or something to that effect.

We're not having a snow day today; we're having an ice day. I'd decided to keep Clara Jane home from daycare about ten minutes before her teacher called to tell me they were going to close due to weather.

Oh, how I love snow/ice day! I throw the rules out the window on snow/ice day. We can watch too much TV, eat junk food, play a little loose and free with naptime. What does it matter? We're not going anywhere!

The day started with Clara Jane asking to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas during breakfast. We piled onto the couch, she with her apple, cheddar cheese, and sippy of milk; I with my steel-cut oatmeal and coffee, for that is the snow/ice day way.

About a year ago, on a similar snow day, I made a post about making cookies and watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with Clara Jane. Today was no different, but completely different. I had a job for us.

I've been in a bit of a quandry about our Christmas tree this year. Clara Jane loves Christmas trees with a depth that borders on idolotry. I'm cool with that. The problem is, our tree (which we haven't set up yet; I refuse to buy a tree prior to December) is always decorated in tastefully matched silver and purple glass bulbs that we got for a wedding gift. Very breakable glass bulbs. On one hand, I don't want to deny my little tree-hugger. On the other, I don't want to spend the next month with shards of glass wedged in my feet.

Solution: let's make salt dough ornaments! Better yet, let's paint the salt dough ornaments purple and silver so I'm not completely sacrificing my pretty, pretty ornaments! And even more better, making salt dough ornaments will give us something to do when we hit Hour Three of snow/ice day and I start freaking out because we're snow/icebound.

Oh, what a difference a year makes.

December, 7, 2005:
Cookie cutter bracelets
Clara Jane wears her cookie cutters as creative fashion accessories, and covers two rooms of my house with green decorator's sugar.

November 30, 2006:
Making sugar dough ornaments
Clara Jane personally cuts three baking sheet's worth of salt dough ornaments all by herself, even lifting them off the table with a spatula and placing the on the baking sheets without dropping or breaking. Unlike her professionally-trained cook mother, whose salt dough cut-outs look like the snowmen who live near the toxic waste dump.

Last year: Clara Jane kept talking to the children on the TV as if they were really there.

This year: While making ornaments and listening to the show's soundtrack, Clara Jane recites bits of dialogue she remembers from her breakfast viewing of the show, reenacting the entire Schoder and Lucy piano scene.

Last year: I'm sure there was probably a temper tantrum when all the green sugar disappeared from her grip.

This year: Clara Jane has the emotional maturity to say, "This song makes me feel happy," when "Christmastime is Here" comes on.

Last year: Clara Jane squwaked a bit about being stuck at home.

This year: "Mommy, can we make a snowman?" No, honey. I'm afraid the only thing we can make out of this stuff is a Vanilla Iceman.

Last year: Clara Jane shoved half a tube of pre-made cookie dough down her gullet.

This year: "Mommy, we don't eat Play-Doh." That's what she said when I stupidly kissed the wad of salt dough she held in her hand.

And she's right. Don't eat the dough. It'll dry out your innards. Some things are learned the hard way.

Posted by Robin at 03:37 PM | Comments (11)

November 15, 2006

Day Fifteen - Schlemiel-Schlamazel

It's a crap day around here. From the hours of 3 AM until 7:15ish AM, my eyes remained open. The wee bit of sleep I eeked out afterwards barely counts for anything. I've got a massive knot in the middle of my back from three nights of trying to sleep on the couch, since conditions in my bed have been less than optimal for sleeping of late. To top it off, once again it rained all day. Normally I love chilly, rainy fall days, but we've had several in a row. Quite frankly, it's making my dogs stir-crazy, which in turn is making me a little nuts. Trust me, there are few things as pitisome as a Basset hound with cabin fever. But we've got one. At one point, she was so bored that she crammed her head under the couch cushions to do a little crumb-surfing. She and Murphy both sat at rapt attention, listening intently while I read Biscuit books to Clara Jane. When dogs take an interest in literature, you know they're mere inches away from the dreaded Death by Boredom.

I totally phoned it in today. Clara Jane and I stayed in our jammies. We ordered pizza for lunch and ate in on the couch while watching "Sesame Street". Since her sleep patterns are a bit wonky right now, too, there was no napping. We read and played, watched way too much TV, and snuggled. No new things were learned. No new experiences were had. We ate bad food and watched bad TV, but we'll get to that in a bit.

I don't know if this happens to everyone, but if I see parts of day which I normally sleep through, it really screws with my perception of time through the rest of the day. Luckily, most of the time, it makes the day fly by. That's what happened today. If feels like it should be about 3:00 and it's nearly 6:00, which means sweet, sweet sleep in the spare bedroom is just around the corner.

We watched a lot of "Laverne & Shirley" today. I know I've mentioned my lifelong adoration of Laverne & Shirley. It was my favorite show when I was a kid, and in the past few months I've rediscovered it via digital cable upper-tier reruns. You know, on the cable channels no one ever watches. As far as I can tell, this particular channel, a spin-off of Lifetime, shows nothing but reruns of decade-old made-for-Lifetime shows and Laverne & Shirley. Every afternoon from 2-4 (which is Clara Jane's naptime), it's time to go to Milwaukee and hang out with those girls.

I'm always amazed that when I'm having a bad day, this channel has a knack for showing episodes I absolutely adored back in the day that still crack me up. Maybe that's because I adored just about every episode. Today was no exception. There was a talent show episode, and let me tell you, if I was allowed only one sub-sub-sub-sub-sub genre of TV for the rest of my life, I would chose the Laverne & Shirley talent show episode sub-sub-sub-sub-sub genre, as that's just about the best TV ever made. There was also the hilarious episode where Laverne breaks a tooth and Shirley's dental student cousin offers to fix it for free. There's a scene where the girls are in the exam room, stoned on laughing gas, that I find just as funny now as I did when I was ten. "Reach for the sky!" "You wouldn't dare!"

Which means I really haven't matured much over the past 24 years.

As an adult, one who happened to be bored and exhausted while entertaining these thoughts, I've noticed that a lot of decisions in my adult life led to Laverne & Shirleyesque situations and scenarios. To whit:

In this time-wonky "Laverne & Shirley"-filled afternoon, I caught myself thinking back to being ten years old, and how that seems to be the year that formed my personality. The things I liked when I was ten are pretty much the things I love now: "Laverne & Shirley" reruns in the afternoon, books (I read the better part of an encyclopedia set that year), writing (thanks to an encouraging third-grade teacher), music (I got my first radio that year), cooking (I learned about clipping and organizing recipes that summer. It was a decade before I set foot in a kitchen, but it was ingrained.). It was all there when I was 10.

I was obsessed with baseball when I was ten, something that's fallen by the wayside. And yet, when our power and cable were knocked out the night of the final game of the World Series, you know what I did as soon as the lights were back on? I sprinted to the nearest radio to see if the Cardinals were winning. And when they did, you better believe I cried like a little kid. The baseball thing might not be front and center anymore, but damn if it's not still lurking.

Immature sense of humor aside, maybe this is the sign of adulthood: getting past the trial and error of youth and realizing that what you liked when you were a kid, before your brain was bombarded with choices and options, is the core of who you really are.

If that's the case, pass the milk & Pepsi and smack an oversized L on my left boob.

Posted by Robin at 05:49 PM | Comments (3)

September 13, 2006

How to Act Right in Public

In the past week I've seen lots of things that have put issues of the public behavior of children on my mind. I guess that's expected, as I have a child who's often in public.

I guess it started about a week ago. Someone on a message board I frequent asked if parents are too lenient these days with their kids. Of course, the resounding response was, "Hell yeah, they are!" Examples of kids running wild on airplanes, doing backflips in restaurants*, starting knife fights in church** were given.

(*This is a slight exaggeration.)
(**This is an outright fabrication on my part.)

Now, being mom to a two and a half-year-old, I took a bit of exception. Sure, there are a lot of parents who let their kids run wild. My biggest peeve is when I take Clara Jane to kid-geared places, like the Museum of Transporation and we encounter playgroups where the moms are standing around, gabbing, while their children have combined their powers of evil to steal a one-hundred-year-old locomotive.

These moms always have sweaters tied around their waists, even when it's 90 degrees outside. I think they're tied so tight that it prevents the blood from their asses from reaching their brains. But those examples aside, I think there are a lot of times when a parent might be trying and struggling with a difficult child, only to face the tsk-tsks of others. Far too many people seem to think that a loud, crying, screaming, excited, running child equals a lazy, lenient parent. Not true. I think more often than not, it's a parent who's at her wit's end, exhausted, frustrated, and at a loss because God forbid she discipline in public, because then she's a child abuser.

Parents just can't get a break sometimes.

That being said, a few days after that post, I caught myself being that mom. You know, the one who disciplines other peoples' kids in public.

We were making our usual Saturday outing to the Tower Grove Farmer's Market. I'd finished my shopping, and we were in the playground, having fun. Now, this is one of those cool parks that not only has two seperate play structures - one for kids under five, the other for bigger kids - but even has them in seperate playgrounds. The big hooligans should never come into contact with the sweet babes.

As it was getting late in the morning, my little family had the entire toddler area to ourselves. That is, until a pack of wild dingos a group of young people came trampling in. There were six of them. Or 23. It was hard to tell with all the pre-adolescent arms and legs flailing akimbo and the screaming and yelling and oh my God, don't these kids have parents, for God's sake? All 47 of them climbed onto the one-person merry-go-round and began spinning round and round and round and screaming and sweet Jesus can you imagine how much puke this is going to create we need to leave NOW.

Oh, I wanted to tell them to pipe down and go play in the big kid's playground. Even though they weren't bothering us. Even though they were just being kids. Even though they didn't seem to have any parents around, and one girl who couldn't have been more than 13 years old appeared to be in charge of the whole group. So, I bit my tongue.

That is, until the punches started flying. Once these 253 unsupervised brats started physically fighting, I put on my Mom Shoes (they're made by Easy Spirit***) and kicked some ass by annoucning, "Hey! You kids! Stop fighting right now!" even though I feel like I'm a nerdy 11-year-old narking on the big kids when I say shit like that.

(***Good lord, no, I don't own those shoes. I'm not that far-gone. Not yet.)

But apparently, I don't look or sound like a dorky 11-year-old, because those kids stopped dead, shut up, and stopped fighting.

I have the parental power supreme.

And then there's today. If you read regularly, you've probably figured out that Clara Jane and I don't spend a lot of time at home. We like to get out and go. I've had a lot of people inform me that we go more than is typical. We just don't like to be cooped up. When we're cooped up, it's far too easy to sit around in our jammies, doing nothing but watching TV all day. I don't want Clara Jane to grow up like that. So, the two of us go to the library. We go to museums. We take classes. We hang out at coffeehouses. We go out for lunch several times a week, just the two of us. Yes, it's fun. And yes, it's hard. Crazy hard.

I used to be friends with someone for many, many years. From second grade until about three years ago, we were friends. She suffered from severe, often mistreated or undertreated bipolar disorder. It was a horrible experience in a lot of ways. But let me tell you, being in public with someone in the midst of a manic breakdown is good preparation for being in public with an outspoken two and a half-year-old. And bonus - it's much easier to wrestle a two and a half-year-old to the ground.

My frustration currently is that every fun thing with daughter is marred by The Mania.

On Sunday we finally took her on her first proper outing to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. She'd been twice before, but was too tiny to actually eat anything. I'd looked forward to this day for so long.

Clara Jane's first real trip to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard

Doesn't that look awesome? A child, her first proper trip to a landmark, a cup full of frozen custard deliciousness, held on her father's lap. Does life get much better?

No, because in about thirty seconds, that child is going to dart into the heavily-trafficked parking lot, throwing herself to the pavement, completely deaf to the screams of her parents.

Yesterday, I had grand plans of us making apple cupcakes. What really happened? She threw a fit because I had the audacity to use my Kitchenaid mixer. First she climbed my body like a lemur, howling and screaming at the unfairness of it all, then she asked to go play with her toys as if nothing had happened. Not that it matters, since I underbaked the cupcakes. I ate one this afternoon anyway, and it had a mysterious crunchy substance on its top.

And today. I took her to the zoo. We're fortunate in that we live in a city that has one of the best zoos in the country, and it's free. There's not the huge pressure to go once a year and see everything because dammit, we're gonna get our money's worth. If we want to go for an hour or two and see one area, we can. And we do. But we haven't in a long time, not since the days when she was pretty content to stat put in her stroller.

Today's stroller-free freedom allowed her to interact with fake sea lions:

and a real hippo:
Hello, hippo!

It allowed her to wander around and find the bookie to place our bets when the rhino rumble broke out:
Rhino Rumble

For the record, if you happen across a rhino and she's giving you the stink eye like this:
Pissed-off rhino
do yourself a favor and get the hell away from her. Of course, that advice is probably good anytime you happen across a rhino. stink eye or no.

Being stroller-free also provide Clara Jane to walk up to an eldery zoo volunteer and explain that the elephant has "a great big trunk, two big white tusks, and makes a big poop."

It also allowed her the opportunity to go running through the makeshift cave, screaming her head off, where she was able to throw herself onto the concrete ground and throw a first-rate tantrum, all in the presence of tsk-tsking people who were apparently smart enough to leave their toddlers at home. I couldn't tell if they were tsk-tsking because I was a lazy, lenient parent whose child was running around like she needed some lithium, or because I was a child-abusing disciplinarian.

The whole experience, even though it had precious moments like Clara Jane telling me the mother elephant is beautiful, made me break out in what I can only assume is a bad case of rhino pox:
I got the monkey pox.

Posted by Robin at 03:15 PM | Comments (12)

June 13, 2006

Questioning My Sanity

Today's better. At least, a little. I haven't cried today, nor have I screamed. Much.

Unfortunately, after I posted yesterday, things went from bad to worse to oh my lord I'm going to burn this house down and skip the country-levels of intense.

For one thing, do you know what's worse than having to fling a maggotty dead bird over the fence after your kid's stood in it? Why, having one of your super-stupid idiot dogs, the one who is, honestly, too stupid to be alive, puke giant greasy black puddles of maggotty dead bird all over ones house.

Apparently, there was a second bird in my yard, of which I was unaware. But while I was making dinner, Murphy made certain I was aware of said bird, and highly aware of what the bird and its parasitic pals was doing to her digestive tract.

Then Clara Jane fell in the bathtub, bumped her head and liked to have drowned. And Chloe's eating a hole through her thigh. And the phones were ringing, and dinner was getting cold, and once Clara Jane recovered from her fall she went right into what she currently does best - screaming at the top of her lungs regarding the horrible injustices she suffers at the hands of her captors.

There was an intense battle yesterday over custody of my cell phone. She refused to let go of it, opting instead to scream as loud and long as any human being ever has. I think she was trying to call Amnesty International.

And I'm almost back to where I was a year and a half ago, before all the therapy that made it possible for me to go days without feeling like I was having a heart attack. All day yesterday, I grappled with those old feelings of panic and anxiety. In the past, when the anxiety would strike, I would focus my attention on my aging cat, terrified that she was on the verge of death, instead of dealing with the actual source of my stress. Yesterday, I caught myself doing the same thing to Chloe, my Bassett hound.

Oddly enough, I wasn't one bit at all worried about Murphy, even though it looked like she had exploded in my living room last night.

All day, I felt myself slipping. Not figuratively, either. It was literal, like I was standing at the top of a hill and watching my mind roll further and further away from me, just out of my reach when I tried to catch it.

I tried to remember what it was I learned in therapy, how to reign it in, but I've forgotten everything. I'm sure I was given a guide book on how to navigate my way out of these situations, but I can't seem to find it in the clutter of my brain.

PKB called this morning. Being a mom of two boys, ages 16 and 7, she's my parenting guru. I don't think I'd even said hello when she launched into the "It's so hard. And it's constant. And if you don't get a break from it you'll lose your mind" speech. And she's write.

She's also pulling into my driveway right now to take me shopping.

All along I've had a hard time reconciling something about motherhood: physically, it's not much work. It's a lot of play, with the person I love best. How can it be exhausting? Or hard? That's insane. This isn't work. Sitting behind a desk for 10 hours a day with an asshole boss breathing down my neck, that's work.

So why is it I'm doing something that doesn't feel like work, and yet, I can't handle it? I can't keep from losing my shit on a regular basis?

Because PKB's right. It's constant. Even when Clara Jane's napping, that doesn't mean I'm off duty. There's a slim chance I'm doing something in the housewife realm while she naps. There's a much bigger chance that I'm tentatively, yet frantically, trying to eek out a little time for myself, all while keeping my ear cocked towards her room because I'm on her schedule, not mine.

Even if Clara Jane's in a good mood, it's constant. There's always a demand, a request, a change of rules or plans.

And fuck if that won't send one's brain lolling down the hill, just out of reach.

Posted by Robin at 01:44 PM | Comments (12)

June 06, 2006

The Beatings Will Now Begin

I should know by now to not crow about having a good day before noon, as it's a sure-fire way to make the day go down the toilet.

Upon returning home from grocery shopping, Clara Jane opted to explore the gas tank on my truck instead of heading for the house. I was loaded, pack mule-style, with two weeks-worth of groceries as I told her, "Clara Jane? Stop it. That's yucky. Clara Jane? That's dangerous. Clara Jane? If you don't stop by the time I count to three...", trying every ploy that didn't require me to put down all those groceries, physically prying the gas cap from her hand before carrying her sure-to-be-tantruming ass into the house. Each parental direction was greeted with a hearty, "No!" as she continued turning herself into a human fire hazard.

When I tried to pull her away while holding the groceries, she dug in and went limp. The groceries teetered, and next thing I knew one of the bags broke. As I instinctively lunged for the one bag, the rest of them smashed to the ground. I caught the nail of my right-hand middle finger on ... I have no idea what I caught it on. A falling bag, probably. All I know is my groceries hit the driveway as my nail was ripped from my finger, tearing all the way across a mere 1/8 of an inch from the cuticle. I screamed, blood spurting from my finger as my strawberries rolled in every which direction, my peaches bleeding to death under the weight of a half-gallon jug of juice, and my kid still playing with the goddamn gas cap, not even acknowledging the chaos around her.

Moments like this, my kid has no idea how lucky she is that I'm not a spanker.

Eventually, I got my hard-headed child inside, fed, and down for a nap. I gathered the crushed remains of my groceries from every corner of the driveway, wanting to cry as I threw away the destroyed peaches, as I was really looking forward to that first peach of summer. I bandaged my finger and marvelled at how much use the middle finger on the dominate hand gets. And not just for communicating, either. I'm learning that an injured middle finger makes things like writing, typing, knitting, diaper-changing and bathing surprisingly difficult.

I collapsed on the couch and did something I rarely do during Clara Jane's naptime: I laid down and watched TV. Scrolling through our 3,849 channels, I landed on an old favorite I haven't seen in about a million years: Bill Cosby: Himself. It was just starting, so I hit the record button for future viewings. When I was 11 years old, I recorded the same movie on HBO and watched it until the tape disintegrated.

I consider those 11-year-old viewings of this movie as the true beginning of the development of my sense of humor. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that, between Himself and Saturday Night Live, the idea was planted in my head that perhaps I could write funny stuff and be funny when I grew up. Being funny became an objective and a goal in my life that has never gone away.

Back then, I loved the movie because the humor was so absurd. Like this bit about getting drunk:

Now you've got to go. So you come into the bathroom, close the door; now, don't forget: you owe this to yourself. You've worked hard all week. It's come to this: [Kneels beside the chair and pretends to lift the lid on the john, then starts moaning]"Ahh, Jesus... Oh, God... If You get me out of this, I'll never drink again as long as I live..." [groans again] Now you are ready to put your face in a place that was never built for your face.

It's funny because it's silly! No way would anyone do that!

Actually, it turns out, people really do do that! It wasn't funny because it was absurd, as I thought when I was 11. It was funny because it was true!

Of course, the bulk of Himself is the material about his family, which morphed into the basis of the not-nearly-as-funny Cosby Show a few years later. In the movie Cosby paints a picture of a family overrun with wild kids. Dad's just trying to lay low and not deal with the chaos around him, while Mom's always about two inches away from a violent mental breakdown. Of course that was absurd! I mean, I had seen my mom get mad, but I never saw her head split open with flames shooting out of her skull as Cosby describes his wife upon her discovery that he's fed the kids choclate cake for breakfast.

C'mon, you know you want to sing the chocolate cake song with me. I've been singing it for the past 24 hours. Dee dee boom dee dee boom ... Dad is great! Gives us the chocolate cake!

Absurd! Crazy! Absurd and crazy are funny!

I've always heard about people having a conniption but I've never seen one. You don't want to see 'em. My wife's face split. My wife's face split and the skin and hair split and came off of her face so that there was nothing except a skull. And orange lights came out of her hair and there was glitter all around. And fire shot from her eye sockets and began to burn my stomach and she said, "WHERE DID THEY GET CHOCOLATE CAKE FROM?"

Wait ... that's not absurd! That's the motherfucking goddamn truth! And I swear to God, when I was picking up bruised strawberries, covered with road grime in my driveway with my bloody finger-stump, I felt it. I felt the skin and hair seperating from my skull. I felt it, I'm telling you! I felt the flames. And two hours later, when I saw this scene in the movie, I laughed until I cried. Or maybe I cried first, and then laughed. Or maybe I had gone so stupid and crazy from parenthood that I did both at the same time. I don't know. I just know that I so clearly saw myself in something that, 22 years ago, I saw as being completely foreign and exaggerated.

By the time I got to the climactic scene, where the children are fooling around instead of going to bed, and his wife whips around with a yard stick, "like a samuri warrior and says, 'I have had! Enough of this!'" I was curled into the fetal position, trembling from the laughing and sobbing.

Not that I would ever take a yardstick to my kid, but damn. I get it now. I so get it. I get that until you're a parent, it's funny because it's so exaggerated. But once you become a parent, it's funny because it cuts right to the bone and touches a raw spot. You've got to laugh because it's the only sane option. In the driveway hours before, I would have loved nothing more than to turn into Samuri Mom, so intense was my anger, frustration, and exhaustion. But all I can do is laugh at the idiot who stood among the strawberries, screaming garbled nonsense because it wouldn't be right to stand in the driveway and scream obscenities with my kid, mesmerized by the gas cap, standing right there.

When you're a father you censor yourself. You get just as angry with a child but you don't want to say, "What the filth and foul and I'll filth and foul, filth and foul and, yeah, ya filth and foul face, and I'll filth and foul, foul, filth!" You don't want to say that to a child so you censor yourself and you sound like an idiot.

I'd like to know how my parents controlled the urge to chuck the remote control at my head the many times we watched that movie together when I was a kid.

Speaking of which, my parents will be arriving any minute now.

My parents never smiled... because I had brain damage. My wife and I don't smile because our children are LOADED with it. Oh, my parents smile now, whenever they come over to the house and see how much trouble I'm having. Oh, they have a ball! "Havin' a li'l trouble, huh, son?"

Oh, my mom laughed last night when I told her about our little driveway fiasco. And I can guarantee that when she talks to Clara Jane later today, she'll take the kid's side.

I tell my kids, "This is not the same person I grew up with. You are looking at an old woman who is trying to get into Heaven."

Posted by Robin at 01:10 PM | Comments (7)

April 20, 2006

Questinable Parenting

I was looking yesterday, and I noticed that I've had more days this month where I haven't blogged than days where I have. Not that I feel guilty about this. I don't. I love all of you, really I do, but you don't own me, dammit. You understand, I'm sure. Well, most of you probably do.

So, what's kept me away? This week, it's been the book-writin', which is finally getting back on track. I've stopped threatening to take the manuscript and light it afire, which counts as progress. I went to the coffeehouse to write for the first time in three weeks today. Wanna hear my excuses for the last two weeks? Two weeks ago, I got two hours of sleep on Wednesday night, so I opted to dump Clara Jane at daycare, then return home to sleep. The next week, Clara Jane woke up screaming in the middle of the night with nightmares on Wednesday night, so we both stayed home the next day.

Speaking of Clara Jane and screaming ... four weeks ago, she moved up to the next level in daycare. Ask me how it's going. Go on. I dare you. I motherfucking dare you to ask me. How the transition. Is going.

Not well. That's how it's going. Not well at all. Unless we're trying to teach Clara Jane how to cope with abject terror, or how to scream louder than all the other children, it's not progressing as we'd hoped. She's learned to cling to my leg like a 34-pound piece of Clingwrap. That's a good life-skill to have, I'm sure.

Today, we progressed like we have every time we've gone to her new classroom: we walked in ... scratch that. I walked in, with my perfectly able-bodied child, the one who sprints like a puma, in my arms, screaming like a babysitter in a bad horror movie while using my boobs as a step-ladder to propel herself over my shoulder so she can run! Run for sweet freedom!

Once I pryed my hysterical child from my body, my shirt saturated with snot and tears (mine and hers), I tracked down the woman who runs this freakshow and told her that it's not working and we've got to do something different. I don't care what. She offered to move Clara Jane back to her old classroom.

In the five minutes it took me to get from her classroom to the coffeehouse, I got a call from the daycare director, informing me that my child's fine and will be staying in her new room, where she had a delightful day of crafts, songs, naps, and telling everyone that she loves to eat "Doggy Yum-Yums".

So, her new teachers have seen two things: 1) my child screams like she's being killed by jellyfish when she's in my presence, and 2) she might possibly eat dog food. If that doesn't merit a call to family services, well, I have no faith in the system.

Some other things that make me question my parenting skills:

1. Tonight I fed my child a casserole made with ham of questionable freshness for dinner.

2. During a 45-minute car ride yesterday, I indulged her repeated requests for The Beatles' "Come Together". No, she's still not over that song, thank you very much. I know there are much worse songs she could be stuck on. Like, anything by Elmo. Problem is, she's starting to sing along. My current concerns regarding my image at her Methodist daycare are nothing compared to what they'll be the first time she screams, "Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease" during circle time.

3. In similar news, I allowed her to watch a portion of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart with me this afternoon. Yes, it was 70 degrees and sunny, and we were sitting inside, watching a movie. I can make that another point on this list, if you'd like. And yes, I won't let my kid watch commercial television, but I'll let her watch a black and white documentary about rock n' roll hooligans. I don't know what part of the film she enjoyed most - the drums and guitars, or the smoking, cussing and record-label hijinks.

4. She's going to her 2-year check-up tomorrow. Yeah, she turned two in February. Shut up.

5. And finally, that thing about sitting inside, watching movies, on a gorgeous day as such.

Posted by Robin at 05:57 PM | Comments (9)

April 04, 2006

Why I'm Never Leaving the House Again

I made a decision today. From this point on, I'm never leaving my house again. Yes, I know, this is rather drastic, seeing as I've always been quite the gadabout. No more.

I'm feeling a little better, having gone to bed early last night. Still not nearly up to my usual manic standard, but I'm not sobbing because I'm exhausted, which is an improvement over my condition 24 hours ago. Even if I hadn't felt slightly improved, I intended to get Clara Jane out of the house, at least for a little bit. Best-case scenario: we would hit the new used-baby store in our neighborhood, followed by a quick run to the fabric store. At 10:30 we'd go to storytime at the library, then lunch at Moe's and lastly, a quick run to Trader Joe's.

Yeah, that's optimistic. We didn't get ready fast enough, so the fabric store was crossed off the list before we left the house. The used-baby store? Two things: 1) Large "open" signs that are visible from the street? They're cheap. Buy one. Potential customers don't like parking a block away, hauling a kid out of a car seat on a busy street, hauling kid to store, all for naught. In fact, they dislike it so much that they probably won't come back. 2) Your shop is only open from 11 AM - 3 PM? How do you make rent? I mean, I know the used-baby business is lucrative and all, but it's not that lucrative.

Have I mentioned what was happening with my bra during all of this hauling and such?

I'm in bad need of new bras. I'm down to one that's wearable, and I'm using that word in the loosest sense. This poor bra ... it's tired. It's tired and abused and so stretched beyond its limit that the strap in the back keeps trying to escape through the neckhole of my shirt. I think the reason I'm so damn tired all the time isn't because I've contracted the Black Death; it's because I spend roughly 6 hours a day in perpetual motion, trying to wrangle this renagade brassaire back onto my body. It's exhausting.

When you visualize the events in this post, don't forget that through everything, I'm constantly fiddling with my bra.

On to the library. Clara Jane's a veteran of storytime. Her last storytime experience? Two weeks ago, we piled into the county library headquarters with roughly 100 other toddlers to see a live appearance by Franklin.

Now, I implore you ... does this look like a kid who has any trouble with storytime?



That's Clara Jane on the right, shortly after she sprinted away from me shrieking, "Hey Frank-a-lin!", but before she insisted on exchanging high-fives with him. After chattering non-stop with her favorite turtle-suited person, she heaped herself on the floor with a pile of crayons - some blatantly pilfered from the gaggle of little boys next to us - to capture her Franklin experience on paper while it was fresh on her mind.

Clara Jane has no fear when it comes to costumed characters, to the degree that I'm a little concerned about her developing a fetish. But do you know what library fixture scares the fuck out of her? Crazy Old Library Lady, that's who.

Things started out just fine, as all library trips do. My kid adores the library. Or did. I'm not so sure she feels the same anymore, as her sanctuary of books has become a house of horrors. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

Today's election day, and the library we visited today was a polling place for one of the 3,927 St. Louis-area municipalities that are electing mayors. At first I wasn't thrilled, because I was going to have to deal with pamphleting electioneers 26 feet away from the entrance, barraging me with propoganda. However, they were all quite nice and understanding when I explained that this wasn't our polling place and we had bigger fish to fry. Or read about frying.

The problem ceated by election day: the polling place was set up in the meeting room usually used for storytime. Not a problem. As Clara Jane shared an alphabet book with a little girl named Isabella, her mom told me that, when storytime's displaced, they have it in the teen area and it's great and fabulous and Miss Sandra hung the moon and stars. Wonderful.

Another little girl, accompanied by her grandmother, were sitting at a table in the teen room when we made our way to storytime. At the next table, another older woman, flipping the pages of her book with such agitation that I wondered if perhaps the characters were telling her horrible, awful things about her mother. Please don't let this be Miss Sandra, I thought. Because whatever this woman's reading, I don't think I want her reading it to my kid.

Clara Jane and the other little girl chattered, as two-year-olds do. They remained on our laps, giggling and talking. I fidgeted with my bra. Grandma smiled adoringly at the girls. Crazy Old Library Lady Who Best Not Be Miss Sandra flipped pages, turned to us and barked, "This is supposed to be a silent area. Get the kids out of here."

Both girls fell silent, inately aware that suddenly, their silence was required. Perhaps their lives depended on it.

I stopped tugging my strap so as to look at least a little reasonable. "Actually, storytime is starting in here in a few minutes."

"This isn't the storytime area! They don't hold storytime in here! This is a silent area and I came in here for peace and quiet! I need peace and quiet for what I'm doing! This is not the storytime room and you need to leave!"

I prepared to hand Clara Jane to the grandmother, whip off my bra, and use it to truss and bind the woman who was having such a screaming, flailing meltdown in her silent area that she was rapidly turning into a very loud, very slimy puddle on the floor. Just then, a plump woman with a soft salt-and-pepper pageboy entered the room, wheeling a cart filled with books, crayons, monkey puppets and an autoharp. "It's storytime!" she chirped in the general direction of the molten petrolium product that continued to shriek, "You're welcome to stay, if you'd like!"

The puddle yorped in the new woman's direction, absorbed her reading materials into her oil flow, and slithered out of her most-decidedly non-silent area.

I think she took a little of Clara Jane's spirit with her. This child - who's been social since the day she was born, who loves live music, and storytime and coloring, and being around other similarly-inclined kids - would not allow me to put her down. When I did, she sobbed as if I was going to leave her in The Bad Vibes Room to be raised by whatever crazy old person happened by next.

I spent the entire 45 minutes of storytime on my knees, Clara Jane adhered to my torso. If her feet got within three inches of the floor, she'd fire up the tears once again. Nothing assured her that everything was okay. Not the gentle melody of the autoharp and Miss Sandra's sweet voice. Not the giggles of the other kids. Not the stories about shoes and the finger puppets based on Eileen Christelow's Five Little Monkeys, who happen to be Clara Jane's favorite monkeys in the whole wide world. She would calm when she was pressed against me with both of my arms wrapped tight around her, but if my muscles fatigued and her feet came within the dreaded three inches of the floor, she'd cry, legs peddling like a frantic duck, kicking my thighs and stomach as her fingers dug into my shoulders, begging me to take her home.

It's really hard to fidget with a renegade brassaire in such a situation.

I don't expect everyone to adore my child, or to be charmed by her every chatter and shriek. Kids in public places can be irritating; I'm the first to admit that. But Jesus. What kind of person has a screaming hissy fit of such magnitude that it leaves a normally gregarious kid so terrified she can't unlatch from her mother?

I think that woman truly did need some peace and quiet, perhaps the kind provided by solitary confinement at one of the area's mental health facilities.

Maybe I should have given in to Clara Jane's pleas to leave, but what would that teach her? That it's okay to let a bully ruin something that is rightfully hers? I hate that the ire of one unhinged person has the possibility of changing how we go about our lives. My reaction - I quit. I'm sick to death of dealing with people and I just don't want to do it anymore. I'm exhausted and I don't need this. Most importantly, I don't want Clara Jane to deal with this. I want her to believe that people are good and have her best interests at heart for as long as possible. I don't want one crazy old bat at the library to steal that part of her innocence. I don't want the storytimes that she's loved so much to have any shadow of fear. But now, they might, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Clara Jane's going to learn about the meanness in this world, and I don't get to choose when or how.

I'm going to learn about the meanness in me. In the past, the sight of such a person - old and alone, miserable and angry - would have made something in my heart hurt. I would hurt for whatever horrible hurt had brought such misery into being. But today, I felt no sympathy, no "there but for the grace of God go I". All I felt was the overwhelming desire to strike this person so that she might hurt as much as she hurt my child.

Posted by Robin at 02:42 PM | Comments (10)

March 15, 2006

The Naughty Nunu and Dirty, Filthy Po

Yep, I'm still glad Clara Jane's home. Life feels normal and right again. She's developed a fixation on the Beatles' "Come Together" and keeps trying to do John Lennon's opening vocal effect, which rocks my socks off. She's also taken up yogurt painting, and covering the bathroom floor with half a bottle of baby shampoo, but I'm still freaked out enough by the tornados that I was able to maintain my composure in light of old flattop's antics.

I'm thanking my lucky stars that we're only experiencing a little vandalism, considering the horrible, sleazy tripe she's been watching. If this isn't proof that the Republicans are right and PBS is evil, I don't know what is.

Allow me to present to you the taxpayer-supported pornography masquarading as the Teletubbies...

While I could have provided better quality images with, say, a video capture card, I opted to go the simple route and just photograph the wretched images. Besides, the little black bar from the video roll accents just how dirty and filthy it is.

Warning: what follows is not appropriate for children, or their overly immature parents.


While Po lolls on the bed at left, Nunu enters. Nunu's got needs. Powerful, sucking needs.


Nunu's engorged and hot, ready for his sweet, sweet Po.


Not wasting a second, Nunu jumps straight to the goods, schnurffling Po's ... what the hell is that, anyway? Um, tubbie? Nunu can't get enough of that sweet, sweet screen.


SWEET JESUS! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? SEX AND THE TUBBIES?? My eyes. Oh, God. My eyes. And I think my vagina just grew shut.


I don't care what that rat bastard Dipsy tells you, Po. Doing that does not maintain your virginity. Stop it. Stop it right now.


Who knew animated vaccum cleaners made O-faces?


Oh, now that's just kinky and sick. Sick!


That's it. There's gonna be tubby custard all over that floor. We're going to see that floor under a blacklight on 60 Minutes one of these days, and it's going to look like the bedspread of room 164 of the Salina, Kansas Super 8, mark my word.


That's it, Po. Show him where to put it and what to do with it.


It's not all smut and slime. Po and the nunu share a tender moment. Either that, or Po's humping him. I don't know. I had to turn it off at this point.

I have never wanted to die as badly as I want to having watched this with my child.

Posted by Robin at 08:31 PM | Comments (13)

March 12, 2006

Gimme Shelter

I'm sitting here with my new iPod on shuffle, and the first song to come up? Gimme Shelter:

Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away

Despite the fact that, an hour ago, I was organizing my music and thought, "Gee, I'm in the mood for some classic Stones. Maybe I'll listen to Let it Bleed while I'm writing tomorrow," this really isn't the song I want to hear right now. Even though it gets more ominous after that first verse, any mention of storms puts me further on edge tonight. I was thrilled when the iPod shuffled on to a little lighthearted Skeeter Davis.

This is the scene in my hometown, Sedalia, tonight, and it's not over. Just as one tornado warning lifts, another twister is sighted. It's bad enough that most of my family's there, but tonight, Clara Jane is there, too. She's sick of being hauled to the basement, and the sight of all my mom's home-canned green beans lining the cellar shelves is making her hungry, I'm told. For entertainment, she's been hauling my old Easter basket around, but even that's losing its charm as she gets further from her bedtime.

When the first tornado siren sounded this afternoon, she asked my mom, "What's that? I like it!"

You'll get over that soon, Kiddo. Trust me. Few sounds chill me to my core like that wail. It sounds like doom to me.

It's a common sound in this part of the world in the springtime, the low rumbling howl of the sirens. Sometimes you have to listen hard to hear them over the roar of the wind and claps of thunder. Other times, they blow when the sky's bright and calm. Only the pale green aura that surrounds everything indicates that it's not a mistake or a test. Those are the worst, because of the reminder of how quickly fate can fall out of the sky and blow lives apart.

A tornado hit Sedalia the spring of 1977 when I was four years old. I'd been excited that day, because Mom had been doing laundry in the basement and she was letting me come downstairs with her to help. When the sirens blew in the middle of the afternoon and she hustled me down the steep wood stairs to the concrete slab basement, I thought it was merely time to put the wet clothes in the dryer again. Instead, she directed me to a concrete-ensconced crawlspace, padded with blankets and pillows that we pulled over our heads.

My dad was a truck driver for a dairy, and he was on the road that day. While my mom and I sat in our cubby, I remember her telling me that we needed to pray for Dad to come home safe. Prayer wasn't a regular event in our house, aside from the usual "now I lay me down to sleep" and "God is great, God is good" childhood graces. Asking God to bring my dad home was new and terrifying.

I remember the roar of the wind, sounding like a giant truck engine surrounding the house. And then silence.

We emerged from the basement and our house was intact. So were the houses surrounding ours. Most of the damage had occured on the northwestern end of town, where the expensive new subdivisions had been built. Houses looked like their lids had been removed like those of tin cans of green beans. Fallen trees blocked the streets, their scattered leaves looking like a green autumn. The old drive-in movie theater was destroyed. The factory where my dad eventually worked for over twenty years was heavily damaged.

I sat in the backseat of my grandma's yellow Volkswagon Beatle, surveying the wreckage of the only place in the world I really knew while my mom and grandma sobbed in the front seat.

We were lucky. Everyone we knew and loved, including my dad, were fine, losing nothing more than some shingles and a few trees. A story floated around for years that a dog in one of the subdivisions was picked up by the storm, which set him down several miles away at the state fairgrounds, where he promptly took a large dump upon terra firma. Whether that really happened or not, I don't know. Sedalia recovered, and has since gone on to survive several other direct twister assaults.

Things are different now. B. and I were shopping when my mom called my cell phone after today's first storm. "Just wanted to catch you before you saw the news and panicked. There was a tornado and everyone's okay."

When we got home a few hours later, the helicopter news footage from Sedalia was already on the local news. I squinted while I watched, trying to see if I recognized any of the destroyed houses. I didn't. During the other storms, my mom and I kept in touch. While they were in the basement without news access, I called with storm updates from the Weather Channel. When we weren't talking, I sat glued to the motion weather maps, watching the giant red splotches of storm as they headed towards Sedalia, grabbing my phone when the spot moved past that dot on the map to make sure they got through it.

I can fill myself with information, presented in an unbiased, non-panicked tidy little animated box. I can plug a zip code into a website and find out exactly where a tornado was spotted minutes earlier, and I can go to a map site and see exactly how far it is from my parents' house, where my baby's trying to sleep. Then I can make a phone call that doesn't require possibly downed lines to make sure everyone's okay the minute it's over. Those endless hours of waiting to see if someone's going to come home have shrunk to seconds. But it doesn't make the fear any less. It just means that I might get hit with unthinkable news faster than we did thirty years ago.

All day I've been thinking about how I hate that Clara Jane's going through these storms, and that she wasn't safe in St. Louis with us. But now, the worst is probably past them. We're the ones who might be facing the same storms, only in the middle of the night. Suddenly, I'm glad she's not here. I'm glad we won't have to wake her at 3 a.m. to make that fast, frantic rush to the basement, half-asleep and bewildered, exhausted from trying to sleep and listen for those sirens at the same time.

I think all of my people in Sedalia have been accounted for, but I'm wondering who was killed, and who's lost. I'm wondering what local sights that I'm so used to seeing have been reduced to haystacks of shattered wood. I'm wondering what we're in for tonight. I'm wondering if Clara Jane was as scared as I was thirty years ago, and if she's wondering when her mom and dad are coming home.

Posted by Robin at 09:52 PM | Comments (12)

March 07, 2006

Deep Thoughts and Bodily Fluids - A Little Something for Everyone

Which do you want first? Of course, the poop...

As of 6:24 PM today, Tuesday, March 7, in the year of our lord 2006, I hereby declare that no one in this house is allowed to perform any bodily functions until they learn how to do it right.

Last night, B. noticed that Clara Jane had a smidge of diaper rash, so he let her run around the house bare-assed for awhile. This is what we call Danger Baby. I think you probably know why, and I'm pretty sure you know where this is going.

"Oh my God! She's crapping on the floor!" B. yelled, jumping up and sprinting away from my desk, where Clara Jane was squatting, doing what I can only assume was her best imitation of a bear in the woods. He recovered, cleaned it up, and once again fell into shock as Clara Jane ran across the kitchen, a giant turd falling out of the hem of her shirt.

Once all the poop was removed, B. removed Clara Jane to the bath. Once out, she was standing on one of the dining room chairs, still naked. "What's all that water on the chair?" B. asked. "Did that drip off of her from the bath?"

Sure, Honey. You just keep telling yourself that while I disinfect this chair on which we sit while we consume food, for it is covered with urine.

Fast forward to bedtime. I was reading, while my cat, Romi the Motherfucking Lardass, attempted to settle her girth onto my girth, which is sort of like balancing a ping-pong ball on top of a basketball. As she settled, I noticed something. Under her tail. Oh God.

I shoved her towards B., flung a box of tissues at him and requested that he please remove the renegade dingleberry (which, size-wise, was really more of a dinglepear) from her ass.

Once the poop was out of our bed, we sat there, catching our breath, both silently pondering the horror of possibly rolling onto the renegade dinglepear in the night. Romi, in her shame, perched on the edge of B.'s nightstand, looking straight ahead, obviously trying to regain her nobility in light of having, essentially, crapped her pants in front of us. I watched her profile as she sat, unflinching, lost in the thoughts of her shame. She opened her mouth, I presumed to speak of her mortification and sorrow at the frightening end of the evening. And from her mouth, as she emitted a delicated hack, came rocketing ... what? A loogie? Projectile vomit? Jet-powered hairball? I'm not sure. All I know is I watched in what felt like slow-motion as this item came hurtling out of her gullet and across the room. Had the dogs been sleeping in their beds four feet away, they would have thought all their dreams had come true and cat vomit had started raining from the heavens.

I somehow managed to sleep, even with this animal, who had sprung leaks from both ends, slept near my pillow. Clara Jane woke me up before 7 AM. Although I wasn't thrilled with this situation, I took advantage of it. Got us dressed and out the door by 9 so we could go for coffee and chocolate milk, followed by a trip to Whole Foods. I needed probiotics, as my digestive system is still reeling from last week's flu. I won't be giving you details, because I prefer for the rest of the world to believe that I don't poop. However, I'm pretty sure Romi has posted all the details over on Live Journal.

I love Whole Foods, but I don't get there very often. Unless I go early in the morning, it's a madhouse and it makes me want to run over people in the parking lot, which doesn't quite work with Whole Foods' earth-friendly vibe. So we just don't go, unless it's a day like today, where the planets align with my ailing intestines and the child in my house who is suddenly operating on Rooster Central Time.

Two years ago, I was also going to Whole Foods for probiotics. Clara Jane was almost a month old and I was still sick. When I left the hospital, my doctor said my C-section incision looked like it wanted to get infected. She sent me home with a prescription for Keflex. Four days later, I awoke with my clothing saturated in liquid that had burst from the incision. It looked like the tail of my shirt and my underwear had been dunked four inches in a washtub.

In the weeks that followed, I was prescribed every antibiotic known to western medicine, or so it felt. Several times a day I sat on the toilet while B. alternated hot compresses and peroxide-soaked cloths on my incision, which continued to bleed and weep. I went to my doctor's office several times a week, always on the verge of being admitted to the infectious disease unit. The infection didn't budge.

Despite the infection, I was able to go out. As long as I took painkillers and wore elastic wasitbands, I could try to get on with my life, which now contained a tiny little girl and a weeping wound. That was good, I thought, because I had other health issues at hand. Whenever I was left at home with Clara Jane, I would panic. Paralyzing, life-controlling panic that left me huddled on the couch, sobbing, for hours on end. Every morning, Clara Jane and I would drive B. to the train station, then we'd go to the diner for a long breakfast. She'd sleep on the counter in her car seat while I ate my egg sandwich and drank cup after cup of coffee. Perched on a swiveling stool at the counter, my incision didn't hurt quite as much.

When we'd leave the diner, I'd have to find someplace else for us to pass a few hours, and Whole Foods was an appealing option. I'd put Clara Jane into her Baby Bjorn and we'd stroll through the store. If she was awake, she'd gaze at the colors and lights in the produce department. I'd take my time walking down the aisles, maybe buying something to drink or a snack. Lunch from the salad bar, if it was a particularly long visit, as a lot of them were. Sometimes I'd sit in the dining area with a notebook and write, if Clara Jane was willing to snooze on my chest.

When it came time to pay, I always tried to get the same cashier. I don't remember her name, but she was in her early 20s, chubby, ring through the divit between her lower lip and her chin, and hair color that varied between hot pink and burgundy from week-to-week. I could always count on her for a little small talk, and to fawn over Clara Jane. She always projected a bit of happiness, and helped ease my loneliness.

Eventually, it was a trip to Whole Foods that finally brought down the infection. My friend Jackie, a homeopathic therapist in Great Britain, suggested several formulas that tend to help surgical infections, along with an arnica ointment. Within a week, the infection was mostly gone, and I was downing probiotics, trying to get everything back in order.

As I walked through Whole Foods early this morning, I thought about those mornings two years ago, and the tiny baby who snoozed on my chest as I browsed. Today, she pointed at items in the produce department, yelling out the names of fruits and veggies. She demanded samples from the cheese and potato chip departments, and mooed at the cow artwork on the organic dairy products. While gazing into the meat case, I heard someone say, "Hey! It's you! I haven't seen you in ages! Oh my God, your baby's grown!" I looked up, and there was my cashier, this time with fading blue hair and a blood-smeared white coat, working behind the meat counter. "She's gorgeous!"

I thanked her, and we made idle chit-chat for a bit. I found myself wanting to tell her that I'm fine. I'm well. Missing some vital flora, perhaps, but otherwise, so good that an early-morning trip to the hippie store is now fun, not a lifeline.

Posted by Robin at 07:24 PM | Comments (13)

January 25, 2006

Bored

All my adult life I've subscribed to the notion that people who suffer from boredom do so because they are boring. If you're so damn bored, get off your ass and do something. This attitude has led to many spur-of-the-moment road trips coupled with far too many occasions (2) in which I managed to get my car lodged in muddy locations where my car should not have been located in the first place. It was the threat of boredom that one day led me to call this strange guy I'd been emailing and say, "Yo. I'm coming to St. Louis. If you wanna meet, tell me where you'll be. If not, no biggie," which ultimately led to me falling in love, which lead to me getting married which lead to me having a child which has lead to me being bored.

Mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly bored.

But it's not just a normal boredom. I'm bored out of my mind and yet completely loaded with stuff to do. I alternate between giving Clara Jane my full attention and grabbing five minutes here and there to read a little, write a little, knit a little, clean a little, stare at the wall a little. It's boredom paired with perpetual motion and a brain that's always engaged.

After nearly two years of motherhood, this still trips me up. It seems like if I'm doing so much I shouldn't be bored. But I am. And I don't feel like I"m doing that much. If I was really doing as much as I think I am, surely I wouldn't be bored. Nor would I have a messy house, an unfinished book that I'm writing, three unfinished books that I'm reading, a Christmas gift I'm still knitting and a pile of receipts I need to organize for my taxes.

I feel completely exhausted and overworked, while feeling like I'm not doing a damn thing.

And my original notion is true: I'm bored because I'm boring. The most exciting thing I've done this week? Well, aside from the meatloaf? Hm. Actually, that was the most exciting thing I've done this week. Spending two hours at Starbucks and writing on Monday night is a distant second.

I know this is all temporary. Either temporary because it won't always be January, the most boring month of the year. Or temporary because my child won't always be possessed by Satan, ergo unfit for public exposure:


I suppose we could entertain ourselves by hanging out in cornfields and performing ritual sacrifices on adults, but there's the rub: I'd be the first to go. Besides, it seems a shame for someone with such a cute pink plaid purse to spend her time in a cornfield where the purse is likely to get splattered with blood.

At least I have my vivid imagination to keep me occupied.

That damn purse in the picture, along with the damn barista at Starbucks on Monday have me thinking about Memphis. One trip to Memphis in particular. You know which one I'm talking about. The one taken in October, 2002, with Kara, Kristina and various other secondary friends. I talked about it about a month ago, even. The trip where we celebrated my 30th birthday by drinking every bottle of Rolling Rock in stock at The Pig, busting out dancing and laughing in the middle of the tour at Sun Studio, getting devoured by a fold-out bed, and contemplating some sushi at a gas station. "You're probably gonna puke before the night's over anyway - might as well!" wasn't enough to convince anyone that gas station sushi was a dare worth taking. When Sarah got so drunk that she stared into her gumbo and uttered these infamous words: "Dude. I have no idea what I'm eating.", she perfectly surmised the entire weekend.

A few weeks ago I drug that pink plaid purse off the shelf to put it back into rotation. I never clean out my purses unless they've been out of rotation for awhile. I get a little kick out of pilfering through the old receipts and concert tickets, occasionally stumbling onto some forgotten cash. While digging through the pink plaid purse, I found the receipt from my admission to Sun that day. I had forgotten that the purse went to Memphis, but there it is, hanging out at Sun, preparing to bust a move:



There on the right, in my hand you'll notice the pink plaid purse. While this has nothing to do with the subject at hand, I'd like to note that Kara's holding a pink purse with blue trim behind her back. It was a one-of-a-kind artsy little thing that we both loved, so we each paid half and have joint custody of said purse. Co.De.Pen.Dent. But I digress.

So now, everytime I see the pink plaid purse, which is several times a day, I think about the Memphis trip.

At Starbucks on Monday, I overheard the barista talking about his plans to go to Memphis this weekend. I jumped into the conversation, asked him about his plans and we wound up talking for a bit. He's celebrating his 28th birthday down there, making all the music geek pilgrimages. It was all I could do to keep from throwing myself at his feet and screaming, "Take me with you! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease take me with you! I promise I won't obliterate the stock of any single brand of beer again! I promise I won't eat the gas station sushi! I promise I won't dry hump any Loverboy posters! I'll be good if you just take me with you!!!!"

The pink plaid purse. The barista. Repeated watchings of Food Network Challenge: Elvis Birthday Cake. These things are not doing me one bit of good. While they conjure up great memories, I wind up feeling like I'm no longer that person that I was just over three years ago. I've gotten old. Boring. I was the girl who cornered Monte Montgomery and informed him that he needed to meet my friend Mary now because she came all the way to Tennessee from Texas just to see him, all while dragging him to our table. I spend my days in yoga pants, jumping when my toddler hollers and desperately trying to find something fulfilling to do in the five minute breaks between those hollers, feeling like I'm turning into that middle-aged woman who had one really great weekend in her life and she can't quite get over it.

Again, I know this is temporary. It's January, and I always get like this in January. I'm not depressed. Not even sad. Just bored. There's plenty of stuff around the corner. Clara Jane's birthday. Asylum Street Spankers and Cowboy Mouth shows with good friends. Hell, there's even writing at the coffeehouse tomorrow, followed by knitting with more friends.

I just don't know how to deal with the mundane. The normal times. If anything, times like these make me realize that I have led an interesting life so far, a life that will continue to be interesting. The boredom doesn't mean I'm boring. It just means I'm recharging. Strengthing my system for when the opportunity for a bar's worth of beer and gas station sushi arises once again. And you know it will. I'll make sure it does, just as soon as I change out of my yoga pants.

While writing this, I listened to a mix I made shortly after that trip. It's a part of an overwrought mix collection I made called The Dorcas Collection, since I made all the covers with graphics culled from The Dorcus Collection. This is from volume #2: Running Free:

The Passenger - Iggy Pop
Cure for Pain - Morphine
No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age
The Can-Can - Moulin Rouge soundtrack
The Whole World - Outkast
Calistan - Frank Black
A Little Respect - Erasure
Beer - Asylum Street Spankers
Brass in Pocket - the Pretenders
Rudy Can't Fail -the Clash
Jean Genie - David Bowie
Ruby Soho - Rancid
Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins
Sheena is a Punk Rocker - the Ramones
Da Do Ron Ron - the Donnas
American Girl - Tom Petty
Box Full of Letters - Wilco
No Sleep Til Brooklyn - Beastie Boys
We Want Fun - Andrew WK
The Globe - Big Audio Dynamite


Sometimes I have problems recalling exactly what I did with my days before Clara Jane was born. Right now, I remember: I did stuff like this. Obviously, I wasn't nearly as interesting as I think I was.

Posted by Robin at 04:28 PM | Comments (15)

January 21, 2006

Sunny Day

A few weeks ago, while watching a commercial for "Sesame Street Live", Clara Jane made the connection that the be-costumed Baby Bear in the ad was indeed the same, real-life manifestation of the lisping Baby Bear from the show that she loves ever so much. And in that moment, in a frenzy of maternal love that completely blanketed all logic, I called B. at work. "Can you still get those discounted Sesame Street tickets? Because we so have to go."

Fifty dollars and three tickets later, I spent the next two weeks wondering what in the hell I was thinking. She's not even two. There's no way she can handle a 90-minute show, complete with lights, loud noises and about a million other screaming toddlers. We just spent fifty bucks for our kid to throw a massive hissy fit in public. Great. Just great.

Today day began with Clara Jane's first foray into public transportation. B. had been looking forward to this for a long time, being a regular traveler on St. Louis' Metrolink. Really, I'm surprised it's taken us this long to get her onto a train.

And with her first trip via public transportation, she also had her first encounter with an idiot on the train platform. Now, to be fair, he might have been very intelligent, had he not smoked his breakfast.

The entrance to one of the train platforms was barricaded with slashes of yellow tape and orange cones, but that didn't stop this fellow from crawling through the tape to the empty platform. "Hey buddy!" someone from our platform called. "That platform's closed. The trains from both directions are using this platform."

The trespasser shot him a look and kept walking down the deserted platform until a Metro employee barked, "Hey! That's closed! Get off the closed platform!"

To which the trespasser replied, "It's closed? Someone should have said something!"

And then he exited, once again climbing through the yellow tape.

That encounter aside, I do believe this was my first visit to Savvis Center where I didn't encounter so much as a passing whiff of anything being illicitly smoked. The "Sesame Street Live" crowd? Not quite as into the hallucinogens as the people at most shows I see at that venue. Maybe it was because it was the 10:30 AM show. I'll bet the hardcore fans don't come out until the 5:30 PM show.

What we did encounter - enough cotton candy and sno-cones to require Insulin Emergency Stations scattered throughout the venue.

Now, I'm going to admit something that's potentially humiliating. Angela wrote about something similar last summer in regards to seeing "The Wiggles". So at least I'm in good company.

I am such a crybaby, especially when music's invovled. Always have been. When I first started taking Prozac in 2002, one of the first changes I noticed was I no longer got weepy upon hearing jingles in Kleenex and Kodak commercials. While I was initially a little disturbed by this dulling of my emotional edge, I quickly came to embrace it. I could do things like watch TV and go to concerts with others without bursting into tears and looking like an idiot.

While I've adjusted well to life without mood stablizers over the past year, one pre-SSRI trait has returned: I'm a fucking bawl bag. I feared today's show would send me into a blubbering fit and I'm not-so-pleased to report that I was right.

During the opening number - "Somebody Come and Play", which always chokes me up on the show, even with it's the upbeat version and not Ernie's rather melancholy, lonesome version - with all the costumed Sesame Street characters parading onto the stage and my kid hollering, "Hello Bert! Hello Prairie Dawn! Hello Baby Bear!" I cried like someone had burned down my house, stolen my dogs and fed my favorite shirt to a goat all in the same day.

At least it's not choking sobs. I can limit it to the occasionally shuddery sigh, but my God, the tears! Great flooding rivers of tears! Tears that can't be passed off as allergy eyes or a reaction to the bright lights!

I eventually pulled my shit together and was doing fine. And then they had to do the "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon". The regular version gets to me, but oh my God lately they've been showing the version with Aaron Neville, and it's a song about wanting to be home, and with Aaron Neville involved it makes me think of all the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina and OH MY GOD!!! JUST STOP!!!! I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SOBBING AT FUCKING SESAME STREET LIVE!!!

I mean, seriously. You would have thought I was at an Alan Jackson concert with the amount of tearshed I displayed. I can't believe I was concerned about Clara Jane going into meltdown mode. Clara Jane was fine. She loved it. Didn't shed a tear the entire time we were out. Unlike her mother, who left a hankerchief completely sopping wet and was reduced to wiping her tear-snot on her sleeve.

Speaking of my child's exemplary behavior, she had a wonderful time. We made it through the entire show and she was enthralled. Mesmerized. Totally into it. I'm even willing to overlook how she pointed to and addressed the performers. She's a bit young to understand that this breaks Cardinal Rule of Cooldom #73 and might get your ass kicked if you do it at the wrong show. I don't know. Maybe the etiquette is different at kiddie concerts. Regardless, I let it slide, since I was in flagrant violation of Cardinal Rule of Cooldom #32: Thou shalt not sob like a motherfucking sissy when Big Bird makes his entrance.

Besides, I think I'd embarrassed her enough for one day:

Posted by Robin at 09:49 PM | Comments (5)

January 19, 2006

Misfit

Why yes, I'm supposed to be at the coffeehouse, wrapping up another fruitful Thursday of writing and editing. However, my back had other ideas. I'd noticed some soreness over the weekend, which I chalked up to the mild cold/flu bug I had. Then on Monday, I did way too much schlepping around with 32 pounds of kid resting on my hip and it's gone downhill from there. By last night the ridge where my butt curves out of my back was rock-solid with knotted muscles. Likewise, there's a cluster of knots along my spine, just above the small of my back. Reminds me of back labor, which makes me want to claw someone's eyes out. You know, if I could raise my arms without crying like a little baby.

I dropped Clara Jane at daycare and headed to the coffeehouse. I managed to work for about two and a half hours before it got to be too much. The 800 mg of Advil didn't even put a dent in the pain. I went home, where B. joined me. He's now off picking up Clara Jane from daycare while I sit, immobile, with a bag of hot rice resting on the top of my ass.

I've got a little confession to make: I'm really glad I don't have to pick Clara Jane up today.

It has nothing to do with my kid. I love that little reunion when I pick her up. It's the other parents I could do without.

I saw this story on last night's local news:

THIEVES STEAL FROM MOTHERS AT DAY CARE CENTERS

Thieves are preying on young mothers when they drop-off their children at day care centers. They're only gone for minutes, but in that time thieves steal their cash, credit cards and check books. Beth Lyons was one of the victim's. Now she makes sure her car is always locked and her purse is with her. "It's horrible. It's just horrible. I'm still now dealing with it." Last month, police say two men stole Lyons wallet and started forging her checks at a south St. Louis supermarket (pictured). They both used Lyon's checkbook to buy groceries. Detective Tim Koncki says the crimes have happened at a child care facility in Creve Coeur as well as one in Maryland Heights where police have stepped up patrols. Brentwood officers are also investigating similar cases. Police say the thieves have hit about a half dozen times in West County.

What this little blurb from the website didn't mention was that most of these thefts happened because of the mothers leaving their purses on the front seat with the doors unlocked. One of the interviewees had even left her car running while she fetched her child, whining that she was in a hurry and the 20 seconds it takes to turn off the car and turn it back on again was just time she couldn't waste (although she had plenty of time to be interviewed on teevee). Besides, another mom went on to say, it's a daycare center. I assumed the area was safe.

As I watched I yelled, "Oh my God! Are you really that stupid? Honestly. Are you? Because if you are, how is it that you haven't been killed yet? How is it you haven't died in some senseless badmitton accident?"

At the risk of stating the obvious, daycare centers do not have invisible, inpenetrable fortresses of safety erected around their perimeters. Especially at times when parents are picking up their kids, there are enough people coming and going that someone could open an unlocked car door, grab a purse off the seat, and walk away unnoticed.

Duh.

I swore I wouldn't be one of those mothers who passes judgement on other moms. This motherhood business is hard enough without other moms being snarky and catty about the choices other moms make.

But good lord, some days it's really hard not to be judgemental. I certainly passed plenty of judgement on the moms I saw on the news last night. But then again, had they been people without kids, whining about getting stuff stolen from their unlocked cars, I'd be passing judgement, too.

I catch myself passing judgement every Thursday when I drop off and pick up Clara Jane. Like this morning. I was preparing to make the right-hand turn into the daycare center's parking lot when another mom, coming from the opposite direction, cut me off to make a left-hand turn into the lot. Like it's a damn race. Maybe she was in a hurry. No. When I left, she was standing in the lobby, having a leisurely chat with another mom. You better believe I formed some rather strong opinions about her.

The daycare is in a church, and I figure quite a few of the parents know each other from the church. Or they live in the same area. I just know that Clara Jane's been going there for five months and I can't tell you the name of one single parent whose child is in Clara Jane's class. At most, we've exchanged polite smiles.

Once a month the daycare offers juice and coffee for the parents in the lobby, and the chance to sit and get acquainted. I stopped by the first month, prepared to get acquainted with my fellow parents. Now, I'm not a shy person. Not even slightly. I will pretty much go up to anyone and start a conversation. But there was something about this group of mothers, with their backs to me, engaged in their own quiet conversations. I stood there with my styrofoam cup of bad Folgers, alone, trying to make eye contact with women who seemed determined to not make eye contact with me.

I wonder if this is an indicator of what Clara Jane's entire school career is going to be like, if I'm going to be Odd Mom Out. It doesn't really bother me if I am, but I do worry about how it might affect Clara Jane. She might carry the burden of having The Weird Mom. I guess there are worse burdens for a kid to carry. If anything, maybe it'll teach her that it's okay to be different and not compromise herself just for the sake of being accepted.

But you know what? I walked past the monthly coffee moms this morning, unnoticed. And as I walked out the door, I wondered which ones had left their car doors unlocked with their purses on the front seat.

And then I laughed.

Posted by Robin at 02:13 PM | Comments (10)

November 18, 2005

Opinions are like ...

I'm not getting along with my fellow humans today. In fact, I'm finding that a great many of them are pissing me the fuck off. Maybe it's the phase of the moon. Maybe it's the horrific things that are occurring in my uterus. Maybe it's the upcoming holiday stress. Whatever it is, I'm not sure if I'm the one who's going nuts or if it's the whole world around me.

I was talking to my mom, and somehow the topic of weight and food came up. After many, many years of bumping heads on these topics, my mom and I have made our peace, at least with each other.

Someone - I don't know who and I can't decide if I really want to know - recently told her, "You make sure Robin and B. aren't feeding Clara Jane junk food."

My mom explained that no, we're doing anything but. Clara Jane eats a very balanced diet with an "everything in moderation" philosophy. Very little processed food, no fast food, lots and lots of fresh fruit, whole grains, lean meats and veggies (which she's been shunning lately, but we're not giving up).

Apparently, this person had assumed that, since B. and I are fat, we eat nothing but shit. Of course! A fat person would never eat a vegetable! They live on Big Macs and Coke!

I'm hesitant to find out who this person is, because there's a good chance I wouldn't be able to resist beating the ever-living fuck out of her. Fat people have poor impulse control, you know.

My mom, bless her, told this person, "They don't keep junk food in the house. When I visit, I have to bring my own." Which is true. She spent a lot of time with us after Clara Jane was born. One night she declared, "You don't even have a damn saltine in this house, do you? No chips. No cookies. We've gotta go to Target first thing tomorrow. I'm starving!"

To which I probably said something like, "Eat a damn apple and get over it."

I'm not a health foodie. Not by a long shot. I like a little bit of everything. I've got my vices, that's for sure. I don't keep junk food in the house for a very simple reason - because we'll eat it. Out of sight, out of mind.

But it galls me to no end that someone can make such a huge judgement of me and my parenting - that I'm doing something harmful to my child's health - based solely on how I look.

Did this person take into account the year and a half of culinary training I've had? The four years I've spent writing about food? The three and a half years I've spent being paid to feed people healthy meals? The two years I spent teaching people - particularly kids - how to eat well?

Of course not. That would require some thought, which is a lot harder than making a snap judgement.

I'd love for this person to spend 24 hours with me. Let's see who has better eating habits.

Nevermind that she's putting my mother in charge of something that's not her responsibility.

Nevermind that the only time my child has eaten McDonald's or KFC have been while visiting my parents. Nevermind that her cookie consumption multiplies when she's with them. But that's fine. They're grandparents; I don't mind if they spoil her a bit. I'm not a total food Nazi, although I did ask them to never darken the door of McDonald's with my child again. It's bad enough that she recognizes that damn clown solely from underwriting promos on PBS. But I digress. Telling my parents to make sure we feed her right is like someone telling a heroin dealer, "Make sure your customer goes easy on the smack."

I'd like to think that my intense reaction to this is rooted in my current intra-uterine happenings, that it's just a bad case of the monthlys that's leading me to be so fucking angry about this. But obviously, a nerve has been struck.

Not long after this conversation, Clara Jane and I went out to lunch at my coffeehouse. At the table next to us was another mom with a little boy about a year older than Clara Jane. I've seen them in there several times, but we've never talked. While we waited for our lunches, the boy ate a chocolate chip cookie roughly the size of his face and drank half of a 12-ounce Sprite (clear cup - I could see). I'm not judging her; she's got every right to feed her kid whatever she wants. But dammit. God fucking dammit. My kid had the same lunch as hers - turkey sandwich with fruit salad, minus the cookie, substituting organic milk for the soda. And yet, if you put me beside the other mom, guess which one would be lectured on the most nutritious way to feed her kid.

It would be me. Because I'm fat and she's skinny. As I watched her kid drink his sugary soda and eat his pre-lunch cookie, a thought kept popping into my head: "She doesn't have to deal with the shit I'm dealing with right now."

Yeah, life ain't fair. The world ain't fair. I've accept that and can deal with it. Chances are the other mom has people criticizing her parenting skills for some reason just as stupid as the "fat parents = junk-food-eating kids" logic. Because that's the thing: it's always going to be something. There are always going to be people who take one tiny bit of information and assume they know the whole story, and what's best.

We have a name for those people: Fucking Idiots.

I'm at peace with my body. It's taken so many years, but I'm there. I know I'm doing the best with the cards I've been dealt and I don't waste my time pining for things to be different. I focus on living my life and making the best possible choices for our minds, bodies and souls. For the most part I'm perfectly fine with that and don't really care what anyone else thinks. Which is the real kicker in all of this: that I'm allowing an ill-informed, superficial false assumption to make me feel like shit.

Posted by Robin at 02:50 PM | Comments (15)

August 05, 2005

Mama Snark

I had a moment today that illustrated to me just how mean I'm becoming, and how easily it would be to turn into one of those snarky women who lords motherhood over others.

Some background: There's a local chef I absolutely, positively cannot stand. Why? Because she's a snarky-ass competitve bitch, that's why. She's a bitter, bitter woman. We used to teach culinary classes at the same arts center, and I once offered to help her with a project after she spent a few days sweet-talking me. As soon as I agreed, she turned into Control Freakasaurus. She went from kissing my ass to yelling at me in less than 24 hours, so I politely told her I wouldn't be able to help and bailed. That was over three years ago, and she still holds a grudge. Luckily, I rarely see this woman. But when I do I'm either greeted with a backhanded compliment or I'm ignored. I usually prefer the latter.

The last time I spoke with her was when I was pregnant. I was five months pregnant and teaching my last class. She decided to sit in on my class, unannounced and unenrolled. Oh, and she also decided to show up 90 minutes early. She sat in the kitchen while I did my prep work, asking thinly-veiled contemptuous questions:

"Why are you sitting to do your prep?" she asked, as if she was my boss and it was any of her business.

"Doctor's orders," I replied, not even turning to face her as I worked. "I'm supposed to limit my time on my feet, so I'm saving it for the three-hour class." I sunk my 10-inch knife through a big, stinky onion, dreaming that it was her head.

"Well, you're not that far along. You're only five months," she snorted.

I thanked her for her educated medical opinion and threw a pot of boiling water on her crotch. Unfortunately, she recovered enough to spend the rest of the classtime correcting me with incorrect information, gossiping and giggling with the center's director, passing out business cards for her catering company and loudly referring to her assistant as "that little Chinese Jew-girl".

Anyway, that has nothing to do with what happened today; it's just an illustration of the type of person we're dealing with.

I saw her at Target today, but I don't think she saw me. If she did, she didn't acknowledge me, which is fine. She's been known to do that before, like last year when I saw her at a local farmer's market. I was visiting a vendor friend of mine, who was later bombarded with questions by the chef regarding me and my presence. In my head, though, I imagined what I would say if she plastered that fake smile on her face and said hello today.

I imagined saying, "Oh, I'm not teaching anymore, and rarely catering. I left the magazine. It all just seems so frivilous, making overpriced, fancy food when compared to nurturing this seed I have so lovingly sown."

I would flutter my eyelashes as a flock of tiny doves lifted my rosy-cheeked cherub from the shopping cart. My full, motherly breasts would commence lactating from the sheer parental glee of it all.

"I'm sure you understand, don't you? No, wait - I'm so sorry. You're not a mother, are you? Well, it's never too late. I mean, you're only in your early fifties; you can adopt. What? You're only 43? Oh, my mistake. Toodles!"

Clara Jane and I would be whisked away on a plush Oriental rug, carried aloft by a band of friendly forest animals, the air beneth our asses as we drifted through the check-out and into a world filled with familial bliss.

My second option was to just look her in the eye and say, "Holy crap, Chef You are a total motherfucking bitch." And you know what? I was 100% prepared to say that, and a bit disappointed that the opportunity didn't arise. Granted, no wildlife would have been involved, but I think that would have been a fair trade for seeing the look on her face.

Posted by Robin at 03:19 PM | Comments (5)

July 22, 2005

Heatwave Lockdown - Day 2

Captain's Log: Day after yesterday
Time:10:50 a.m.
Outside Temperature:90 degrees F.
Heat Index:100 degrees F.
Number of children's books read: 4
Number of times Here Comes Peter Cottontail! has been read at insistance of child who doesn't realize it's not Easter: 3
Number of minutes napped: Five, but it might all be an elaborate ruse on the part of the child, who could very well be lying in wait in her crib. I must be careful. There is no situation as dangerous for a captain as mutiny.
Number of crayons chewed by child:Unknown, although I observed orange, purple and green-yellow streaks on her teeth. Was unable to examine molars for additional colors.

We have arrived at day two in a vessel that is in disarray after passing through the Clara Jane Really Big Tantrum Meteor Belt last night. Thankfully, help arrived late yesterday afternoon in the form of the child's father, but he faired as poorly as me. In attempt to distract the child from the monotony of the vessel, he removed her to the basement in hopes of tricking the child into believing she was out of the vessel. His attempt failed, and the child retaliated with a blast of flatulence so fierce that they beat a hasty retreat from the basement.

My mind has started wandering due to this extended stretch of captivity. Mindy has provided much to keep my mind occupied with her question regarding which ten fictional characters I would like to engage in naked relations with.

1. Jack - Coffee and Cigarettes. Yeah, I'm cheating. It's really Jack White as himself, but I do think Jack's personea is a bit fictional, so I'll take it.
2. Llyod Dobler - Say Anything.
3. Holden Caulfield - The Catcher in the Rye. I'm pretty sure I could have fixed him.
4. God - While there is much debate as to whether God is real or fictional, I'd totally do him if he'd promise to drop the temperature to a respectable 80 degrees.
5. Joel Robinson - Mystery Science Theater 3000. He knows what it's like to be in lock-down. He knows the wanton desires it fuels. He knows ...

DANGER!!! DANGER!!!! It was a ruse! The child isn't sleeping!! Abort dirty little fantasies! Prepare for battle!! The enemy child is going with a new tactic! Instead of punching, shrieking, and trying to yank my nipples from my tits, she's going with the go-limp-and-wriggle option! We didn't cover this in boot camp, Motherfuckers!!! The horror! The horror!

Posted by Robin at 10:49 AM | Comments (6)

July 21, 2005

Heatwave Lockdown - Day 1

Captain's Log: July 20-something, I never know the date, 2005.
Time: 11:22 a.m.
Outside temperature: 92 degrees F.
Heat Index: 101 degrees F.
Number of children's books read: 8
Number of times Black Cat Creeping has been read at insistance of child who doesn't realize it's not Halloween: 4
Number of minutes napped: Big fat fucking zero
Highest levels of decibels reached by child's shrieks: 134

It's the first day of Heat Warning 2005 and my pale, pale child and I have taken to our house for protection. Unfortunately, my pale, pale child needs daily time outside the house, lest she become crazed from the utter lack of stimuli provided by me, her mother and captain.

I fear this lack of stimuli is causing the child to snap under the pressure. She has developed a fear of sleep. Specifically, she fears that, if she falls asleep, she will eventually wake up and to her horror, everything will be exactly as it was when she fell asleep. This has put the child in an extreme state of agitation, and has left me with a diminished capacity for fulfilling my captain's duties. For I, too, fear sleep. Case in point: last night, after the child awoke at 12:30 a.m., I was able to spend 15 minutes soothing the child back to sleep. However, so fearful was I of drifting off to sleep only to be jolted awake by yet another nighttime screaming fit, I, too, was unable to sleep.

We are tired. So very, very tired.

Please send emergency back-up provisions in the form of a nanny, a bottle of Ambien, some baby Benadryl and a case of vodka.


Posted by Robin at 11:21 AM | Comments (8)

July 20, 2005

Night of the Pot Roast, Day of the Guckie

It hasn't been a great week in the Land of Mom. At this moment Clara "Warrior" Jane and I are engaged in yet another Battle of the Nap. She's in her crib, and just when I think she's asleep, she shrieks, and I pound my head against the hardwood floor. This child has been fighting sleep all week, including a three-hour middle-of-the-night screamfest on Monday night/Tuesday morning. At four a.m. I was ready to grab my carkeys and get the hell out. The battle ended when B. brought her to bed with us. They slept wonderfully. I half-dozed with a pair of little feet planted in my back, attempting to cause permanent spinal damage.

The plus side of all this: I was able to prepare a lovely pot roast dinner with tender little potatoes and succulent baby carrots at 2:30 a.m., ensuring that my family would be well-fed the following evening, since I knew I would be Drooling Zombie Mom by that time. Also, smacking around a big chunk of beef was a better means of venting my frustrations than running away from home in the middle of the night.

I did some reading - after making the pot roast, of course - and it all appears to be normal. Clara Jane's 17 months old; too old for two naps a day, not old enough for one nap a day. Having had only one nap that day, she was overtired and couldn't sleep, which doesn't make any damn since at all. That's like saying, "I was starving so I ate that entire pot roast and all the tender little potatoes and succulent carrots, but I succumbed to malnutrition nonetheless." Whatever. All I know is this might possibly be a preview of the next year of our lives. If that's the case, we're going to be eating a lot of goddamn pot roast.

Another problem we're having seems to involve my child being a tad lonley. On Sunday we spent the day with Kara, Sara, Cyn, her 7-month old son Connor (who is so delictable that I'm going to eat him and then use his gorgeous, super-long eyelashes for floss when I'm finished), Stacey and her gorgeous four-year-old daughter, who is a memeber of the Claire and Clara Jane Mutual Admiration Society. Between the pure bliss of hollering, "It's a baby! It's a baby! It's a baby!" everytime she glanced at Connor, and having Claire showering her with affection and bunny attacks, Clara Jane got a little spoiled. On Monday, she talked about babies all day. She would cry to see the baby on my computer (meaning the photo of her I have on my desktop). She'd gaze into the mirror wistfully and murmur, "*sigh* It's a baby." Such longing! Such despair! Such middle-of-the-night shrieking!

So yesterday afternoon, sleep-starved and shaky as I was, we ventured to Hartford in search of caffiene for me and babies for Clara Jane. Just another day of keeping up with our joneses.

As luck would have it, there was a 22-month-old boy and his mom in the play area when we arrived, and Clara Jane was raring to go. She wiggled away from me while I was waiting for my latte and went to make his acquaintance. I followed, took a seat on the couch, and nodded to this boy's mom, who sat on the window seat across from me. "How old is he?" I asked, which is momspeak for, "Oh sweet Jesus, I need some grown-up interaction. I see that you have a small one, too, and therefore you probably needed grown-up interaction, too. Let's save ourselves from these tiny sleepless wonders!"

She curtly answered and, as almost an afterthought, asked for Clara Jane's age.

Well, that was refreshing. After that exchange I can probably go another week without stimulating adult conversation, for I am an adult conversation camel, able to take teensy tiny little bits of conversation, which store then in my hump to be divvied out during the long, long days where my conversations revolve around sippy cups, poop and how the kitty-cat says meow.

Soon, the mom was joined by two men, also bearing girl-children, ages 13 and 18 months. This information, I gleened via eavesdropping, since my presence wasn't acknowledged at all, even though I was sitting five feet from them and my child was informing their children that kitty-cats say meow, horsies say neigh and guckies say GACK GACK GACK GACK GACK GACK GACK!!!!!!! At least one member of my family was having a meaningful conversation.

So I eavesdropped while I drank my coffee and watched the kids. The other parents were co-workers, teachers at the same high school. Upon learning this I didn't begrudge them much. Had they just been a playgroup giving me the snub, I would have been thoroughly pissed. Instead, I just felt a little dumb, listening to them talk about when they got their masters degrees, whether or not they were going to pursue PhDs, and what advanced degrees their spouses held.

Their talk eventually turned to work, and their attention away from their children. I managed to pay attention to both, and I was struck by how the parents' personalities blended with those of their kids. The boy turned out to be The Hitter, and his mother The Pushover. "Now G., we didn't hit." No, actually Mom, we do hit. A lot. The youngest girl's dad blended quietly into the group as he daughter silently unloaded the bookcase. He slipped back to retrieve her, leaving the mountain of books on the floor, as if they had escaped from the shelves without a sound and certainly without a 13-month-old's assistance.

But the real kicker was the 18-month-old's father. Loud and brash, he chortled when he announced, "In my world history class, I can teach Rome in a day! GUH GUH GUH GUH GUH!!!!". He loudly proclaimed that he and his South American wife were teaching their daughter to be bilingual. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that's awesome. What I didn't find so awesome was how, when he spoke to her in English, he used a somewhat normal volume, but when he spoke in Spanish, he did so loudly, while looking around to see if anyone noticed that, hey! He's speaking Spanish! When that didn't garner much attention, he took hold of the coffeehouse's battered guitar and loudly began strumming, blaming the guitar's one broken string for its lack of musicality. Yeah. Just keep thinking that, you balding, braying jackass attention whore.

Likewise, his daughter dominated the other children, shrieking and squawking, but never uttering a word in English or Spanish. It appeared that her primary language was something from "Lord of the Flies", as were her play tactics. She was a toy thief, a screamer, and a hitter. She's aspiring to be a biter, I'm guessing.

And then there was Clara Jane, playing somewhat outside the group and quietly moving on to another toy when the one she was playing with was stolen by the other kids. She didn't push into their group, didn't assert herself, but relished in whatever attention they tossed her way. And I wondered, as I sat on the couch, eavesdropping and a bit lonely, if someday Clara Jane would find herself doing the same thing while the others fought and brayed.

Posted by Robin at 10:46 AM | Comments (6)

July 14, 2005

The Babysitter Who Never Was - And Never Will Be

I've got a confession. Before I became a mom, I wasn't always as understanding and generous with my friends who had children before me. Namely, I couldn't get my head wrapped around why they couldn't go out and do fun stuff, sans kids, occasionally. "Just get a damn babysitter!", I would think when faced with an unavailable friend who had either cancelled or nixed plans because of kids.

Two things never occured to me: 1) getting a babysitter isn't exactly a cake walk, and 2) perhaps my friends enjoyed the company of their children more than my company, and using the can't-find-a-sitter excuse is much more polite than saying, "Thanks, but I'd rather change diapers than go for drinks with you".

Hey, I never claimed that I'm not an asshole.

Oh, but karma is a lovely thing. Because guess what? I don't have one single solitary bit of outside childcare! I'm not saying that as a dig to moms who utilize sitters and day care. I'm saying it as, "Get me - I'm an idiot who's too neurotic to leave her kid with someone else!"

Part of the problem is, B. and I have no family nearby. My entire family is three hours away. His is 13 horus away. Makes for a bitch of a baby pick-up. Also, most of our friends are in a similar boat. They have their hands full with their own kids, families, jobs, etc.

The only time in Clara Jane's life - all 17 months of it as of tomorrow - that B. and I have gone out without her have been the occasions when my parents are in town, or when Clara Jane is visiting them. Really, I'm not complaining. B. has absolutely no problem staying home with Clara Jane while I go on the occasional galavant with my friends. And for the most part, I don't mind that an evening out consists of a party of three. We have no qualms about taking Clara Jane to dinner. Considering that most pre-baby evenings out consisted of dinner and a trip to the bookstore, things really haven't been that different.

But still, not only would it be nice to have a babysitter for the occasional grown-up evening, but it's just smart. Because you just never know when there's going to be a situation that requires adult supervision.

I've left Clara Jane in the care of my next-door neighbor on a few occasions, but stopped when I realized I wasn't 100% comfortable leaving my child with a chain-smoking racist Jesus freak who would call me to come get Clara Jane anytime she cried. I don't think my neighbor fully understood the concept of babysitting. You see, the whole idea behind babysitting is that, when the baby cries, you take care of the situation because the child's mom is paying you to do so. I know the term is confusing. I mean, babysitting implies sitting in the presence of a baby. In my neighbor's case, it involved sitting on a milk crate in the doorway to her back porch, letting in the January air while chain-smoking. No wonder my kid cried. Maybe my neighbor would have understood the job better if I called it babyresponding-to-the-kids-beck-and-call-you-redneck-dimwit.

So, we've been without any sort of childcare since January. While cruising Craiglist recently, I found something that looked promising - a stay-at-home mom in my neighborhood, in her 30s with two young daughters, certified in CPR, looking to do some babysitting. I thought, what the hell. Doesn't hurt to explore our options, does it? I emailed her, asking for more info.

Within minutes, I got a response with her address and phone number. I hate talking on the phone. And these days, with Clara Jane, talking on the phone is difficult. I'd much rather make arrangements via email if at all possible. More specifically, I'd rather find out via email if a person is a nut, rather than getting stuck in a 3-hour phone conversation with a nut. Trust me, it's happened. I'm a freak magnet when it comes to the phone.

I didn't immediately respond to her message, since I happened to be rather busy that day. But that's ok, because the next morning, I had yet another email waiting from the potential babysitter. And another one later that day, asking when would be a good time to talk about her caring for my "precious daughter". Okay, so she's a little ... enthusiastic. And reminds me a bit of the Wicked Witch and her "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!" I emailed her, apologized for being slow and told her I'd call after the weekend. Which was a lie, although I didn't realize it at the time. I got another email, immediately. This one included an invitation to a Mary Kay party.

Uh oh.

In the past four days I have recieved two emails to Discovery Toys parties hosted by this woman, and two for Mary Kay parties. Apparently, she likes to sell stuff. My mother's intuition, which is a cynical but often accurate asshole, tells me that this woman possibly babysits to gain new clients. Or so she can sell their children on the black market.

So, I'm still without a babysitter. But I did hire a guy to mow our overgrown jungle every two weeks. Here's hoping he's not a fertilizer salesman.


Posted by Robin at 10:33 AM | Comments (7)

July 13, 2005

Note to self: Read Sweetney, not reviews on Amazon.com

While doing my morning drink-coffee-read-blogs-while-child-demolishes-banana-and-Cheerios routine, I read this, which had me yelling, "You tell it, Sister!" and "You go, girl!!", phrases which I 1)never say, and 2)make me want to punch people who say those phrases in the neck. But the sentiment was there, as so much of what Sweetney wrote rings so very true with me.

It's hard stuff, this motherhood business. I've got a book on my to-read table right now called The 7 Stages of Motherhood. The other day, when I went to Amazon to get a link to the book for my sidebar, I just about kicked my computer when I read one of the customer reviews. Click on the above link and scroll down to the review titled "Extremely Negative, Downright Depressing." Seriously. I can't defend the book, because I haven't read it yet. And I understand that the book didn't fit her experience as a mother. But Jesus. I can't even articulate anything here because of the blinding shriek of rage that's currently eating my eyeballs.

I don't fault mothers who have wonderful motherhood experiences. Not in the slightest. In fact, generally I'm one of them. I have an extremely easy child who's been healthy, developmentally on par, and generally a delight to raise. But that doesn't mean there aren't negatives. Is there anything positive in life that doesn't bring negatives with it? Of course not. Do I know any mothers who live idyllic lives in which everything about motherhood is a joy? Only the ones who ingest extreme quantities of Valium and vodka.

And to answer the question Kelly posted in her review, holy shit yes, breastfeeding can be awful! Sometimes, when a child is unable to breastfeed, it's so awful that it destroys Mama's self-esteem - which has been battered by months of pregnancy hormones. Breastfeeding can, indeed, be painful! Nipples generally don't bleed, Lady, unless they're pumping out milk. And I dare you to get a decent night's sleep while laying on two engorged, rock-hard boulders. Plugged milk ducts and mastisis are a hoot, too. Is it really, really hard? Well, if you think zooming down the highway in the passenger seat with a breast pump plugged into the cigarette lighter and a horn on each tit is hard, then yes.

I know I shouldn't get this angry about a stupid customer review on Amazon. I really shouldn't. But goddammit, this woman seems unable to accept that perhaps not everyone has a mothering experience that involves all the softly-lit baby at the breast bullshit. Few people have that. Most of us have experiences that, while extremely rewarding, make us doubt everything we do. And while the relationships we build with our children might turn out to be the greatest relationships of our lives, it's often at the detriment of the relationships with our partners, friends, and other family members. It ain't free, Babe.

And when you don't recognize that perhaps most mothers do have at least some negative experiences and feelings toward motherhood, you're not doing a favor to anyone. You're just telling other moms that they're not good enough and trust me, most of us tell ourselves that enough that we don't need anyone else saying it to us. The real downside of this: when you bring down other moms, you in turn bring down their children, because a mom who is continually brought down isn't going to be as good of a mother.

I've noticed lately that I'm at a bit of a crossroads as a mother. I wasn't one of those moms who fell in love with her child at first sight. I loved her because she was mine, but it took time for me to really surrender my heart to the little person whose poopy diapers I change. I wasn't crazy about the baby stage. For me it was scary and frustrating, filled with so much questioning and self-doubt. My overriding thought during this time was that my daughter deserved better than I was giving her.

As she's grown into toddlerhood, I've started to hit my stride as a mom. It's fun now. She's now big enough to consciously return my affection. She's big enough to voice her opinions to an extent, to let the world know what rocks and what sucks. Like this morning, when we were clapping along to the Beatles' "Love Me Do". I momentarily stopped clapping and she squealed, "Clap, Mama! Clap!" In my mind, that was ample payback for at least a few days of post-partum depression hell.

This newfound bonding with my child has led to changes elsewhere in my life, and I find myself facing hard decisions. Staying in the workforce, for starters. At this point I only have my big toe in the workforce, and it's been difficult to gradually chip away at my career. It's a part of my life that was important to me for a long time. The changes in my relationships have been even more difficult. Of course, I don't have nearly as much time to devote to my friends. But more importantly, I find myself not having the emotional energy to put into some of my relationships. I wish I did. I really do. But to devout that emotional energy, I would have to take it from my relationship with my child, and I'm certainly not willing to do that. That's one of the hardest realizations that I've ever had.

I won't even get into the marital changes because Sweetney pretty much covered them, and I don't want to get into those particulars of my life on my blog.

If all this makes me negative and depressing, so be it.

Posted by Robin at 09:15 AM | Comments (15)

June 14, 2005

Mofo

Yep, I'm just that boring this week. I figure you have no interest in tubs of couscous salad, or the fact that B. has the sniffles and I have my period for the first time in I don't know how long (thanks, PCOS!).

I could tell you that B. rearranged our bedroom on Sunday, and the accumulated six years of dust behind the dressers is probably why he feels like shit. But the new arrangement is so wonderful that I now have a little crush on my bedroom. Everytime I walk past the bedroom door and see our bed facing me, open and inviting, I get a little tingly and long to take a nap.

Then there's the fact that I'll be buying White Stripes and Springsteen tickets in the next two weeks, since my favorite artists are rewarding my devotion by emptying my bank account in one fell swoop. I could be buying Weezer/Ben Folds tickets, too, but I've got to draw the line somewhere. At least the Nine Inch Nails show that was announced this week is happening on a weekend I'll be out of town, so I won't have to sell plasma to buy diapers.

But that's really all the excitment that's happening this week. I want to talk to you about something. Some of you are here and you really shouldn't be.

That's right. I'm talking to you, the hounds who are looking for hot mamas. You know who you are, looking for women of child-bearing age who might get a little freaky and take photos to share with you.

What I'm trying to say is, zip up your pants and move along Oedipus. There's nothing for you here.

For some reason - probably because of the word "mom" in my URL and my prolific and liberal use of the word "fuck" - I get a lot of hits from people looking for mothers having relations. Most of these searchs originate from MSN's search engine, where I seem to be quite popular.

Since I'm a mother and I have loads of spare time for activities such as bon-bon consumption, soap opera viewing, and backward cowgirl humping, I used some of that time today to do a little data collection. Out of 100 random hits on my blog today, here are examples of things searchers were hoping to find at poppymom.com, along with my site's rank in that search:

Well, I do need to finance the upcoming concert deluge ...
mom needs cash - #3
mom for cash sex - #1

Virginia Woolf was so right.
my mom room - #2

A little sex ed lesson: if she's a mom, chances are likely this isn't her first time. You didn't get here by stork, Dumbass.
first time sex and mom - #5

Odd Asian condiments, anyone?
mom cock - #1

What my child will no doubt be calling me in 12 years.
fucking mom - #2

Ok, this one's not about cooch, but I thought I'd offer some motherly advice: maybe you shouldn't work in an office.
how to fight sleep in office - #7

I do and do and do for you kids, and this is the thanks I get? You're going to miss me when I'm dead. You'll see.
mom doing sex - #1

For the pet-lovers.
mom fucking our dog - #1

Surely you can be more creative than this. You're a smart boy. You're just not trying hard enough.
mom sex - #8
mom sex story - #4
mom sex photo - #1

I also took a few minutes to run these search phrases through Google, and guess what I found? PORN!! Not one single link to poppymom.com. So, a word to the horny: quit using MSN for your websearches.

Sure, I know that by posting these search phrases, I'm just inviting more little pervs into sore and sorry disappointment by leading them on a wild goose chase through tales of non-sleeping babies and grocery shopping. Let it be a lesson to them to use a decent search engine.

Trust me. A mother knows.

Posted by Robin at 08:59 PM | Comments (7)

June 01, 2005

It's amazing I'm able to make friends at all with these mad social skillz

This morning Clara "River's Edge" Jane and I met some of our friends at the zoo. This is a group of women - four of us - that I met on Babycenter when we were all pregnant. We all have daughters born within ten days of each other.

One of the moms moved to St. Louis from Detroit during her pregnancy, and unfortunately (for the rest of us - I think she's glad about the situation) her family is moving back to Detroit next week. So, we all got together for one last outing this morning.

But that's neither here nor there, really.

The kids were having a snack break, and us moms - as moms are wont to do - were comparing teething horror stories. I participated in the following exchange:

Angie: When does teething end?
Me (perplexed): Uh .... when they get all their teeth?

I am so smooth.

(Hi Angie! I told you I would be blogging that!)


Clara "I Dig Hippos" Jane and me. I was standing on my foot, instead of gnawing on it, for once.

Posted by Robin at 04:00 PM | Comments (6)

May 31, 2005

It's a tidbit kind of day

I'm tired, so stringing together something thoughtful and pithy probably isn't going to happen. Here's some chunks from my day:

Clara "Ambien" Jane woke up before 7 a.m. this morning. Now, I know those of you with early-rising children are going to hate me for this, and I totally encourage you to hurl heavy items and obscenities at me. But dammit, it's soooooooooo hard when she wakes up that early. She usually sleeps until 8-8:30. I'm spoiled. Slap me.

But the good news: we were able to make our weekly Target pilgrimage early, before all the good parking spaces by the cart corrals were taken. While we were there, we had the type of encounter that leads to me drawing conclusions about the lack of friendliness in this city.

There was another mom that we kept seeing in the store. She had an infant and a little boy, about two years old. Granted, it was before 10 a.m. and she was carting around a couple of kids, which gives her every right to be surly. I would be, too. I smiled every time I saw her, and every time she glared at me.

But her little boy ... oh, he had eyes for Clara Jane. Whenever we'd pass he'd just gaze at her and grin. Around the fifth time we saw them, he paused, smiled, and said hi to her.

Clara Jane looked at him, looked at me, pointed at him and announced, "Mama! He's a baby!" The poor little guy looked absolutely crushed, not realizing that in Clara Jane's vernacular, everyone is a baby. His mother glared at me extra-hard for that one.

Clara Jane asked to take a nap when we got home. Parents with poor sleepers, you're welcome to kick me in the shins and my husband in the groin for that one. If you could see how Clara Jane presses her hand to the side of her face (the sign for "sleep") and sighs, "Seeeeep," you'd probably want to kick her, too. Or maybe just startle her. It's adorable and it makes me absurdly thankful that for the most part, I have the easiest child in the world.

She napped. I knitted. I've finally started working on my first sweater project. It's a darling little pink and pink varigated striped hoodie from the beautiful Nursery Knits. I finished the baby blanket I was knitting; now I just need to learn how to block it.

This afternoon, after making catering deliveries, I sat myself down and watched a rerun of "Oprah" regarding how women should release their inner sexpot. I've got some issues with this. And of course, you're going to hear them:

1. One week, Oprah is whole-heartedly agreeing with Trinny and Susannah that us gals need to give up the flimsy support-nothing underdrawers and go for the supportive granny garments that are ugly on the inside but pretty on the outside. Now Oprah's whole-heartedly agreeing with Kim Catrall that we need to ditch the granny panties and go with the thongs. Which one is it, Oprah? And why are you so interested in my underdrawers, anyway?

2. Don't tell me that I have an inner sexpot who's dying to get out. I had an inner sexpot, once, way back when. I killed her. She was crushed to death under the mounds of belly flab after the support system of my abdominals muscles was destroyed to retrieve the human being that was created by that inner sexpot. Ever see a front porch collapse with a hound dog under it? That's what happened to her. And just to make really sure she's dead, I suffocate her every day with my granny panties.

3. Frumpy, balding men who are still wearing their circa 1983 Member's Only jackets in a non-ironic way who complain that their wives are no longer the slutty little dreamboats who wooed them into marriage need to be crushed under a porch. Or they need to experience first-hand the inner-thigh chafing that happens when you wear a G-string and hump a pole to your Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease DVDs.

I'm not feeling very empowered right now, Oprah.

I'm supposed to go to the zoo tomorrow, but I'm thinking about cancelling. I'm going to call in fat and frumpy. You know you're feeling fat and frumpy when you don't feel glam enough to go to the zoo.

Posted by Robin at 08:15 PM | Comments (8)

May 11, 2005

Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby's head

As you regular readers know, I don't really do concert reviews. I'm not a music critic. Other people do a much better job of concert reviews than I do. You can read one of them on Interference.

My post-concert posts have two possible directions: making fun of my fellow concert-goers, or waxing philosophical. Monday night I saw U2 in Chicago. Guess which way the discussion is going.

The set list is available here.In other coolness: this particular show was filmed for their next DVD release, which tickles me to no end.

Of course, there were moments of wit and hilarity. Since our seats were in the nosebleed realm, which is always entertaining when attending a show with Kara, who's afraid of heights.

"Oh, you're not gonna fall!" I told her during her post-Kings of Leon hand-wringing. "Not unless I push you, anyway."

"THAT'S WHAT I'M AFRAID OF!!!!"

Later, Holley nudged me, laughing as she yelled, "We paid $100 each for these seats!" And then we all laughed and laughed and laughed. The laugh of the damned, of course.

A bit later, when Kara went in search of a toilet, Holley suggested that we throw Kara's jacket, just to freak her out. I thought that was a great idea, and that we should leave a note on her seat that said, "You're next!". Unfortunately, I would have had to borrow a pen and paper from Kara (which she had on hand to write a rough draft of the terse letter she's sending to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, but that's another story).

While we were waiting, four conical, glowing red lights were lowered, one for each member of the band. I tried to tell Holley that they were special U2 heat lamps, specially designed for maximum pop star freshness, but employees are required to dispose of any pop star left under the lamps for more than 15 minutes. I wasn't exactly successful in relaying this info, because I cracked myself the fuck up and couldn't get my entire long-winded fast-food joke out without heaving with laughter.

Obviously, I had a touch of the altitude sickness, coupled with the bad karma that comes from eating a 1/2 pound of pure Chicago beef under an autographed photo of Oprah at the Palace Grill.

Now, before I get into the show itself, let me tell you something. In the big moments of my life, especially over the past four years or so, U2 has always been present. When I know I need to walk out of my house to face something big, and I'm having trouble doing so, "Beautiful Day" appears, and I'm coaxed out of my home and my comfort zone, into new territory. It happened when we were trying to drag ourselves out before the Nov. 2001 U2 show camp-out, and when my friends and I were getting the gumption to hit the road for my 30th birthday road trip to Memphis. It happened the night I went to the hospital to give birth to Clara Jane. After 14 hours of early-stage labor, wondering with each pain how much longer I could stall, "Beautiful Day" appeared on VH1. It was the last song I heard played in my home before it changed forever. It was how I knew it was time to make the most frightening journey of my life.

About a month prior, it was another U2 song that triggered the notion that I was on the verge of something big. I was undergoing some tests to make sure all was well with Clara Jane. One of the tests involved measuring her heart rate and movement to ensure that they corresponded with each other. Just as the nurse started the test, "Where The Streets Have No Name" started playing on the lite-rock station the nurses were listening to. The song starts quiet, with a flutter of melody from The Edge's guitar, building into a racing heartbeat of drums and bass until it explodes with Bono ...

I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down these walls that hold me inside.

And as the music built, my baby began to wiggle, then tumble. By the time Bono's voice burst through, I could feel my child in every square inch of my body. She gyrated, kicked and twisted. Her little heart thundered in jagged lines on the fetal monitor. For five and a half minutes I was more aware than ever of the human being inside me, seperate from me.

The song ended, her movements returned to normal, her heart rate slowed. It was just a momentary burst of interuterine excitement, the fetal equivilent of stopping your daily routine, cranking up your favorite song and pogoing around the living room to blow off a little steam.

In the eight months I had carried her, she never seemed real. I felt her movements, but the concept of carrying another human being just felt completely abstract. She was never as real to me as she was in those five and a half minutes. Music could move her, just as it has always moved me.

My daughter and I had found our first common interest.

Why do humans dance? Why do we bob our heads to a tune? Because we're wired to do so. It's in us before we exit the womb.

Can you hear me when I sing...
You're the reason I sing
You're the reason why the opera is in me

Bono wrote those words in a song for his deceased father. I was dreading hearing those words in concert, in the aftermath of the most recent blow-out with my own father. But it barely fazed me on Monday night, when I expected it to lead to a blubbering breakdown. My heart seems to have decided on its own volition to no longer dwell on every single way I have failed him in my life. I can't feel bad about that anymore, because it's damn near destroyed me, these feelings of never being adequate, of knowing that the only person I ever wanted to please still sees me as being little more than a lazy smart ass.

Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?

I'm trying to reclaim it. I can see it. It's there. I can almost touch it, if I reach.

In all of the glitz and rock star spectacle, beyond the screaming crowd and filming, it came down to two songs for me. Two songs that turned me inward and left me tear-streaked and shaking, reminders of what this life of mine is supposed to be about.

"Beautiful Day", six songs into the show:

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

Words I've heard so many times over the past four and a half years. Words that have always given me a little push when I needed it. But they didn't push this time. They pulled me back.

As much as Kara fears falling from the nosebleed seats, I have feared falling of late. In the worst moments of the past 15 months, when I've felt inadequate at best, and like a whirling sandstorm set to destroy everything I love and myself at worst, I have felt myself falling. It would be so easy to fall, so easy to just let go of this life and be done with the pain. A few times my fingertips have relaxed and I've just about let go. Said my goodbyes, made my peace, and waited to drop.

I know I'm not a hopeless case. I know I'm not a hopeless case. I know I'm not a hopeless case. Sometimes, I need Bono to remind me of that in person, in the presence of 30,000 other people.

And in that moment on Monday, I felt something shift. A question answered. A flutter followed by a gyration that makes life real. Real and good.

Nine songs later, "Where the Streets Have No Name", and all I could think of was that little girl at home, the one who came to life for me during that song, the one I'm going to hang on for.

And once again, I walked out at the end of a U2 show completely shaken to my core, and reminded of what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, and what power there is in surrendering to something much larger than myself and having faith that I'll be caught should I lose my grip.

Today, Clara Jane and I were back to reality. Groggy breakfast. Swollen baby gums with teeth gleeming just under transluscent skin. Frantically rushing to take care of my basic hygeine and the bills while she napped. Grocery store and Target in the sweltering heat and humidity.

I was listening to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb as we ran our errands. While I've enjoyed it, it hasn't touched me like other U2 albums. But then again, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and All That You Can't Leave Behind didn't reach me at first. It took time.

Pulling into the Target parking lot, it suddenly meant something to me as I looked in the rearview mirror into those smiling blue eyes, the child giggling as she pulled her big toe to her mouth just because she knows it makes me laugh:

Baby slow down
The end is not as fun as the start
Please stay a child somewhere in your heart

I'll give you everything you want
Except the thing that you want
You are the first one of your kind

And you feel like no one before
You steal right under my door
I kneel 'cause I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you're not

Everywhere you go you shout it
You don't have to be shy about it

And I cried as I pulled into my parking space. I cried as I laughed at the giggling girl in the backseat with both of her bare big toes in her mouth without shyness, without fear and with nothing but love and joy.

Posted by Robin at 12:03 PM | Comments (5)