March 31, 2005

why I hate WalMart

No, it’s not because they engage in reprehensible labor practices. Nor is it because they play Christian television in the baby section (message: the children of working mommies go to hell! the children of mommies who shop at other megastores go to hell! buy our crap or your baby is going to hell!), or even because, despite the low-income demographic of the majority of WalMart shoppers, they charge MORE than comparable chains (Target, KMart) for infant formula. And no, it’s not because the lighting triggers a Pavlovian response in my children that turns them from smart, charming little boys into screaming banshees. No, it is none of those things.

It’s the surly people who work there.

I ran in to my local Super WalMart this morning, to buy bananas and flip flops*. (The bananas were for Charlie, who is still mad that Wade took THE VERY LAST BANANA in our house to work with him YESTERDAY–he keeps saying, ‘Why did Daddy take my banana?’ like he’s being starved to death.) I also decided, while I was there, to try on some sweats and a swimsuit (don’t think too hard about that–I’m not going to talk about the whole WalMart dressing room/swimsuit part of my morning, so get over it).

In this particular WalMart, the woman who persons the dressing rooms also answers the phone. Each time it would ring, she would make an announcement over the PA system to alert the appropriate employee that he or she had a phone call. These announcements went something like this:

Dressing Room Attendant/Operator (yelling over the PA system as loudly as she could): ‘PAM IN HUMAN RESOURCES YOU HAVE A CALL ON LINE TWO!!!’

Of course, the yelling made it nearly impossible to understand what she was actually saying. As I was trying on various sizes of swimsuits and sweats (do not think about it!) and trying not to let any of my skin/clothing touch the floor in the dressing room (or the clothes, come to think of it), Crazy Dressing Room Lady continued to yell over the loudspeaker: ‘PAM! IN HUMAN RESOURCES! YOU HAVE A CALL!!! ON LINE TWO!!!!!’ This went on for a good ten minutes (the ENTIRE time I was in the dressing room, no kidding). I was really starting to fear for Pam in HR’s life–after all, Oklahoma is a concealed weapon state, and this woman was clearly pissed.

I gathered up my stuff, thinking that I should really get as far away from this whole bad scene as possible. As I hung my sweats and swimsuits (none of which ‘worked out’) on the rack, Crazy Dressing Room Lady dialed the phone and said in a calm, polite voice: ‘Is Pam in this morning? Could you let her know that she has a call on line two? Thank you!’

But then, as I was checking out, the same woman came on the PA system: ‘LATISHA! YOU HAVE A CALL ON LINE FOUR!!!’ LaTisha happened to be ringing up my flip flops; she turned toward the part of the store where the dressing rooms are located (NOT near the checkout counter) and yelled, ‘Line four?’

And Crazy Dressing Room Lady yelled back (withouth the PA system), ‘Yes! Line four!

*It kills me to say it, but WalMart has the GREATEST flip flops in the entire world. They are rubber and flat and are super comfy, and they come in fabuous colors. I bought one pair of pink with daisies and another pair in black, with pink and white polka dots. FOR $1.94 EACH. You cannot beat that. I’ll be going back for two more pair, soon.

listen up, Jeb!

Here is my Advance Health Care directive, for anyone who cares.

Should I happen to wind up in a Persistent Vegitative State (the kind NOT caused by television, mind you), I want the following: I wany any and all useful organs donated. I want to be cremated. I want my husband (or some other responsible member of this family) to spead my ashes somewhere in the mountains in New Mexico.

If my brain is dead, I do NOT want extreme measures used to keep me breathing. No life support. No feeding tube. If I can’t help myself to thirds of my mother-in-law’s new peas and potatos in cream sauce (mmmmm . . . ), there’s no point in going on. Unless there is REAL hope that I will someday SOON (soon like Henry and Charlie mean it, not soon like in the indefinite future after we get over this whole stem-cell-research-is-the-same-as-murder thing) hug my children, read a novel, or spin a new theory about why the Republicans hate Hillary Clinton so damn much, unplug me.

Should my wishes, for whatever reason, not jibe with the political agenda of any member of Congress who chooses to overlook the REAL problems in our world today in favor of dicking around in what is after all a PERSONAL matter, I wish the following: I would like to be put in the custody of Jeb Bush (or, really, any member of his extended family, except for Barbara and Jenna) and allowed to live out my days in Kennebunkeport. And just in case I have some brain function left that all the smart doctors and their wildly advanced machines can’t distinguish, I am saying now that while I persist in my vegitative state, waiting to recover, I want a really nice room, with furnishings exclusively from Pottery Barn, and I want a manicure and pedicure every week and a massage every three or four days. Paid for by Jeb. Forever.

Thank you, Internet, for witnessing this directive.

the last word on Warner

Here is what I really wanted to say, what I was trying to say, about Judith Warner’s book:

I have a great life. I have a husband who works–hard–to pay the bills so that I can be ‘at home’ with our children, a situation we chose together and which neither of us regrets. I have healthy, smart, charming kids, a nice house that we are actually paying off, good health care, and enough money left over for private school and some day care and the occasional friviolous trip to Target or Pottery Barn.

BUT . . . I am always exhausted. I am thin (but not in a good, healthy way). I am often short with my children. I am overwhelmed by laundry, housework, bills, doctors appointments, playdates and grocery shopping. While my husband sleeps soundly at night I lay awake worrying that Henry isn’t holding his pencil the right way and that Charlie is wasting away in day out and really SHOULD be in the same very very expensive preschool as his brother. I worry about what will happen when I go back to work, and what exactly I think I’m going to DO when I go back to work. I spend my days changing diapers and buckling car seats and saying idiotic things like ‘Can you use some nice words?’ And I fall into bed at the end of every day dreading the alarm and the beginning of the next round of worry and stress.

My friend Leslie jokes about our lives. She calls, pretty much every day, at the same time, after lunch, when the boys–hers and mine–are all napping. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks when I answer the phone. ‘Loading the dishwasher,’ I nearly always say. Sometimes she will say, ‘What are you doing? No, let me guess–you are . . . having a pedicure! Reading a book! Curing cancer!’ All equally unlikely.

I’ve tried for a long time to really live the Zen of motherhood, to remind myself that mindfulness comes through repetition, and that the more repetitive and mindless the task, the greater the opportunity for true insight. But let’s face it, there is nothing mindful about the lives of small children. They are loud and wild and demanding, and they don’t understand the idea of ‘quiet time’ as anything but punishment. And so, instead of being mindful, I am stressed and cranky, and I turn on the TV to get away from my kids (which makes me feel guilty which makes me cranky) and I get up at 5:30 in the morning to have just a little bit of time alone (which makes me more tired and cranky and . . . you see how this goes).

And I feel bad–terrible, horrible–about complaining about any of this because I am so fortunate and I do have such a wonderful life. But this wonderful life is wearing me down and making me sad.

THAT is what I think Judith Warner is really trying to say.

March 30, 2005

temporary insanity

I decided, in what I’ve been referring to as a moment of ‘temporary insanity’, to forego all structured child care this summer in favor of swim lessons. My week currently looks like this: Henry goes to preschool five mornings a week, from 8:15 to 11:15. On Mondays and Thursdays, Charlie goes to Mother’s Day Out (sort of a cross between nursery school and day care) from 9:00 until 2:15. So right now, I have two four hour blocks of childlessness each week, and then three mornings alone with Charlie and two afternoons alone with Henry.

Oh, and I did I mention that I can’t find a babysitter who is both reliable and available on a regular basis? I have one of each: the Reliable Adult Sitter (a teacher at Charlie’s school) who works three jobs and can only babysit on Saturday nights, but not every Saturday night, as she has a boyfriend who she only sees on (you guessed it!) Saturday night, and the Consistently Available Pre-Teen Neighbor, who is a very nice girl–so nice, in fact, that the boys figured out within five seconds of my backing the car out of the garage the first time she came to sit that she wasn’t going to enforce any of the rules and they could just go ahead and start throwing steak knives at each other. Oh, and she talks on the phone. THE ENTIRE TIME SHE IS HERE. Even when my kids are awake and running wild through the house.

So, with school providing my only consistent break from my role as Responsible Adult, I have decided, after much thought to keep everyone home with me this summer. Which brings me to Judith Warner.

Warner’s new book, Perfect Madness, is pretty much everywhere these days. Warner’s thesis (at it’s broadest) is that women of my generation and social class are driving ourselves crazy trying to be perfect mommies. She considers a variety of reasons for this, most of which have to do with growing up in the post-feminist Reagan 80s, and most of which I find plausible if not compelling. I think this is a book that could have done with some more rigorous editing, and I wish Warner had offered more than broad generalizations about how our culture needs to change (yes, accessible, affordable day care would be wonderful, as would more part-time work opportunities, but HOW DO WE GET THEM? I don’t know, and neither, sadly, does Judith Warner).

This books real strength, to me, was in Warner’s often startlingly perceptive assessment of the kind of quiet desperation many (most?) upper-middle class mothers are living. Warner has gotten a lot of bashing for her rather dark portrait of mommyhood in the well-manicured suburbs, but I am inclined to think that she is right, and that she’s not overdramatizing for effect. I think I am part of a generation of well-off women who gave birth and settled in to enjoy whatever version of Life With Baby we had chosen (working, not working, working part-time)–and then realized, somewhere down the line, that this life had some real drawbacks. And of course it’s hard to complain when, after all, we CHOSE this path, and we aren’t poor or anything, and we have these lovely children. But still . . .

Warner wants this book to be a call to arms, a first step in a revolution, one that will end in better, more accessible daycare and better, more accessible work options for women like me. Fine. But the really interesting (and important) part of this book is the whole notion that we are driving ourselves crazy trying to Do It All and Do It All Better Than Everyone Else. Warner would say that my decision not to put my children in school this summer is not just an episode of temporary insanity, but that the culture we live in pushes me to a kind of constant insanity. The factors that influenced my decision–the startling cost of daycare, the lack of available sitters, my concern that my kids would somehow be missing out if they were in school during the summer ‘vacation’, my own desire to enjoy every moment with my kids at the same time that I know they will drive me berserk–all of these things, Warner would say, are part of the larger problem: that being a 30-something mommy right now is all about being perfect, and doing it without any help from anyone.

I like to think that I’m not that mommy, but so much of this book was familiar to me. I think that’s why it has garnered such strong responses–I’m not sure anyone wants to acknowledge that the good life sucks sometimes. And, worst of all, it sucks because WE LET IT.

Whew. So that’s why Judith Warner made me cry.

the Pink Princess Girly Girl strikes back

I have had it with the damn superhero fascination. We suddenly have Spider Man and Justice League crap all the hell over our already messy and disorganized house. So I plunked the boys in front of the TV (watching The Incredibles, which I don’t object to, because I think it’s a pretty smart movie) and swept through said house and PUT EVERY SINGLE BIT OF SUPERHERO CRAP that is not an Incredibles tie-in AWAY , in a basket in the laundry room, waaaaay up on a shelf that I can barely reach. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down at the computer. And I feel so very much better now.

The problem with the superhero fascination is essentially that Henry, at four and half, isn’t old enough to really understand any of it (never mind Charlie, who changes his clothes six times a day and announces after every change, ‘This is my superhero costume!’*). That, then, leads to other more concrete problems, like running in the house (’I'm trying to fly, Mom!’) and jumping off the furniture (see previous comment), and demanding that his brother or playdates be the ‘bad guys’ when they play (which his friend Luke steadfastly refuses to do: ‘No, Henry, I don’t want to play bad guys. I want to play Luke and Henry!’ God I love that kid).

The other problem is that Wade, despite his ability to see that 1) this is really not appropriate, 2) it’s getting expensive (or has the potential to), and 3) it’s so DAMN ANNOYING, keeps coming up with more and more superhero stuff for the kids. While I was gone, he bought them a little set of Justice League figures (one of them is named Martian Man Hunter; Charlie calls him Marshmellow Man Hunter, which, despite my dislike of All Things Action Figure, I find charming and sweet, like the little man is going out to hunt Easter Peeps). Wade also, in his defense–and believe me, he used this in his defense–bought art supplies on the same trip to SuperTarget. But what do the boys want to DO with the art supplies? You guessed it–COLOR PICTURES OF SPIDER MAN THAT DADDY DOWNLOADS FROM THE INTERNET. I’m just doomed here, aren’t I?

I swear I’m going to write about Judith Warner and her smart smart book. Really. But right now I’m going to drink wine and watch The Incredibles with my superhero children.

*Today Charlie’s superhero ‘costume’ consisted of a navy blue fleece pullover hoodie, unzipped to show his little bare Buddha belly, royal blue pyjama pants, and a pair of brown loafers (no socks–apparently he’s a preppy superhero).

March 28, 2005

I’m baaaack!

Did you miss me?

I’ve been in Albuquerque, for the men’s NCAA basketball regional finals–ALL BY MYSELF. How was it? you ask. It was AWESOME. It was also the first real vacation I’ve had in three and a half years. By ‘real vacation’ I mean a trip ENTIRELY WITHOUT my children. I took ONE small carry-on bag, a teeny tiny purse, and shoes that I couldn’t wear to the park. I drank wine in the afternoon. I swore out loud. I read the ENTIRE New York Times. I watched whole basketball games without having to fill sippy cups or change poopy diapers. And then I talked about the same games with people who know and love basketball as much as I do. It was wonderful.

People here were a little thrown by the whole idea of me going to the basketball tournament and Wade staying home with the boys. They either couldn’t believe that I really like basketball enough to actually go to the tournament (oh I do) or that Wade really likes our kids enough to actually enjoy spending four days alone with them (oh he does). In the end, the verdict seems to be that I’m an oddball and that Wade is paying for it (which probably isn’t far from the truth, actually). Tonight one of his friends called to ask if I had gotten the basketball thing out of my system. No, I said, on the contrary–I am still fuming that, with Michigan State up by three and 12 seconds left in regulation, my kids went berserk and had to be shuffled into baths and bed, causing me to miss BOTH overtimes. Ah, the friend said.

I like to leave them really baffled.

The downside of my otherwise wonderful weekend was that the re-entry was hell. It was surprising even to me how quickly I forgot how utterly chaotic my house can be, especially at bedtime. I spent the weekend, between games, musing about all the Things I Could Be Doing With My Life–writing more, painting the guest room, reading smart books. Then I got home and spent the entire evening saying, no no no! Charlie, no! Henry, I said NO! It was exhausting.

And, of course, Wade and I managed to get into a fight, about the kids jumping off the furniture at his parents’ house. This isn’t a new discussion, and it always follows the same pattern. We eat dinner, then we all move to the garden room to visit. The boys, egged on by Wade and his dad, jump on the sofa, on the ottoman, on the chairs; they spin in the chairs, crashing into tables and people; they make tunnels out of the sofa cushions and jump on those. Last night, as a new trick, Henry was doing summersaults across the floor. Eventually, it is time to put on shoes and leave, and EVERYONE (including me) cries and yells. Then we stuff them in the car and take them home, where they continue to run and jump and yell until we strap them in their beds and shout ‘For the love of god, go to sleep!’ At some point during the jumping, I say to Wade, ‘You know, this is a terrible idea,’ and he says, ‘No, it’s fine.’ And, usually, I just fume to myself.

Last night I was so annoyed by the Return to Chaos that I let him have it. And, oddly, unlike all the other times I have brought this up, when I tried to be calm and constructive and say, You know, honey, maybe it’s not a good idea to let the boys run roughshod over your parents’ house, this time, when I said, What in the hell are you thinking? You let them act like that and it’s just ONE MORE THING that they think they can get away with when you’re not around! Are you TRYING to make my life harder?–this time, he listened. And he agreed.

So, in the larger scheme, it’s a win for me–no more jumping on the furniture at Mimi and Bob’s. But I hate that my perfect peaceful weekend ended with yelling.

And not at basketball.

Tomorrow: Judith Warner makes me cry. In public. Twice.