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

I think my son exploded.

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

Nothing below the fold today.

Sorry charlies, nothing to see here

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Phoning in a Twofer - A Meme with a Twist, Plus Giveaways!

A few weeks ago, I was "tagged" for the first time ever to do a "meme" (or whatever the kids are calling it nowadays) by the lovely and talented Mimi On The Breach.

When I first started blogging I didn't think I would do memes. But now I realize how hard it is to consistently come up with good quality shit to write about, especially since my life is not that interesting. Some of us can spit out daily posts that are dense, metaphor-packed, and cause the reader to weep helplessly by prompting the startling realization of a deep life truism. I, on the other hand, write about things like my kids' farts and my miniscule boobies.

Add the fact that work is really kicking my ass this week and the meme idea (with slight modifications for laziness) is looking pretty appealing. And for good measure, I'm going to throw in the other thing I thought I'd never do, which is to give away TWO (2) unfabulous prizes - revealed at the end of the post.

But enough pre-mumble. Let's get this party started. (And I'll keep the contest open until Saturday Morning.)

Rule #1. I tag ALL OF YOU. Don't feel like you have to link back to me, though.
Rule #2. Either read my six random things, or ignore them.
Rule #3. Leave a comment with one random thing of your own. Or not.
Rule #4. One prize will be given to a randomly drawn commenter.
Rule #5. The other prize will be awarded to my favorite comment, based on completely arbitrary and unfair reasons of my own choosing.

Without further ado, Manager Mom's Six Random Things:


1. I am afraid of earrings. I have vivid hallucinations about them getting caught on something and causing my earlobes to rip open and spew gore everywhere.



2. As a teenager I was once involved in a series of events that culminated in me throwing up in the back seat of a cop car. The fallout was more unpleasant (and more expensive) than you can imagine.



3. If you are trying to remain a MILF, but are on a budget, bangs are cheaper than Botox.



4. Having met him in real life, I find it entirely plausible that Always Home & Uncool and I are twins that were seperated at birth.



5. I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and a '64 Impala.

6. I almost didn't add the "Mom" to the "Manager". Back when Manager Dad and I were dating, I never realized that I wanted to have kids. But then came the day that we first met MD's newborn nephew. I saw the look on his face when they handed that baby to him and knew at that moment that a) he was the man that I wanted to marry and b) that he would make the best father in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD. (Happy Belated Father's Day, MD).

So there you have my six random things. And the unfabulous prizes?

Yep, that's right! Two lucky winners will get their choice of a Kum & Go wearable, which gives me the PERFECT excuse to order the green shirt for myself.

Updated on June 30th: The random winner is Ann at Velvet Lava and the Mom's Choice award went Stamford Talk. Because she was my first non-relative reader, and she begged a lot in the comment section.

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Carnal Thoughts

It's business time!



I'm in the Admiral's Club Lounge at JFK, about to embark on the Manager Mom 2008 West Coast Business Tour. THREE cities. FOUR airlines. Infinite airplane misery. (Hi there, Herbietown! I'm feeling your pain, my brother.)

As I left my house at 4:30 A.M, (yes, I said A.M., because that's what I had to do to get the cheapest airfare, and I hope those sadists in our Travel & Expense Department get a horribly disfiguring skin rash) I saw that our local Greek Orthodox church was setting up their summer carnival.

Naturally, this makes me think of having illicit sex with random strangers.

Er, from a THEORETICAL, not a PRACTICAL, point of view, said the happily-married-for-nine-years mother of two who will spend the next several days attending an "innovation conference."

Why is this the case? Because in my late college years, when my friends and I got tired of getting groped and thrown up on by drunken frat guys (which more or less resembles my experience at a typical kid birthday party nowadays), we started having movie nights.

We'd gather in someone's apartment with a few cases of Schaefer Light, a fine brew whose 24-pack at $1.99 pack price point made their marketing tagline ("When You're Planning On Having More Than One, Make It A Schaefer") more of a personal challenge. Then we'd pop This Is Spinal Tap into the Betamax and spend the rest of the evening eating Tastykake Cupcakes and reciting lines of dialogue along with the TV.

But one day, my best friend happened to bring over a movie called Two Moon Junction. It stars Sherilynn Fenn as a proper Southern debutante who gets swept away by her passion for a brooding, mysterious carnival worker. This was definitely a Hollywood fantasy world because this guy looked nothing like the greasy toothless track-marked workers that staff, I don't know, EVERY SINGLE CARNIVAL I've ever experienced in my lifetime.

But with the Schaefer flowing, and all of us between boyfriends, this movie quickly moved into heavy rotation. Eventually, the novelty wore off and we realized that Richard Tyson is actually pretty gross, a fact later confirmed by his performance as Cullen Crisp in Kindergarten Cop.

And so in the spirit of love, and with visions of carnys dancing in my head, I'll leave you with another heartwarming piece of family exploitation - one in which my daughter, after having her Electra complex go from zero to 60 in under ten seconds while watching the movie Enchanted, created a little book in which she writes about the mating habits of adult humans.

Again, purely from a theoretical point of view. Certainly not by observing the mating rituals of her parents.

I posted it over here,and I hope y'all enjoy it as much as her art teacher did.

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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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Are You There, God? It's Me, Manager Mom

So, did you do anything fun this weekend? Because I think I managed to turn a dinner party invitation into a one-way ticket to Hell.

The dinner was at my next door neighbor's house, which would normally not be blogworthy except that she also happens to be the priest of the local Episcopal church. There were seven of us there; the others were very funny and cool, and we were having good get-to-know-you cocktail hour chitchat.

We moved from topics like golf, taxes, and pot-smoking neighborhood teens on to politics. Emboldened by a few gin and tonics (you wouldn't think a priest would pour such stiff drinks, but you would be thinking wrong) and never one to err on the side of good judgement, I made a joke about how you weren't supposed to talk about politics or religion at a dinner party but that since we already covered politics, we might as well go there with the religion.

I then proceeded to tell the story about how after The Girl was born, I met with the local priest about having her baptized, and he spent the whole time hassling me about how I never go to church and why did I want to get her baptized anyway when I'm such a horrible Catholic? And then on the day of the ceremony, he forgot to show up, leaving our family cooling their heels in the church until I found him in the rectory more than an hour later.

Midway through the story, I started to have that feeling I have where I'm dreaming of being in a public place and I look down at myself and realize that I'm TOTALLY NAKED, and then everyone starts pointing at me and laughing.

And that freaked me out MORE, so I went on to apologize, and then to babble about how I have issues because my parents used to fight a lot about religion, and the whole time there's a running commentary in my head in which I alternate repeatedly thinking the Lord's name in vain with disbelief that I told my mean priest story to a ROOM FULL OF PRIESTS.

Luckily, one of the other guests made a joke about how it's pretty hard to shock an Episcopalian these days, and my neighbor busted out some cake and everyone was able to move on from my moment of oversharing.

But the next morning I woke up with a slight hangover and a heaping helping of piping hot Catholic guilt, because I was forced to confront what a massive failure I've been in the spiritual guidance department.

I did TRY to take them back to Mean Priest's church a few years ago, but he made us go sit in a soundproof cube area where The Boy (who was three at the time) managed to find a stray gummy worm underneath one of the pews. I can only hope that the rest of the parishoners were more entertained than the priest was by the sight of me frantically digging through the kid's mouth, trying to get the fossilized floor candy before he could swallow it.

Bottom line, it's long overdue for us to give the kids some spiritual grounding. Therefore, I have decided to go church-shopping.

I have high hopes that somewhere within a 10-mile radius, I'll find a nice, progressive, Christian-esque church that won't judge us too harshly if we skip the occasional mass for a soccer game, and that vacuums their floors on a more regular basis.

In the meantime, please feel free to post comments with ideas for my family's salvation. I should have some time to review them on Sunday.

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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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How About A Nice Divorce For Mother's Day?

For whatever reason, I started getting emails from Splash Car Wash when I got arm-twisted into signing up for a "frequent washer" card.

I don't know why I bothered. I hate that minivan so much, it's lucky that I let it stay in the garage and feed it as much of the hideously expensive engine juice as I do.

I get the thing washed approximately once a year, usually the day after this happens: I'm pulling into the parking lot at work, late (as usual) for a 9:30 meeting thanks to an ill-timed kid tantrum at morning dropoff.

Nattily attired in some summer white pants, I get out of the car and proceed to drop my lunch box, which breaks and scatters my food rather spectacularly across the parking lot. As I'm bending over to pick up all my crap I brush up against the filthy car door, which leaves a gigantic, black, oily, Texas-shaped Rorschach Test on my ass all day for the entire office to contemplate.

But I digress, as usual.

The above image on the left is the email that Splash sent out. And while I applaud their use of a timely theme and their marketing chutzpah, I could not help but say out loud, "I don't effing think so."

Manager Dad has been duly forewarned that if he also happens to be the mailing list, and this is the best idea he can wring from his overtired and overtaxed grey matter for a Mother's Day present, I will swiftly implement a unilateral year-long laundry embargo in retaliation.

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A Not-So-Shocking Confession

I’m a big advocate of looking for fun wherever it is trying to hide. That’s why I put ‘squeezing pleasure from business’ in my blog header. I’m not afraid to admit that I like working, I’m good at what I do, and in case you haven't guessed from my right-leaning rantings about various financial topics, as a pleasant side effect I also happen to bring home some pretty decent bacon. (I can’t fry it up in a pan because cooking's a mere one on a long list of wifely tasks that I suck at. This is why the gods invented Boston Market.)

Which brings me to the not-so-shocking confession. I love to work. An only child by birth, I am WAY too selfish to stay home full time. I did the part time thing for a few years and I will always treasure those days. But the part time was hampering me from getting the assignments and advancement that I wanted, and it started to bother me more and more, so after a few years, I threw in the towel and went back full time.

Aside from the intellectual stimulation piece, on the superficial level (and I’m big into the shallow, or I wouldn't be on pins and needles every week waiting for my US Weekly) I like putting on nice clothes and going to a place where I can play with other grownups. For me, I’ve found that raising children is rewarding and fulfilling and all that, in the long term. But I also found that everyone who had so much helpful child rearing advice for me when I was pregnant neglected to tell me until I was knee-deep in the shizzy that it can also be mundane, stressful, and even maddening on a day-to-day basis.

If it wasn’t, the nannies working for all those Greenwich stay-at-home hedge-fund-manager-wife types wouldn’t be pulling down so much coin. If one’s primal urge isn’t to leave one's palatial mansion to partake in corporate gamesmanship, weekly facials is certainly a fair substitute. I’m not here to judge anybody.

But as much as I generally like my work, the fun has been in short supply lately because I’m not a huge fan of the job I’m in right now. It's an operations job that I'm learning a lot from, but I don't really like, unlike my previous brand management role where I was excited to go into the office every day. Luckily, my company rotates us to new positions every 2 years or so, so I only have about one year left on my sentence before I get released to a new job for good behavior.

Having said that, I am now in the midst of a business trip to London that has made these past few days ridiculously ripe for some fun-squeezins. Business class airline ticket paid for by company...7 1/2 hour flight...meeting all day Friday…is it not blazingly obviously that it begged for a weekend stayover?

Any mom, whether she works or stays at home, can definitely appreciate what a rare and precious gift the notion of having a whole 24 hours completely to yourself. And that, ladies and ladies (are there any guys besides Manager Dad who read my blog?) is what tomorrow is going to be all about.

So in the next post: musings on the UK.

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The Girl's Turn

Today is The Girl's birthday. It marks the end of the week of our family's version of Kiddie Gras, brought on by the close proximity of the birthdays (just 4 days apart). During this frenzied window, any illusions of good nutrition, positive discipline, and reasonable bedtimes that we try to maintain during the rest of the year pretty much goes down in flames.

I already gave The Boy his birthday props in this post - now it is The Girl's turn for a shout-out. But before I present the top 10 most magnificent things about my 7-with-the-soul-of-a-70-year old, please indulge me as I get a wee bit schmaltzy. (Hey, it's my blog, and I'll schmaltz if I want to.)

The Girl's entree into the world was not a smooth one. There was a unexpected hospitalization with a blur of doctors, steroid injections, ultrasounds, and a constant low-grade level of fright until finally, at 34 weeks, The Girl came into the world: quiet, tiny and wide-eyed, with a smooshed up nose like a miniature Rocky Balboa.

I only got to hold her for a moment before they whisked her away.

The next time I saw her, she was flat on her back, completely motionless, on a warming tray in the neonatal intensive care unit. She was sporting more tubes, needles, and wires than an amateur ham radio convention. I took one look at her and all of the terror, hope, fear, and hormones of the week washed over me, and I couldn't do anything more than burst into tears.

Because at that moment, I understood in a way that I had never felt before what it felt like to love someone so much that it made you feel desperate inside.

I look at her now, with the memories of those roller coaster first days safely repressed, and I am completely flummoxed that the same girl that we celebrated a "Five Pound Party" for in the NICU is now seven years old. Luckily, she has no lasting complications from her rough start - she's tall, bright, beautiful, and bossy - and yet, I continue to be awed and terrified by her on a daily basis.

So in no particular order, let me lay out top 10 most wonderful things about The Girl.

1. Gymnastics class. She's half a head taller than almost every other kid in there, and without question the least coordinated, but she flops and flails her coltish legs around the whole time with a huge smile on her face - just because she's having so much fun.

2. The nocturnal reading. It's not a bad problem for a mother to have to tell her kid to turn off that flashlight and stop reading already! The only downside is that her bedtimes have been creeping later and later, and she wakes up grumpier and grumpier. It's a bad sign that she has noticed the positive change in my personality after my daily 24oz Dunkin Donuts, prompting her to ask when she she will be old enough to be allowed to drink coffee.

3. The way she helps her brother do little things (like button his pants or spell his name) when she thinks that nobody will see her being nice to him.

4. The current style phase of monochromatic dressing, resulting in the creation of such avant-garde looks like "prison inmate" (grey-on-grey, striped socks) and "Mary Kay Saleslady on Acid" (pale-through-fuschia layered pinks).

5.Her re-enactments of scenes from High School Musical. She sings the heck out of those love songs, filled with as much passion and longing as a 7 year old whose who has never experienced true heartbreak can muster. (If Troy heard the way SHE sings "Breaking Free," he'd dump that boring little goody-goody twit Gabriela in a New York minute.)

6. The bizarre phone calls she has with her best friend. (Sample topic: "Can you see my eyeball?" -Presses eye to phone.)


7. Her perceptiveness and creativity - despite the fact that when combined, it can cause us embarassment, such as the time her teacher asked me why she would write a handbook called "Gear for Love" in which one of the recommendations was "Love Wine". (It came from the Disney movie Enchanted, certainly, not from observing any mating rituals between Manager Dad and myself.)

8. The way she carries on when we try to comb her hair in the morning. I know she thinks brushing is a form of child abuse, but the melodrama attached to the grooming process is fairly hilarious, when it's not completely maddening.

9. Her stubbornness (I call it that when it's working against me) - or "determination" when it's aimed at a problem she's trying to solve. I forsee epic, gladiator-style battles in her teenage years, and I trust she will be a formidable nemesis.

10. The secret 'flashlight signal' where, if after bedtime she requires an extra kiss from Manager Dad, she shines a flashlight down the stairs in just the right place for him to see from the couch. (Yes, I know about the signal, and yes, I know he's her favorite, but it's OK, I completely understand - I think he's pretty great too.)

To my sweet, weird, funny, beautiful girl: the world will be yours for the taking. And I'm behind you every step of the way.

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A MILF No More?

When I was a kid, my parents forced me wear my hair short. And since the hair was also frizzy and bright red, I spent most of my pre-teen years looking like the love child of Carrot Top and a '70's-era Dr. J. No matter what hideous shade of seizure-inducing pink my mother dressed me in, people invariably gushed, "Oh, what a cute little boy!"

So when they finally let me take control of my own style (high school), I overcompensated. I farmed some major ‘80’s hair. I never met a perm (I needed big hair to balance my Fame-inspired off-the shoulder ripped sweatshirts) or a highlighting technique (which complemented my orangesque tanning-bed glow) that I wouldn’t try.

But I absolutely refused to get it cut until the day after my college graduation, and then only because I downed half a dozen shots of Jagermeister at the now-defunct Gully's Riverview Inn and passed out facedown in a wad of someone else's gum.

In my late twenties, I grudgingly came to accept that I couldn’t pull off do-me butt-length blonde streaks anymore. So I got the rite-of-passage female corporate drone haircut, and my hair has remained meekly at shoulder length ever since. My one other major change was when I got bangs in ‘98, a concession to the folly of the aforementioned ‘80s "All-You-Can-Tan" package. Being a tightwad who is squeamish about needles, I figured that bangs are cheaper than Botox. But aside from those two events, all’s been quiet on the hair front.

So last week, when I went in for regularly scheduled maintenance, I was most surprised to emerge from the salon with a short new ‘do. I don’t really recall how it all went down (something to do with an anniversary celebration and free champagne punch) but the end result was a new style that I can best describe as Carly Fiorina meets The Monkees.

I am upset with this turn of events for an utterly shallow reason: with short hair, I feel like I no longer qualify to be a MILF.

Whether or not I’m actually a MILF right now is up for debate. I have only one source of MILFinformation – Manager Dad. Since he is not a stupid man, I cannot say with 100% certainty if he truly believes that I am, or if he just wants me to keep doing his laundry.

And while I know I shouldn’t care about MILFdom (I’m one of those keep-your-own-last-name semi-feminist types), I do anyway. I'm not trying to be a Springerian train wreck, wearing microminis at 57 and sleeping with my teenage kid's boyfriend. Nor do I want to turn into a dog-frightening Joan Rivers freak show, desperately sculpting my last shreds of remaining natural skin into an eternally frozen expression of surprise.

No - I simply want to maintain a reasonably age-appropriate level of good-lookingness so that I can enjoy the occasional catcall from construction sites, and continue to earn more money than my less attractive counterparts. (Don't shoot the messenger on that one - this has been statistically proven).

Response from the family is split - thumbs up from The Girl, thumbs down from The Boy. Manager Dad wisely broke the tie with a "you look great, honey."

Reaction from friends and coworkers was generally positive, although the “You look very professional” that I got from Steve in Information Management doesn’t quite have the same ego-stroking impact of a "Hey there, hottie." On the other hand, I guess it also doesn’t have the same potential for a sexual harassment claim, so I respect where Steve is coming from on that one.

I think I like the haircut. And if I decide I don’t, I have an ace in the hole - a young, defenseless daughter with no disposable income who cannot drive. I can project all of my hairy desires on her. I feel that it is my motherly duty to instill at least a few childhood hangups; all things considered, a hair fixation isn't the worst thing she could wind up with. Shouldn't take too much therapy to cure.

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The Boy's Big Day

Today is The Boy's birthday.

Despite the fact that I am a woman, I'm not really in touch with my feminine side. Emotions make me nervous. But on this day, I have this strange, fuzzy, sentimental thing - I think it's called a "feeling"- and therefore humbly ask you indulge me a few moments of misty reflection on the wonder that is my newly minted five year old boy.

Both The Boy and The Girl have been talking up their birthdays for at least six months. The Girl is two years older, but their birthdays are only 4 days apart. I have been capitalizing on this by throwing them joint birthday parties. I thought this was the year that we were doomed for a breakup, because for months they couldn't agree on a shared location. The Girl wanted the Stamford Museum & Nature Center, while The Boy wanted the Stamford Raceway.

Negotiations were intense and feelings were running high. But thanks to a last minute intervention by Condoleeza Rice, detente was achieved. If a 5 year old boy and a 7 year old girl can agree on a birthday party location, there IS hope for peace in the Middle East. The party will be held at My Three Sons in Norwalk, which coincidentally happens to be my least favorite kids' birthday place on the planet.

Since they share their party, I try to make the actual day of their birthday feel special. So I decorated the kitchen with garlands and balloons, served him a sugary, non-nutritious breakfast, dressed him up in his favorite samurai warrior shirt, and dropped him off at school with an array of kosher delectables for him to share with his schoolchums.

And I'd like to steal a shopworn technique from the great David Letterman, and use it to share the top 10 things that I adore about The Boy.

1. Bedtime and the way he makes me cover him up completely with his sheet before he will allow me to leave his room. (I must assure him that his face, blue blankie, dogs Willy and Hairball, and the back of his head are all included).

2. His speech quirks - they way he struggles with the letter 's', how he pronounces th's like f's, the way he mixes up his b's and v's (turning 'maybe' into 'may-ve' and a 'movie' into a 'moo-bie'). I'm sure this will cost a small mint to correct via speech therapy someday, but for now it's adorable.

3. The smell of his hair after a bath - green apples.

4. Mornings, when he and I are the only ones awake and the house is still quiet. He pads downstairs to come find me in the office and snuggles into my lap with his sweetly rumpled, vulnerable demeanor. (Note to The Boy - I would not mind if we shared this closeness at a slightly later hour than your usual 6am wakeup time).

5. The way he randomly thanks me at times for things like packing his lunch, and how he congratulates me when I do a good job of playing with him.

6. The daily wardrobe choice of his favorite ill-fitting camouflage pants. He's painfully thin looking with long, spindly legs - I cinch them in as far as possible and yet they still manage to look like floods AND hang too low on the waist, showing off his Jimmy Neutron undies and making him look like a miniature Vanilla Ice.

7. The impromptu math quizzes that he gives me in order to reassure himself that I really do know how to add four plus four.

8. The way he gets so excited when he is waiting to start a soccer game - he squinches up his eyes, balls up his fists, and runs furiously in place waiting for the action to start.

9. His walk - he struts around like there's a soundtrack playing in his head. (I envision it to sound much like the theme song from Sanford and Son).

10. The current obsession with Star Wars, and the creativity he uses in MacGyvering an endless array of household items into light sabers and laser pistols. Our house is never quiet - there's a constant stream of sound effects as he engages in a neverending battle with the invisible minions of the Dark Side.

Happy Birthday, my little Jedi Knight. Manager Mom couldn't be prouder.

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My Wine Label

Manager Dad and I were in Vegas a few months ago. We went there to renew our wedding vows in because we had been married 7 years and have not cheated on each other yet. The ceremony at the Viva Las Vegas wedding chapel. Their Elvis looks NOTHING like the king but I highly recommend the "One Song Package" where for only $275, you get Elvis doing the ceremony PLUS one song at the "reception", with a photographer and free live webcam streaming thrown in. Klassy! (Ironic use of the "K" intended).

So we were celebrating after the event (which a bunch of our friends came to, and despite the ridiculousness of the situation, I got all cheesed out and emotional when we were in the middle of the vow renewal.) We ordered a bottle of wine, which was out of stock, so our waiter substituted this one instead at the same price. It was from Lamborn Family Vineyards and it was a zinfandel and it was delicious. It might have been the company (the man I LOOOOVE) the location ( Foundation room at the House of Blues on top of Mandalay Bay, looking out at the whole twinkly strip) or the fact that the wine we'd had prior was from Jerry Garcia vineyards, and it tasted about as good as his lungs and liver probably looked around the time of his death.

At any rate, I enterprisingly went online to get some more, and found that they were only sold in 7 stores around the country. One of them was in San Francisco, where I had to go on business trip. Being 1) extremely cheap and b) a master time-waster, I decided to take a walk from my meeting to the wine shop and pick it up instead of having it shipped to me at home. I wound up passing the office for a cool marketing agency and I wound up hiring them and falling head over heels in friend love with their whole staff, and all kinds of nice things came into my life as a result of this bottle.

And then I found out that they were having a contest to name their next vintage of Zinfandel. I cranked out this little ditty, which made the top 5 submissions. So the Lamborns put this to a vote within the online community. I put out the call to my evil minions (many) and my friends and relatives (few) to go and vote for my story... and viola, darn it if I didn't win!!!

On day I left for Sundance, I got a note from Brian Lamborn (the son of the owner) with one of the labels. I attached it for your viewing pleasure. They'd just bottled it (not yet released) but here is the first preview of the new Zinfandel - the 2006 Lamborn "Serendipity" Zinfandel.

Buy lots of freakin' bottles. (They're only making a few thousand cases and when they're gone, they're gone). And oh by the way, can you send me a bottle when you do? because the Lamborns don't ship to Connecticut. Nice people, but tey need to stop paying attention to details like "federal law."

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