Triage

Things are going to be crazy these next ten days.

A very insightful woman that I once knew (who nonetheless had the unfortunate habit of speaking almost exclusively in the language of "cliche") once told me, "When you are juggling a lot of different balls in the air, you need to figure out which ones are glass and which ones are rubber."

Since I have already eliminated sleeping, my only rubber balls seem to be in either the "shaving my legs" and "blogging and the internets" areas.

So I am going to dust off a few vintage postings until I get back on track. I won't be able to read too many blogs either. But not because I don't love you...I'd give each and every one of you a big sloppy kiss if I could. With tongue, even. And I'll be back.

This post originally appeared here, and was created using child labor.



I'm sure THIS little project raised a few teacher eyebrows in The Girl's art class...

(More of The Girl's art below the fold...)

Someday, she'll realize that you don't ALWAYS need two people, thanks to the magic of electronic aids.

I'm not sure exactly what these love box items are, but I'm afraid to ask, because if she's been going through my drawers again I might have to answer some, er, 'probing questions'.

It helps to have a little something something to loosen things up and put you in the mood. Or to get you tipsy enough so that you can just lie back and think of the mother country.

When I was in high school, boys used "Drakkar Noir" cologne to serve this function.

Note to self: explain to The Girl (and especially someday, The Boy) that Love Pills are not a recommended method, unless you are looking to wind up in jail.

And that, my friends, is how the magic happens in the Manager Household.

Click here to read more.

What Could Have Been

Yesterday, I could have lost my son.

There was no showy drama: no squealing tires or screeching brakes; no speedy trips to the emergency room or sober-looking doctors with grim pronouncements; no scary strangers lurking at the playground.

It was just dinner.

Manager Dad was out, squeezing in a quick nine holes before the sun set. I was tired from unpacking and hadn’t had a chance to go to the store, so I excavated a meal from whatever was in the freezer and pantry: canned corn, a banana, some nuggets (chicken for The Girl, spinach for The Boy).

He took one look at his plate and threw a massive fit. I don’t know if it was exhaustion or leftover sadness from the end of our trip, but when I tried to talk to him about why he was upset, it made things worse. He finally shouted that the only way that he was going to eat anything would be if he ate alone (“I don’t want anybody LOOKING AT ME, MOMMY!”)

So The Girl and I ate dinner together, our attempts at conversation punctuated by fist-thumps and wails from the living room.

The Girl finished and went off to the playroom. The Boy finally started to calm down, and I tried to coax him to the dinner table with the promise of buttered toast if he would eat JUST ONE [DAMN] SPINACH NUGGET. (Which, by the way, were the exact same ones that he claimed were his favorites EVER, just one week ago.)

He harrumphed to his chair. And sulked. And squirmed. For the next twenty minutes, he stared at that nugget, poking and squishing and picking it up and dropping it over and over, until it was almost as cold as it had been when I first took it out of the freezer.

I got frustrated. I told him that I was tired of throwing away perfectly good food every day, and that I didn’t want to be at the table with him when he was using bad manners, and I got up and went into the kitchen. I watched him through the serving window; he had the nugget on a fork, and I thought, hey, that might have done the trick, he might finally eat the stupid thing.

I turned to the sink to start rinsing dishes when I heard him stomp into the kitchen; I turned around, ready to deliver some sort of exasperated remark when I noticed that his face was red and his eyes were wide and all that I could see was fear.

I ran to him and he doubled over. I might have said something like OHMYGODOHMYGODAREYOUOK? He could not answer. And I know now that sometimes the most frightening sound of all is the sound of nothing: no choking, no coughing, no breathing.

I don’t remember exactly how I managed to get myself to react. I got behind him and put a fist in my other hand, and put my arms around his waist and jerked hard and sharp up into his stomach. He threw up, a bright green asterisk on the wood floor. And then, finally, he sucked in a long, painful, crackling breath.

I pulled him close and he shoved his face into my neck. I felt the sharpness of his shoulder blades; his body was shaking, his heart thumping. He coughed and coughed, and with his head still buried in my hair, forlornly raised his arms over his head, just like his teachers taught him to do at school when he drinks too fast and it goes down the wrong pipe. We stood there in the kitchen, covered in breaded vomit, squeezing each other as if we were the only two people left in the world.

Yesterday, something as ordinary as one spinach nugget almost changed my life forever.

I think I might eventually forgive myself. I hope I might eventually forget.

Click here to read more.

A Statistical Analysis of My Post-Vacation Nervous Breakdown

Estimated days it will take to unpack and reassimilate all crap: 3

Percentage of tomato plants that died while we were away: 89%

Hours of unwatched shows on the DVR: 18

Toilets containing week-old unflushed kid pee: 1

Length of unmowed grass: 19 inches tall

Minutes that The Girl cried in the car on the way home: 27

Minutes that Spawn slept in the car: zero

Total pounds gained: 6

Number of digital photos to sort through: 734

Estimated percentage of digital photos that halfway decent: 12%

Unread work emails: 889 (before mailbox went over size limit and shut down)

Weight of unopened mail: 24 pounds

Months it will take to pay off vacation credit card debt: 2.5

Ratio of vacation fun to stressful aftermath: 1:1000

I'll get myself together and write something decent soon, I hope.

Click here to read more.

I Had The Time Of My Life

Day three of our vacation. Wish you were here?

It has been raining. Every. Single. Day. With no break in sight.

Being cooped up and forced to endure relentless family togetherness has sparked escalated levels of intra-Spawn violence, which, while irritating, at least gets them good and tired. So last night, exhaustion mixed with pathological boredom caused them to pass out early, opening up a rare opportunity for us to make progress towards meeting our recommended annual quota of marital orgasms.

But we needed to stall for a bit to make sure the early bedtime was going to stick. The house we're renting has a DVD player and a random assortment of movies, so I asked MD to pick one that might put us in the mood. But I guess I need to work on my communcation skills because he picked Escape From New York. While this may not be quite as erotic as my FAVORITE porn-ish film, I CAN say that a young Kurt Russell manhandling a massive penis substitute gun and sporting an oddly hot mullet and vintage 1980s fetishwear DEFINITELY gave me a few ideas in the fantasy role-playing area:

ROMANCE FORECAST: Partly aroused, with a 50% chance of intercourse

Things were looking promising when The Girl had a nightmare and woke up in hysterics. Two slices of toast and a chapter of “Diary of A Wimpy Kid” later, we finally got her settled down. But MD and I needed something to get us back on the road to freakin', so I put on a movie that I hadn't seen for twenty years, but that I remembered as being the SEXIEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. And all I have to say is that nobody puts Baby in a corner and anyone with half of an ovary will know that I am talking, of course, about Dirty Dancing.

Unfortunately, watching this again WITHOUT the benefit of raging seventeen-year-old hormones, it is painfully evident that this movie completely blows. I was trying to delude myself into thinking that MD didn't notice when he turned toward me, gazed deeply into my eyes, and murmured throatily, “I don’t think I’ve evern in my life watched a bigger steaming pile of crap,” and I could actually SEE his testestosterone level dropping.

ROMANCE FORECAST: Mostly emasculated, with sub-zero temperatures.

But then we opened a bottle of wine, and had a few good laughs about our idiotic teenage years, and well, since my own favorite movies usually end on an ambiguous note (think Blade Runner or The Matrix), I'll just end this right now and let you invent the ending that you find most satisfying.

Overall Probability of Vacation Sex: Undisclosed

Click here to read more.

Big Ben! Parliament!

Scene from The Manager household earlier today:

4:00 A.M. The Boy enters our bedroom, fully dressed and teeth brushed, wearing backpack full of toys and clutching Transformers action figure in each fist. Announces loudly that he’s ready to leave for vacation.

4:01 Manager Dad leads him back into his room and stuffs him back into bed, still fully clothed.

6:00 Alarm goes off. MD goes downstairs and circles mountain of luggage like a wary lion trying to fell a water buffalo. Begins loading car while Spawn toss random last-minute must-bring items onto the pile.

6:22 Head to Dunkin Donuts to procure trip rations.Finish first 24oz coffee in under 2 minutes; return to Dunkin Donuts for seconds.

6:40 Car packed; last-minute walkthrough of the house sparks meltdown when The Boy spots the Wii and is told that it's not coming with us.

7:00 Family in car, ready to depart.

7:01 The Girl requests a bathroom stop.

7:05 Leave driveway.

7:06 The Boy requests a bathroom stop. Return to house.

7:09 Leave driveway for the second time.

7:13 Get within twenty feet of the parkway on-ramp. Crisis erupts as The Girl discovers that her bagel has the wrong flavor cream cheese. Manager Dad turns the car around and heads back to Dunkin Donuts for bagel exchange.

7:22 Finally get on the parkway. Despite the bagel swap, The Girl decides that cream cheese "tastes funny". Boy refuses to eat his own bagel in a show of solidarity. Pass out granola bars and Smartfood.

7:26 Snack stash completely decimated. Spawn still hungry. Pass out gum and Tic Tacs.

7:27 First "Are we there yet?" Source child unknown.

7:29 The Boy requests another bathroom stop. No exits for twenty miles. MD pulls car over to shoulder and takes him on a nature hike.

7:31 Fight breaks out over which movie to put on the DVD player. "Alvin and the Chipmunks" beats "Underdog". Somewhere in Hollywood, Jason Lee cashes a fat royalty check while wearing an evil grin.

7:35 Sound of chipmunk singing causes me to repeatedly stab myself in the ears with plastic bagel knife.

7:36 Loud sobbing is heard; realize it's coming from me.

Only five more hours until we reach our destination.

Family vacation time. To improve the entertainment value of any other posts I might wring from my remaining brain cells, please Fedex survival kits containing sunscreen, booze, and National Enquirers to my attention, care of Pondsea House, Peaks Island, Maine.

Click here to read more.

How Books Are Destroying My Family, Part 1

Recently, I posted about how much I dread eating meals with Spawn.

One reason is that The Boy treats the "food" part of the meal as optional. He's always been picky, but things have gotten MUCH worse lately, to the point where he now eats roughly one forkful every other day. I am at a loss to explain how he has the energy to sustain his high level of physical activity, unless his body has figured out a way to extract calories from Crest Sparkle Fun toothpaste.

I’m afraid that if this goes on much longer he’ll go on a reverse growth spurt and start shrinking. He’s five years old, yet barely fills out a pair of 2T underpants. When I take him out in public, I can see thought bubbles floating over people's heads: She must be one of those crazy mothers that I've read about in the New York Post, starving that poor kid in a moldy basement somewhere.

So I've gone into damage control mode, trying to get him to eat at least ONE type of protein, and to figure out what touched off this charming little phase, because SOMEONE MUST PAY.

And then he brought home "Little House On the Prairie" and told me how they've been reading it at camp and how much he likes it, which surprised me because he usually isn't interested in books unless they have "Optimus Prime" in the title. But after reading a few pages, I understood the appeal. They might have been pluckily gentle pioneers on TV, but in the BOOKS, they're a bunch of axe-wielding survivalist nut jobs.

Excerpt from "Little House In The Big Woods:"
"It doesn’t hurt him, Laura,” Pa said. “We do it so quickly.” In a minute the hog stopped squealing. After that, Butchering Time was great fun. There was the heart, and the liver, and the tongue, and the head to be made into headcheese.

And THAT, my friends, is why The Boy no longer eats any sort of animal based protein. (As a sidenote, what in holy hell is HEADCHEESE? I thought it was the byproduct of a venereal disease, not something that anybody actually considered EATING.)

…Pa blew up the pig's bladder, which made a little white balloon, and he tied the end tight with a string and gave it to Mary and Laura to play with.

I blame THIS for the recent breakdown he had when we walked into his best friend's birthday party and spotted the decorations. And also for why he doesn't want to play soccer anymore.

“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

This is actually a quote from Hannibal Lecter, but it explains why I don't like Italian wines.

Now I am trying to find other activities for us to do together besides reading. But even the hot and heavy romance he used to have with the Wii has paled in comparison to his fascination with the ongoing saga of hog-slaughtering sadists.

And there are NINE frigging books in this series. Anybody know a good vegan recipe?

P.S. In response to comments, a running list of foods that The Boy refuses to eat can be found by clicking here.

Click here to read more.

Suck On This, Dilbert

Welcome to the "Open Your Office" Blogopalooza!

Earlier in the week I asked people to give us a peek at their work space - the place where they do their thinking, or writing, or nail-biting. They came through in spades. People reached deep inside, excavated their inner bureaucrats, and exposed the places where they take care of the bidness. Links can be found at the end of this post; please visit and rock the comment love as if you will never live to comment another day.

Mine is a tale of two offices. Most days, I toil in a cubicle. It is pretty much devoid of any personality, just the way Facility Services likes it. (P.S. Click on any of the photos to make them bigger.)
THREE is the magic number. I sit on the 3rd floor of Building 3, and to keep the numerology going, I always use the 3rd stall in, usually right around 9am, which as any idiot who used to watch Schoolhouse Rock can tell you, is 3 x 3.My cube is is the place where official paperwork goes to die. I have at least three dead Sequoia trees worth of paper stuffed into pointlessly colorful file folders.
Occasionally, I telecommute. Spawn do not stay home with me. They go to a Kiddie Kennel during the day while I am working. I do not leave the house, but I do fold laundry during conference calls, and I have a weekly Wednesday morning date with a guy named Brian. Peapod grocery delivery, you dirty-minded people.
I do "real" work AND my bloggy stuff in this room. The home office is my favorite place in the house, because I got to decorate it EXACTLY how I like it, and it houses many of my favorite things.
Finally, you should know that if I am ever breathing heavily when we are on the telephone, it is probably because I am multitasking to ride on this: CERTAINLY not because I am riding on THIS:


So that's my situation. Let's check out the rest!

Always Home And Uncool
Alice at Honey Pie
Cocotte at Suburban Musings
For A Different Kind Of Girl
Jenn at Juggling Life
Laura at Chesty LaRue
Marketing Mama
MereCat
Connecticut Mom's Family Financials
Kristine aka Stamford Talk/Fancy Pancakes
Anne At Wise Women Coffee Chat
Lindsay at Rock And Roll Mama
Erin at Cheap But Not Easy
Marathon Mom
JCK at Motherscribe
Tina at The Bigger They Get
Daily Piglet
Deb at San Diego Momma
We Make Three
That Girl From Shallotte
LilSass from Don't Get Me Started
Ms. Picket To You
Carolyn at Carolyn Online
Madge at It's a Madge Madge World
Mrs. Chicken at Chicken And Cheese

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Click here to read more.

Anatomy Of A 5 Year Old Boy's Crap-Taking

I think my son exploded.

Those of you with older children, please tell me that there will come a day when I WON'T find this in the bathroom:
It's going to be hard to explain to future employers, roommates, and girlfriends why he STILL has to be completely naked before he can successfully execute a bowel movement.

Nothing below the fold today.

Sorry charlies, nothing to see here

Click here to read more.

Time To Get Over Myself

I think I have writer's block.

I feel pretentious even THINKING that, since my "writing" consists of using Powerpoint and Capture Express to paste pictures of my head on other people's bodies, or making up idiotic captions for pictures I take with my cellphone in order to illustrate the random neuroses that plague me on a daily basis.

So recently, when I had someone ask what my writing process was, it made me snort. It sounds WAY too fancypants for a hack blogger such as myself to attribute something that's driven by stupidity, emotional retardation and/or blood alcohol levels to an official "technique."

But when I thought more about it, I realized that "process" is practically my maiden name. I mean, HELLO, I work for a gigantic Fortune 100 company. I can't pick my nose during a regular workday without getting advance approval from fifteen different executive committees. I EAT your BUREAUCRACY for BREAKFAST. And crap it out in a the form of a crisply written interoffice memo.

So in the corporate spirit of "Just Because It's Unimportant Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Deserve A Two-Hour Meeting And A Fifty Page Presentation," I have summarized my process for the enjoyment of anyone that has not yet passed out from utter boredom:

Step 1. I do something stupid like teach the Spawn a rhyme about farting, which reinforces YET AGAIN how incompetent I am in the parenting department.

AND/OR:

Step 2. I'm wearing a light-colored, dry-clean only outfit and running late for work when I either smear blood all over myself, or one of the Spawn spontaneously barfs.

FOLLOWED BY:

Step 3. For several hours, I stew over the event in question. I also occasionally witness something while I'm doing worky type stuff that causes me to space out and scribble things like "Google Kum & Go to see if this really a gas station, or just a discount porn shop" in the margins of highly sensitive financial documents.

AND FINALLY:

Step 4. When Spawn are down for the count at night, I spend the next few hours ignoring my husband to hunch over a keyboard and rant about whatever middle-class problem has so heinously wronged me on that particular day.

This process has worked for me so far because I am a high-strung, compulsive, A+ person in a Type A world. Unfortunately, I am also starting to realize that another reason that it works for me is because I am an ungrateful bitch who finds irritation in things that just aren't really that big of a deal.

So when I am faced with a REAL issue, my usual smash-and-crab approach doesn't work too well.

And therein lies the blockage. I just found out that someone that I love got themselves in a really shitty situation, with no easy solutions. They are destined to feel the fallout for YEARS to come, and it just seems ungrateful to piss and moan about things like The Boy wearing the same t-shirt for five days in a row when people I care about are in so much pain, and there's nothing that I can do except bombard them with phone calls and emails.

I feel like I have somehow lucked into an undeservedly good life. I have Manager Dad, who has proven able to survive Hurricane Me; The Boy and The Girl, who love me as if they don't know any better, and my parents, each who have each come through catastrophic health events without winding up much crazier than they were to begin with.

I'm no Buddhist, but I am feeling like I need to take a moment to lay off the bitching and show some gratitude, or the universe is REALLY going to deliver me a five-alarm smackdown.

So, thanks, universe. And thanks to you for listening.

Click here to read more.

Open Your Office

No good idea shall go uncopied or unpunished.

I enjoyed being a Peeping Mom so much in Mrs. G's "Heart of the Home" multi-blog postapalooza a few weeks back that I emailed her and asked if I could steal the idea, with a little modification. Being the gracious hostess she is, she gave me the go-ahead.

So here's my thought. Since she already covered the heart of the home, I am interested in the brains of your operation. What's your intellectual sanctuary? Where do you go to do your thinking, working, and writing? Whether you're a cubicle jockey or a backseat-of-the-minivan scribbler, join us and lay it bare for all to see.

Here's how we'll seal the deal: (NOW WITH NEW SIMPLER INSTRUCTIONS!)

1. Create a post about what you consider your office: the place you get work done, or your best thinking space.

2. Post it sometime on Sunday, July 13.

3. Email me with a link to your post when it's live.

I will include links to all of your posts when I post mine, and we will commence general time-wasting.

Nothing below the fold today.



NOTHING TO SEE HERE...PLEASE MOVE ON.

Click here to read more.

The Last Supper

I've been having some funky health stuff going on lately, and my doctor says that I need to eliminate things that are causing unnecessary stress in my life.

After examining all of my commitments, I have decided that although I love Spawn as if they were my own children*, I need to stop having family dinners with them. Immediately.

Scene from a typical evening at our house:

Spawn (Upon entering): Whatsfordinner? Whatsfordinner? Whatsfordinner? CanIplayvideogames? Whatsfordinner? - Repeated for the next 20 minutes until doorbell rings, the sound of which triggers a Pavlovian response; they stumble, zombie-like, into the dining room.

Me: Sets out a freshly prepared [just delivered], nutritious ["sweet potatoes" which have been browned sugared and marshmallowed to within an inch of their lives, but are technically still of vegetable origin], festively arranged [transferred from plastic containers to Chinet] meal in front of them.

The Girl: Did YOU cook this chicken?

Me: Don't worry, it's from Boston Market.

The Girl: [Picks up chunk of meat with fingers and licks it.] Origins confirmed, begins process of "eating", during which 2/3 of her meal winds up on the floor, smeared in her hair, or stuck to the wall.

The Boy: I hate Boston Market.

Me: I refuse to acknowledge that statement. You have to eat at least FOUR pieces of chicken before you get any cornbread.

The Boy: I don't like it.

Me: How can you not like chicken? It tastes like everything.

The Boy: Because it's a DEAD CHICKEN. A farmer shot it.

Me: I have no good answer to that.

For the next forty-five minutes, Manager Dad and I make "conversation" by way of threats and ultimatums interspersed with phrases like "sit on your butt, not your feet," and "if the reason you left the table THIS time was because you took a crap in the bathroom, wash your hands and use the Glade Air Freshener Spray."

By the end of the meal The Boy will have eaten 3.4 bites (if you count both kernels of corn individually), The Girl looks like the lone survivor of the historic Faber College food fight, and I have chest pains.

So in the interest of self preservation, I am going on strike from family dinners. Yes, I'm aware that it's been scientifically proven that if we don't eat together on a regular basis, Spawn will grow up and become crack whores. Or worse, Republicans. Either way, people are going to whisper behind my back at the next Rotary Club** meeting. But at least I'll still be alive to attend it.

*Having been present at their births, I am reasonably confident that Spawn are, in fact, my own biological offspring.

**I am not actually a member of the Rotary Club.

Click here to read more.