On Sportsmanship

A friend of mine was kind enough to throw some last-minute tickets to the Harlem Globetrotters my way. I'm a big fan of cheap and cheesy entertainment, so The Spouse and The Spawn and I braved the most dangerous stretch of Connecticut highway to get ourselves to graffiti-laden Bridgeport, Connecticut (motto: yes, some people actually LIVE there) to catch the show.

I first saw the Harlem Globetrotters back in the 70s when they were quite simply, THE SHIT. Times, they have a-changed, and with videogames and the NBA and the rise of the Jonas Brothers, they're not quite as much of the excrement nowadays. So the whole event had a rather quaint feel, thanks to the iconic whistle-y theme song and an unexpected smattering of vintage Three's Company-style gay jokes.

But the show was surprisingly entertaining, and I was so transported back to my childhood that when I spilled my Diet Pepsi on my lap I almost expected to see it soaking through a pair of styling kelly green polyester pants (hand-sewn from McCall's #4337 pattern).

Amidst the throwaway homophobia, there was some basketball-playing and also some sort of plot about a bet between the coaches, the outcome of which was that if the Globetrotters lost, the Head Trotter (Special K, a nickname that I hope was derived from his love of the cereal and because of any sort of lingering ketamine habit) was going to have to go and play for the hated Generals.

At one point the coach of the Generals got caught cheating, so everybody in the audience was encouraged to razz the Generals coach. In the midst of all the booing, The Boy turns to me, eyes ablaze with delight, and says, "I know what you're supposed to yell, Mommy," and jumps to his feet and screams, "YOOOUUUU SUUUUUCCCCK!" which had the immediate effect of producing a) a spit take followed by b) uncontrollable laughter, even as I knew that I should be delivering a Teaching Moment about politeness and good language and sportsmanship.

The Spouse and The Girl didn't hear a thing because of the crowd noise; they thought I'd completely lost my mind. And of course my laughter encouraged The Boy to shout it a second, third, and fourth time, with each repitition making me laugh until fat tears were washing away all of my mascara.

It was a proud, proud moment.

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Always Blurb Before You Read - A Cautionary Tale

We're in Day 2 of the 2008 Donors Choose Bloggers competition - and one of the projects on my donation page has already been fully funded! Proof positive that the people who read this blog are the smartest and most attractive people on the planet.

And your ass looks GREAT in those pants, by the way.

Since education is the theme of the day, I thought I'd review a book that Spawn and I read together recently. It's called "Tell Me Again About The Night I Was Born."

And despite the fact that it reeks of celebrity vanity (it's written by Jamie Lee Curtis) it's actually a charming and lovely book to read aloud with your kids.

If, that is, said kids are adopted.

If they're not, and you're like me and don't bother to read the blurb to find out what the book is about, trust me, the grilling that ensues will make you long for the relative pleasure of a full body cavity search conducted by your friendly neighborhood TSA screener.

Scene: The three of us in my room at bedtime, snuggled in my bed, The Boy (5) and The Girl (7) on either side of me. I get to Page 3: "Tell me again how the phone rang in the middle of the night and they told you I was born."

Me: (gears slowly starting to grind in my head) That's not where I was expecting this story to go. Hey, Spawn, how about we read Goodnight Moon again?

The Girl: No, I like this book. Let's keep reading.

Page 8-ish. "Tell me again how you got on an airplane with my baby bag and and flew to get me and there was no movie, only peanuts."

The Boy: My friend Andrew says that peanuts could make him and lots of other people die until they're dead. Why does the airplane want to kill those people?

TG: I thought babies lived in their mommy's tummy before they were born. You said WE lived in your tummy. Were you lying?

Me: (sweating slightly) You and your brother DID live in my tummy. But some children go to live with a different family after their mommy has them. It's called "adoption."

TB: Why would anybody would give their kid away? Was she bad?

TG: How much does it cost to buy a real baby? Can I save my allowance and get one of those instead of a guinea pig?

Me: Um. You can't buy babies. But sometimes mommies or daddies aren't able to care of their children, and they want to give them to a nice family who will.

TG: Then why would they make a baby in the first place?

Me:

Me: (second try) Sometimes people make mistakes.

TG: Were WE mistakes? Is that why you told [neighbor] Mrs. X the other night that you were "fishing" because [The Boy] was born only two years after me?

Me: What? No - OF COURSE you weren't mistakes. And I said "efficient," not "fishing." What I meant was, we wanted to have you born three years apart but we were more efficient than I thought, because your brother was conceived right away.

TB: What does CON-SEEVED mean?

TG: You don't want Mommy to tell you about that.

Me: (loudly) Who wants a pony?

The Boy: Are you going to sell me to another family so that you have enough money to buy one?


Please, don't let future generations of mothers grow up to be as stupid as I am. Support public education projects with as little as $5, and help me win the 2008 Donors Choose Bloggers challenge. Click here to visit my Donor Page and fund real projects in real schools.

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A Little Help Please...

So...I haven't been blogging lately. And I'm afraid to blog about why I haven't been blogging, because most of what is torturing me lately is work related and I have no interest in being Dooced. Unless said Doocing comes with either widespread fame/fortune/adoration (like it did for her), or is accompanied by the kind of severance package that causes Congress to hold hearings on the injustice of executive compensation.

But neither of those scenarios seem likely. And another reason that I haven't been on the internets all that much is that I decided that instead of spending all of my free time blogging about what a terrible mother I am, I could, oh, I don't know, try being a better mother.

Novel idea, yes?

I've been trying to stop multitasking and really focus on being present with the Spawn. Not just physically THERE, but engaged. No checking emails while they're playing in the playroom. No sorting through mail and school papers while they're refusing to eat their Boston Market. No trying to put away laundry while they're getting ready for bed. Trying to take time to do things with them, even if it's just to play a board game or read a book together.

But today, I think my efforts to be Better Mom are setting me up for a rather spectacular flop. I told the The Girl that she could have her friend over for a sleepover, and she wanted to decorate cupcakes. So I did something that I never in my adult life thought I would do, given that my family often begs me to stay OUT of the kitchen, and especially since Stop & Shop does this type of thing so much better:

I baked.

I bought three boxes of cake mix and those little paper cupcake holder thingies, and some white frosting and food coloring to make different colors and some sprinkles for garnish. I borrowed some baking tins and from the bowels of my kitchen, excavated this strange-looking wedding-gift appliance that has these twirly things that mix stuff up. I emptied the boxes and cracked the eggs and figured out how to operate my oven, and now I have approximately 87 cupcakes cooling on the counter, waiting to be frosted.

Problem is, they look really weird. They're all different heights, and some are sunken instead of rounded, and some are covered in pimply looking nubs. I'm a little worried about that. Is it possible to kill a child with bad cupcakes? Death by Betty Crocker?

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At Least I Know What She Wanted To Buy At Target

Found this one when I was straightening her room. It may or may not be related to yesterday's list:

Is she trying to re-enact a scene from the movie "Fargo"? Slay some vampires? Cross-stitch me a "Bless This Mess" needlepoint to hang on the kitchen wall?

I better not piss her off, just in case she actually manages to get her hands on any of this stuff.

Another shawty post... no need to click.

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The Girl Is Starting To Worry Me With Her Lists

I found this when I was cleaning up the random papers on the coffee table early this morning:

I can't even begin to figure this list out. I mean, she's SEVEN YEARS OLD. Midgets and prison? Is this a list of things she wants to do over the holiday weekend?

Nothing below the fold, no need for clickage.

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I'll Take Manhattan

This weekend, Manager Dad and I wanted to give Spawn an end-of-summer last hurrah by planning a weekend activity that was more fun than our usual trip to Costco. I have a friend who lives in New York City who was going to be out of town, and she very nicely (although I am pretty sure I saw fear in her eyes) agreed to let us stay in her apartment.

With the free place to stay, I thought we could do a weekend on the (sort of) cheap, but I must have been smoking something because as anyone with half a brain cell can tell you, Manhattan is not known for its great bargains. Everything we wanted to eat, see, or do cost a minimum of eighteen dollars per person. We probably could have stayed home and bought a used Toyota Corolla for less money.

But if Mastercard is to be believed, you can't put a price on family memories, and I was determined to expose Spawn to some legendary New York attractions. So naturally, first on the list was to sample authentic regional cuisine at a Times Square tourist trap themed restaurant. According to Us Weekly, Brad and Angelina took all five hundred of their kids to a place called "Mars 2112," and they're all worldly and shit, so if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me. They start your 'experience' by stuffing you into a sort of elevator pod thing which simulates a rocket ride to outer space:

The Girl: (cackling) THIS is the coolest restaurant EVER.

The Boy: (terrified) I think we are really blasting off into space. (Grabs both of my ears and shouts directly into my nostrils). DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE ON MARS! I PROMISE TO BEHAVE FROM NOW ON!

The Girl: (turning green) Actually, I think I am going to throw up.


We got out of the simulator and The Boy spotted the costumed 'aliens', which made him completely unhinged, so he spent the entire meal in a state of panic, hiding under the table whenever any of the waitstaff even LOOKED in our general direction. We wound up throwing away most of Spawn's $15-a-plate dinners because the pasta was "too slimy" and the sauce "too chunky." After that, we gave up on restaurants and fed them a diet of bread, bottled water, and bananas, just like the monkeys at the Central Park Zoo.

We did a double-decker bus tour, although we had to de-bus after twenty minutes due to kid boredom and the absence of bathrooms. A pedicab bike tour through Central Park was a lot more successful, although it wasn't quite as much fun for the kid that was biking us around. Between the screeching of the bike's gears and the pained expression on his face, it was clear that he regretted offering to take all four of us in a cab built to safely carry MAYBE two people, and even then only if those two people were Kate Moss and Keira Knightley.

Hands down, Spawn's favorite part of the trip was shopping. We gave them each a $20 budget, which lasted about fifteen seconds at their "retailtainment" stores of choice: American Girl and the Pokemon section of the Nintendo store. Even I was excited about the Nintendo store because they had a stash of Wii Fits*, which I'd been dropping hints about as a potential birthday present ever since we got the evil Wii in the first place.

So thanks to the magic of capitalism, the trip was a smashing success. Spawn had so much fun that The Girl cried the entire train ride home because she didn't want to leave the city.

And now, back to reality, and the new school year, which starts Friday. I'd like to give a special middle finger shoutout to our local Board of Education. Thank you so very much for making the first day of school the DAY BEFORE the Labor Day holiday weekend.

*Warning: Do NOT subject yourself to the Wii Fit unless you have very high self esteem, and/or have been drinking. I took the "fit test" and despite the fact that I run 35 miles a week, it began taunting me, first criticizing my my Body Mass Index and then asking me if I trip and fall a lot because it thinks I am uncoordinated. But the kicker was when it loudly announced that my Wii Fit age as SIXTY ONE. I will NEVER hear the end of this from my family.

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Saving The Drama For Her Mama

Last Friday, summer camp officially ended.

To mark the occasion, the counselors decided to stage a hip-hop dance recital, because after all, nothing says “I’ve had a great summer” better than a bunch of white Jewish kids trying to breakdance to the vocal stylings of Kanye West.

The NIGHT BEFORE (thanks for all the advance notice, counselors!) I was informed through the state of the art “crumpled note in backpack” communication method that I was supposed to pack a black t-shirt for her to wear as a costume.

The Girl hates black, so she didn’t have one. And because I didn't find the note until after the stores had closed, I couldn’t buy one. So I made a rookie mistake, stupidly assuming that she could just get through the entire two minutes that she was going to be on stage in one of MY old shirts.

The morning of the show, The Girl put me on notice that I had to be at camp by 6, an hour before the recital started at 7. This of course guaranteed that some coworker would decide they absolutely HAD to have a last-minute meeting, and since it was critical to have it THAT DAY, it of course started at FIVE O’frigging clock.

So I didn’t even leave the office until 6, prompting a white-knuckled Grand Theft Auto-style drive up the Merritt Parkway.

I walked into the auditorium exactly 5 minutes before the show started. I looked around and it was like I had stumbled onto a battlefield scene from Braveheart: face-painted anarchy. Wild-eyed kids were running around in various stages of physical undress (and emotional distress), waving their arms and shrieking at whichever dazed-looking parents happened to be closest by; whether or not they were their own parents didn't seem to matter.

I spotted The Girl, who was accessorizing my black t-shirt with a look of white-hot fury. The shirt was enormous on her; the sleeves hung past her elbows and the bottom was brushing her knees. Her mouth was stained with fruit punch and her hair was matted with partly dissolved cotton candy, giving her the appearance of a tiny, ferocious Courtney Love.

"YOU. WERE. SUPPOSED. TO. BE. HERE. AT. SIX!" she screeched at me. Manager Dad threw up his hands and gave me a look of You dug your own grave on this one, Miss Latey Laterson.

She stomped over and stretched her arms straight out and started whirling them around in tight helicopter circles, making the sleeves flap like gigantic mutated bat wings.

"This (sob) shirt (sob) is (sob) too (sob) big. (sob sob sob) I can't be expected to PERFORM in THIIIIIISSSSSSS!"

(Insert additional sobbing)

I looked around, desperate for an assist, but everyone was either scraping their own kid wreckage off the floor, or was deliberately avoiding eye contact. Finally, one of the counselors saw an opportunity to upsize their end of summer tip by helping me out.

He hustled her onto the stage, where her tears magically dried up and she danced her little heart out, bringing her role of pint-sized hip-hop-‘ho to life with a level of enthusiasm that made Manager Dad fear for her future commitment to chastity.

But I was in no position to complain. If a dash of pop culture misogyny can be THAT effective in curing emotional outbursts, bring it on. I will sell out my feminist principles faster than Jamie Foxx can drop a chorus of, "Git down girl, go 'head, git down".

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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.

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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.

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When Worlds Collide

Day three of Spawn being grounded from the Wii.

I got home late from work yesterday, and was in the middle of microwaving a nutritious family dinner when the following exchange took place:

The Boy: "Mommy, I'm bored. What can I do?"

Manager Mom: "Go and play with your sister."

TB: "But she has girl toys."

MM: "I don't care. If you don't play nicely together, you won't be allowed to play the Wii for ONE WHOLE MORE WEEK."

And, scene. Off goes The Boy as instructed.

After Spawn went to bed I was straightening up the playroom , because the cleaning lady was coming the next day, and, you know, I don't want her to think that we're SLOBS or anything.

When I got to the dollhouse, I saw the curiously heartwarming aftermath of their joint playtime:




The only scene that I found to be slightly alarming:


Did I mention that The Boy is terrified of dogs? Perhaps it's time for some therapy.

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Little Shop Of Horrors

A few days ago, I took The Spawn to their six-month dental checkups.

Normally I’m very good with managing appointments, which by “managing,” I mean “scheduling them for a time when I can’t go.” (Just kidding, Manager Dad! That "work conflict" that prevented me from going to their annual physicals was totally coincidental!)

But I thought I could handle this one because the kids generally don't mind going to the dentist. There's no pain involved (yet) and she gives them free stuff like licensed-character toothbrushes and cheap plastic trinkets. For added insurance, I planned to keep their moods (and blood sugar) highly elevated by deploying chocolate Munchkins at the slightest sign of distress. (Despite the fact that rewarding kids with junk food is probably not the best strategy in front of their DENTIST.)

So I wasn't anticipating any major problems. Unfortunately, I failed to account for the fact that The Boy has turned into kind of a wuss.

It started with a few weeks ago with baths. If you happen to be in our neighborhood on bath nights, the sounds coming from our house might give you the impression that they're filming the latest installment of Friday the 13th in our bathtub. Then we had the strep tests; when the nurse unwrapped the throat swab he started howling so loudly you would have thought she'd produced a straight razor and a bottle of bourbon and told him to lay down for a frontier-style tonsil extraction.

The dental visit was going OK until we got to the flouride treatment, which is just a quick coating of leave-on gel. NOTHING like the flouride treatments I remember, which consisted of five minutes of sucking on a gigantic, foul-smelling tray of gunk, choking back vomit while staring at an egg timer to see how much longer the ordeal was going to last.

But for whatever reason, the sight of that flouride-laden Buzz Lightyear toothbrush (the EXACT SAME ONE that had so delighted him just ten minutes ago) sent him into full-on, Code Red, fight-or-flight mode. He clamped his jaw shut and threw out all of his best Randy Couture kung-fu moves. The only time he would open his mouth was to shout things like "OH HELL NO YOU BITCHES AIN'T PUTTING THAT SHIT ON MY TEETH!" (Except he didn't use the word "ain't," because he's pretty good at grammar.)

Twenty minutes of threats, bribery, attempts at reason, and groveling didn't work. So we had to resort to force. Which meant that it took me and TWO dental hygienists to hold him down while the dentist pried his mouth open.

We finished the appointment with both The Boy and myself reduced to tear-stained, sniveling, snotty messes, while The Girl cheerily picked out her plastic chokables from the prize chest.

And I'm thinking to myself, - Crikey. If he carries on this much for teeth brushing and throat swabbing, what would happen if he ever had to get a blood test?

I need to get The Boy to toughen up when it comes to doctor visits. Any ideas?

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Playdate, Or FBI Child Pornography Sting In The Making?

The Girl is getting ready to go to one of her friend's houses for a playdate. To make sure that she maximizes their time together, she wrote up and presented me with an agenda of planned activities:
As a anal-rententive person who's been known to throw down a few lists of her own, it brought a little tear of motherly pride to my eye to see that The Girl is following her old mom down the Type A path, even at this tender age.

So I began gathering up and packing all of the required props for her to-do list. I was cross-checking the bag full of stuff against the list, when I saw this item, which I hadn't really noticed the first time:

Er... This family, as far as I can recall, only has two school-age kids. I thought I checked them out pretty thoroughly, and I'm pretty confident that they don't have any extra babies stuffed in a closet somewhere.

I hope that she didn't discover any funky pictures on their computer the last time they went on Polly Pocket.com...

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Mobile Phone Mothering

Yesterday, I was on my way from the office to a business dinner with one of our vendors. As a general rule, I look forward to these about events as much as a drug-free root canal, but last night I was happy to be going because I got a night off from cooking and listening to everyone bitch about my meal selections, and the dinner was going to be at a really good Indian restaurant that I've been wanting to try, and the most exotic restaurant meal my offspring will tolerate is at California Pizza Kitchen so this was my best shot at ever getting to eat there.

So I was feeling guilty - not about missing an evening with the family, but about my lack of guilt about the missing of the the evening of the family, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

And then I spotted this:You're just going to have to trust me when I tell you it was the kickest-assingest rainbow I have EVER seen.

So I called home and told Manager Dad to hustle the kids outside so they could see it too. And they went outside and he put me on his cell phone speaker, and the kids were all noisy-excited sharing the pretty prettiness of the rainbow together, and the fact that I was only part of it through a staticky mobile phone connection instead of in person made me feel a little bit like this: But then I went and had a glass of wine or three and some tasty Saag Paneer with the nice vendor lady, courtesy of her company's expense account.

And I woke up The Girl this morning and she gave me a sleepy hug and showed me this:



And she said, "Mommy, I'm so glad that you called, or we would never have known to go outside and look at the rainbow. It was the most beautiful rainbow that I've ever seen."

So I guess I get to chalk this one up to the "good mom" column after all.

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From The Department of "What The Hell Was I Thinking"

Last night's bedtime started out normally. After a dozen or so requests to the kids (at increasing volume levels) to start getting ready for bed, they finally got moving.

They schlumphed their way over to the stairs; crabbed the whole way up; bitched and moaned while putting on their pajamas; and complained during teeth brushing, which caused them to spray liquified toothpaste foam all over the freshly cleaning-ladied bathroom vanity.

In the middle of all of the complaining, we hear a "frapppffft" noise.

Manager Dad: "Boy, did you just have gas?"

The Boy: teeheeheehee

The Girl: hohohahaha

Me (to myself): Hey, this is my chance to be Fun Mom for a change! And so inspired by a weekend visit from my dad, I blurted out a rhyme that he used to recite to me when I was a kid. It goes a little something like this:

"A burp is a message from the heart. If it comes out the other end, it's called a fart."

I realized mid-sentence that putting this out there was probably a really bad idea. It was like a a party scene in a teen sex comedy where someone says something embarassing on the dance floor, and you hear that record needle scratching sound followed by dead silence while the crowd all looks at the speaker with a “who is that frigging loser moron?” kind of vibe.

The kids stared at me like I had sprouted a third eyeball, and then started screaming with laughter. And the same kids who have selective hearing and zero short-term memory when it comes to things I NEED them to do, of course IMMEDIATELY memorized this.

"A BURP IS A MESSAGE!" they kept yelling back and forth to each other at top volume, running up and down the hallway and cackling demonically. I started mentally composing one of my now-routine pre-emptive apology notes to their teachers about the poetry lesson the kids would undoubtedly be giving their friends the following day.

And during the next half hour, as we desperately tried to think of something that could get us back on the path to bedtime, MD muttered to me, "I bet you taught them that just so that you could blog about it later."

No, sweetie; I taught it to them because I really am just that stupid.

Thank GOD my dad never taught me "Milk, Milk, Lemonade."

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Of Breasts And Bacteria

Our family's long strep throatial nightmare is almost over.

The Boy has been on meds for a few days, and I have become more than a shade concerned about how much he likes them (especially given the "extracurricular activities" that I indulged in while I was in college).

He's a little cephalexin junkie, waking up and going straight to the refrigerator, where he pulls out the bottle and convulses his entire body trying to shake it up while shouting at me to hurry up and get the teaspoon, Mommy! I'm afraid that instead of adding the bubble gum taste that I'd requested, the pharmacist accidentally flavored it with crack.

But he's feeling much better; so much so that yesterday he slept in until a decadently late (for him) 6:45. I was already up and doing some work; after beelining to the fridge, he came into the office with his bottle to get his morning fix. He climbed into my lap, all sweaty and rumpled and blasting me with his surprisingly toxic morning breath, and was sort of snuggling the side of his head into my chest, which made him scrape his cheek on the zipper of my sweater.

After treating me to his angriest look (which always makes me burst out laughing because he looks so funny-cute, which pisses him off even more), he started yelling "I'm mad at your shirt" and yanking at the zipper, exposing the tank top I was wearing underneath. He stared at my chest for a moment, momentarily forgetting about the medicine, and said, "Mommy, what are your round parts called?"

Oh, frack. I was NOT prepared to have THAT conversation. Not at 6:45,and certainly not before liquid fortification. And even under optimal conditions, I completely suck at these types of sensitive conversations. I butchered The Talk with The Girl so badly that she still bursts into tears every time she sees a tampon box in our linen closet.

Since that train wreck, I tried to prepare for my next time in the hot seat through careful and extensive research (Ok, so it was only Googling 'talking to your kids about sex,' but I think that I should get SOME credit for effort) on the right way to handle the conversation. I only skimmed a few articles before I lost interest and decided I would just wing it; but I did manage to absorb three important knowledge nuggets:

1) Keep it simple and give only age appropriate information

2) Minimize your use of confusing sexual slang, no matter how personally entertaining you might find it

3) Try very hard to keep your fits of giggling under control

Armed and dangerous with my superficial knowledge, I took a deep breath and let it rip. "They're called breasts."

"Your breast-tes are small, Mommy. Why are they so small?"

Well, thanks for noticing, Captain Obvious. Believe me, you're far from the only man in my life to ask me that question.

“Everybody's bodies are made differently." I replied. "For example, I have red hair. But Aunt Katie has yellow hair. But she has been pretending to be a natural blonde for at least ten years, although even Stevie Wonder could spot her dark brown roots. From a mile away. At midnight."

And I am pretty sure I only THOUGHT, but did not add, "Plus, there are some ladies that work at places with names like "Bada Bing" that realize that they'd make a lot more money if they bought themselves a pair with a size that starts and ends in the letter D."

For a minute, it seemed that my explanation had either satisfied or confused him enough where I could execute a swift change of subject.

But he regrouped. "Well, what are boobies, then?"

No fair. Now HE had just blown Rule #2, and the only anwers that I could think of would DEFINITELY cause me to violate either rule #1 or #3, if not both.

So I decided that the responsible thing to do would be to send him off to wake up Manager Dad to have HIM answer that particular question.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think if the boy is going to wind up going through life with some freaky breast fetish, it should come from his old man, not from me.

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This Random Act Of Motherhood Was Brought To You By The Streptococcus Bacteria

So, honey, how was your day?

Because I spent most of mine trapped in our house with the deranged Pod Preschooler who has taken possession of The Boy.

Some background: his day care has been under siege from an especially nasty strain of strep throat that has infected twelve out of twenty-two kids so far. Going anywhere near his classroom will net you a full body-cavity search followed by a Purell hosedown. As a parting gift, you’ll get some leaflets with photos of disgusting, pussy, inflamed tonsils.

The Boy seemed like he would survive the attack. No sore throats, no fevers. And then came Monday morning, where he was just completely getting his bitch on, the centerpiece of which was a grand mal, put-me-on-the-cover-of-Us Weekly tantrum evoking classic Britney Spears. Faced with his vein-popping rage, I had a moment where I feared that instead of a human child, I had actually birthed the second coming of Rosemary’s Baby. Only our trusty local Catholic priest (or a strep test) would reveal the truth.

Two throat swabs later, we got the results: The Boy was, in fact, a Hot Zone. Twenty-four hours of antibiotics were required before we'd be given the all clear to send him back to the kid kennel. Which left two schedule-crazed parents engaged in the latest round of our recurring career deathmatch, jockeying to see which one of us would have to bail out on work. I was forced to concede that most of my stuff could be handled over the phone, and left a late-night voicemail alerting The Boss that he would be deprived of the pleasure of my company in the office the following day.

The Boy had been mostly asymptomatic, so he wasn't in much discomfort from the infection. HIS misery was caused by a side effect of the treatment, a stomach ache that kept him up until almost midnignt. MY misery was caused by the fact that he still woke up at the same time he does every day, which is roughly a quarter of way too freaking early. This put him in an emotional state more volatile than a sleep-deprived reality show contestant who thinks he's about to get voted off the island.

So we passed the morning in a haze of shared manic-depressiveness. One minute my diagram of the immune system (with Ms. Pac-man as a white blood cell, gobbling up dot-sized germs) had him cackling like a miniature Jack Nicholsen; the next he was weeping helplessly because I cut up his waffle for him when he wanted to do it himself. Between 10:00 and 10:37, we played a game that he made up which consisted of me spelling the word "pool" over and over and over and over and over. The game finally ended when my voice cracked from the strain, causing him to ask, "Mommy, are you crying?" (My answer: "Not yet.")

I made a few pointless attempts at trying to work. I'd put him in front of the TV and go off to make a phone call; on any regular workday, nobody answers their phones anymore, especially since they can see my name and extension in their caller ID. But we have caller ID blocker on the home phone, which tricked a lot people into actually answering, at which point The Boy's Spidey-sense would start tingling and he would run immediately into the office to loudly sing random songs from Alvin and The Chipmunks while I flapped my arms like some giant, mentally unhinged pelican, trying to get him to go back to the room with the TV.

After a few repeats of that routine, The Boy was on the verge of going nuclear, so I finally gave up. It had been raining all day, but there was a break in the bad weather, and I herded him outside with some vague idea that I’d tire him out by making him take a long bike ride.

The streets were quiet, and it felt like we had the whole neighborhood to ourselves. He was pedaling with as much strength as he could wring from his spindly little legs, and I was run-walking beside him, and both of us were shouting and laughing. And it sounds so corny but at one point he actually stopped and got off of his bike to pick me a flower. He ran back over to me, looking ridiculously adorable in his Minnesota Twins t-shirt, plaid shorts, mismatched socks, and shiny red satin cape (because only superheroes can fight the forces of germs) with his Optimus Prime helmet all cockeyed on his head, and he handed me the scraggly little dandelion and said, "You're the BEST mommy ever."

I’d like to leave us there, basking in that unexpectedly carefree moment, before I blow the mood by describing the spontaneous combustion that happened when we got back to the house and I had the audacity to MICROWAVE his leftover pizza instead of WARMING IT IN THE OVEN, and I was making The Boy have THE WORST DAY EVER, on PURPOSE, you MEAN MEAN MOMMY. And I certainly won’t go on to describe how he then whacked me in the temple with a toy car, leaving a Lightning McQueen-shaped welt that I had to explain to every single person in the office, who all felt compelled to ask, “Hey, what happened to your head?” at work the next day.

So I won’t do that. I’ll just end this painfully boring post with a silent salute to whichever kid sneezed in The Boy’s face and gave him the strep. Because my 24 hours of (intermittently) painful quantity time produced one of those rare moments of quality that never seems to happen when you try to force it through some planned family activity. I wound up today with one of those special kid memories to lock up in my vault, and it didn’t even require any airbrushing.

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My Outsourced Motherhood

Thank God Mother’s Day is over.

If I had to read, listen to, or watch one more Very Special Tribute to a Very Special Mom (shot in soft focus and featuring the kind of music typically found in a douche commercial), I would have heaved a tire iron through my television screen.

While the idea of having a whole day dedicated to the celebration of me is pleasant, in actuality it just makes my shortcomings even MORE blazingly obvious. How could there possibly be so many Ultra SuperTerrific HappyMothers out there? They bake! They sew! They wipe away tears and pick chunks of snot! They flip burgers for the homeless and change bedpans for the elderly! These specimens of womanly perfection make the Dalai Lama look like Paris Hilton.

If I had a spare moment, I’d use it to feel bad for The Boy and The Girl, as they will never experience such a blissful level of idyllic parent-child codependency. And I work full time, so I’ve had to subcontract about three-quarters of my motherly duties anyway. As such, I sleep OK at night knowing if they ARE messed up, it’s technically someone else’s fault, not a direct consequence of my own parenting techniques.

With the pinkwashed torrent of sentimentality behind us, for what it’s worth (actually, $68,000 a year, according to salary.com) I’d like to thank the collection of household staff, paid caregivers, recurring services, unwitting volunteers, and other domestic helpers that have helped make me the mother I am today:

To Silvia and John, our first day care providers: Somehow, your foul-smelling goulashes succeeded in tricking my children into eating a staggering range of vegetables, the likes of which they won’t even be in the same room with now that they’re coherent. Someday I hope to get at least one of the kids to eat squash again, and if I do, I will remember you fondly.

To Martha, our cleaning lady: Thank you for your bi-weekly attempts to transform our house from a Scottish pay toilet to a reasonably hygienic place to live. I especially appreciate that you manage to get rid of the gobs of SpongeBob toothpaste that wind up caked all over the bathroom vanity. I can’t afford to pay you any more than I do, but if I ever win the lottery, I’m giving you a fat bonus AND buying you a gold-plated Dyson DC-15.

To Kenny at Sea Breeze Dry Cleaners: Your reasonable prices and convenient location have allowed me to keep my strict no-iron streak intact (going on 13 years now). And whatever it is you do to my barfed, boogered, and bloodied items of clothing, I bow to your prowess as the Stain Whisperer.

To Karen and Allisha at Arena Gymnastics: Thank you for the second straight year of patiently trying to teach The Girl how to do a cartwheel, even though I can sense from the looks in your eyes that it might be a lost cause. And thanks to all of the Stamford Youth Soccer coaches that help keep The Boy motivated by pretending that winning isn’t everything, especially because his team gets slaughtered on a weekly basis.

To our Holy Trinity of Takeout (aka Boston Market, Kit’s Thai Kitchen, and Domino’s Pizza): Thank you for your continued existence. Without you, my family would be subsisting on a weekly diet of rice cakes, frozen turkey sausage, and rotting bananas.

And last but certainly not least,To Megan, our ex-so-much-more-than-a-babysitter: I have always marveled at how you could be so patient, loving, and kind. Possibly you are not very bright, or perhaps you are hard of hearing. But regardless, the kids STILL ask for you all of the time, even though you left for California more than six months ago. Will you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE move back to the East Coast? I forgive you for drinking competitive product in the house, and I'll even apologize for teaching the kids to tell you that only mean people drink Diet Coke. Come back. Please. Seriously.

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This Post Was Manufactured Using Child Labor

After dinner tonight, we were doing our usual routine: MD checking his fantasy sports standings, kids watching an age-inappropriate television show starring a semi-disgraced budding multimillionaire of middling talent, and me banging away on the laptop, ignoring my family.

But tonight, thanks to the fact that they repeat that stupid show about three thousand times per episode, even 50 inches of high-definitional splendor couldn't keep The Girl amused. So she came over and climbed into my lap, causing me to accidentally hit the delete key and lose about half of a post I was working on.

"Are you working on your blog again?" she asked. "And what is a blog anyway?"

I tried to explain to her that a blog was kind of like a diary: a place where you can write all of the private things you think in your head, but don't have the courage to tell other people unless either a) you're drunk and they're your bartender, or b) you post it in the most public arena possible, where it has the potential to shame your family and friends and maybe even get you fired.

She didn't quite grasp the nuances of my explanation, so she said, "That sounds neat. Can I have a blog too?"

Now, for a first grader, the kid's a pretty good writer, and she can be relentless when she gets interested in a project. I'm not a jealous person, especially of my own daughter, but with my luck if I let her have her own blog she'd be averaging a couple thousand hits a day AND have a book deal within the span of about two weeks.

So rather than compete, I decided the best thing for me to do would be to exploit her for my own selfish gain. I told her she could have a guest post on my blog. Besides, its about time the little freeloader started pulling her weight around here.

She brings her "sloppy copies" (what she calls her rough drafts) of her writing portfolio home on Fridays, so we had quite a bit of material to select from. She decided to share some of her thoughts on the what life is like in her first grade class. And so, without further ado, may I present The Girl's first guest post (with just a tiny bit of editorializing from her mother):

Heh heh...she wrote "Uranus". Now here's the weird thing. She SPELLS it correctly, but when she SAYS it, instead of "Your Anus" she pronounces it "urine-us." It reminds me of the whole Anita Hill debacle where all of the newscasters must have thought they sounded crass by saying "huh-RASS-ment" and fancied it up by saying "HARassment" instead. I never taught her to pronouce it that way, so I'm thinking it came from her teacher, who must have gotten fed up after twenty years of rude seven-year-old boys cracking up every time she gets to that part of the solar system.Mommy knows some compound words too, and accidentally taught them to your brother just the other day! The Boy's teachers were NOT pleased when he shared that particular vocabulary lesson with his little friends. Judging from a few of the emails I got that evening, neither were their parents.

All right, honey, I love you dearly, but... you left the owl alone, and touched a frigging giant hissing cockroach instead? I knew I shouldn't have had that glass of wine in my third trimester...

That's right, girlfriend. You rock those fact families. Learning IS fun, and even math is fun, no matter WHAT attempted brainwashing those antifeminist reactionaries over at Mattel will try with their vapidly programmed Teen Talk Barbies.

So that's it. I hope you enjoyed a look into Toquam School's Classroom #40. One of the best schools in this miserable district, and oh yeah, the one that the incompetent buttwipes in our Board of Ed are still trying to close.

We'll see if I invite her back for future guest appearances.

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Over The River And Up S&%$'s Creek

It's 6am on Sunday morning at Manager Grandmother's house.

Sunrise is touching the grey (factory smoke-filled) New Jersey skies; dewdrops are beginning to glisten on the (overmanicured suburban environmental nightmare of a) front lawn; and the sleepy-looking (registered sex offender) next door neighbor has just meandered down his driveway to pick up his Sunday newspaper.

I'm trying to write quickly, before the tranquility is shattered by the arousal of child and childlike (I refer to The Boy, The Girl, and yes, The Grandmother) and the subsequent elevation of the household noise level to DEFCON 5.

While I, of course, love my mother dearly, a visit to the MG means 48 hours of unending family togetherness. This has been known to induce a heightened state of stress, caused by a hat trick of physiological deficiencies: sleep deprivation, emotional defensiveness, and mental exhaustion, all rolled up into one messy burrito.

The Boy and The Girl feel no such ambivalence. When MG is in the house, we are shunted aside like so much dirty underwear. She showers them with presents and praise, and generous helping of junk foods somehow rationalized as good for you ("Well, ice cream with chocolate chips does have calcium, you know.") She laughs and tickles and teases and unabashedly burps out loud whenever the feeling strikes. She is their own personal walking, talking, one-woman Kids Choice Awards, and they utterly adore her.

Our visit this weekend was fraught with purpose: MG had gotten tickets to for the final weekend of the Star Wars exhibit at the Franklin Institute as a special treat for The Boy's birthday. He got so excited when I told him that I thought that his brain might actually melt. He implemented a minute-to-minute "how long until we leave?" countdown and insisted on packing his suitcase more than a week prior to our departure.

I must have been distracted by shiny things, because I forgot to double-check his packing job. Upon arrival, we discovered that aside from some action figures, Transformers comics, and random scraps of paper, The Boy had brought twelve pairs of mismatched socks, five pairs of pants, and his pajamas, but only a single pair of underwear and a lone t-shirt (Empire Strikes Back, to be worn at the exhibit). Plus the clothes on his back which emerged from the three-hour car ride stained with juice, covered in crumbs, and crusted with mucus from the occasional sneeze-n-wipe.

That's OK, I thought. It's only a two day visit, so I'll just wash his car outfit and he can wear it again on Sunday.

Cue the Irony Gods, who thought it might be funny to make The Boy have an enormous accident in the middle of the night. Said accident set in motion a chain of sponge baths and laundry, with the end result of him waking up the next morning with pretty much everything (clothes AND pajamas) either still damp with pee, or soaking wet in the washing machine. And it was 8am, with us looking at a half hour drive to try to make our a strict 9am admission time slot.

I searched for inspiration in the immortal words of the wise philosopher Tim Gunn: it was truly 'make it work time'. Seizing the only two pieces of available clean clothing, we got everyone dressed and the whole family piled into the car, where my shirtless-under-his-spring-jacket, commando-under-camouflage shorts son patiently endured ten minutes of chafing while I ran into Old Navy to buy him some clean underpants and a t-shirt.

We beat our cutoff time with nearly three full minutes to spare.

And so, although I look forward to these visits, I'm ready to go back to work and play at being a grownup, and enjoy some much-needed peace and quiet in the office. Damn... I forgot. There is no peace and quiet in the office anymore.

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My Mom Went To London, And All I Got Was This Lousy Post

I’m currently on an overseas business trip, and since I had a Friday meeting, I put in a requisition for a weekend layover with Manager Dad. It was promptly authorized because a) he’s a really, really good guy; and #2, he had been granted a similar waiver about a year and a half ago when he had to go to Paris on a weekend which happened to coincide with my 36th birthday.

So I've been here since Thursday afternoon. I’ve had some quality alone time, defined as "time not spent cooking, picking up family detritus, or laundering clothing."

But as delighted as I am to hang out with my own self, I miss everyone. The youngsters get angry with me when I travel and don’t want to participate in the perfunctory dinnertime phone calls home. So I try desperately to engage them in conversation as they breathe heavily into the receiver. (The Girl ended our conversation today with “I’ll talk to you when you get home, mommy…I’m giving the phone back to your husband.”)

And because I had the bright idea of taking a red-eye over in order to maximize my time here, the jetlag is starting to get the better of me. I am so exhausted that I'm having Jacob's Ladderesque hallucinations; physically, I’m starting to resemble Estelle Getty on a crack bender.

But I've been having a fantastic, rejuvenating trip. I've taken tons of photographs, frightened scores of shoe salesmen with my horrifyingly ugly, not-yet-pedicured, mangled runner's toes, and generally stopped at whatever places caught my eye. I'm an art fanatic so I made a point of hitting Tate Modern and a few other contemporary art museums featuring images that would be considered hard-core pornography were they not displayed in a building designed by a distinguished architect.

And since I cannot force my beloved spawn to eat at any restaurant that doesn’t include the word “pancake” somewhere in its name, I took the opportunity to try new cuisines- Indian food and Dim Sum in Chinatown. Now, I’ve eaten plenty of Chinese food in my day (after all, I am American) but never dim sum. I'll definitely repeat the Indian food but dim sum is a delicacy that I fully intend to deprive myself of in the future. I’m no linguist, but based on today's meal, I would guess that ‘dim sum’ is Cantonese for “fried dumpling filled with miscellaneous ground up kitchen leftovers.”

I am also preparing to break my strict 'no-bringing-home-presents-after-a-business trip' policy. I implemented this after witnessing the way a former boss was treated by his children when he forgot to bring them a gift after a day trip. But in this case, I have been gone for a long time, and the guilt machine is running on a double shift.

Plus, we have been working hard to brainwash The Boy into becoming a fan of English Premier league soccer, and I found a logoed wallet from Arsenal, which is his favorite team. (He doesn’t have any money but he has an extensive collection of my hotel room keycards that he likes to carry around.) So I had to preserve family Feng Shui by making a complimentary purchase for The Girl, and Harrod’s had some miniature British licensed character fuzzy animal set, so all should be well.

But hands down, the best part of the weekend: I was wandering through Sainsburys grocery store. (I am a horrible cook, but I love to grocery shop - must either be guilt remnants from my Catholic upbringing, or good old-fashioned masochism) when I decided to buy a single-serve bottle of wine to keep me company in my hotel room. And I got carded! With no apparent irony! By a female cashier, who was wearing a wedding ring!

Just think… if live in a world where THAT could happen, maybe we CAN reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and solve global warming. Maybe the Buffalo Bills WILL win the Super Bowl in the same year the Cubs win the World Series! Maybe we will see Obama & Clinton running on a joint ticket!

Or maybe, just maybe, I could bring home some dim sum, and get the family to take a bite from a deep-fried mystery dumpling.

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