May 17, 2005

I’ll be loading the freezer with vodka soon

In what I have been cheerfully referring to as ‘a fit of drunken insanity’, I have decided to forgo ALL childcare this summer and hang out with my kids ALL THE TIME. No one will go to school or Day Out; instead, we will have swim lessons at the club and long naps and martinis at 4:00 every day (and I don’t even drink martinis! nor do my kids! whoo hoo!).

And now, as the actual start of this Festival of Preschooler Bonding nears (Charlie’s last day of school is Monday; Henry’s is next Thursday), I am beginning to wonder WHAT THE HELL I WAS THINKING.

Here’s what I was thinking: I was remembering all those summers when my brother and I were kids, and we stayed home and hung out with my mom, and went to the park and the pool and ran in the sprinklers and had playdates (although I don’t think we called them ‘playdates’ in the ’70’s). We never went to Day Out or camp or daycare; we didn’t have sitters who came full-time to play with us while my mother ran errands. We hung around in our pyjamas and ate our breakfast in the family room and our lunch in the back yard. We built cities out of Lincoln Logs and climbed trees and drew pictures in the driveway with chalk. We read books and played baseball and tennis and rode our bikes. My dad travelled a lot for work, so we really did spend all that time with my mom.

And I was thinking how much I loved that, and how much I loved my mom, and how much fun it would be to do that with my kids, especially now, when the world is so different and parents feel like every spare moment of their childrens’ days must be jam-packed with educational activities. I don’t want to spend my summer driving the boys from one lesson to another; I want them to enjoy being kids. I want them to chase bugs and build forts and turn the stereo up so we can dance. I want them to play so hard every day that they fall into bed at 7:30, exhausted. I want them to remember, thirty five years from now, how much fun we had in the summer. And I was thinking that it would be great if I could be that mom, the one I remember from my childhood, just for this one summer.

As much as I want that, now that I am faced with the reality of an ENTIRE SUMMER with my kids, I’m a little nervous. Okay, a LOT nervous. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ALL DAY? And how am I going to keep from loosing my mind?

I wonder if my mom worried about this.

May 16, 2005

the cop thought she was hot, too

My last year in graduate school, I had an office mate named Michael Charlton. He was a fiction writer, working on an MFA. He looked like a writer–his clothes were rumpled, and he always needed a shave and a haircut. He was recently divorced, and was trying to get back into the dating scene. He drank too much and smoked too much and was always announcing that he needed coffee. He had a deep, gravelly voice and a lopsided smile–if you like that tortured writer look, he was pretty damn sexy. Once, after too many beers, he told my friend Jennifer that he thought I was ‘hot’. But I digress.

One afternoon, Mike came into the office and said, ‘You’ll never believe what just happened.’ He had stopped at the bank on his way to lunch. One of the tellers was a beautiful Japanese girl; he had been talking about her for weeks. He asked Jennifer and me, ‘Would it be weird if I cashed a check and then asked her out?’ No, no, we said, go for it! It’ll be great! On this particular day, he stood in the line, testing out variations on ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ The man in front of him finished his unusually long transaction and Mike stepped up to the counter. Before Mike even had a chance to hand her his check (much less ask her out), she burst into tears, turned to the teller next to her, and announced that the customer in front of Mike had just robbed the bank.

When the police came, they asked Mike if he had noticed anything about the bank robber–the man in front of him in the line. ‘Nope,’ he told the police office, ‘I was too busy checking out the hot teller.’

‘Smooth,’ I told him.

‘Yep,’ he said.

‘I bet she’ll go out with you now.’

He laughed. ‘You think?’

‘Absolutely.’

May 12, 2005

his only real problem is that he’s being raised by a lunatic

We’re back from the psychologist, who of course turns out to be quite nice (although younger than I am, but who isn’t these days?). Henry had a great time–she has cool toys in her office, apparently–which is good because he’s going back in a couple of weeks for more testing. Hooray!

The deal, at this point, is simply this: she wants to do some more formal (read: standardized) testing, not because she’s concerned about his intelligence (everyone agrees that he’s smart, like, SMART smart, like scary smart) but because she wants to see how he does in a more academic setting, as opposed to hanging out playing with fire trucks. She’s also going to have his teacher fill out a checklist about behaviors at school, which is good because I have no idea what he’s like at school (I pay all that money so that I don’t have to be with him all the time, see?). So–so far, so good.

Of course now I’m beginning to think that I need some therapy, thanks to the forms I had to fill out this morning. One asked who cared for this child in the first two years. (That would be me.) Another asked what kind of childcare we had, and to what extent we use it (uh, none and never). And then there was the question about ‘other support networks.’ I got nothin’, as Henry likes to say.

And THEN I had to fill in the grid listing parents’ occupations and educational levels. So I wrote PhD for Wade, and then wondered if I should write just MA for me, or ABD–I was really fretting about this. I mean, I started a PhD, and I actually wrote some of the dissertation, but then . . .

And it dawned on me: oh my god no wonder this kid is odd! Look who’s raising him. Oh my god it’s all my fault! He’s doomed.

But then he came out of her office, and he was happy and wanted to go to the bookstore, and he picked out a sticker book about space and said, ‘Look, Mommy, it’s Saturn,’ so of course I bought it for him and now he’s putting stickers in and we’re going to have lunch with Wade and IT’S ALL GOING TO BE JUST FINE.

Sigh.

May 11, 2005

haphazard

6:30 am

I bought the Archer Farms brand of coffee at SuperTarget (instead of my usual Starbucks), and this morning I brewed a pot. ‘How is it?’ Wade asked.

‘It doesn’t suck,’ I told him.

‘Good use of the double negative,’ he said.

10:00 am

If it is at all practical, I prefer not to wear shorts. I have a lovely summer wardrobe of cute skirts and fabulous capri pants, like these from Old Navy (I bought them in ‘Bunglaow’ and in black–they’re the best). Last summer it was cool-ish here, and I was able to get away with this. This year, it’s already topping out near 90, and I may have to rethink the whole shorts thing.

Charlie in particular is fascinated by my no-shorts decision, if only because it contradicts the current house rule about his clothes: no sweats (which are the only long pants he will wear, sadly). On Monday, he dressed himself for school and chose–you guessed it–sweat pants. ‘You’ll be hot,’ I told him (and I was right–he wound up pulling them up over his knees for most of the day).

Today I have on a tee shirt and a pair of capri cargo pants. When Charlie and I went out to play in the yard, he looked me over and said, ‘You’ll be hot.’

And he was right.

6:00 pm

Henry spent most of dinner crying and insisting that vegetables are bad for you after we told him that he had to eat either one pea or one bite of rotisserie chicken if he wanted a roll. This wasn’t really funny (it wasn’t funny at all, actually), but there it is.

7:00 pm

In an effort to get Charlie to read stories with me, I laid down in his bed. Unfortunately, I was laying on top of his blankie. He threw himself on the floor and whined, ‘I want my blankie!’ ‘It’s right here, buddy,’ I told him. ‘Give it to me!’ he whined. I put it over my head and said, ‘No, you come and get it.’ He thought this was a riot and made me do it over and over again.

The best part was either his direction–’Put the blankie over your head. No, your whole head! And your tummy! No, lay down!’ and so on–or his very very convincing fake whining (after he got me covered to his liking, he would flop down and whine, ‘I want my blankie!’). We went on like this for a good fifteen minutes. It was about the funniest thing that happened here all day.

And finally . . .

Henry has his appointment with the psychologist tomorrow morning. We told him, cheerfully, this morning that he isn’t going to school tomorrow! Because he’s going to the doctor! And then to lunch with Daddy!

He started to cry. ‘I don’t want to go to the doctor,’ he wailed. Then, suddenly, he stopped. ‘Is it Doctor Scott [the opthamologist] again?’

No, we said.

‘Oh. The dentist–what’s his name?’

No, we said again. This is a new doctor, you’ll like her. ‘She’s fun,’ Wade told him, ’she’s going to play with you.’

He sighed. ‘Okay, I guess.’

Poor little boy.

May 9, 2005

and I will probably end up returning the stupid quilt

No time to linger–somehow my plan to spend my two child-free hours reading the New York Times and writing turned into shopping madly for a quilt for our bed (because it’s hot, and Wade can’t sleep with the comforter on, which means he’s remaking the bed in the middle of the night WHILE I AM SLEEPING IN IT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH–but more about that later, I promise)–

But I wanted to say this: Henry woke up this morning his usual happy self, and went off to school with nary a complaint or concern (except that he was miffed that I wouldn’t let him wear a pair of LINED BLACK SWEAT PANTS to school, what with the weatherman saying that it will be NEARLY 90 DEGREES here today). I, of course, was awake at 5:00 am fretting about the whole thing. But that’s my job, I suppose.

I’ll keep you posted, Internet.

May 7, 2005

guilt-ridden, but clean

I’m getting a housekeeper. I can’t even believe I’m writing those words, but it’s true! The nice lady is coming tomorrow to assess my house (oh god I have to clean before she comes) and strike some kind of deal about when and how much. I’m very excited, but I also feel a little funny about the whole thing–liberal white guilt meets stay-home mommy guilt.

We’ve been through this before at our house, at least the liberal white guilt part. We’ve had a lawn guy for two years now, ever since Wade pulled a trash can (the big ones that roll to the curb) over his foot and ripped off his big toenail, thus making it impossible for him to either wear shoes to work for a week or mow our lawn. The toe incident was a blessing in disguise; we had been talking about hiring somone to do the mowing, but Wade kept insisting that he could do it himself, which was fine except that I was thinking about filing for divorce because the damn mowing was making me crazy. Our house is on a huge rectangular lot; the actual house takes up about a third of the lot, leaving the rest for the front and back yard. The back yard, in particular, is enormous, which is one of our favorite things about this place. BUT–it took Wade a good three hours (yes, THREE HOURS*) every weekend to mow and edge and do god only knows what else out there. Add to that his countless hours of complaining about mowing the lawn, and the totally crappy mood I was in by the time he was finished, and really, our weekends were fun fun FUN! Ugh.

So after the toe(nail) came off, we hired Luis to come every two weeks. He does a great job, he’s affordable, and (an extra bonus), he’s HOT. I mean really really HOT. Like that kid from Desperate Housewives hot. Oh yeah . . . . What was I saying? Oh the lawn. Right. It looks great.

And now we’re getting a housekeeper, for essentially the same reasons. I can clean the house, I’m even pretty good at it, but I don’t really like doing it, and it’s hard to find the time, since my kids are with me virtually every moment of every day. And from this springs my liberal white, stay-home mom guilt. I’m going to PAY someone to do the dirty work at my house while I hang out with my kids. Now I feel guilty about being priviledged, AND guilty about not being able to keep my home clean (when, after all, my job is to take care of the house and kids). And as if I weren’t angsting enough about this, add the fact that Joanna, the housekeeper (Luis the lawn guy’s wife), has two kids of her own, the same ages as my kids. So then I feel guilty that she will be cleaning my bathrooms while I’m at the pool with the boys. Argh.

But the thing is this: what I really want to do, in this last little window before my boys are in school full-time and I go back to work, is be with my kids, not be cleaning the bathroom while they watch TV. And we can afford this. And–most importantly, and most selfishly–this will help me carve out some time for myself during the day, which I just don’t have now, since I’m always trying to get the kitchen cleaned up or the laundry finished or the toilets scrubbed before Henry appears to announce that it’s 2:00 and his rest is over. By the end of most days, I am overwhelmed and crabby and desperate for just ten damn minutes alone, please! I think having Joanna come and take care of the housework might very well make me a more pleasant person.

I’m getting a houskeeper! Whoo hoo! Okay, now I have to go clean before she comes.

*The summer Charlie was born, my parents came to help us out. My dad volunteered to do the mowing. He was pretty convinced that he could do the yard in less than three hours, and that Wade just needed a better system, although he’s too nice to say that out loud. When he came to the hospital to visit Charlie and me, he announced: ‘I mowed your lawn this morning. And it took me THREE HOURS.’ So it wasn’t just Wade. Luis, of course, is in and out in forty minutes. Go figure.