Paging Fairfield County Bloggers!

The other day, I had my first "huh, never thought of that before" moment about having my blog. I was having breakfast with a friend and she was telling me a story when all of the sudden, she stopped suddenly and said, "Oh! PLEASE don't write about this in your blog!" I assured her that I would never betray her confidence, and even if I did, my blog has (how do I put this kindly without insulting myself?) specialized appeal.

So why bother blogging? Well, for someone who has to operate in the language of soul-sucking, mind-deadening business cliches the better part of each day, it's a nice change of pace and creative outlet. It's also a good way to keep family, potential identity thieves, and the random strangers that try to friend me on Facebook up to date about on what's going on in my head and my life.


And as a very cool and unexpected side benefit, I've had a few strangers read my stuff and leave comments and reactions, which has led me to uncover a rich vein of other interesting writers in the area. As their postings and occasional emails have lead me to believe, they're not only happening from a digital perspective but appear to have a high probability being fairly cool people in the real world.

So I thought, wouldn't it be super-duper swell to see how the other half lives, to meet some of these people and talk shop? After all, The Best Way To Have A Good Idea Is To Have Lots. And what better way to generate ideas than to gather in person in a location where they have half price cocktails?

So here's my idea: bloggers from the FC: Let's meet up sometime.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not inviting you over to my house - that's a little bit "To Catch A Predator" for my tastes. I was thinking somewhere glamorous, like the snack bar at the Norwalk Costco, or possibly the High Ridge Road Cosi if we were really feeling crazy.

The marketing person in me understands that to generate excitement for the event, we need a catchy name. Since I have limited capacity for further creative endeavors in my last remaining brain cell, I am appealing to Taken With A Grain Of Salt to apply her alliterative skills and come up with something. To be really intimidating, she might consider incorporating "2008" and/or the word "summit." I have found that in the corporate world, that's the best way to get people to attend your meetings, presuming you fail to get budget approval to serve food.

Next, the location. I had been thinking we could rent out Herbietown, but then I remembered that it's a figment of that guy's imagination. Therefore, my Plan B is to have the tuned-in Stamford Talk recommend a place in the area that might pass for what the kids call a "hotspot," preferably one where we have a high probabibility of seeing and being seen, and maybe even having someone email the Stamford Advocate to get us written up in the world's most boring gossip column.

If you don't want to bring your family, I'm sure that Fairfield County Child can give us some tips on where to find and exploit cheap child care labor.

For entertainment, we'll munch on Baby Food while Jeff Herz enlightens us on His View Of The World. and Indigo Sarah delivers random meta-stories about the Pope and The Canadian.

I'll partner with Amy Bow to lead a discussion on topics specific to working and/or extremely pregnant moms, ranging from MILFishness to maternity underwear.

And when the whole shindig is done, Mr. Stamford can post about how much the event sucked. That way, Kevin, who will no doubt blow off the event because he is Always Home And Uncool, can sleep easy knowing he didn't miss anything special.

There are plenty of other interesting people in the area, and if I left you off, don't take it personally. I just ran out of clever shoutout gimmicks. If I left you/your blog out, leave a comment with some big ups for yourself, so we can check you out.

And as for the event itself, it would be delightful for any and all that want to attend: fellow bloggers, occasional readers, player haters, prior stalkers. We will do our best to be inclusive and bore anyone who shows up.

So... I'll throw out a date. Friday the 13th. (In June). Happy Hour. Location TBD. Any takers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Tom Brady Is In My Basement

Unfortunately, it's not the Bridget Moynahan-impregnating, Glaceau-drinking, Gisele-shagging, Stetson-scented, Superbowl-losing-quarterback hottie.

It's the Tom Brady from Connecticut Basement Systems, here to provide an estimate on how much it would cost to install a new sump pump.

Nonetheless, it was highly entertaining to send Manager Dad an email with this post title as the subject line. In his reply, he indicated that he would make a few stops on the way home from work: 1) to purchase a pregnancy test and 2) to have a quick consultation with a divorce attorney.

If you did click here, sorry, no more pearls of entertainment in this post. I just couldn't figure out how to get rid of the "click here" link.

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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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Getting Gas

Effing fuel prices.

So... where does one go to get gas in Stamford? Aside from the obvious places like Ole Mole and Kit's Thai Kitchen?.

I'm tired of spending $50 to fill up the minivan. It really chaps my ass, especially since I never wanted to be driving a minivan in the first place. I got hoodwinked into that particular purchase by Manager Dad. ("Don't worry...I'll drive this one, you can drive the other car! And just think of how convenient it will be for road trips and Costco!")

Somehow, the next thing I know, I'm driving it to the office every day, hating on NPR Media Commentator Paul Janesch because I can't bring myself to listen to hip-hop in a Honda Odyssey, on the grounds that it makes me seem like a complete poseur jackass.

So how does a middle-class mom minimize the family gas expenditures? Why, by driving all around town to find the gas station with the lowest price per gallon, of course.

There are three Mobils (two on High Ridge, one on Hope) within a two mile radius of our house that have three different (yet all ridiculously high) prices. The hell? How can the same gas chain in the same zip code be so far off?

There's a couple of Shells that are priced in the same stratosphere as the Mobils.

So I usually go to the Citgo on Hope. And yes, I am fully aware that Citgo is owned by a Venezuelan company and therefore supports dictator (and world-class head case) Hugo Chavez. But what can I say - homey gives cheap gas. I paid $3.45 per gallon of unleaded today while the Mobil right across the street had it for $3.57. Double huh? I think you know what you can do with your Speedpass, Mr. Exxon Mobil Corporation.

But the cheapest gas I've found has to be the 95 Express right on Route 1 near the Exit 9 entrance to rt. 95. This place routinely has gas for at least 10 cents cheaper than any other gas station I've encountered. Because of this, the station is more crowded than your average Amsterdamian discount brothel on payday.

Unfortunately, the station is terribly designed and laid out, with an extremely narrow ingress and only one tiny exit (from which you really should not try to cut across three lanes of the busy Route 1 to turn left, but everyone tries anyway). The traffic flow is frightening. You see a flock of jerks angling to get around other cars in an effort to either get to an empty pump or get out of the parking RIGHT THAT VERY SECOND so that they can get to Hooters or wherever they're in such a hurry to go on 6pm on a Thursday. I actually saw a guy in a Ford Expedition run over another man's foot in an effort to escape, rather than just waiting the two seconds before the car in front of him finished gassing up and pulled away.

So rather than endanger my own life (and the life of the much-despised minivan) I guess I'll stick with the Senor and Citgo of the Despots, unless anyone has any other suggestions.

And by the way, how can Stamford POSSIBLY sustain so many gas stations? (Not to mention strip mall pizza places, banks, and hair/nail salons, but that's a whole other post.)

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And "Mother Of The Year" Goes To...

Today, I faced one of those no-win dilemmas that only a working mother can appreciate: what do you do with a child that’s slightly off, but not really sick? Do you miss yet another day of work, or Motrin him up and send him to day care?

I had inklings of trouble last night when the boy refused to eat more dinner than he normally does. Usually he'll grudgingly consume about 3/4 of a meal, but last night, after a few bites of home-cooked (actually, Boston Market-purchased) chicken, he threw in the fork. Not even the usual bribes of cornbread or sliced apples on the couch could entice him to eat more.

Much later, I was awakened from a dead sleep at 4am with the same child looming over me in the dark.

"Mommy," he said, "I'm either hungry, or I'm going to throw up."

Ever optimistic, I went with "hungry." Gave the kid two slices of toast and stuffed him back into bed. Tried to nap between his subsequent intermittent wanderings back into our room. So when it was time to actually get up, I was tired and short-tempered. I knew the kid wasn't quite right, but I had a lot of work to get done. And he seemed OK - no fever or other outward signs of illness, and when he started asking for chocolate milk and Munchkins I chalked up his droopy demeanor up to being tired. So Manager Dad and I made the executive decision to soldier on and take him to day care.

I telecommute on Fridays, and as I conducted my morning business, I kept a nervous surveillance eye on my cell phone. My paranoia was not unfounded as I received The Call at approximately 10am. I was most displeased to hear the voice of Nice Day Care Lady #1, aka The One Who Usually Calls If Your Child Is Sick Or Injured.

'Hello,' said NDCL#1, 'I am just calling you to let you know The Boy is not quite himself today.' 'What's wrong with said boy?' I asked. 'Well, he's kind of mopey,' was the answer. 'He's not participating in activities.'

Now, she didn't directly ASK me to come pick him up, but the sentiment was clearly there. I could feel a warm cloud of expectation wafting through the wireless spectrum as I questioned the situation more closely. 'Does The Boy have a fever? Is there coughing, sneezing, or sniffling? Is he expelling bodily fluids from any orifice at a more alarming velocity than normal?'

'No, he's just very quiet today,' she said. (Perceived subtext: ‘I can’t believe she’s not already on her way here.’)

Upon this confirmation, Mother of the Year (that's me, if you hadn't guessed) quickly said, 'OK then, call me back if any of those things happen.' And I unceremoniously hung up.

I am VERY protective of my telecommuting arrangement and don’t want to lose the privilege. I don't ever want people to think I'm not pulling my weight on my days from home. I am many things on my days from the home office (poorly groomed, a Peapodder, folder of laundry on conference calls, silent hostess of various repairpersons or cleaning ladies), but I am NOT a slacker.

So while on occasion I'll make quick stop at the horrible Grade A on Newfield (motto: We're Not Afraid To Sell You Rotten Produce") after kid dropoffs, my main indulgence is my hourlong lunchtime workout. For one glorious hour, I turn off the cell phone and squeeze in a good, hard run. I come back re-energized and smelly, and proceed to work furiously in a pool of my own sweat for the rest of the day. (I pray to the Cubicle Gods that cheap videoconferencing remains an elusive invention.)

If it's a nice day, I run outside - no problem. If it's a rainy or cold day, I have to go to the track at my gym. And my gym is where The Boy goes to day care. And I have to walk right by his classroom to get to the track.

Problem.

So I get dressed for my run and make the 2-minute drive over to the gym. I walk slowly into the building, willing myself to be invisible. I peer cautiously down the hallway - looks clear. I walk quickly through the Hot Zone - that bare stretch of hallway where there are no doorways or large plants under which to take cover.

I was just about home free, standing at the doorway to the gym, when I heard the cheery voice of Nice Day Care Lady #2, aka The One Who Usually Calls About Unpaid Bills and Unfilled-Out-Forms.

'Mother of The Boy!' she chirped.

Daaaaaaammmmmmmn.

I lifted my hand off the doorknob and took a deep breath. 'How is the boy in question?' I asked.

'Oh, he is really miserable. He's been lying on the couch all morning. I'm glad you came to get him.'

Guilt began to breech the Great Wall between my unconscious and conscious minds, because, well, I really hadn’t come for that particular reason. But as Mother of the Year, I gave it my best college try. 'Oh, yes, of course!' I said. ‘That is exactly why I’m here! Ahem, by the way, has he actually thrown up or gotten a fever yet?'

Puzzled, NDCL#2 said, 'No...but he's just really not himself.'

As an only child of divorced parents, I can be nothing if not self-centered. So I quickly came back with- 'OK – I’ll just do a quick workout, and I'll take him with me on the way home.'

Looking me straight in the eye, NDCL#2 said, (and honestly, it was without malice) 'Ok, I'll tell The Boy that you're in the building but won't be picking him up for another hour or so.'

Checkmate. Well played, NDCL.

And so, sufficiently infused with guilt, I begrudgingly slunk into the classroom to get The Boy. Who, by the way was napping peacefully.

So I woke him up, brought him home, and parked him on the couch, draping an array of towels in his immediate projectile area. (I have found this to be a primitive, yet effective, barf defense mechanism.) He then proceeded to watch two full-length movies (Ice Age and The Empire Strikes Back, if you are keeping score) consume one bagel, eight ounces of Fruit Punch Gatorade, and two bananas.

Nary a chunk was blown.

I, on the other hand, wound up tired, guilt-laden, unexercised, unshowered, with laundry unfolded, and I didn’t get any work done until the kids went to bed, so of course, I had to stay up late and will feel even worse tomorrow.

Of course, I don't want The Boy to REALLY be sick, but the fact that I brought him home when he was fine to stay at day care just makes me feel like a complete, 360-degree failure. Because I knew he wasn’t running at 100% and I made him go to day care anyway. And after all that, I STILL short-changed my work, and despite the fact that there was no malice in my interactions with the NDCLs today, I still feel like a complete dink.

Oh well. I might not be Mother of the Year, but luckily, The Boy has no other frame of reference. I’m the only mother that he has. And if nothing else, I got some Grade A snuggles and kisses. And I’m all caught up on on my Spongebob episodes.

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Meet Me At Mygatt

Many things annoy me. But the top of the triangle of my Mom's Heirarchy of Irritation would have to be crap. Stuff. Knicknacks. Trinkets. Items. Collectibles. Things that come into my house through backpacks, bags, UPS deliveries, or clutched in little fists. Things that find a resting place somewhere highly visible and extremely inconvenient, where they dig themselves in with the tenacity of a disgraced politician attempting to cling to power.

I don't think anybody else in my family nobody notices or cares about this phenomenon except for me. I once left a pair of underwear in the living room (don't trouble yourself wondering how they got there in the first place, or whose they were) for THREE DAYS just to see if anyone else would notice and perhaps by some miracle pick them up and put them in the laundry hamper.

If it was not already blazingly obvious, I will tell you that the little pair remained crumpled forlornly on the floor next to the coffee table the entire time.

Although we are a typical family of four, I have become convinced that we make an atypical amount of garbage. Aside from the four humans living in the house, I believe we have an invisible Clutter Gnome that sprinkles random toys, broken pencils, newspapers, scraps of scribbled-on paper, and stray Cheerios all over the house, just to drive me batty.

Not too long ago, I spent an afternoon with some strange, yet strangely lovely people called "Freegans", who have inspired me to try to live a more neutral-impact lifestyle. So I have created the Mantra of Mess in accordance to the The Karma Of Crap: for each that comes in, one must go. Since we somehow accumulate approximately fourteen hundred new items each and every day, even our enormous, city-issued waste of my taxpayer dollars, garbage bin cannot handle the load.

So when the pile of stuff in our mudroom grows to a kitten-swallowing size of alarming proportions, I take matters into my well-manicured hands: I load up the minivan and head down to the Katrina Mygatt Recycling center.

I don't know who Ms. Mygatt was, or why she deserved to have a dump named after her. But I'm slightly envious because the dump is a rockin' Stamford hotspot.

I had visions of a smelly, grime-laden place overrun with flies and staffed by ancient, toothless, leather-skinned old men. Now granted, there are SOME flies, and SOME smell, and just a wee bit of mystery mush on the ground. But overall, it's relatively clean and well organized, featuring a surprisingly egalitarian and cosmopolitan mix of patrons. And Mr. Toothless is actually a pretty decent guy once you get to know him.

You hear languages ranging from English to Spanish to Creole. You see construction workers, gardeners, and other laborers hauling in scrap metal and yard waste. You see soccer dads in their Toyota Priuses dropping off year-old Nokias, no longer needed now that they got their new Apple iPhones.

You see Ugg-clad, blonde-helmet-coiffed, Lincoln Navigator-driving moms dumping loads of Land of Nod and Pottery Barn Kids catalogs. You see high schoolers furtively dropping off boxes filled with underagedly-drunk empty beer bottles (which are promptly snapped back up for deposit redemption purposes by the duct-tape bike-riding guy that shouts incomprehensible things at you when you're at the High Ridge Starbucks or sometimes the A&P). And you'll see me, freestyling unique strings of expletives after I smack my head on the open hatch of the minivan trying to dig all of the cardboard boxes out of the cargo area.

Since I am always in need of a few environmental offsets, I go to the dump whenever I can. I usually hit the Mygatt after a leisurely morning at the Stop and Shop, or sometimes as a way to psych myself up for that modern-day survival of the fittest expedition known as "Shopping Costco on a Saturday".

As far as my total carbon footprint, I probably waste more in gas driving to and from the dump than if I just waited for the monthly curbside pickup, but hey, we all gotta honor the earth in our own special way.

Besides, Mr. Toothless looks forward to my visit. I think he likes my furry Uggs.

For more info on the Katrina Mygatt center, click here.

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