February 20, 2006

it seems so appropriate to have Judith Warner in the sidebar for this

Last night I sat and read all of your comments and suggestions about my hair and Charlie’s sleep, and I can’t thank you enough–certainly for your thoughtful feedback about Charlie and all those nice things you said about the hair, but more importantly for being so respectful and kind to each other, even when you disagreed. I don’t know how it is but the comments here at Friday Playdate always have the tone of a lovely cocktail party, where everyone is wearing a nice dress and some fantastic shoes and using their party manners. I’ve been reading around at other sites where, well, that’s just not true, and I am deeply grateful to all of you for just being so darn nice. Thank you.

I was particularly aware of your niceness this weekend because while I was trapped in the house with my family for two days watching the sleet fall and fall and fall outside (we’re still trapped today! because the schools are closed! and the roads are icy! isn’t that terrific!) I had a chance to read our local newspaper, which I try so very hard not to do because it never fails to irritate me. And look! It’s happened again.

Saturday’s editorial page included a piece titled What Working Moms Do, by Jennifer James McCollum. I don’t know this woman and have no bones to pick with her personally; instead, I want to think about the way she talks about being a ‘working mom’ and why it irritates me so much.

We are all aware of the ‘Mommy Wars’ if only because the media has stoked the fire with, among other things, stories of career women who gave birth and left work and now wake up every morning wondering if they did the right thing. Recently, the talk has been about ‘opting out‘ and how this is related to my generation’s commitment to the feminist ideals of our foremothers.

In the Mommy Wars, ‘we’ are pitted against ‘them.’ Who are ‘we’? Well, what group do you identify with–working mom, stay home mom, working from home mom? Single mom, married mom, older mom, younger mom? Pick a group, please, because otherwise how will ‘we’ recognize you as one of ‘us’ and not one of ‘them’? And ‘we’ are better than ‘they’ are, in some essential way. My favorite parenting book ever is Jennifer Conlin’s The Perfect Parents Handbook. In in, with a mock seriousness similar to that in Spinal Tap, Conlin asserts that the most important part of being a good parent is identifying your perfect parent group in order that you and your children will associate with the right people. She offers each group tips on maternity fashions, what to name the baby, how to announce the birth, how to chose a preschool, what sports to play, and so on. While Conlin is being funny (and she is, truly, so very funny), her parody works because it strikes at the heart of the Mommy Wars: unless you are part of the ‘right’ group, you are a failure as a parent.

Which brings me back to the essay in the Oklahoman. McCollum, a working mother of two, lists the things working moms do: ‘buy in bulk and wear ugly shoes so they get there quickly and come back faster. . . . file their nails at stoplights and have messy cars full of things like straw wrappers, school papers, missing pacifiers covered in goo and hair, pen caps, empty packets of coffee creamer, bills that needed to [be] mailed two weeks ago and ATM receipts. . . sacrifice their locks for wash-and-wear hair . . . cry when their toddlers crush blush into the bathroom rug. . . melt when, after such episodes, their children say, “You know what, mommy? I shoooore do love you.”‘ And I found myself thinking, okay, but I do all of those things as well. And I am not a ‘working mother.’

Does McCollum really think that, as a stay-home mom, I wear pretty shoes every day? That I have time for weekly manicures or an elaborate hairstyle? That my car is always clean and free of kid junk? That I am not angry when my children destroy my things? That I don’t ‘melt’ when my sons break out the ‘I love you, Mommy’ apology? McCollum seems to be imagining the stay-home mom as some combination of Mary Poppins, Sister Theresa, and Princess Diana. And yes, I would love to be that woman, to have that life. But I don’t, nor do any of the stay-home moms I know.

For McCollum, however, the biggest distinction seems to be that ‘Working moms . . worry, cry and buy’ too much. And again I found myself wondering what precisely made the working mom different from the stay-home mom. Am I doing this wrong? Is not working supposed to free me from worry? From tears? From some sense that a stop at the dollar store just might make up for all the ways I am failing my children? If so, then I am doing a worse job than I feared I was, because not only do I not wear nice shoes most of the time, but I worry and cry more than I ever expected to. But I always assumed that this was because I was a mother, not because I worked or stayed home. ‘All these working moms know the hardest job in the world is being a stay-at-home mom,’ McCollum writes. ‘They wish, sometimes, they could be one.’ I think McCollum has completely missed the point here: the hardest job is not being a stay-at-home mom; the hardest job is being a parent. And what makes it so hard, particularly for women, is this sense that we are not all on the same side, that we are battling it out to see whose job is harder, who is making the most sacrifices, who does this best. To have our side declared the winner of the Mommy Wars.

I am so tired of this rhetoric–that working mothers desperately desire to be home with their children, that stay-home mothers are one step away from saints. I don’t believe either of these things. I think women who work have days where they are relieved to go to work rather than spending the day with a teething or sick or crabby child; I know that women who stay home full time are occasionally (dare I say often?) bored by the company of their beloved offspring. No one can live up to the ideals McCollum holds out in her essay; no one should have to. But we are clearly asked to identify with only one of these groups, and our response to the essay is clearly proscribed: if you are a working mommy, you are supposed to envy those stay-home mommies, and if you stay home you are supposed to pity the women who work. What disturbs me the most, though, is a clear sense that readers are supposed to identify with the working mother, who is knocking herself out and beating herself up in the service of her children, and not with the stay-home mothers, who have probably dropped their kids at Mothers Day Out so they can get their nails done and their hair cut. Because in the Mommy Wars it is always US against THEM, and only one side can win.

This does us all a disservice, not only as mothers but as women, and I wish we had some kind of cultural exit strategy from this conflict. And that is why I am so perpetually grateful to those of you who read and comment here. You are working mothers and stay home mothers and women without any children at all. Some of you are actually not women but men. You don’t all share my worldview or my experiences, but you are kind and sympathetic and able to disagree or offer a differing view with respect and humor. I think the Mommy Wars would be over if we all behaved this way; I think it is reprehensible of media outlets like the Daily Oklahoman to perpetuate this divisive rhetoric. I want to like Jennifer James McCollum, I want to respect her effort to articulate how hard it is to raise children and have a career and balance those things, but I am put off by the idealized picture she has in her mind of what my life as a stay home mother is like. And I think that is so unfortunate.

February 17, 2006

it’s Friday, so let’s talk about my hair

This was my hair when I was in Houston, which was, oh, a month ago. And yes, I’d had a glass of wine (or three), thus my Extra Happy Face. Party on!

This was my hair (and my vintage 1997 geek glasses, which I love, so don’t mock them) on Monday. I had to take like three dozen pictures to get two halfway good ones. Really! I probably should have had a glass of wine then.

Please note that the photos are black and white to disguise my roots, which I have not had time to touch up. And yes, they still make SunIn, although when I looked at the bottle I realized that I actually use Clairol Touch of Sun because it costs less. And it works! Okay, although it doesn’t hide the grey. Oh well.

Glad we’ve got that out of the way–watch this space on Fridays for Hair Updates. Or for the (inevitable) news that I’ve caved and cut it.

I have so much else to tell you all, like about all the fascinating conversations I overheard at Starbucks this week, but Charlie has been coming in at 5:45 am to get in bed with me, which is very cute until I try to get up and get in the shower and he cries and says, ‘I don’t WAAAANT you to take a SHOOOWWWER!’ He also cries in the afternoons because he’s tired and doesn’t want to nap. Except today, when he DID want to nap, but on the floor, and he INSISTED that I lay down with him ON THE FLOOR. I said no, and he cried. For half an hour. At bedtime he gets up like 200 times because he’s so tired that he can’t settle himself to sleep and enventually he falls apart and cries until I lay down with him (in the bed, not on the floor). So I’m feeling a little tired myself, and I could really use a long shower. And any advice the Internets might have about how to get the boy to stay in bed and go to sleep would be welcomed. We’re open to anything, including bungee cords and duct tape, just so you know.

Edited to add . . .

Hey, it’s 8:30 and I’m back to say look at you all, ignoring the complete narcisscism of this post (good lord, who needs to see all those pictures of my head?) to offer ACTUAL USEFUL ADVICE and sympathy about my demon spawn son! On a Friday night, even! Thank you, Internet. Keep the suggestions coming.

To help you out, here are Things We Have Tried (With NO Succes) To Keep Charlie In Bed:

1. Closing his door; he opens it and come out into the hall SOBBING. And then comes to find me, still sobbing.

2. The doorknob cover on the inside of the door. We did this with Henry and it worked like a charm. But Charlie can take it off! Because Henry taught him how! Whose idea was it to encourage them to like each other? Dammit.

3. Bribes. This didn’t work for the potty either, which is wierd because Charlie loves him some candy so you would think he’d be ripe for the bribing. But no! Last night, for example, I offered him a lollipop in his lunch–his favorite treat ever–and he STILL got up. Repeatedly. And then this morning had the gall to REMIND me to put a lolly in my bag for him. I think not, son.

4. Threats. I am all about the threat. Which may actually be part of my problem. Hmm. Anyway, at some point I wind up saying some verson of the following: ‘Go back to bed or we will take your stuffed friends/binkie/pillows/food/you name it away.’ And I actually have made good on some of these threats (the stuffed friends and pillows, and the binkie, although we return that to his bed once he’s calm, and of course we wouldn’t take his FOOD away, in case you’re worried. Although someone should probably do that to me).

5. Oblivion. We have actually had the most luck with the very simple strategy of ignoring him when he comes to find us. We either keep reading or surfing or loading the dishwasher or we have the MOST BORING conversation you can imagine. One night Wade told me EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of an internal review board meeting he had been to that day. I thought my brain was going to start leaking out my eyeballs. But it worked! Charlie laid down on the floor and was half asleep by the time the meeting was over. And when I said, ‘Are you ready to go to bed, buddy?’ he said, ‘Yes PLEASE Mommy.’ I kid you not.

The problem right now is that by 7:30 or so, Charlie is beyond exhausted and I have had enough of his whiny company. And so we are at an impasse.

BUT! Continue to help and sympathize. Or at least make me laugh.

February 16, 2006

I didn’t do it

Leah tagged me, but because I’m a rebel (okay, I’m totally not) I’m going to do half of the meme, and change the rules. Again! Go to Leah’s site if you want to read the original meme (and to ogle her son, who is ADORABLE–my favorite picture is here). Get ready–here are four jobs I’ve never had and four classic movies I’ve never seen. You’re on the edge of your seat, aren’t you?

four jobs I’ve never had
Restaurant employee. I applied for a job at Arby’s once, but the manager said I was ‘overqualified.’ I think he disliked my I’m-home-from-my-expensive-liberal-arts-college-for-the-summer attitude. And, looking back, I can see why! I also seem to recall some sort of nation-wide panic at that time (this would be in the late ’80s) about Arby’s employees having their hands severed in the roast beef slicer. Remember this? Okay, so maybe it was just my mom who was worried, but I wasn’t too heartbroken about not getting the job. I really didn’t want to work in any sort of restaurant, particularly one that required a uniform. With a hat! Do they still wear those hats? The ironic thing about this is that the following fall, when I went back to school, I waited tables in a bar, which really was just one step up from the Arby’s, and had a uniform that consisted of a t-shirt made ENTIRELY of polyester; the bartenders used to joke that in a fire we wouldn’t burn but melt. This was a truly horrible job, but so very lucrative, especially on Monday nights when two of the seven fraternities on campus had their meetings. The meeting, of course, was just an excuse to relive the weekend, plan for the next weekend, and get drunk (again! thus adding one more day to the weekend, which typically kicked off on Wednesday afternoon). Drunk frat boys tip well; a pitcher of beer was like $6.00, but it was apparently so much easier to hand me a $10.00 and yell, ‘KEEP THE CHANGE!’ Which I inevitably did. Of course, this lead to some sense that the tipper was entitled to grab my ass, but a well-placed blow to the head usually put a stop to that. How do I know this? Let’s just say I do and leave it at that.

Personal assistant. Wade and I have an unusual fascination with E! Entertainment Television’s reality lineup, specifically Gastineau Girls and Dr. 90210. We don’t PLAN to watch these shows–we don’t TIVO them or anything (although I will once I get my TIVO, don’t you worry), but we seem to stumble onto them pretty regularly, and as they have that reality TV can’t-look-away-train-wreck quality we all love, there we are. Anyway, this season’s first episode followed Lisa and Brittny Gastineau as they sought to hire a personal assistant to do things like get the phone hooked up! and find clean towels! and locate a specific overnight bag in a closet the size of my house! This got me thinking about what a horrible personal assistant I would be. I only get through my current day (which has a fairly strong element of ‘personal assistant’ to it, if you think about it) by wielding the threat of time-out at every opportunity; I don’t think you can actually PUT the Gastineau Girls in time-out (although they BOTH deserve it). And inevitably I would go berserk and tell Brittny to GET A GRIP FOR GOD’S SAKE IT’S ONLY A SHOE AND YOU HAVE THREE HUNDRED PAIRS IN THE CLOSET and that would be the end of my career as a personal assistant. Plus my propensity for whacking people upside the head when provoked might make me unhireable. Was I going somewhere with this? No. Let’s move on.

Nanny. Didn’t being a nanny always seem like fun? Come on, think about it! Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, THE NANNY! Those girls knew how to live. The children always played together nicely, or better yet left the house for the ENTIRE day, freeing the nanny to hang out in the kitchen watching daytime TV and noshing on whatever the cook was making. And they always got the guy! Okay, not Mary Poppins, although Burt was sweet on her and she seemed to have unlimited access to all sorts of terrific hallucinogenic drugs. And of course Maria got both the Captain and the Nazis, but they got over that, right? But the Nanny! Fran Drescher wore heels! And full makeup! And she got to marry the almost-hot and fabulously wealthy English guy! Okay, yes, I have TERRIBLE taste in television shows. Sorry. (See, you ARE learning something about me!)

Writer. My senior year in high school, I was voted Most Likely to Write the Great American Novel. I think this happened for a couple of reasons: I liked to read and even in high school I had a compulsive need to finish even the worst book, which meant that I ALWAYS had the homework done for English class (unlike some other of my classes, but let’s not get into that here). And, for some reason, I was always in the English class with the football players boys who couldn’t didn’t like to read, so they thought I was some sort of genius when really I just had a good memory for plot. In our senior year, we had our class meeting after lunch, which meant that occasionally some of my classmates were, uh, not entirely themselves by the time these meetings started, if you catch my drift (drunk! or maybe stoned! but not me–I was too busy doing my English homework). And because the dean of the Senior Class, poor Mr. Smith (yes, really! that was his name) took attendance, all my drunk football player friends (I use that world loosely) from fifth period English were there the day that we voted for things like ‘best legs!’ and ‘cutest couple!’ and ‘most likely to run for political office!’ and they loudly egged all their other drunk football player friends to VOTE FOR WAGNER TO WRITE THE NOVEL! It was truly touching. No, not really. Because I never wanted to write a novel (remember what happened when I tried?) and I am skeptical that there has ever been a GREAT American novel. Oh and? WRITING IS HARD. At least in the coherent manner required when you’re being paid to do it. Not like here, where I can just yammer on and on! Thank god for the Internet.

Moving right along . . .

four classic movies I have not seen
E. T. It’s not the same once you know how Drew Barrymore turns out, is it?

The Graduate. I have no excuse. None.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Yes, I know, Pheobe Cates has great boobs! Anything else? I didn’t think so.

Apocalypse Now. But I’ve read Heart of Darkness at least five times, if that makes a difference.

Okay, now I’m tired. It’s a lot of work, not doing things. I think I’ll go not do anything in front of the television. But you! Should feel free to do this! And tomorrow I’ll post some pictures of my hair! Can you stand the excitement?

February 15, 2006

I cannot tell a lie

But I can totally borrow someone else’s truth and attribute it to my husband.

Technically, ALL of the stories I told are true, but one of them is not about Wade. Because while I have no flair for fiction, I’m good at taking things that have really happened and dressing them up a bit. Look at me–I’m James Frey! Although like James Frey I was tripped up by some simple fact checking, thus proving that I learned NOTHING from his mistake.

1. Wade rode on the University of Oklahoma cycling team.
TRUE!
Wade went to grad school at OU in the late 80s/early 90s. And yes, he really WAS hit by a car; he suffered a mild concussion. He likes to tell everyone that the day AFTER the accident, his parents went out of town on vacation, despite the fact that he was languishing in the hospital. But he was fine, really. And he wears a bicycyle helmet all the time now–when he’s riding a bike, I mean, not ALL the time, which would be, well, wierd.

2. Wade runs marathons; he has run 18 in the past ten years.
NOT TRUE!
Actually, this IS a true story–but not about Wade, who wouldn’t run for the phone if it was Heather Locklear calling to ask him out on a date.* Well, okay, MAYBE then. But not for anything else.

Wade’s friend Adam, on the other hand, really IS a runner and is a fairly good marathoner; he has finished in the top ten at the Memorial Marathon for the past two years, and ran a personal best in 2004. Adam also ran the San Francisco Marathon with his brother-in-law, who is some sort of venture capitalist, and the brother-in-law really DID take phone calls during the race. (My brother, on the other hand, is a golfer, not a runner, although he DOES own a business and has been known to take phone calls at odd times. Just not during a marathon, unless it was one he was watching on television. And I can’t really see that happening, now that I think about it.) Adam is also a writer; he did a series of articles about races in Oklahoma, including the run at the nudist colony (which may or may not be near Tulsa–I made that part up. Look at me! with the lying!). I am fairly sure he ran that particular race nekkid, but quite honestly, I don’t want to know. I like this man and his wife a lot and I really want to be able to have dinner with them every once in a while without having to think about . . . well, you know. But apparently, people DO run the race in their birthday suits, and then they all hop in the hot tub together when it’s over. Adam runs his race, collects his trophy, and leaves–no hot tub. You’re all relieved to know THAT, aren’t you?

3. Wade once shared a bottle of Southern Comfort with David Lee Roth, in the stairwell of a local hotel.
TRUE!
I still don’t know what else to say about this, except that it was a long LONG time ago and I was not there.

4. Wade spent a summer working in an oil field.
TRUE!
Apparently this was the Most Boring Summer Job ever, and the trailer was horrible. More horrible than the Motel 6, which is saying quite a bit.

5. Wade will go on a five-day camping trip where he will hike twenty miles while carrying a fifty pound pack, fly fish in icewater up to his thighs, sleep on the ground at night, and eat freeze-dried camp food while sitting under a tarp in the pouring rain (or snow!), but he will NOT eat a decent, freshly-prepared meal outside.
TRUE!
The one exception to this is when we visit my parents in Albuquerque, where there are no bugs and no humidity. But for the most part, Wade would sooner be drawn and quartered than have to eat outside. I, of course, would eat EVERY meal outside, weather permitting, but wouldn’t go camping on a dare. And yet we are somehow able to coexist peacefully. Because we love each other. Or something.

A big congratulations to Mama Christy, Crayonz, and M&Co, all of whom actually looked up the race results for the Memorial Marathon, which is a clear sign that they have WAAAAY too much time on their hands. And so to fill that time, I suggest that THEY do this meme (follow the link for the ACTUAL instructions–or play my way!). See? No good deed goes unpunished. The rest of you–particularly those of you who guessed correctly–should feel free to tag yourselves and let us know you’re playing. I want to see what kind of liars you all are.

So now you know a few more things about my husband. And remember–if you find yourselves in line at Starbucks one morning behind a really REALLY tall guy with glasses, say ‘I KNOW YOU!’ and see what happens. I’m sure it will be funny.

*We actually sat around the other night and talked about how now that Heather and Richie Sambora were divorcing, and my pretend boyfriend Ralph Fiennes had been dumped by his long-time girlfriend, we could all go on a big double date. And hoo boy did we think we were funny!

We really need to get out more.