BS (beloved spouse) – Page 7

Category: BS (beloved spouse)

it don't come easy

Posted on June 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, i share the tale of the Easy Bake Oven. it will be a tale much like another famous tale, though it involves no curtains. mercifully.

it’s starts with a little girl. let’s call her BC, shall we, as we always do around here. when BC was about three years old, she went to a chanukah party at her uncle BTD’s house. there were many children there, as her uncle has five kids, and her uncle’s wife’s family has a lot of children and cousins. at this party, everyone had presents to exchange; everyone, except the uncle, who had presents for all of the other children but no present for his beloved (and at the time only) niece, BC. probably a little oversight on the busy present shopper’s part.

in any event, bless BTD’s heart: this is conjecture, of course, but it appeared that after BC’s beloved uncle scrambled upstairs, and then downstairs, he presented BC with a gift he had plucked from an upstairs closet from thin air: a brand-new Easy Bake Oven. BC loved this oven; only, too bad for her. EBOs are for children age eight and up. no matter how mature madame was at this age, she was not ready for an EBO. carefully, her grandmother whisked the present away to toys r us, where she exchanged it for something a little safer for a spunky three year old.

fast forward to our hero, the now-eight-year-old BC. that same grandmother, remembering how much her granddaughter wanted that EBO, got it for her for chanukah. her other uncle, the lovable, right-wing nutball larry, supplied a whole bunch of EBO mixes to keep her own personal glycemic index at about 1000. happy days are here again, right?

not quite.

for our hero, who had not yet fully developed her ability to read fine print, took the giant long cattle prod pushing tool and shoved it into the oven, lodging it permanently inside the oven, even before she had any chance at baking anything. oh woe, she cried. her mom, desperate to dislodge the long plastic thingy, called up hasbro for guidance. unfortunately for all, hasbro and our friends at the cpsc had just announced a recall of the EBO. apparently, other things were getting entrapped in the ovens. (things called fingers.) dutifully, BC’s mom and dad packed it up and returned it, as they had been instructed. the mixes lingered, but the oven was gone with the wind postal service.

months went by, months when hasbro said they might rebuild it; or then again, maybe not. eventually, they issued a $25 gift certificate for any item on hasbro.com. considering the shipping, it wasn’t the best offer in the world. (BC’s mom promptly lost the offer, so in truth, she’s just rationalizing because she felt so guilty.) in time, BC’s evil mom, fearing that the mixes were going to be nastier than nasty, chucked them as well.

fast forward once again to this very date, a date which shall be remembered for so many things. for one thing, BC’s brother jools celebrated a whole week of dry nights; he was to be gifted, as promised, with a shark slip and slide. (after weeks of obsessing about this item, he decided to choose two other items instead as his reward.) for another, BC achieved straight As on her report card. and, remembering that a child had been denied her EBO for so many years, BC’s parents caved bought her her very own EBO.

hurray!

but woe to BC: her mixes are gone. BC’s mother, being cheap industrious, located DIY EBO recipes on the internet, as she knew the three included mixes would last about two minutes. and after BC’s dad returned from the store with a lightbulb (the secret to those crispy crusts delicate cakes heated plastic oven walls), we set forth on our baking adventure.

#1: yellow cake (one packet) with chocolate frosting (one packet), baked especially for the man who bought the lightbulb.

#2 and #3: chocolate peanut butter fudge, one serving shared by wreke and jools, this serving was affectionately dubbed gloop for it’s consistency. imagine the fine taste of confectioners sugar with a slight brownish tinge. the second attempt, eaten by BC after a stint in the fridge, fared a little better.

BC had a great time, though her mother, wreke, was left with the realization that the same woman who would not buy wreke an EBO was willing to do so for her grandchild. no, instead, wreke realized that her own mother, aka the grandmother, was willing instead to let wreke use the real oven instead.

in retrospect, it was probably safer.

home

Posted on June 11, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BS sent me this article from the Inky regarding perhaps the most pressing issue of our times: where does north jersey end, and where does south jersey begin? and, more importantly, is there a culture to central jersey? a research-minded person has just completed a documentary on this very topic, and i, for one, hope it makes its way to the DC metro area, where there are boatloads of NJ refugees transplants.

now, most of you folks who have either never been to the garden state or whose experience of my beloved home state consists of a ride on the turnpike (helpful hint: hold your nose as you pass through elizabeth) probably have no earthly idea that we new jerseyans think we have different culchahs. we do, though to be fair, a lot of our customs depend on our proximity to either new york or philadelphia.

for me, for half my life, this was home. and in the old days, it was simple to me: you were either in the 201 area code, or you were in the 609 area code. growing up in toms river, i lived literally on the border of 609 and 201, though i was proud to be in 201 merely because i was sick of the yeehaws in south jersey who perpetually wanted to secede. (we were willing to let them, believe me.) i always figured monmouth and ocean counties were sort of a mix of north and south, as we always had an influx of people from both philly and new york. to me, monmouth and ocean were and ARE central jersey, and everything north of monmouth is north jersey; and everything west of both is south.

now, of course, there are 50,000 area codes covering the state, so my definition pretty much goes kerflooey. that, combined with the fact that monmouth and ocean seem to be completely infiltrated by new yorkers looking for better home prices (well, they were better until the influx) leads me to wonder whether my two home counties are still central anymore. i mean, route 9 — you know, bruce’s fabled highway, which passes both by my old house as well as by BS’s hometown in scenic freehold boro — is a nightmare now, with traffic that rivals long island. i’ve been gone for nearly 20 years, and the place is completely different.

but i still return. my family is still there. i can’t get decent pizza outside of the new york metro area. i can’t really experience the sleazy joy of the boardwalk anywhere else quite the way it is there, the rancid odor of the sausages and zeppoles, the taffy which can cost you $1000 in dental work if you’re not careful. the salty smell of the shore, the green of the pine barrens, the swirl of hungry seagulls swooping and diving inland before a storm, the delicious, secret thrill of hanging out amongst people who probably live a lot more dangerously than you do.

i just can’t really feel that anywhere outside of my old stompin’ grounds. i guess i don’t really care whether it’s north, south or central jersey, in the end. it’s just an overpopulated, underappreciated place.

but one thing’s still for sure: people in new jersey never, ever, call it joisey.

guilty pleasure monday: what i am (edie brickell & the new bohemians)

Posted on June 9, 2008 by wrekehavoc

there goes rhymin’ mrs. paul simon:

edie brickell is an inspiration to any of us chicks who wish we could just jump up on stage and start singing with a local band. which is what she did one night when the new bohemians were playing. the rest is one-hit wonder history.

what i am is one of those quizzically-lyric’d tunes that just makes you want to bop around, whether you are in a bar or whether you’re dusting your furniture. i remember when it came out. i was in graduate school, living in one of the many ancient 1900s rowhouses that new brunswick is famous for. yes, just me and three others: my buddy Kip (who is still friends with me, years later, in spite of the hyperventilation incident during finals); another woman who had a boyfriend who liked to hunt and cook venison in our ancient kitchen; and a woman who apparently had psychological issues. serious ones. (we just won’t go there today.)

oh, and did i mention that the giant oil drum which held the key to the power in our home was actually leaking copious amounts of oil into the ground and into our home? i suspect we all ended up with our fair share of brain damage from the fumes.

ah, the handy street house from hell:

this is probably not OUR handy street house from hell, but it sure looks like it; and based on the oil situation, it could have been what happened to us.

but back before we ended up on the porch because of the nasty-ass venison fumes; and back before i moved out because i could no longer live on a Superfund site, we had us some happy times. like defrosting the ancient tundra that had formed in the ancient freezer. and studying like crazy. and my most favorite memory: when my boyfriend, now known as BS around these parts, came to visit me one day. somehow, Kip and I were cooking something — G-d knows what, considering that the kitchen was semi-functional — and BS showed up. edie brickell came on the radio. next thing i know it, BS and i are dancing around the kitchen, along with Kip. it was so spontaneous, and probably hilarious considering the (lack of) size of the kitchen.

but there we were, silly as ever. is there anything too deep about this memory? probably not.

I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know, if you know what I mean.

twisting by the pool

Posted on June 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

we belong to our community pool. it’s hard to believe, in fact, how much it costs to be a member of said pool, and yet, we do it. there are not many options where we live; we can’t actually put one into our backyard (besides the overwhelming expense, our back yard is a bit of a luge run), and it’s close to the house. yes, we are lemmings.

anyway, in years past, we have not known anyone at our pool, save for another family from our synagogue. i have actually tried making friends, but apparently, there is a huge sign on my forehead that says: avoid! avoid! she has a strange sense of humor, and her hair is bad! but this year, as BC goes to school with a lot of the kids from our neighborhood, i figure we will meet plenty of the people who swim.

today, we went to the pool. luckily, our new neighbors were there. wow. who knew that the pool experience is so much more fun when people actually talk to you! BC played with our neighbor’s two kids, while jools hung mostly with BS and i. and lo, and behold: the dude, whose feet touch the 3 foot bottom on tiptoe, actually hit some milestones, all in one day.

swim without waterwings: check.

swim with head underwater from mom to dad: check.

jump in pool and recover himself enough to swim to appointed adult: check.

so very proud i am. truly.

it would have been a completely perfect day had the boys BC knew from school not come around and started calling jools stupid! these are third grade boys going off on a five year old. i wasn’t there — BS witnessed it. and while BC was outraged for her brother (yes, the same brother she thinks has psychological problems and, in her professional opinion, needs speech therapy), BS told her to ignore the boys. why should she care what they think?

clearly, i need to let BS know that this is not the way bombastic me would have handled this. see, i take no prisoners and wear my mom badge proudly. and i have no problem with taking a boy by the hand and marching him to his mother, asking her whether she approves of her son taking on another child nearly 5 years younger than him, unprovoked, and calling him denegrating names.

and you wonder why other people avoid me at the pool.

piece o' my heart

Posted on June 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

welcome to crazy-busy central, where, at the rate we’re all going, someone’s going to shoot out an eye. jools is graduating from preschool next week; BC is hugging trees at school (as uncle larry put it, though they’re actually simply identifying them. but you know uncle larry, AKA the man who is to the right of attila the hun, will never shy away from an opportunity to put a political slant on a situation, joker that he always is…); and i’ve had a date this morning with a cardiologist.

see, i just don’t have enough specialists in my life at the moment, so i thought i’d go for the gold. i’ve been having pains in my heart and weakness that radiates down my left arm and into the left side of my neck and head. i feel like a crazy person, but BS strongly suggested that i’m not and that i need to take care of myself (as did my parents), so i broke down and ended up at a cardiologist, someone who seems quite approachable. my blood pressure is fine, and so was my EKG, but next week, i have to have a treadmill stress test and an echocardiogram. i figured next week would be good in case they need a vein, as tomorrow is another date with my IVIG!

(i wonder if keith richards experiences this many medical interventions?)

i have to laugh at the concept of a treadmill being my stress inducer. ha! i seek out the elliptical stepper to relieve my stress. here’s my idea of a real stress test:

1) up intermittently all night with one child who is barfing.

2) wake (ha! ha!) in the morning knowing that something is due. a report? paperwork? oh. now i remember. a presentation in front of bigwigs. a presentation i dutifully and diligently completed but was going to put finishing touches on last night after the kids went to bed; only, too bad for me. a kid got sick.

3) the realization that your spouse and you will now play the game whose job is more important today!? let the shouting begin!

4) “winning” that competition, off to work you go, exhausted, with other child in tow. drop other child off at school. park car; take a bus and two metros to work.

5) give important presentation, realizing that important piece you didn’t get to was actually more than just windowdressing. oops.

6) call from other child’s school. child is barfing. please come pick up child. spouse cannot pick up child, as other child is currently reenacting the magic of krakatoa in full bloom.

7) take two metros and a bus to get to car. get to school. get to child. child blows chunks on your Jones New York suit. (hold in those tears. it’s not your turn.)

8) after your dry clean only apparel is destroyed when child helpfully wipes a wet paper towel over the spew, get kid into car. do happy dance when you locate a plastic target bag in the back. place target bag in front of child.

9) get home to find that spouse, too, is kissing the porcelain god. spouse sees you, mutters something of the whereabouts of barfy child #1, then runs upstairs to the bedroom and closes door. buh-bye. won’t be seeing him again until saturday.

10) there you are: sleepy, queasy, in heels and a formerly good suit, with two kids looking up at you for help. it’s 3:00 p.m. go.

now you can attach electrodes to me and see how well my heart fares. not that this has ever happened to me… well, not necessarily in this order. i suspect there are other, better scenarios out there. i can even recall the night when i had a child and a husband barfing and a child not breathing. i held a bucket under one and a nebulizer on the other. oh, if only i had the wherewithall to take pictures of this joyful wee-hours-of-the-morning family experience. but in the end, i had to leave the barfers to themselves and drive the non-breather to the hospital at 4 a.m. — behind a weaving, probably drunk driver. really. good. times.

in short: i don’t need no stinkin’ treadmill.

(doctors? you can thank me later for this test design.)

remedy

Posted on May 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

our house is stress central.

one child had to get two immunizations yesterday. a child who has a limited pain threshold. i won’t mention names, but it’s a girl child. a girl child who was star of the week one minute but then not necessarily star of the pediatrician’s office the next. her hand started hurting her, along with the shot sites. tylenol was not helping. my brother-the-doctor indicated that perhaps a nerve was hit, but not a biggie. still, not a pretty afternoon.

one spouse had to work. he had to work a lot. he had to work a lot again. he called at 4:45 pm to share that we needed to go downtown to pick up one other child at school. school ends at 6 p.m. this is the height of DC rush hour, coming AND going. am i happy yet?

no. not hardly.

downtown we drove in a rush, the unhappy and now-in-pain immunized person and i. we made it in record time. my parking pass was confiscated, as i need a new 2008 one. it is now may. but nice security people let me park anyway, as the worst security threat we pose is one girl reenacting the exorcist. (i’ll let you wonder which one. the answer is not as simple as it might seem.)

we make it to one hellboy’s school. a hellboy who apparently as of late has made a career of knocking around some of the toddlers in the morning. (just cause.) someone is acting out. someone who might be a pissed-off palooka. but knocking babies around like inflatable punching bags is unacceptable behavior around here.

fortunately, today was not a punching-other-children sort of day. it was merely a spending-time-holding-hands-with-my-main-girlfriend sort of day. yes. the boy is in love. and he’s in love with a girl named condoleezza.

not this one (though i suspect she may be named for her. but i don’t know for certain.) ah. only in DC.

but he listened. and he behaved.

am i happy yet?

not quite. but a little better.

we three rush home, rushing in a rush hour way. which means not exactly speeding down constitution avenue. it doesn’t help that the woman driving in front of me is driving like hunter s. thompson is her co-pilot. wouldn’t it be funny if we got home and daddy’s car was in the driveway? BC joked.

don’t push me, little girl.

of course, BS wasn’t home when we got home. and i had not even cooked dinner. when it’s after 6 and dinner isn’t even started, and people are climbing the walls in search of something edible, it is time to visit mr. freezer to see what magic he holds. lucky for me, there was a wegmans veggie lasagna languishing, ever since i bought it and BS said: ew. no one is going to eat THAT. tough times call for tough measures. (and i say that in this house, if you’re not home, you don’t get to pick dinner.) that sucker was going in the microwave.

miraculously, the kids loved it. we’re talking BC, aka miss picky-picky of the western world, asked for seconds. the only criticism i got about it was that there were carrots in it, according to jools. (i don’t have the heart to tell them that there was also spinach and mushrooms. jools loves them, but BC hates both of those.)

am i happy yet? getting closer.

i get kids bathed; i read some chapters of some inscrutable Bionicle book we found at the elementary school fair last weekend. i medicate a certain older child with the zillion different things she requires thanks to her magical lungs… and immunizations. in case i have forgotten, she is IN PAIN. she CAN’T MOVE HER ARMS.

do all moms have days like this?

i start hellboy into bed. it’s 8:00. BS comes home.

DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well, so much for that mission accomplished. at this point, BS is speaking in monosyllabic grunts. he has had a long day. he has had a long, not-so-good day. he has had a long, not-so-good, and apparently hungry day. did you eat yet? i believe he grunted in the negative. enjoy the lasagna!

i get the boy into bed. i get the girl into bed. she’s in pain, so i get her something from the freezer to help at least one of her arms. in vain, of course.

BS says goodnight to the girl. BS says goodnight to the boy. after a few minutes of decomposing, as we call it in this house, BS announces he’s going to bed.

fabulous.

meanwhile, there’s one little girl who can’t sleep. in the morning, she’ll let me know that she was UP. ALL. NIGHT. but i waited, and i waited until she fell asleep before i went up to bed. so i know she was at least asleep for 30 seconds of the night.

on the bright side, little man went to sleep like a champ.

lately, i am so exhausted. i feel completely wrung out. tomorrow, i go for some more IVIG, and hopefully that will help me keep from getting sick. see, when i get wrung out, i get sick. no one around here gets that. moms are supposed to just keep going and going and going. but i have to just stop sometimes. if i don’t stop some times, i will stop. for good.

fortunately, this morning, i awoke and thought about a little boy in this house who likes to sing a certain song. how BS found out about this group, i don’t know. but jools is completely hooked on the hook of this song, called Nth Degree.

i found it on youtube. and everyone gathered around. even BS.

and suddenly, there was the remedy. it was just a few minutes, but we actually were all smiling. we were all happy.

even me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vhMhm9euT8&hl=en

and that dang bird is still trying to get into our house.

about last night

Posted on April 30, 2008 by wrekehavoc

about last night: i wrote an absolutely out-and-out scathing post, a post about how angry i am. it was so screamingly angry that i deleted it.

days upon days upon days of little sleep are adding up to one major wiped-out woman on the verge of something. i couldn’t even sleep last night, even though the kids were in bed. i am just so wound up. so many people in this house are not sleeping for one reason or another. and when you’re the mom, you end up being the catcher of all this sleep deprivation, by default. even the best dads might sleep through things, but moms never do, unless they have been drugged or killed.

so there i was on the computer, and i was bombarded with messages about mother’s day: buy mom flowers. send mom a card. get mom jewelry. take mom out for a nice meal. now, i have no quarrel with getting my mother or my mother in law some token of appreciation for the day, and i certainly appreciate the cards and sometimes unidentifiable objets d’arte that my children make for me.

but there are times like today, yesterday, the day before, all last week… times when i just feel like everyone is sucking the lifeblood out of me. i work for my family. i work for the house. i work for the fucking WORLD. 24/7, whether it’s doing the dishes, or dealing with illness, or handling my exploding home, or helping my kids navigate through some crisis or another. i don’t get paid for it. i don’t get thanked for it. i sometimes don’t even think people realize what i do. but it’s all down to me. i am in charge of directing my family’s life.

and no one works for me.

in short, i don’t want mother’s day. i don’t need jewelry. i don’t need to go to the International Fucking House Of Putrid Food. and i don’t want any flowers.

what i want is mother’s life.

i don’t want to be appreciated on one day. i want to be appreciated every single day. i want people to notice that i never get a day off, much less a weekend. and i’m glad to do it, even though it wasn’t necessarily my first career choice. i am grateful i get to do it, too, all right? but i wonder sometimes whether it was the right choice for me.

the other day, we were talking about clothing, and BC said oh mama, you don’t need to ever wear suits. you are just not the suit kind. this child has no recollection of a time when i worked outside the home and wore something beyond sweats or jeans. this child thinks i live and breathe for her. and, through the choices i have made, helped along by my health predicament, i guess i do. or have done.and of course, i will continue to do so.

but i often wonder what sort of example i am setting for her. yes, dear: study hard, get a masters degree, and you, too, can become the floor upon which your family walks.

and of course, if i complain, i am ungrateful. ungrateful that there is a roof over my head, food on my table, and IVIG in my veins. what a shallow bitch, one might say. do you know that Susie or Sally have it SO. MUCH. WORSE. THAN. YOU. (yes. i know. thanks.)

but is self-preservation an unworthy goal?

i have just come from BC’s school. their big 5k training run is this morning; and while BS is running with BC on race day, BC asked me if i would run with her this morning. parents are not required this morning, but she wanted me to run with her. let me point out for the record: i hate running. but, i got suited up, rushed my kishkes around, and drove her there at 7:50 in the ayem. we get there — there must be about 50 girls there plus some parents. and there’s a huge circle being formed. girlfriend runs over to one of her friends as they make the circle. i walk over to stand beside her. no, mom, she says. you stand over there, and she points to siberia on the other side of this tremendous circle. no other moms or dads are being banished. they are all standing next to their respective daughters.something inside me just snapped.

nope, i replied. i’ll see you later then. good bye! and i walked away. and i left.

so yes, add that to the collection of why i am a bad mother.i’m not going to be treated like shit by any nine year old. i am not going to be treated like shit by any 40-something year olds, either. in short, i am no longer taking shit from anyone out there, related or not.

i am tired, tired and extremely angry. and appreciating me one day in may, a day where i will have woken up all cranky and cold because i will have slept overnight in a cabin devoid of electricity and indoor plumbing, courtesy of my little Girl Scout, will probably be too little too late. i appreciate every single person around me; at least, i appreciate the ones i’m related to — and certainly quite a few to whom i am not.
appreciate me now.

little wing

Posted on April 22, 2008 by wrekehavoc

18 years ago today, we were dancing to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrWoEjo-SIE&hl=en

happy anniversary to the guy whose bark is definitely worse than his bite.

bungle in the jungle

Posted on April 3, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BS has returned! the bat is gone! all’s right with our little world! alert the media! and yet here i am, still focusing on wildlife. go figure.

we have been steve irwin fans since i-dunno-when. BS and i called him dingo boy; and we loved to watch him chase animals all over the place. i especially remember whenever his wife terri entered the picture. when i was pregnant with BC back in 1998, she was pregnant with bindi. we used to hoot and howl whenever clueless steve would put terri’s life in danger, asking her to do things tough for a normal person, let alone a person in the family way: c’mon ter, let’s scale this cliff and make our way down into the [insert scary, dangerous animal type here]-infested area! yep. the only scale i was near was the OBGYN’s at that point; and the only danger i would consider putting myself into was fighting someone at the supermarket for the last pint of chubby hubby.

i loved the fact that the irwin’s two kids were the same ages as mine. and i was wildly astonished by the poise with which bindi spoke at her dad’s funeral. she is an articulate young lady with an apparent passion for animals, though there are times on her kid’s show that she seems like she might be turning into some sort of hyper-energetic, disney-fied being. i love this family, and i really want to root for them.

that’s why i am so sad to read about bob irwin, steve’s dad, leaving the australia zoo. bob, as you might know, is the actual founder of the australia zoo. he not only has lost his son, steve, but i believe he has also lost his first wife. terri denies any sort of family feud, but you have to wonder what exactly would make a man walk away from something he built up from nothing, especially in a time when terri is being sued. there are reports that terri is trying to make the zoo a disney-like destination, with hotels and spas. while several media outlets were willing to pay him for an exclusive interview, bob chose to give his one and only interview, for free, to the aussie ABC. it’s all so strange and somewhat suspicious.

another thing i wonder about: there’s an awful lot of attention on bindi. the girl is clearly being groomed to follow in her father’s footsteps. you have to wonder whether she is missing out on a regular childhood, complete with opportunities to explore other interests. who knows: she could be the next best painter, brain surgeon, poet. i’m sure there’s a certain internal pressure at work here — the good and obedient child wants to do whatever she can do to honor her father’s legacy. but at what cost to herself?

oh, and what about bob? you know, the little four-year-old dude? with all the attention paid to his sister, what does that mean for him? does he absolutely hate his sister? is he jealous?

i hate to watch families implode. especially this one.

driver 8

Posted on April 2, 2008 by wrekehavoc

driver 8, take a break. we’ve been on this shift too long.

i’ve been single-parenting it since sunday morning. and i love my kids. but i’m so very, very glad that BS just called and said he’s on an earlier flight home today, possibly home by dinnertime.

the nice thing about single-parenting it is that the rules are all mine. if we want to eat chocolate for dinner, we can. (fret not. we didn’t.) if we want to make a tent and sleep in it, we can. if we want to sleep a little later, or wear crazy clothes, we can. dance party with the clash? sure. cos i’m the mom, and i say so.

the bad thing, of course, is that the kids cry for their daddy. they miss him and his regulated schedule, his soft laugh, his scratchy beard, his crankiness. every bit of him, they miss.

i do, too.

(here’s the visual: i am self-medicating. it’s mid-morning, and i’m eating two squares of dark chocolate. it will make me happy. don’t tell me it won’t.)

single-parenting has brought me some stellar experiences over the past few days.

1) the aforementioned dead bat who, by the way, is still very much dead. and still on the lawn, waiting for BS’s special way with a shovel.

2) jools. home. every. single. day. i know many of you do this voluntarily, but i am unused to a very active child, 24/7. we’ve been having a lot of fun together, making hummus and guacamole and such, but i haven’t been getting as much done as i need to do. still, no one is dying because my house is a mess, so i’ll lighten up.

3) BC’s cough. BC has had a cough since sometime last year. (when the pediatrician asked her last week how long she’s been coughing, she answered: since first grade. and she was dead serious.) nothing has stopped it; not inhalers, not singulair; not voodoo dolls. (heh. just kidding. i think.) it’s really beginning to bug her; sunday night, it took her quite awhile to settle down to sleep because of it. i finally put my foot down and told the pediatrician that we need to visit a pulmonary person.

but then, we had to do the medical limbo. for some reason, the pulmonologist can only accomodate people with our stellar insurance (and that’s not sarcastic talk — it is the insurance gold standard around here, and a PPO to boot) in their leesburg office. huh? so i have to pull madam out of school and go through rush hour traffic to get her to the doctor’s office in about two week’s time. yay.

but wait, there’s more: oh, can we add sinus waters study to our pediatrician’s chest x-ray order? a wha?

but dutifully, i get the pediatrician’s office to fax it. i call to check it has made it. apparently, the pediatrician checked the wrong box — it’s an x-ray, not a CT scan. (oh really? you’d think the doctor would know that, the receptionist said. i guess he’d know that before i did, being a real doctor, unlike me.) and around and around we go again.

all the while, jools is glued to nick jr. because i suck as a mom.

so today, for fun (and before the wednesday afternoon carpooling duties hit me), we will go for the aforementioned x-rays.

i can hardly wait.

4) yesterday, a magical experience where a friend of BC’s insisted that she had cleared an afterschool playdate with her babysitter. pleasepleaseplease let BC take the bus home with me. pulllllease!!! i said i would drive BC over and just check with the babysitter, since we had not yet met, much less cleared anything. the babysitter was rather surprised at the idea of a playdate; we apologized and moved on.

5) while driving home from said non-playdate, lecturing BC about why i don’t just send her on the bus with any friend who insists that a playdate is ok with the adult-on-duty, i saw a police officer with a laser, and it was pointed at ME. and whoomp: there it was. 37 in a school zone. i have actually made it to my advanced age having never gotten pulled over for speeding. i’m an excellent driver, you know. and now, i’m speeding, albeit not wildly, but technically speeding nonetheless. don’t cry, mama, BC said. you can’t cry in front of a police officer.

oh girl. yes. you. can.

the officer took my license and registration and went back to his motorcycle to call it in. julian kept asking me what was going on. i muttered and muttered. leave mama alone, i heard BC bark at jools. i muttered that my husband and his brother, a police officer, were probably going to laugh at me over this one day. i pictured it in my mind’s eye: yeah, my wife is such an idiot, she doesn’t know what to do when she’s pulled over for a ticket. i muttered because it kept me from crying over my very first traffic infraction at age 40+.

the officer returned and started telling me about prepaying the ticket versus the court date, etc. etc. suddenly, a voice shrilly commanded from the backseat:

exCUSE MEEEEEEEEEE!

it was jools. oh shit. now i’ll get ticketed for some parenting violation, too: this woman has rude children. lock her up.

please officer: i’ve been home alone with two kids for a few days, and i’m a little wound. can you take pity on me and just ticket me over the car and ignore the fact that my young son doesn’t grasp the concept of decorum? pleaseohpleaseohplease?

excuse me, i said to the officer. okay, jools, what do you want?

no, i want to talk to the policeman.

doubleshitdoubleshitdoubleshit. i peered at the officer through my window. is it ok, sir?

sure. what can i do for you? he asked jools.

my uncle mikey is a police officer! he announced to the officer.

is he really? the officer asked. where is he a police officer?

in new jersey, i replied.

BC pulled the facts together: my uncle mikey is a police officer in NEW JERSEY!

well then, he replied, i’m going to give you a warning, thanks to uncle mikey. he crossed out my court date and wrote W A R N I N G over it. slow down, okay?

yes, sir. i took a deep breath as he walked away from my car. karma pulled through for me. all those times i let people in instead of cutting them off; all those times as a patient and courteous driver — it all came back to me in the guise of a kind police officer.

and it also made me thankful for my brother-in-law. my husband has only one brother. lucky for me, he happens to be a terrific person who happens to be a police officer. he risks his life daily, and he’s a person we are all very proud of in this family. and i bet he has been in this situation before and he has been kind. i just know it. he has a good heart.

i waved at the police officer as we drove past; he waved back in that serious, Adam-12 sort of way. i bet he has an insane sister-in-law, too.

last night, jools got a honkin’ big bowl of his favorite ice cream. and BC finished her solid chocolate easter bunny.

my rules, cos i’m the adult-on-duty. and i think that’s fair.