January 24, 2006

it’s posts like this that got me on the BoB short list

Charlie is still sick. He woke up this morning, after a good night’s sleep, and said he felt ‘Great!’ He ate toast for breakfast, and reminded me that we needed to go get some bananas. ‘And APPLES!’ he insisted. ‘RED ones!’

So we took Henry to school and went to SuperTarget and had coffee and a bagel at the Starbucks; he ate the ENTIRE blueberry bagel, which was probably his first substantial food in three days. He made charming conversation and listed all the people in our family who love him. He was very cute and very happy. We ran into my friend Melissa and, because I was feeling daring, I made a lunch date for Thursday. Because by Thursday, I assured her, everyone would be healthy! and in school! and I would be ready for adult conversation!

We picked Henry up and had our lunch (Charlie ate a little bit of a peanut butter sandwich) and got settled for our rest time. Charlie was asking to nap, but Henry wanted to play, and wanted Charlie to play with him. ‘No, buddy, he needs to rest,’ I told him.

‘Okay!’ he said. ‘You can play with me!’

And then I realized how godawful tired I was, which seemed funny, as I had gone to bed early last night. I talked Henry into resting in his room and laid down on the sofa. And fell soundly asleep.

Wade woke me up when he came in, at 1:30, on his way to the dentist. And I thought, hmm, my throat feels a little scratchy. So I made some tea.

Henry got up at 2:00; he played a computer game while I loaded the dishwasher. Charlie woke up crying at 2:15, and the diarrhea started again. He spent the afternoon lying in my lap on the sofa, moaning, while Henry flitted around the house in his superhero cape.

Wade came home from the dentist a little before 5:00, as Charlie was wailing, ‘My tummy hurts!’ and I was trying to figure out if my sore throat was actually getting worse, or if it was just all the whining.

It’s 6:45 now; Wade has taken Henry to his parents’ house for dinner and Charlie is watching Elmo’s Christmas for the second time. And me? Well, it’s funny you should ask.

I feel like I’m going to die. And do you know what I think is wrong with me? Any guesses?

Strep throat. Again.

But how is that possible? you ask. And all I can say is, I have no earthly idea. But! There it is!

I’m going to bed. I’ll be back when I’m not dying. And the kids aren’t dying. So don’t hold your breath.

January 23, 2006

daterrific!

Hey, so did you all watch the first part of Bleak House on PBS last night? Wasn’t it wonderful? Isn’t Gillian Anderson a perfect Lady Deadlock?

Oh, that’s not what you want to hear about, is it? Okay–my date. My date was fantastic. In fact, it was $175.00 worth of fantastic! Yes! Really! Can you believe it? And no, that does not include the cost of any new shoes (or any new anything!) for me! That was just dinner and the sitter! See why we never go out?

We went to Cafe Nova (click the link, it’s totally worth it), which is, of course, owned by John Paul Merritt, who you remember from season three of the Bachelorette. He proposed to Jen and she said no and everyone was all ‘How could she choose JERRY over John Paul?’ but then she said no to Jerry, too, remember? And we were all horrified, but we can’t really hold it against her because really, who ACTUALLY meets their soul mate on reality TV? Jen started out with that Firestone heir and we all though THAT would last forever and it didn’t, so at least she was being more careful this time, although John Paul does really seem to be a nice guy, and I’ve met his mother and she’s lovely. And now he has this fantastic restaurant! Where he reportedly hangs out on the weekends!

And why wouldn’t he? It’s a beautiful place, and crammed to the gills with Beautiful People. Like our hostess, who was young and stunning and wearing (under a very nice cream-coloured cardigan sweater) a gold sequined bra. Where do you get something like that, I wonder?

But on this particular Saturday night, no John Paul. And sadly, no Molly either, as she had a sick child (102 degree fever! Yikes!). But her husband came and met us and the three of us had a wonderful time talking about how J. K. Rowling cornered the juvenile literary market (because she writes well, unlike so many of the people writing for children) and whether there is such a thing as a truly non-fictional narrative (I say no, there isn’t, but others at my table–ahem, you know who you are–disagreed). And nary a once did anyone ask me to cut up their chicken nuggets or announce ‘I have to go POTTY!’ or insist we go home! Hooray!

Cafe Nova is, shall we say, a little out of Wade’s and my range, both in terms of the cost (our portion of the bill was honestly $145.00. For dinner and drinks. And Wade wants you to know that we did NOT order off the entrees section of the menu, only off the appetizers and salad parts. Although we did have a nice cheese platter and dessert) and in terms of the hip factor. I was painfully frumpy in my nice cashmere sweater and nice black Ann Taylor skirt (I did wear a pair of sexy slingbacks, but they were under the table all evening). The food was, frankly, fine–the cheese plate was the best part, which is a little sad, I think. But! Did I mention that I wore slingbacks? With a heel that I can only barely walk in? And that no one asked me to carry them? Hooray!

For our next date, we will be going to a movie. At the dollar theater. With perhaps a stop at McDonald’s for something of the dollar menu. But I think I will wear my slingbacks again, just for fun.

Today, of course, I’m back in my routine–you know, the Monday routine where at least one child doesn’t go to school, thus depriving me of the ONE DAY A WEEK that everyone is supposed to go to school. That routine. Charlie is home with me today, for no good reason; he’s not sick (at least not that I can diagnose, although he did fall asleep on the floor in his room at 10:15 this morning, which is unusual–the early nap, not the floor part) but in the parking lot at his school he threw the mother of all tantrums, complete with screaming and crying and kicking and hanging on to the car, and could neither be reasoned nor carried into school. And because both my mother and my mother-in-law may be reading this, I will say, yes, I probably SHOULD have just dragged him in, but really, he was so upset and it’s possible he is getting sick and it’s day care, after all, not actual preschool and I TRIED, for fifteen minutes, I really did. And no, I don’t know if bringing him home was the right thing to do, but it’s what I did.

So, once again, I have a child with me today, and his punishment (and mine!) is that we are not going ANYWHERE, least he get the idea that throwing a tantrum during school drop-off will land you at Starbucks, which means that I haven’t had enough coffee. Or enough alone time. And it did kind of take the buzz off my let’s-wear-sexy-shoes-and-not-talk-about-the-children weekend.

But other than that, my date was terrific!

Update: Hey, guess what? Charlie has a STOMACH VIRUS! The poopy kind, not the vomity kind, and you’re welcome! Because I knew you were wondering. So not only did I have him at home today, but I will have him with me ALL DAY TOMORROW! Because he can’t be around anyone for AT LEAST 24 hours! And then I will probably have Henry home on Wednesday! Because that’s how these things work!

And while this makes me a good mommy for not leaving him at Day Out, it still makes me a crabby mommy. Because he’s SICK! God help us if I get it.

January 20, 2006

my sanity is worth $17.36

Every other Friday, my housekeeper comes and sterilizes every surface in our house. Every other Friday, Charlie and I pick Henry up at school and go out for lunch, so that my housekeeper can actually CLEAN the house without the kids messing it up right behind her. On a typical every other Friday, I either make sandwiches for the boys to eat in the car on the way to some Fun Destination (a bookstore or park, depending on the weather) or we go someplace Kid Friendly to eat (which means that I spend the ENTIRE lunch getting up and down to get drinks and straws and napkins and the actual lunch and more straws and more drinks and . . . ). And virtually every other Friday, our lunch date ends with either a potty accident or a tantrum. Sometimes both! Although I only have tantrums, just so you know.

Today, though, I decided that I wasn’t going to do that. I’m still riding the buzz of my impending date, and I didn’t want to go into the weekend wanting to smack Wade for getting me pregnant in the first place (not a good tone to set right before the date, see). So today the boys and I went to a real restaurant for lunch. And it was magnificent.

Leslie was the one who got me thinking about this. When we went to dinner a few weeks ago, she said, ‘I want to go to an actual RESTAURANT, where I can sit at the table and have someone wait on me. I don’t want to stand in line or have to go pick up my food. I want to SIT DOWN.’ And she was right–I had actually forgotten how lovely it is not to be running back and forth for a million things. She and I had a complete, coherent conversation that night, mostly because we never had to get up! Oh, and because we left the kids at home, too, but that’s a whole other thing.

So today! The boys and I went to lunch! At the real restaurant! We colored the kid’s menus and talked about how beer is brewed and how Harry Potter got his scar and what the boys want to be when they grow up (Henry wants to be a detective; Charlie is deciding between squirrel and firefighter, which is a tough choice, I know). And the boys ate! A lot! And I had a lovely petite spinach salad (served with a juicy chicken breast and a delicious vinaigrette dressing). After lunch we went to the bookstore and played with the train and read Chicks and Salsa. And, of course, we had an emergency potty trip, but unlike all those other every other Fridays when I though my head would explode, I just rolled with it. All because of the restaurant lunch.

And now I’m kicking myself for being such a cheapskate for so long and not doing this sooner. Because really, I just bought myself one more day of sanity. And a delicious spinach salad to boot!

January 19, 2006

does this justify new shoes?

My friend Molly called the other afternoon, which was lovely as we’ve been playing phone tag for a while (okay, she’s been calling me and I haven’t been calling her back, but I swear it’s not because I don’t want to it’s just that every time I pick up the phone someone starts crying or whining or bleeding, which makes it hard to actually have a conversation). Anyway, she said, ‘I just voted for your blog!’

Then I was really sorry I hadn’t called her back sooner. Because look how useful she is! I have such nice friends.

We got all caught up, and made a dinner date for Saturday, with our husbands, because, oh, did I mention that I HAVE A BABYSITTER THIS WEEKEND? Yes. Yes I do. Envy me. But not too much, because I will be paying her $10.00 an hour to watch cable TV while my children sleep. And she’s a Baptist, and we know how Charlie feels about Baptists.

While Molly and I were on the phone, the boys were entertaining themseves by playing some elaborate game that involved running from one end of my house to the other while wearing their pyjamas and their superhero capes. At one point, Charlie came running into the kitchen and announced, loud enough for Molly to hear, ‘Goldilocks pulled my cape off on PURPOSE!’ And then he ran away. Molly called me back yesterday and asked if I ever got the full story about Goldilocks and the cape, and I had to say no. I still have no idea what exactly went down, but Charlie didn’t seem to scarred by it.

Then Molly told me this story: one morning, while she was still in bed, she heard her sons talking together. Her five-year-old said to his brother, ‘Let’s make a volcano!’

‘Okay,’ she heard her seven-year-old say. ‘But be quiet! It’s a surprise!’

At that point, Molly said, she decided she had best get out of bed before the surprise volcano became a reality. This is the same son, by the way, who asked her if they could clean out their attic so he could use it for a laboratory. To make surprise volcanos, apparently!

See? Other kids are just as wierd as mine! Ha ha!

Anyway, now I’ve got this date, with my husband no less, and I can’t decide what to wear. I could go with something dry-clean-only! And chances are it would survive the evening without any snot or peanut butter being rubbed on it! I wonder if I have anything nice that still fits?

On a related note, the New York Times had a piece yesterday on the return of the slip as a wardrobe staple. Not the slipdress, which never worked for me, as I have absolutely no cleavage, and which always seemed impractical for winter, with the cold and all, but the slip. You know, slips! Remember? Yeah, me either.

I like this article because, in typical New York Times fashion (get it? FASHION?) it includes moments like this: ‘”We’re beginning to see a new generation discover the slip,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. “For now slips are an undercultural movement by women shopping in more affluent stores.”‘ What the hell is an undercultural movement? Is that an underwear joke? I really, really hope so.

I also love this woman: ‘”Slips have a kind of sophistication, a sexiness that makes you feel more womanly,” said Lauren Martin, a psychoanalyst in New York. She shows off her wardrobe of traditional slips under sheer blouses and skirts with slits.’ Imagine having her as your therapist. What would Freud say about her slip? Hoo, I’m so funny.

The thing about slips is this: they seem essentially impractical, both for daywear and as lingere. For me, at least. During the day I wear pants so I can play baseball and run at the park (or chase my children into a parking lot, whatever the moment calls for) and at night I wear sweats so I don’t freeze. The slip seems to call for high heeled shoes and high-end vodka, neither of which are part of my day-to-day routine (although I can understand the appeal–a nice pair of Manolos plus a couple of Cosmos and you’re pretty much out of comission, at least as far as mommying goes). Of course, this once again confirms that by the New York Times’ standards, I am completely unsexy. Which I already knew.

But! I have a babysitter! Which is about the sexiest thing to happen around here in a long time.

January 18, 2006

I wish I had something else to write about, I really really do, for your sake and mine

But I’ve got nothing. Oh, sure, I could (and should!) tell you that Baby Andrew has been moved from the Level Three NICU (for the smallest, sickest babies) to the Level Two, which is one step closer to going home! My sister-in-law has been able to start kangaroo care, too, which is good for her and for the baby. They are planning for him to be in the hospital until mid-March (when he would have been full-term) but this is a big move. And I should thank you all for your kind words! Thank you!

I could also tell you that I’m on page 315 of The Other Boleyn Girl. 346 pages to go. Still waiting for something interesting to happen. Or just for SOMETHING to happen. Other than me dying of boredom.

Or I could tell you that Rachael Ray is getting her own talk show. And a magazine! I don’t have anything else to say about that, I just found it surprising, mostly because she irritates the hell out of me, and I can’t imagine that I am alone in this. Am I?

But I am essentially out of things to write about, except that it has been SIX WEEKS since I had a completely kid-free weekday. Which means I have had a child with me essentially ALL THE TIME for six weeks. This morning I realized that my brain has completely melted! Like fondue! Only less delicious.

Okay, so I haven’t been with my kids for the ENTIRE six weeks–there was the whole trip to Houston, and my manicure at Christmas, and the Saturday a couple of weeks ago when Wade took the boys so that I could balance our checkbook (which took EIGHT HOURS, because that’s what happens when you don’t do it for THREE MONTHS), but still! Six weeks! Without a free Monday! For those of you new to Friday Playdate (or those of you who just aren’t paying detailed attention to my schedule, and by the way why aren’t you paying detailed attention to my schedule?), Monday is the ONLY day that BOTH of my children go to school all day. Although they haven’t, for the past SIX WEEKS.*

Mostly I hang out with Charlie (Henry goes to school every day, although he only stays all day on Mondays and Wednesdays). And, for the most part, Charlie is a ton of fun to hang out with, except on a day like today, when we have had the following stimulating conversations:

Me: Here’s your French toast!**

Charlie: NOOOOO! I wanted a WAFFLE! I don’t want something soft! I want something CRUNCHY! (puts head on table and cries)

Me: Okay, let’s get our shoes on so we can take Henry to school.

Charlie: NOOOOO! I don’t like any of my shoes! (lays down on floor and cries)

Charlie: Will you please play with me? Will you play with me? Playwithmeplaywithmeplaywithme!

Me: Sure! Can I go potty first?

Charlie: NOOOOO! (grabs my legs and cries)

Charlie: Look! This pirate has a gun! And a sword! And I think a shark ate his hand! Because he has a hook! And he’s going to ride on the ship! With this other pirate! Who has a gun! And a sword! But a shark didn’t eat his hand! But he’s not wearing any shoes! Why isn’t he wearing any shoes?

Me: Uuunnnnhhhh . . . (bangs head on floor and cries)

Charlie has essentially spent the past six weeks honing his master plan to push me over the edge; it consists of cheerfully pestering the bejesus out of me to PLAY WITH HIM (translation: ‘Sit here on the floor and let me stick Playmobil people up your nose!’), alternated every so often with hysterical crying when he is asked to do something he doesn’t want to do, like wash his hands or eat lunch or go to bed. And it’s working!

Henry has also been doing his best to drive me into an early grave, although his strategy is to be EXTRA good all day and then completely fall apart RIGHT before Wade comes home, or–even better!–just as Wade walks through the door. Despite the fact that I know it’s coming, this always catches me off guard, because, unlike Charlie, who cries about predictable things, Henry’s breakdowns are often precipitated by . . . well, I don’t know what. And that’s the problem, see?

Last night, it was his light saber. (Yes, the boys have light sabers and yes, I approved this, and YES, I am clearly unable to learn from my mistakes). The light sabers were in time-out when Wade came home, because the boys had been waving them around in the living room and nearly cleared all the picture frames off a table. Wade was late because he had been in a meeting; his mother was on her way over with cookies. That’s the back story.

The actual scene went like this: when Wade came in, Charlie was in his room, naked and crying, I don’t remember about what. Then Wade’s mom showed up, and Henry started SCREAMING about his light saber and about how mean I was to take it away and about how he would not be able to do his play now and wouldn’t be able to go to school in the morning because no one would know who he was without his light saber and ‘Mommy is so MEAN!’ I heard Wade say, in his extra EXTRA calm voice, ‘Buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

My mother-in-law came in Charlie’s room to tell him about the cookies (which of course made HIM stop crying), and I could tell that she was waiting to see if Henry would calm down so she could visit with him. When he kept on screaming, she said, ‘Okay, well, I’m going to go!’

And I said, ‘Can I come with you?’

I was serious.

*Okay, that’s not entirely true. Last Monday, the boys went to school but I had my niece with me all day, which was nice but still! not a free day! Especially as it included many many off-key renditions of Hakuna Matata.

**Aunt Jemimia, from a box, cooked in the toaster. You didn’t think I was actually MAKING French toast, did you? You must be new here. Welcome!

January 16, 2006

this just about covers everything

My goodness, I have so! much! to! tell! you all, and it all requires multiple! exclamation!! points!!! For no good reason!

The End of Enforced Rest Time

Thanks to all of you who offered suggestions and moral support. Our experiment with ending Enforced Rest Time has been a mixed bag. On Friday morning, I told Charlie, ‘Today, after lunch, how about we go to the bookstore and play?’

He said, ‘Are we going to rest?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘not after lunch. We’ll eat and then go to the bookstore and then later, we’ll have some quiet time before Clifford comes on.’ (See–I’m using BOTH independent play AND television! Just like you all suggested! Hooray for me!)

‘Why are’t we going to rest?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you don’t really rest, do you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I jump on the bed!’ Then he thought for a moment and asked, ‘Can we get a cookie at the bookstore?’

And because I am not above bribing my children with sugary treats, I said, ‘Of course!’

So Charlie was on board. Henry, however, was a completely different story. When I pitched the bookstore idea to him in the car on the way home from school (including the cookie, to give it more weight), he started to sob. ‘No no no, we HAVE to rest!’

‘It’s okay, buddy,’ I said VERY CALMLY (like EXTRA very very calmly). ‘If you’re tired, you can have a rest.’

Charlie piped up. ‘But I’m not having a rest, right? Because I don’t rest, I just jump on the bed!’ He’s so helpful, that one.

Henry continued to wail. ‘No, EVERYONE has to rest! Otherwise, if anyone comes to our house, how will they know it’s us?’ I’m sure I must have mentioned that one of his quirkynesses is a tendancy to lose track of reality. Yes? Yes! He cried the ENTIRE way home from school (about a twelve minute drive); when we came in the house, he laid on the floor in the kitchen and cried until his lunch was ready. Then he kept insisting, ‘I AM GOING TO REST.’ So, a good start!

In the end, he did NOT rest because he realized that Charlie wasn’t going to, and we played in the yard for an hour and went to the bank and stopped at the bookstore (and, yes, had a cookie–although I was wishing for a martini by then). Change is hard for Henry, and consequently for the rest of us. But we’re forging ahead! Or something. And we’re not resting! Although we are having quiet time from 3:00-4:00, just to keep Mommy out of the sanitarium.

What I’m Really Reading

Lucinda e-mailed me the other day (the best BEST part of this whole BoB thing is the nice nice people I’m meeting, like Lucinda and Kathryn–go read their blogs, but VOTE FOR ME, which you can do ONCE A DAY until the voting ends, not that I care or anything)–anyway, Lucinda e-mailed me the other day and said that she, too, is reading The Other Boleyn Girl and how did I like it?

And I e-mailed her back: ‘Honestly? I don’t.’ Really, I’m trying, but I just don’t like it! I’m reading it for my book group, so I feel bound to finish it, particularly if I’m going to show up in two weeks and blah blah blah on about how much I hated it, but gah! I’ve read 191 pages (leaving me a mere 470 to go!) and I could care less what happens to any of the characters. I’m actually starting to HOPE that the narrator will be executed because she is so very annoying. Have I mentioned that one of my flaws as a reader is a tendancy to get over-involved in the narrative? Maybe that’s where Henry gets it . . . huh.

Anyway, I think my real problem is not so much with this novel (although I do think it’s just TERRIBLE) but with the other things I’ve been reading when I should be reading for the book group, which have been one absolutely magnificent book after another. So for your reading pleasure, here are All The Good Books I Have Read Since Christmas and Why I Loved Them.

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
This is a beautifully written coming of age story set in South Carolina in 1964. The protagonist, fourteen-year-old Lilly Owens, runs away from home with her nanny, Rosaleen, after the older black woman is arrested for assaulting three racist white men. They travel to Tiburon, South Carolina, and are taken in by three black bee-keeping sisters who hold the secret to Lilly’s mother’s mysterious death ten years earlier.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro is most famous for The Remains of the Day (another novel I love). This is similar in structure (the narrator, Kathy, is looking back at her life) but entirely different in its plot. Set in England in the late 1990s, Never Let Me Go is a haunting exploration of the ethics of eugenics and cloning. In light of the recent Senate debates about abortion surrounding Samuel Alito’s confirmation hearings, this is a timely–and frankly disturbing–read.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Christopher, a fifteen-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, looks out his window one night and sees his neighbor’s poodle dead in the yard. He decides to solve the mystery of the dog’s death, but this heart-wrenching novel’s greatest success is in the way it shows the reader the mystery of the autistic mind. As the parent of a quirky kid, I found this novel so very moving; when Christopher talks about his inability to recognize nonverbal language cues, I cried. Read it now.

Okay, I think that just about covers it. And look! It’s almost time for cocktails! How perfect!