not that you asked...

Something awesome and something INSANE

Last Tuesday, as we do every Tuesday, Dave and I went out to dinner. And then we went to look at couches, because, as you may possibly have heard, ours is worn and faded and smelly and there's the minor issue of the enormous, offensive hole in the upholstery which AS WE SPEAK is morphing into TWO enormous, offensive holes. It didn't take long before we found something we really, really liked (maybe because anything is better than what we currently have) and that would fit perfectly in our oddly shaped living room now, and in a basement rec room when we buy another house someday.

And then we had a really depressing discussion about money, and came to the equally depressing conclusion that we just need more of it, in general, but ESPECIALLY if we are going to purchase something as large and expensive as a couch. “OK,” I said. “Tomorrow, I'll start working on finding a job that brings in a little extra money.” I was feeling positive and enthusiastic, but also realistic. It's hard to find a job that fits into a stay-at-home mom schedule without also beginning a coordinating search for a babysitter.

On Wednesday morning, I found an ad on Craigslist that sounded interesting. I sent a casual-sounding email, inquiring about whether the position had been filled. The editor emailed me back, and she was interested in hiring me. We set up a phone chat for Thursday morning. That phone conversation took place and I was offered the job even though 36 hours had not passed since I'd declared I would begin looking for a way to contribute financially to the household. It's perfect, I'm excited about it, and I'll be able to do a large chunk of it after the kids to go bed without issue. (It's actually the exact same job I held right after I graduated from college, pretty much for the same company, even, but that's a story for another time.)

I had dropped my kids off at my mother-in-law's house before I took the interview phone call, and even though I am usually a FANTASTIC and EFFICIENT and EXPERIENCED manager of my own time, when the phone rang, I still somehow found myself standing in my room, saying, “HELLO!” to my potential employer in a very perky and professional voice, wearing nothing but my underwear. There has never been a time in my life that I have been more thankful that the Videophone is still predominantly used by the Jetsons.

And then it occurred to me after I hung up the phone that the last time I interviewed for a position (when I took that blogging gig at Parents.com, remember that old thing?), I kind of... well, I'd also taken that call in just my underwear. I remember this VIVIDLY, you guys. My underwear is apparently, and also EMBARRASSINGLY, my own personal version of the power suit. Actually, when I took that call for Parents.com, I was also wearing PANTYHOSE, because I'd been spending my eleven-week-old son's entire naptime trying on my Regular Person clothes because I was going back to work after having said eleven-week old and the pantyhose was a last-ditch effort at getting my pants on without my thighs exploding from them all Incredible Hulk-style. (I had to go out the next day and buy three pairs of pants in a jaw-droppingly large size.) (It sucked.)

Still, even I think it's kind of weird to have some sort of... bizarre penchant for interviewing in my underpants. Even weirder, perhaps, to GET THOSE JOBS. Perhaps MOST bizarre for finding ways to waste time before an anticipated and important conversation that involves taking my clothes OFF. And to think: I EVEN OWN A ROBE.

This is totally off the subject but I can't help but bring it up: Dave told me that a coworker of his announced his vasectomy the other afternoon. Which, understandably, prompted questions from some of the guys around the office. Turns out that not only was this guy able to get twilight anesthesia for the procedure (ask any woman who has birthed a baby in any way, shape, or form whether twilight anesthesia is really and truly necessary for a procedure that involves a singular PUNCTURE incision that is ONE CENTIMETER LONG) (I know, right? Don't make me measure my c-section scar! BECAUSE I TOTALLY WILL) but they actually numbed his arm before he got his IV.

Yes, you heard me right. THEY NUMBED HIS ARM BEFORE INSERTING HIS IV. People. There are no words for how I feel about this. You're telling me a dude can go and get a surgery (that is covered by insurance) and have his arm numbed before his IV is inserted and get twilight anesthesia so he's barely even conscious while a doctor makes a ONE CENTIMETER incision somewhere personal that might give him a bit of pain for three or four days? An incision that requires Tylenol and an ice pack? All because he's a GUY and he has GUY PARTS which we all know are soooooo much more sensitive and worthy than women's parts, right? Meanwhile we participate in CHILDBIRTH, where there are sometimes DAYS' worth of searing contractions and ripping and tearing in places where the sun don't shine and wait, I'm sorry, THEY NUMBED HIS ARM BEFORE THE IV WAS INSERTED?

It must be nice to be a man in a man's world, you know?

It must be animal week

A few weeks ago, my mom was inside loading the dishwasher when she heard my dad frantically calling to her from outside. She hustled out there expecting God knows what – my father dangling from a ladder or having thrown his back out moving things around in the garage, most likely – but instead she found him giddy with delight, feeding lightning bugs to his “pet” frog. Apparently he was excited because even after the frog swallowed (or, you know, whatever it is frogs do) you could see the bugs lighting up in the frog's throat. (Well, for a little while, at least.) (Because then they were... um, digested.)

The funniest part about this story is that my mom totally rolled her eyes while she was telling it to me, in an “isn't your father absolutely RIDICULOUS?” kind of way, when the truth is that my mother, in recent weeks, has made two wild animal pets of her own, a squirrel and a deer.

A SQUIRREL AND A DEER. It's like living in a Disney movie, you guys, except for the part where my parents kill my pet cats.

Ok, so we all know how I feel about the squirrel. I AM JEALOUS. I want a pet squirrel of my own, but my mom is actually succeeding by doing nice things like not letting the dog chase it smack into a tree every time it comes onto the porch. I don't do as well with that. Her squirrel actually waits on the porch railing right outside the kitchen window. He will wait there, PATIENTLY and ADORABLY (I can't hear you, people who say they're just rats with tails!) until someone opens the window and throws a handful of nuts to him. Nuts! Because that's the other nice thing my mom does for the squirrel: buys him a giant CANISTER of nuts. Eight pounds of nuts bought JUST FOR A RANDOM WILD SQUIRREL.

And the deer! The deer lingers in the backyard ALL DAY LONG lately. And every time she ambles out of the woods, my mom scrambles to cut up an apple or open another bag of baby carrots for her (“She's so skinny! And she has TWO BABIES!”) and now that crazy deer is so used to our family that she will stay in the yard and eat the crap we throw at her that we've scavenged from the crisper drawer even while my kids are thrashing around in the baby pool ten feet away. My mom and I went to Costco the other day to buy food for a big family cookout and in addition to the 12 chicken breasts and the vats of soy sauce and honey (and OMG, anyone looking for something to grill this weekend can stop looking RIGHT NOW – this is perfection) and the four-pack of hot dogs and the pallet of Diet Coke, my mom threw a bag of 25 apples into the cart, FOR THE DEER.

My parents used to just have a nice, squirrel-proof birdfeeder. We made fun of them when they bought it, because COME ON, does it really have to be that enormous? And squirrel-proof? Why isn't this an equal-opportunity backyard, again? But birdseed was nature's gateway drug for them, and they're moving on to bigger, better and possibly way more rabid things. 

Oh fine, I kind of LIKE the deer, which is a Very Big Deal for me, ever since I developed a bit of a phobia about hitting one with my car when I was in high school. Hambone likes the deer, too, but Hambone can only see the deer when she is in plain view. I have no idea what has happened to Hambone as of late, but I am wondering if possibly his olfactory situation has gone way downhill? I give to you exhibit A, a photo I took of my parents' backyard JUST LAST WEEK:

 

How does a DOG not smell a DEER that is lying THREE FEET AWAY? No wait, TWO deer. Just lying there, resting in the midday heat. And it's not like Hambone ran out there, crapped, and ran back. He WANDERED AIMLESSLY. Sniffed things! Nosed around! Peed on a bunch of stuff! So I have no earthly idea. Dog FAIL.

This reminds me that one time when I was really young (eight? nine?) my family went to Canaan Valley in West Virginia, and the deer there were so tame that they'd walk right up to you and eat gum right out of your hand. I think the thing you're thinking here is not what I thought years ago, which was GAH, deer spit on my hand is pretty disgusting but rather, WHY on earth would you feed a wild animal GUM? But we did! We fed them GUM, you guys. I don't know whose brilliant idea that was, but I know it was gum, I remember SPECIFICALLY that it was Wrigley's gum, from the green pack with the silver foil wrapper and now I think how hard could it have been to pick up a handful of grass or tree leaves or something? Were we THAT desperate to feed animals with our hands? It turns out we were, and we went with gum. CHEWING GUM.

I have another story about Canaan Valley but it involves these neighbors we used to have and how we only spoke to them once or twice but every time we did, they invited us to their cabin and although they never came right out and said it, there was mention of a hired masseuse and a handful of other couples who planned on attending and all the good times we would have with alcohol in the hot tub and while I am not much of a worldly person at all and probably in the top ten percent of Most Naïve People On Earth I still knew they were swingers and wanted provide us with the opportunity to be swingers, too.

But we... well. We do not swing. We do other shady and bizarre things, obviously (I feed gum to wild animals; one time Dave put the dog's electric fence collar around his neck and crawled over the line) (and it was HILARIOUS) (for everyone but him) (he said it hurt like a you know what) but we draw the line somewhere. 

 

(Not here, though. I see nothing wrong with comparing my daughter to a cat with a bladder-control issue.)

One in, one out

We've had an interesting week. Perhaps most importantly, a week ago today my nephew was born! My sister-in-law had a complicated, high-risk pregnancy, so the little dude had to stay in the NICU for observation for an entire week. His week-long stay ended up being completely uneventful so he's finally being released this afternoon, and I am taking my kids over to meet him when they wake up from their naps. I don't know what to expect as far as their reactions go; it makes me sad that Asher no longer remembers when Lucy was born, or when he held her for the first time, or how tiny she used to be (at one point that child was FOUR POUNDS AND 15 OUNCES), or how ANGRY and DEMONIC I was during my postpartum haze. (On the other hand, perhaps this memory lapse is a good thing.)

Then last Saturday night, my mom called. “Well, I have something to tell you,” she said. She didn't say “I have something BAD to tell you” but I ALREADY KNEW IT WAS BAD. No one calls and says “I have something to tell you” if it's going to be that they bought a new recliner or Aunt Ida's will was finally sorted out and you're getting six million dollars. Those are the kind of conversations you start with “GUESS WHAT?!” followed by a generous helping of whooping and merriment and questions about treating the entire family to a two-week respite in Cancun. No one was whooping on the other end of this conversation. No one mentioned Cancun, either. So I said, “What is it?” and my mom said, “We had to put your cat to sleep.”

This is not necessarily a sad thing. My cat was a month shy of 16 years old and living in my parents' fully-finished basement. My parents generously offered to take her when we had Asher almost four years ago because the cat and my husband did not get along (TOTALLY HIS FAULT) and once we had the nursery set up, there wasn't a bed in the house the cat could hide under to avoid him. Frankly that's no way to live anyway, is it? Hiding under beds in very tiny houses? So she lived with my parents, and got along famously with my dad, and once she got the old Lion Cut she could have won awards for Miss Congeniality. But she was getting old, and she couldn't groom herself, and she threw up about a bazillion times a day and she scarfed down food and water and peed so much that the litter box had to be cleaned every day or it would float down the hallway and then, in the last few days of her life, she went downhill really, really fast. One week she was doing ok, the next, she could hardly lift her head. So in this case, the sad part isn't that my cat is dead, because my cat had a long, relatively happy life (I say “relatively” because I subjected her to living with Dave for three-odd years, which she HATED). What is sadder and way more horrible than death is suffering, and thankfully, my parents did not let her suffer.

HOWEVER. I find it RATHER AMUSING that I have owned TWO cats in my young life and both were put down by my parents BEFORE THEY CALLED TO TELL ME IT WAS EVEN NECESSARY. I am wondering, perhaps, if maybe the appropriate way to inform someone that their pet is going to be DEAD FOREVER is to call and say, “Hey, you know, your cat is really sick and we're on our way to the vet with her and did you want to be there in case she is Called Home to the Big Scratching Post in the sky?” My parents do not do things like this. They kill, then they call. And it's not that I'm angry with them! Far from it! I'm more... amused. Oh, fine, I think it's HILARIOUS that this is their Cat Killing Pattern.

The first time they did it (REST IN PEACE, MISSY THE CAT), I don't even remember knowing that my cat was really really sick. I mean, I was in fifth grade, and I knew she'd been using my parents' bed as her own personal litter box, and I knew that my parents were getting really tired of finding their comforter soaked with cat piss (although my fifth-grade self was not totally sure why doing laundry was such a big fricking deal, since THE WASHING MACHINE DOES ALL THE WORK), but I don't know that I equated cats who go to the bathroom in inappropriate places as Seriously Ill Cats. I think I knew she wasn't 100 percent, but she was relatively young, and I was only ELEVEN or something so I went to a slumber party and came home the next morning to find... just her collar. “Do you want to keep it?” my mom asked me. DO I WANT TO KEEP IT? This is how you're going to tell me YOU HAVE HAD MY CAT MURDERED WITHOUT MY CONSENT? Do I want to keep it INDEED. And then I cried, because I didn't get the chance to say goodbye, which I'm sure my parents were thinking would be less emotionally traumatic. Does a fifth-grader need that kind of emotional pressure? Nah! Better to let her go to a slumber party where she will watch The Amityville Horror for the very first time.

(That movie was terrifying when I was eleven. TERRIFYING.)

Anyway, so my nephew was born and my cat is dead and yet somehow last week I also signed my kid up for preschool. That's a whole different post, though, this preschool business. I am simultaneously thrilled and nervous and bereft. We drive by the school often, and pull into the parking lot to ogle the outdoor playground, and Asher explains to Lucy why she can't play on the playground and he can (“only big kids can play, Lucy, and you're still a baby”), and most of the time, I am genuinely excited for the changes that are coming to our family this fall. Sometimes, I'm worried I will miss him. Which is really depressing if you used to be my cat, because I haven't thought about her this week much at all. AND SHE'S DEAD, not just leaving me for preschool for nine hours a week.

I threw in that part about Whole Foods so I wouldn't be tempted to do a whole entire ranty post about it

Today, for the very first time, I took both kids to the pool ALL BY MYSELF. (I will hold while you applaud.)

Asher is much more confident in the water after two weeks of swim class, and in turn, that makes me much more confident about letting him do whatever the heck he wants to do while we're all at the baby pool so I can keep all my eyeballs on Lucy, the child who makes swimming look suspiciously like drowning. I swear, I turned around for three seconds to pacify Asher's escalating pleas for me to WATCH THIS, MAMA (he was attempting to splash a bug out of the pool, FASCINATING) and when I turned back around, she had already climbed out of the pool and was in the midst of throwing herself off the side. DEATH WISH. I'd say she went fully under the water about 15 times during the course of the 90 minutes we were there. Eighty percent of the time she was able to turn herself over underwater and stand up without so much as a sputter but the other 20 percent... well, frankly, the other 20 percent of the times made me feel like we should have an oxygen tank at the ready, right by the side of the pool, WITH TWO MASKS because MY GOD the chest-crushing anxiety that knocks the wind right out of you when a face-down toddler catches the corner of your eye.

The ice cream truck pulled up right about the time I needed to get everybody out of the water so I could quit CONCENTRATING so darned much. What happened to the RELAXING part of pool-going? Where is the part of the pool where I read a book and everyone frolics safely and happily on their own? I suppose maybe that happens when your kid stops ingesting enough pool water to fill a reservoir? (We've got A WAYS TO GO.) Anyway, the kids had already HAD ice cream today (it's summer, SHUT UP) but they'd never had ice cream from an ice cream truck and ice cream trucks are Official Rites of Childhood Passage so I got some cash from my bag and then we gathered up all of our pool toys, put them in our grossly overpriced plastic Hello Kitty bucket and put it on our chair next to our towels and bags.

You guys, I wish you could have seen my child standing there; facing off with the Ice Cream Truck Menu. This is a child who eats ice cream. Plain ice cream. SIMPLE ice cream. (SALE ice cream, I also feel I should mention.) Not ice cream NOVELTIES. He wants vanilla, and he wants it in a cone or a cup. The end. And he doesn't even want very much! He had no earthly idea why he was staring at a bunch of pictures of things like Scooby-Doo and Spongebob and popsicle-shaped objects with, wait, what is that – not six layers of flavors, are you kidding me? Where is the narrow, plain, HFCS cherry popsicle of which we happen to be fond? WHERE IS THE PLAIN WHITE ICE CREAM? And why are all these other kids pushing and shoving and CLAMORING for such things? They don't even have VANILLA AT THIS STUPID ICE CREAM TRUCK, who eats ice cream shaped like a CARTOON DOG'S HEAD FOR PETE'S SAKE.

I ended up buying three Breyers Strawberry Fruit Bars. THIS WAS A COLOSSAL MISTAKE. First of all, these things were huge. They each weighed about three pounds and there was only about half an inch of popsicle stick to hold on to which meant that neither child could hold onto them without having to TOUCH the sticky fruit bar so I had to bite off the bottom half of each bar and spit it onto the grass (it was just too much to eat) (also CLASSY) and Lucy spent her time alternately licking hers and pointing to the pieces I had spit out and announcing “UH OH” and Asher almost fell over dead when it started melting and dripping onto his legs and by the time we were finished, the popsicles looked almost exactly as they had when we bought them, save for the chunks I bit off the bottom. Everyone's legs were covered in sticky syrup and local bees were starting to get kind of interested in our situation and so we threw those suckers away and went back inside. I am going to pretend I don't hear the ice cream truck the next time it pulls up, I PROMISE YOU THAT. (Felt kind of bad for the kid whose grandma bought her a Scooby-Doo ice cream, as it STAINED HER FACE BROWN.)

Anyway, when we got back to our chair (and this situation is the whole reason I planned on writing this post in the first place), I saw that our bucket of toys had been upended in the pool. Everything was floating this way and that and one of our Prized Possessions (a plastic squirting Thomas train that I realize I likely shouldn't have brought in the first place) was altogether MISSING.

Ok, so beyond my stupidity in bringing a favorite toy to a pool, WHAT THE HECK. If your kid is old enough to be tooling around the pool by themselves, and you aren't worried about them falling in and drowning and therefore let them wander at will, SURELY they are also old enough to know not to touch other people's property? And if you were there WITH your kids, tell me why you didn't see them taking other people's stuff and ABSCONDING WITH IT? I could totally understand if we had left our stuff out on the side of the pool and kids saw it and wanted to play with it. No big deal – we try to share our toys when we're there, and we kind of expect the same from others. If my kids see something that they want to play with that isn't theirs, I make sure that we ask permission. It's polite, it's respectful. I expect the same, most of the time. But in this case, in order to prevent the loss of some of our things, I picked them up and put them somewhere I considered “safe.” So someone just wandered over, thought our stuff looked fun, and took it. I was ticked; mostly because I thought this was irresponsible on some parent's part: either your kid has no idea about appropriate boundaries, or YOU don't. And hey, guess what? MY STUFF ISN'T YOUR STUFF. Especially if I'm not around to reiterate that.

I thought my heart would break when I had to tell Asher that I didn't know where his Thomas was and that we would just have to come back the next day and see if anyone turned it in. He was sad, after all, I'd just bought it a week or so before and he loves playing with it in the bathtub. (I know, IDIOT for bringing it out of the house in the first place.) I finally ended up telling him that I'd get him another. We made it out to the parking lot and LO AND BEHOLD, there was Thomas, sitting on the curb where the ice cream truck had been. Which was worse, because I felt like that meant some little kid had carried it out there with him, and instead of his mom NOTICING and demanding that he take it back to where he found it, he just abandoned it on the curb in exchange for a Scooby-Doo novelty ice cream, leaving another child POTENTIALLY BROKENHEARTED. I am BEYOND disappointed, Pool Parents of My Town.

Also, while I'm at it: I am asking these same parents (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) to drop their snooty Whole Foods Charade because OMG I saw that blue frozen stuff you bought off a truck and let your kid eat for a snack and it had a GUMBALL at the bottom of it. LESS THAN ORGANIC, me thinks.

I LOVE YOU AMERICA