deus ex mama
one day, probably not too long from now, BC will start to wonder why she can’t look as perfect as models on magazine covers. it’s kind of an inevitable modern rite of passage: comparing yourself to these pictures and finding yourself woefully inadequate. but as a webgeek, i know the truth about photoshop.
i will show her:
and
BC remarked: “mama, do you know the house is all smoky? have you been cooking again? did the smoke alarm go off and i missed it?”
i’m a great baker. i’m a terrible cook. i’m so sorry, farberware stockpot. you deserved better. RIP, old friend.
[note to my brother larry: hey, remember when you got me this for my wedding present? (oh. i didn’t think so. see, mom bought it and slapped your name on the card. really.) well, it’s been 17 years. i need another one. thank you.]
BC’s friend told her last night at a slumber party that her mother was the tooth fairy. so now, BC has shared with me that she knows i am the tooth fairy.
i knew it wouldn’t last forever, but i’m so bummed.
—postscript—
at about 8:30pm, BC came out and said she couldn’t sleep. she looked over to find BS filling the easter baskets. i walked her back to her room.
“mama,” BC said, “daddy lied to me. he told me he wasn’t the easter bunny.”
i thought for a second. “no, honey,” i said. “daddy didn’t lie. daddy is helping out this year because my knee is messed up. he isn’t usually the easter bunny.
i am.”
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms… — Monty Python skit
a long winded way to note how this day simply didn’t go off without a single hitch. i mean, it just simply wasn’t possible to write this day as a scene from a movie. every critic would point and note how contrived it all would sound.
it started with a promise to a little boy. see, tuesdays are the days when jools and i hang out. when i worked, i always had a schedule where i could take tuesdays off and hang with BC, so it stood to reason that hellboy and i should have some quality time together, too. and we do. he loves gardening and playing and basically anything that doesn’t involve getting his hair washed. realizing that i will be unable to trot around for a few weeks after surgery, i figured the time was now to visit the zoo. nevermind the fact that my leg is generally held together these days with a massive leg brace and some chewing gum; a promise is a promise and we were going to the zoo, come hell or massive diplomatic traffic snarl.
so we dropped off a very bitter BC (who, ear still hurting, went to school to deliver her science fair project, a teddybear sunflower seed that is growing like crazy and a display board that includes a really lovely painting of said sunflower) and joined the legions fighting their way onto the roosevelt bridge. only, too bad for me (as junie b. jones would say), as i forgot that the independence avenue exit closes off the wonderful, magical rock creek parkway entrance on weekday mornings. so jools and i took a wild ride around the tidal basin, making our way up toward the south side of the washington monument, then tearing our way up 14th street, sneering in the general direction of the white house, and making an insane left above farragut square to get to 15th — only to realize that i need to be over a lot more to get to connecticut ave. i found my beloved m street, travelled a few blocks, and did what any self-respecting jerseygirl driver would do: i made a right onto connecticut from m. only, apparently, that’s verboten. nowhere did i see a sign that said no right turn; but apparently, i scared the bejeezus out of the person making a right off this tiny little road that fell into m street.
“wow, mommy,” peeped little jools. “are we going in the right direction yet? why is that man beeping at us?”
i assured little ‘do we were on our way; and we were. we drove right up to the zoo, parked in the A section, and made our way out of the parking lot. jools started to bark loudly, “i stamp on cigarettes. i stamp on them; they’re bad!”
hoping i’ve discovered a teachable moment, i start to say, ” yes, jools, cigarettes are bad. you smoke them and then you die! don’t ever start smoking cigarettes; they will kill you.” and then i look over to see why this all started; there is a woman standing by the entrance, smoking away and shooting eye-daggers at me and my child. oops. after taking a shaky breath, i decide that the teachable lesson is more important than being polite to a stranger who will likely die soon due to her drug habit, and off we go.
we visited the pandas, who were quite frisky today. (the big news today was that zoofolks are planning to artificially inseminate Mei Xiang with semen from Gao Gao, San Diego Zoo’s adult male panda. i decided to postpone that teachable lesson for now.) jools fell while walking near the salamander non-exhibit near the pandas. i walked him through the panda indoor exhibit and asked one of the people standing in the panda cam booth where the nearest first aid place was. they kindly got him ice, a band aid, and let him sit in the panda cam booth while he convalesced. (lucky dude. i’ve never gotten in there before.)
but, to borrow from monty python again, it was only a flesh wound, so off we went soon thereafter. of course, jools wanted to go to the furthest end of the zoo to play at the pizza play area. not so bad walking downhill; but the trip uphill was not exactly a joy. a woman sitting on a bench with her family stopped me as i slowly made my way. she asked me why i was doing this, seeing that i wasn’t exactly in fighting form. i explained that a promise is a promise. she told me i should take a picture of jools and me and show it to him when he’s 21 so that he remembers that his mom keeps her word. i think he’ll know that by then, but it made me laugh all the same.
and watching jools watch the prairie dogs was priceless. he loved them so much that we visited them twice. take that, you poxy pandas!
we went home, ate lunch, relaxed a little, and then decided that we had some seeds to plant in the garden. gardening with a torn meniscus and pcl isn’t actually a cakewalk, but it was doable (when my helper wasn’t squirting me with the water in a spray bottle, that is.) i maniacally checked the door each time i was sent in to fill up said spray bottle, making sure that the door stayed unlocked. jools has a habit of playing with doors and locks, you see. so of course, the one time i didn’t check — we ended up locked out. fortunately, a neighbor let us hang out in her house for awhile, use her phone, and play with her dog; and a dear friend picked up BC at school and brought her home. BS, bless his pointed little head, came home from work a little early to rescue us. so it all ended well, i suppose.
of course, now BC wants to visit the zoo next week.
i just put BC to bed with what seems to be an ear infection. she’s in a bit of pain, and i have the feeling i’ll be up a few times tonight.
so, of course, i have to focus on something mildly amusing.we were driving to softball practice earlier today (before the ear situation arose), and david bowie’s rebel rebel came on the radio. the kids love this song — who wouldn’t — and were singing the chorus. of course, i don’t know which version raised my eyebrows more: BC singing: “hot dog, i love you so” or jools singing: “hot tramp, i love you so.”
my daughter is well on her way to bowdlerizing modern music. i imagine there is a job waiting for her at the kidz bop company. meanwhile, my son is singing something that really is a wildly inappropriate utterance for a 3.5 year old. however, it reminds me of when i was his age and i listened to the hair soundtrack nonstop on my little record player in the basement. i especially loved singing what i thought were the words to one song in particular [if you’re easily offended by sexual terms, don’t click the link]. (and no, at 5, i had no idea what the title meant, either. i just liked the music.) i walked around the house singing this song for years, and no one said boo to me. when i was old enough and i could look up the words, i was horrified to learn what they meant and i never sang the song again.
my mother is one of those people who believes that when a kid is old enough and figures things out, the kid’ll act appropriately. if you make a big stink out of things, though, then the kid will fixate on the issue and you’ll never hear the end of it. i guess i’m in the same camp, especially since you won’t catch me singing that song ever again.
i’m beginning to think that there’s something wrong with me as a parent. other parents talk with their kids about why the sky is blue; i talk about global warming. some parents talk about the instruments in the orchestra; i talk about why i prefer a live drummer to a synth track.
so it makes sense that this morning’s conversation followed suit. BC and i were driving to school this morning when gimme shelter came on the radio. this is probably among my favorite stones’ songs, if not the favorite. BC started to rock out, which was really cute and cool at the same time. i parked the car, and we got out of the car, BC singing “war, children — it’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away.” and the conversation went from there…
BC: mama, what do they mean by that?
me: well, they mean it’s really easy to get into a war. but they also sing later that “love is just a kiss away,” which means that they think it’s just as easy to love as it is to fight, and why not pick love instead of fighting?
BC: what a cool song.
me: yeah, but it’s a depressing movie.
BC: i don’t want to watch it.
me: i won’t let you.
BC: why?
me: because, well… you see, in 1969, there was the concert called woodstock where they had so many people coming, they just threw up their hands and let anyone who wanted to come come in. and it was overall a pretty happy and peaceful event.
so then, later that year, they decided to throw another show at a place called altamont. unfortunately, they decided that this group of motorcycle riders called hells angels should keep everyone in line at the show. unfortunately, between people at the show being on drugs and drinking too much — which you know is a bad thing — and the hell angels people being pretty angry to begin with, well, it became a scary place and a man was killed there. they made a film about it, and it’s called gimme shelter. and you aren’t old enough to watch it yet.
i noticed about this time that another mom was walking with us in rapt attention. later, i walked up to her. “wow,” she said, “you really have different conversations with your kids.”
somewhere in heaven, dr. spock is probably rolling his eyes at me.
jools is home with me today. we spent nearly two hours outside ripping out ivy, digging, riding bikes, and, in my case, getting a wicked headache which will require plenty of antihistimine power as well as tylenol. we had to go in because jools was having such a great time, he forgot about the little issue of needing a bathroom. oops.
but before that happened, i witnessed something wonderful. jools, you see, figured out how to clamber up the ladder on the playhouse, push up the entry hatch, and climb into the treehouse. BC has held this treehouse over his head now for a few years, as in “you can’t come up here, n’yah n’yah, only girls allowed!” little hellboy was so proud of himself, he let himself out of the treehouse, slid down the slide, and then clambered up again. three times. just to prove to himself that he could do it.
BC is going to be in for a big surprise…
my dear friend jax, who i don’t see as often as i’d like, cooked an amazing dinner in honor of my birthday. (for those of you new here, jax is a friend who works at the same place as BS and who was assigned to be our “daycare buddy” when her DD, a few months younger than BC, started at daycare. over the years, we’ve realized that we are basically the same person; she is the long island italian version, and i am the new jersey jewish version.) what’s especially amazing is that she did this after being on travel for work last week out on the west coast and had just returned on friday. while she knew that chocolate is the flavor i favor in cake, she psychically knew i especially love a chocolate cake with gushy pudding in the middle.
i cannot say thank you enough about that.
i must say, though, that the show that came just before dinner, though, was priceless. earlier, BS and jax’s DH took the kids for a walk to the nearby river, where they collected shells and even found a horseshoe crab shell. you know, it was almost the stuff of norman rockwell. (jax and i sat and drank wine. oh yeah, she cooked. i did nothing.) our four kids were playing together in the house — BC and anya (8, 7.5), jools (3.5) and katie (just turned three — happy birthday fellow march b-day girl!), and we thought they were happily doing something harmless. i’m not quite sure when we realized it, but someone went downstairs to check on the quiet kids. in short, they were covered in paint. jools and katie both had purple paint in their hair (jools had a purple mohawk); anya and BC were also covered. although none of us were particularly happy about the situation, it was incredibly difficult not to laugh. we swooped up the kids, washed everyone off, and jax threw their clothes in the laundry. the paint won’t come off the clothes, and we didn’t take pictures (!), but who cares. at least no one ate the paint.
so a big shout out to my lungisland friend who busted her butt last night and who i suspect is busting it even more, now that there’s a ton of paint on her basement floor. i wish i could help you clean up.
smiling jools said to jax as we were leaving: “next time, you can come over and destroy OUR house!”
that’s assuming our house isn’t already close to being condemned, dude 😉
i remember when i was a smug singleton… even a smug, married, non-parent, i’d add. i would look at people who had children in upscale restaurants and wonder why these noisy little screamers were ruining my meal. i vowed that when i had children, i would not take them to restaurants until they were good and ready to go. and i sure as hell wasn’t going to ruin anyone’s upscale dinner unless i knew for certain that my kids would behave. i was as good as my word, and i still get bent when i see parents bringing kids to really nice restaurants who are not ready to behave in said places. i figure, shoot, i did my time for society and ate at lots of places with kiddy menus; why can’t they make the short-term sacrifice, too?
fast forward to today.
we had a yummy dinner at nam viet, one of the last surviving vietnamese restaurants in the area formerly known as little hanoi tonight. as we walked in (my kids actually behaving perfectly for once), i saw a late 20-early 30-something woman and man grimace as we were seated next to their table. i then overheard the woman say to the waiter, “you probably should move us, as i don’t think they are going to move.” needless to say, i didn’t like what i heard. it isn’t like my kids came in screaming or shouting, running amok and sticking chopsticks up their snoots. they were behaving better than a lot of adults i know. so of course, i did what any jersey-girl mother would do. i hissed.
i looked right at the lady, and i said, “i hope your uterus dries up.”
around these parts, i am known as a class act.
krispy kreme has just introduced a new, whole-wheat donut. hold onto your pants, homer: these 180 calorie pups have 4 or 5 grams of trans fats. i’m just waiting for BC, the world’s second most fervent donut lover (second only to her dad, BS) to petition me for a crate of these, pleading that they’re whole wheat so they’re GOOD FOR YOU, MAMA.
yeah. i hear leeches do wonders, too.