The Conversation

Me: Kids, we need to talk.

The Girl: Yes, I have been meaning to tell you that I want to go to Michaels and get stuff to make foam fairy monsters.

Me: Uh, yeah. That's not exactly what I wanted to talk about. Kids, here's what I need to tell you: my company had to lay some people off, and I lost my job.

The Boy: Does this mean we're going to lose our house? Are we going to live in a tent somewhere?

The Girl: No, dummy. It just means we shouldn't be using our allowances to buy a bunch of junky stuff. We should save it for things we NEED, like food and clothes.

The Boy: I have two five buckses, Mommy. You can borrow those!

The Girl: And I have plenty enough of clothes, Mommy, so you can just worry about buying me food. But [The Boy] doesn't like most food so maybe you should buy him a new shirt instead.

Me: Thanks. Now, don't worry, kids, because things are not going to change THAT much. It means that instead of going to your afterschool program, I'll pick you up from the bus. And that we'll cut out some of the things that we do that we don't love, so that we can try to keep doing the things that are really special.

The Girl: Are you going to start cooking more? I hope that we can still get the two-for Tuesday specials at Dominos's.

(Sudden thought causes her to shout) I DON'T WANT TO EAT TONGUE, MOMMY!

Me: What are you talking about?

The Girl: When Beezus and Ramona's dad lost his job their Mom started making them eat tongue with gravy.

Me: I can promise you that I will never, ever, EVER serve you tongue.

The Boy: (horrorstruck) Does this mean we won't get to go to Disneyworld ever again?

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Come Smell The Magic!

Hey, Manager Mom! The economy’s in the crapper, your 401K is down by 20%, and companies like yours are laying people off left and right! So, what are you gonna do?

I’m going to Disneyworld!

Yep, with my usual impeccable timing, I managed to schedule this trip to happen right when the stock market is dropping faster than virgins on prom night. (Also a great time to ask people to donate to disadvantaged kids' educational projects in this 2008 Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge contest I’m participating in.)

Six months ago, I was trying to figure out kennel coverage for Spawn over the October school closings. There were three days we’d have to cover around the Columbus day holiday. Using my best George Bush math based on the going vacation day program rate of $100/per kid/per day, I somehow convinced myself that it make more financial sense for us to just go to Orlando instead.

We waited to tell Spawn until a week ago because I didn’t want the trip to become one more thing that I threaten for punishment (e.g. “if you don’t start behaving RIGHT NOW we won’t go to Disneyworld after all!”) and then never follow through on, further undermining my limited credibility. Also I didn’t think I could take hearing “WhenarewegoingtoDisneyworld?” twenty times a day for the next six months.

(Not to worry, they found many other subjects to Rain Man about instead).

But when we finally broke the news, their reaction was NOT what I was expecting. In fact, The Boy started crying.

“I don’t want to break my arm!”

Of course, I had forgotten that their friend Caitlin broke her arm on one of the rides when she went last year.

And now that we're here, the excitement level is still on the mild side, somewhere between yellow and orange. I’m slightly annoyed that Spawn has as of yet failed to acknowledge the full extent of my awesomeness for planning this trip.

But we’re heading out to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party tonight. The Boy is dressing as Anakin Skywalker. The Girl is dressing up as an artist. I think once we hit the pearly gates I might finally get some props.

And trying to look on the bright side…maybe the shitty economy means we won’t have to wait in long lines.

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Catch Me If You Can

I just got home from a business trip. Focus groups in Rosemont, Illinois.

My plane was basically a flying Greyhound bus, allowing me to experience the full glory of moderate-to-severe turbulence, with the added bonus of a seatmate that spent the whole flight vigorously rearranging his man bits. To be fair, I ate a bean burrito before I got on the plane, so sitting next to me probably wasn’t any picnic either.

I hadn't traveled in a while, and before I left I was on this kick where I was trying to be a more hands-on mother, although I think I've succeeded mostly in annoying the Spawn, who made it clear that they would MUCH rather be watching the latest rerun of The Suite Life With Zack And Cody than play Chinese Checkers with me for the "twenty hundredth" time.

Because when I left for the trip, they did not appear to be devastated.

The Boy barely looked up from the Wii game he was playing, although Manager Dad said that two hours later, he put down the nunchuck and looked around, eyes glassy and bloodshot, and asked, “Where’s Mommy?”

The Girl walked me out to my car, claiming that she wanted to spend every last second with me before I left. But I’m pretty that she wanted to make sure that I was REALLY leaving, so that she could have Manager Dad all to herself.

As for me, of course, I missed the little buggers...but...

A hotel room.

With a king-sized bed and a high-speed internet connection and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Two on demand.

A restaurant where I got served a hunk of tuna so rare, they must have just waved it over the stove before they put it on the plate.

Mints on the pillow and little green leaf-shaped soaps.

*Sigh*

Oh yeah, I had to work and stuff, too. But I don’t really want to talk about that right now.

Not until after October 16th, anyway.

If you're tired of hearing about corporate fat cats that are living off the teat of the shareholders, why not take a moment to donate to Mrs. W's "Excited To Read" classroom project? All donations go directly to buying books for her special ed students.

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Puppies And Rainbows And Soft Billowy Clouds

It's Saturday. OJ Simpson has been convicted. The $700B bailout package has been passed.

The universe is starting to inch towards sanity.

Let's keep making the karmic gods happy. By throwing even a $5 donation to my 2008 Donors Choose giving page, you'll support worthy classroom projects like Mrs. G's effort to help her her high school students learn Spanish.

By doing that you'll help me reach two goals: one, to fully fund all of the school projects on my page, and two, to win in the Mommy Bloggers category for the challenge. Right now, I'm in fourth place, losing to Finslippy, who (deservedly) has a jabillion readers, and a couple of west coast blog consortiums, who have about two hundred contributors each.

Back Manager Mom, the maverick in this competition. Let's give those Silicon Valley and LA Moms an East Coast generosity smackdown.

So please, my friends, on a day where my local newspaper somehow deems a Britney Spears sighting worthy of front page news, help keep the world in balance by supporting something that might actually promote intelligence.

No need to click for more today, all of the begging is front and center.

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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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Because A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste And All That Stuff

The other day, I got an email from a woman at Donor's Choose about participating in their 2008 blogger's charity event to benefit school programs, which is ironic because as some of you may remember, I've had a major beef with reading lately.

But I've also been on this quest lately to try to be a nicer, better mother, which is not only exhausting, it's making Spawn think that I either have a terminal disease or am getting sent to prison. So I thought that I could channel some good-deed-doing in another area of the universe, and what better time to ask people for money for a good cause than in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

So I agreed to participate in the 2008 Blogger's Choice Donationpalooza because I think that Donor's Choose is a great organization. All of the donations on my page will go to projects in the Stamford public schools, which are perpetually struggling to find resources, so much so that they almost closed Spawn's school a few months back because they couldn't afford to operate all of the schools in the district.

So if you have time for a few clicks, and maybe an extra $5 to spare, please, click here and support a project that will bring so much into the lives of schoolkids in the area. Or pick another project if you don't like mine. The projects I chose are eligible for matching funds through the Fairfield County Foundation, so right away, your donation will be doubled.

As an added incentive AND a recession insurance policy, I will randomly select twenty people from the list of donors and mail you one (1) virgin, unspoiled scratch-off Connecticut lottery ticket. Just send a email to lambira@gmail.com with your snail mail address after you donate.

Whether you donate through my blog or someone else's, please, consider this: without education, I'd be an even bigger idiot than I am now.

Thank you for your time and generosity.

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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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Manager Mom's Gallery Of Shame, Part 2

My birthday weekend is over, and I'm sad to see it go. I had such a good time using "But it's my birthday!" as an excuse to avoid all of the things that I didn't feel like doing, from the trivial (fetching the newspapers from the end of the driveway) to the disgusting (doing the final assists on The Boy's butt-wiping) to the obvious (did not cook a shred of food the entire weekend.)

I meant to post these on Saturday, but I was busy lying on the couch. For those of you who enjoyed the first eight years, behold the terrible power of my adolescence, with its parade of overthought hair and questionable fashions:



















I would like to point out that my mother showed all of these to Manager Dad after he proposed to me. And he STILL went through with the wedding.

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Manager Mom's Gallery of Shame: Part 1: The Grade School Years

Sunday is my birthday. I will be thirty-eight years old.

"Wow, ManagerMom!" People never say to me. "At 38, you're quite the cougar MILF! Have you always been this stunning?"

To answer this question, I bring you portraits from the first eighteen years of my life, which my own mother faithfully saved in an 8 x 10 picture frame in our living room:
Having seen some of my fellow bloggers on Fug Mug Friday over at PapaTV I don't feel quite so bad.

On the other hand, there's still the adolescent years. I'll save those for tomorrow.

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I Will Run You Down Like The Vermin You Are

I have freely admitted that I suck at most of the things that wives and mothers are traditionally good at, like cooking, cleaning, laundry, and having emotions.

But the ONE domestic-ish thing that I USED be able to do was grow tomatoes.

Until this year, when EVERY SINGLE TOMATO got stolen right off of the plants. At first, I thought one of my neighbors was playing a joke on me. Then I thought Manager Dad getting even with me for something I've done to annoy him lately. And then I thought it was a raccoon.

So I tried chicken wire, scarecrows, the sprinkling of dog pee, hexes. Nothing worked. Every time a little green tomato would sprout, it would be plucked off of the branch by the next morning.

Now I realize it was you, squirrels. And today was the last straw. It's one thing to steal, another thing to taunt me with the remains of your theivery:

Game on, you little shits.

Oh. P.S. Happy Anniversary, Manager Dad.

No need to click - today's sadism is all above the fold.

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Dear Keanu,

I spotted your secret signal to me in last week's Wall Street Journal, and I knew that you wanted to meet:



I'm sorry that I blew you off, but I've been thinking about us a lot lately. Especially because this Friday is my and Manager Dad's ninth anniversary. It seems like this "starter marriage" of mine might actually stick.

And so, because of my love for MD and our Spawn, I think that it's time that you and I FINALLY put an end to our relationship.

I remember when we first met; we were so young, and dumb, and carefree.



I always appreciated the fact that you supported my career choices.

I'll miss the wild times we've had together, but it's getting hard for me to keep up with your Hollywood lifestyle.



But our affair wasn't ALWAYS about partying and fetishwear; some of my favorite times were the quiet, simple things that we did together.


I want to reiterate that I'm doing this for Manager Dad. This has absolutely nothing to do with my recent tweets about wanting to bear children for either of these fine young gentlemen:



So that's it. Our twenty years together have been lovely, but all good things must come to an end.

But I hope you take comfort in knowing that I'll always carry a little reminder of you in my heart, and my home:



I will love you desperately forever and am being forced to do this against my will

Fondly,

Manager Mom

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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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On Hiatus

Thanks to everyone who has made writing this blog so much fun. I'm going to be taking a break for a while.

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My Long Overscheduley Nightmare Is Almost Over

I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm ALMOST sure that it's not an oncoming train.

I have eighteen half-finished posts. End of summer Spawn emotional train wreckage! Vast right-wing conspiracy of back to school extortion! Secret affairs and breakups! Horribly embarassing photos of myself as a child! But that will all have to wait until I finally have time to write some shit, hopefully tomorrow.

In the meantime, I had signed up to be a part of Neil Kramer's wicked cool Great Interview Experiment, which I mightily wish I had thought of in the first place. As serendipity would have it, I was matched with my ruminative friend John Dove, of Buddha on the Road fame. John and I have swapped many emails in the past. He's even motivated me to buy a book on mediation, although I have not been able to calm down enough to actually READ it yet.

So if you're bored visit John's posted interview of me. If nothing else, reading about my neuroses should make you feel that much better about yourself.

Nothing below the fold today. Special note to Bites: I PROMISE am going to fix my frigging popup window issues but I don't have the brainwidth to deal with it today. I need to find a high schooler or some other child labor to exploit to fix my technical issues.

Nothing below the fold, no need for clickage.

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Further Proof That The Girl is My Biological Daughter

I twittered (tweeted? twattered? twut?) yesterday about how when I got home last night, The Girl came running up to me, all kinds of proud because her front tooth was loose.

"How'd THAT happen?" I asked her.

"My friend Katie kicked me in the face today!" she said happily.

Katie must have some sort of karate belt, because she did a solid job on on that sucker. Not even 24 hours later, the tooth fell out. I don't know if it's residual paranoia from being kicked in the head, or if the kids at camp are questioning the existence of the Tooth Fairy, but The Girl clearly senses that something's not right with our story. After she fell alseep I found this note under her pillow, in a Ziploc bag along with her tooth:

Yep, she takes right after her suspicious, cynical, type A old momma.

P.S. We gave her three bucks. What's the going rate for teeth nowadays?

P.P.S. Our answers are under the "click here to read more."

P.P.S.S. Haven't slept more than 4 hours straight for the past week. May pass out any minute. Please inject caffeine or stronger substance directly into my veins.



We answered "it's a secret", "sky blue, like yours," and "golden."

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The Miseducation Of America's Youth

Let me apologize AGAIN for the stench of laziness wafting from my blog this week.

I still haven't caught up from vacation and now I'm taking five MORE vacation days to teach an undergraduate advertising class at a local college. I've been spending all of my free time reading the textbook (which I never bothered to do when I was actully in college) and getting my lectures ready.

Tuition is about $4000 per kid with 11 students. And someday, I will pay roughly twice the GDP of Guam in order to send my own Spawn to college. This makes me feel like a high-priced call girl and therefore obligated to give my paying customers their money's worth. And if they start getting bored, I can always bust out some stories about how high Tom Green appeared to be on one of my photoshoots, or list of all of the reasons why it's a bad idea to eat craft services sushi.

In honor of the damage I will be inflicting on tomorrow's business leaders, this recycled post is from another time that I faced a hostile audience. It's old, so it kind of sucks. Endure/ignore at your discretion.


Perils Of The Linen Closet

Yesterday morning, I was struggling with my still newish, un-MILFy haircut, trying to get it to a place that didn't make me look so much like Tilda Swinton. Somehow I managed to cut my hand on my hairdryer, causing me to smear blood all over my tasteful Banana Republic career separates.

After working my way through all of my favorite expletives (The Boy – (“Mommy, what does (rhymes with rock pucker) mean?”) I grabbed a Band-Aid from the messy bin in the linen closet and doctored myself up.

After changing into a new outfit that had the least amount of stains and wrinkles, I passed out hugs and lunches, wrote a preemptive note of apology to The Boy's teachers for when he repeated the new words I'd taught him, and headed off to Dunkin Donuts (the High Ridge location if you're keeping score) for 24-ounces of sweet caffeinated salvation.

With the double D in my car cupholder (because there ain't no D's in my other cupholders - The Evil Twins can barely muster up a 34A nowadays) and twenty minutes of driving ahead, I tried to put my mind through the mental gymnastics that help me get into work mode. I had a big presentation to give to some important types at work, and I didn't want to LOOK like as big of a jackass as I was FEELING like on this particular day.

Flash ahead to noon. I had just finished delivering my presentation. It was jam-packed with every feature and function that Powerpoint has to offer: charts, graphs (of the pie, line, AND bar varieties), bullet-pointing, animations. I'd hit them with forecasts, projections, conclusions, educated guesses, visionary speculations. I used words like "paradigm shift"and "step change." I had props and prototypes. I had my admin order lunch, because serving food is pretty much always guaranteed to put managerial cogs in a good mood.

But my magnificence was met with silence. Finally, one of the women spoke up. Six heads in various states of gray and/or baldness swiveled toward the sound of her voice.

“Hey,” Female Executive That I Had Once Liked said loudly. “Is that a Hello Kitty band-aid on your hand?”

Why yes. Of course it was. Thanks for pointing that out. And let's all also watch the spectacular explosion of my professional reputation, while we're at it.

Six heads whipped back and forth between staring at her and staring at my hand. It was like a bunch of teenage boys watching Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova play Wimbledon naked.

“Um, yes," I said. "They sell them at Target." If I didn't sound stupid enough, I added, "They have My Little Pony ones too.”

“Good to know," said Female Senior Executive Who Just Barely Spared Herself a Blog-Lashing. "I need to get some of those. My daughter hurts herself all the time. Now, let’s talk about your recommendations….”

Life Lesson #1: Sometimes, the Power of Mom can be your saving grace.

Life Lesson #2: Always look before you Band-Aid.

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It's No San Francisco

Last night, the Fairfield County Blog & Grog Society (founding member: Always Home And Uncool) had our second meetup. It was like a miniature BlogHer, except with mosquitos, nachos, and men. The other difference? No swag. We couldn't even get free drinks from the bartender, who remained unmoved by the huge lies about the mighty weight of our combined blogpower.

We had people ranging from a twentyish hip-hop writer to a fortyesque government chemist to an internet philosopher to a guy with anger management issues. We had not just ONE, but TWO real authors, and Sarah brought an advance copy of her upcoming book for us all to stroke and oohh and aahh over.

Connecticut Mom's Family Financials (who is ridiculously cute in real life) drove TWO hours to come, while the split personalities of Fancy Pancakes and Stamford Talk were chauffeured by their husband, who got sick of all of the shop talk and took off, leaving them to take the train home with Station Stops. Luckily, Fairfield County Child lives just a short stumble away.

We missed The FTF (who gave some lame excuse about celebrating his anniversary) and This Is Not Going To Help, who appears to be trapped in a cave somewhere in the Ozarks.

We even had a reporter from the local paper covering the event, which was great until I came down with a slight case of the drunks and gave her a detailed list of all of the things I'm not supposed to blog about. Then I started trying to convince Beth (who is now my new favorite person because of our shared love of Zalman King erotica) that she should host a Vibrator Night at the spa that she owns until she very nicely pointed out that the LAST THING she needed to do was associate a legitimate spa with porn, since there are already enough perverts in this world trying to get massage therapists to give them a happy ending.

But aside from that, the event was a smash, and we have decided to make this a regular thing. On the third Thursday of every month, you can find all of us at Monster B's in Stamford, Connecticut. If you're ever in the area, please, come on by.

Maybe you can help us get that cheap bastard owner to FINALLY cough up some free drinks.

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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.

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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.

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