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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Exploiting The Rich: Let The Music Play

Spring has finally gotten all sprungly.

I know this to be true because Manager Dad has officially flipped the Cool Weather/Warm Weather switch on his wardrobe, moving from the daily uniform of khaki pants and button-down dress shirts to khaki pants and short-sleeved polo shirts. It’s a whole new wardrobe management ballgame.

Aside from being a symbolic milestone, the switch has the practical effect of shifting five units per week from our local dry cleaner to our home-based Laundry Mountain. This adds up to approximately four extra loads over the course of the summer. While I don’t enjoy the additional labor, this does save about $50 a month on dry cleaning, leaving me all the more to indulge in my fondness for smokes, booze, and cheap hookers.

So while we were talking about saving money, I wanted to share another way I’ve found to entertain your family by taking advantage of the sweat labor of rich folk. (My first post, about the charms of Old Greenwich, can be enjoyed if you have a few extra moments in the bathroom by clicking here.)

The magical land of which I speak today is New Canaan, Connecticut (estimated median home value=$2,000,000). A town which is clearly not afraid to embrace the letter "a," New Canaan has a lively downtown business district filled with stores selling things we can’t afford to buy and restaurants we don’t want to remortgage our homes to eat in.

It’s also one of those metaphor towns that instantly evokes a social stereotype. You know what I mean: Detroit = "Disenfranchised Autoworkers." San Francisco = "Pot-smoking hippies." Long Island = "Joey Buttafuoco". For New Canaan, it’s “Self-Loathing Yuppies,” thanks to the only two major movies inspired by and filmed in the area: The Ice Storm and the Stepford Wives remake, starring Nicole “My Pants Are On Fire When I Claim Not To Have Had Cosmetic Procedures” Kidman. Because I’ve seen her in person, and I promise you, that woman has a Botox technician on speed dial.

But back to my point, which is that aside from an abundance of overindulged, plastic, self-pitying suburbanites (note to friends: not YOU, of course, Brooke, Lawrence, Mel, and Tom – I know you guys are still keepin’ it real), New Canaan also has Waveny Park. Waveny is a beautiful, spacious public area with a lovely old mansion. In the summer (starting on June 11th), they hold free concerts on Wednesday nights on the back porch of the house.

While they are technically for residents only, it is easy for unethical non-resident area freeloaders such as myself to horn in on the fun.

The acts are all has-beens (or more accurately, never-wases) and the music itself ranges from forgettable to puzzling. This year’s kickoff band, “The Bob Button Orchestra” bills itself as playing Big Band classics. I can’t confirm or deny this, but my main take-aways from last year’s show were this:

1) the average age of the band members is approximately 72

next) they like to dress like pirates, complete with puffy shirts and red satin sashes
and

c) despite their advanced age (or perhaps because of it) they like to swill Captain Morgans straight from the bottle between songs (possibly explaining the pirate getups).

It’s become a much-anticipated Wednesday summer family tradition for us. We get the kids, pick up a pizza, and relax with friends while enjoying the fresh air and the “music”. After dinner, the kids run around in the field, doing their best to contract Lyme disease by breaking the Guiness Book’s “Most Ticks Acquired Within a 1-Hour Span” world record.

The evening concludes with a visit to Waveny Mansion’s public toilets, (spotless, mind you, featuring abundant toilet paper, soap, AND hand lotion), where I pick off as many of the ticks that I can, bag them up to send to the state testing lab at $25 a pop, and stuff them into their pajamas so we can execute a swift bedtime once we get home.

The one downside of these concerts, aside from the fear of having our car towed, is an uncomfortably surreal feeling caused by looking around at your fellow concertgoers. They all look like they stepped directly out of a Tommy Hilfinger print ad. And the hordes of roving kids evokes a sort of reverse Children of the Corn, except instead of being filthy and creepily homicidal, they're all preternaturally well-mannered with blonde bowl haircuts and slight French accents, picked up from various summer au pairs.

But if you can suspend your class discomfort, come join us on any given Wednesday. We’ll be easy to spot: amidst a sea of natural-wood camp tables, fashionable umbrellas, carefully packed wicker picnic baskets, and Lilly Pulitzer cricket sweaters, you’ll find a tiny oasis anchored by an ancient, stained Mexican blanket, surrounded with a loud plastic cooler and cheap camp chairs with huge corporate logos (free from various work giveaways).

We’ll save you a slice of pizza, and I’ll even ask Bob to pour you a shot of Captain Morgan’s.

You can access the 2008 Waveny Park concert schedule by clicking here.

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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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Hidden Perils Of The Linen Closet

Yesterday morning, I was struggling with my still newish, un-MILFy haircut, trying to wrestle it down into something that didn't make me look like a decomposing Tilda Swinton. During the battle I cut my hand on my own hairdryer, causing me to bleed all over my Banana Republic career separates.

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

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

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

Flash ahead to noon. I had just finished delivering my shockingly brilliant presentation. It was jam-packed with every feature and function that Powerpoint has to offer: charts, graphs (of the pie, line, AND bar varieties), bullet-pointing, animations. I'd dazzled them with forecasts, projections, conclusions, educated guesses, visionary speculations. I used words like "paradigm shift"and "step change." I had props and prototypes. I had my admin order lunch. Serving food in a meeting is the corporate equivalent dropping an atom bomb. It never fails shock and awe the meeting participants.

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

“Hey,” Female Executive That I Used To Like Said Loudly. “Is that a Hello Kitty band-aid on your hand?”

Why yes. Of course it was. And eff you thank you for pointing it out. My head began to hurt from the noise coming from the spectacular explosion of my professional reputation.

Six heads whipped back to stare at my hand, watery eyes blinking behind glasses, waiting for my response. It was like a bunch of drunken frat guys watching Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova play Wimbledon naked.

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

“Good to know," said Female Senior Executive Who Unknowingly Spared Herself A Blog-Lashing. "I need to get some of those - my daughter injures herself all the time. Now, let’s talk about your recommendations. I think we should move on them right away….”

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

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

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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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An Open Letter To The Open Office

To my coworkers:

It's been a tough earnings season, and I recognize that praise has been in short supply around the office nowadays.

But I'm a people person. I'm all about positive reinforcement, in case you can't tell from my Successories posters. And I think I’ve found something we can get all Oprah about, and that's the fact that we've survived the new and exciting "space management" theory, designed to stuff more people into less square footage and foster the holy trinity of business “ations” – Innovation, Collaboration, and Humiliation. No matter that the practical result has been to make us all feel like a pack of rabid gerbils.

When they started remodeling the floor, I mourned the loss of my office (and my door, speakerphone, and the nice view of the sculpture garden). I listened with while you twentysomething Manhattanites yapped on about how “fun” and “social” the new floor design would be, and how it would encourage the “sharing of ideas.”

I'm getting used to not having a door, or any sort of personal space or privacy. I've purged my computer of my favorite Keanu Reeves screensaver. I've removed all of my office flair so that I don't mess up the prescribed color scheme. I've done pretty much everything that I was told to do to mark my personal space, short of peeing in all of the corners of my cube.

But we can always do better. And by 'we' I mean you. So in the can-do spirit of “continuous optimization,” there are a few pieces of advice that I'd like to share, in the hope that it will make MY life a little less stressful:

1) If I go into one of the private rooms to make a call, do NOT automatically assume that I have a job interview/messy divorce/gynecological problem.

2) On the other hand, if YOU get a call about YOUR job interview/messy divorce/gynecological problem, get at private room, stat. I don’t need to hear the gory details. Let’s preserve the magic by keeping some secrets from each other.

3) Yes, I can hear it when you blast gas. And I’ll be smelling it in ten seconds.

4) The first day you eat a tuna sandwich at your desk, it’s inconsiderate. On day two, it’s cruel. By day three it is considered an act of aggression under NATO rules of engagement. Cease and desist immediately or face complete retaliation, possibly involving some sort of curry.

5) While I understand that the presence of estrogen in my body means that I’m supposed to be a Grey’s Anatomy fan, I’m not. I don’t give two craps about McDreamy and McTrampy or whoever those characters are, so please, save your detailed blow-by-blow recap for email.

6) Pay the points and lock down that interest rate-your credit score is appalling, and you should be damn grateful that you’re getting any sort of loan with the market the way it is today.

7) He is totally cheating on you. Grow a pair and dump the jerk, already. Or at least drink a nice glass of shut the hell up instead of calling all your friends to whine about it.

8) Yes, so-and-so probably WILL get promoted before you do, if there is any justice in this world. She is smart and a hard worker. You are a blame-thrower with anger management issues and an obvious YouTube habit.

Thanks for letting me give my suggestions, and keep up the good work, Comrades of the Cubicle! Monday is fast approaching, and I’m looking forward to the 9:45 Coffee Area Weekend Drunken Hookup Report. Much more exciting than my weekends of soccer games and Costco trips.

Yours Truly,

Manager Mom

P.S. All situations depicted in this post are dramatic exaggerations. Except for the tuna fish eater - whoever you are, I am totally coming after you.

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