Category: jools (also a beloved child)
road rage
what the HELL is the matter with you people who drive on Route 270 through Montgomery County? [and yes, i am, in fact, screaming.]
i drove to a birthday party up in scenic damascus yesterday, and i felt like i was taking my freaking life in my hands. now understand, i am not a frightened little old lady who drives at 20. no, i drive the NJ Turnpike, i drive the DC Beltway, i drive all over the place (EXCEPT for NY – i swore when i received my driver’s license i would never, ever drive there. 25 years later, i am true to my word.) i drive like a big-ass, jerseygirl driver. which, of course, i am. sans the big hair.
and yet.
here i am, driving to this little kid birthday party with jools in the backseat, singing his super why repertoire at the top of his lungs. meanwhile, i am negotiating 6 of the 12 lanes that cut through lovely (don’t go back to) rockville, potomac, parts of rockville that are also called potomac (to make people feel richer), gaithersburg, etc., and people are screaming by me. i mean SCREAMING, and the wind they create actually makes my tiny little prius shake slightly. i’m going 70 to keep up with slow traffic. and when i say people are passing me, they are whizzing by, not just gently passing.
then there are the weavers: the people, usually male, who weave through several lanes at a time at 10,000 miles per hour, like cloth through a loom. usually, they’re driving huge pickups — the ones with the supersized sides — or SUVs. (i get it, i get it. you have a huge penis. now get the fuck off the road and go play with it somewhere else.)
and then, lest i forget, the clowns who merge onto this panoply of pandemonium… at 40 mph??? do they have a freaking death wish? where did they learn to drive — north dakota??? did ANYONE take PHYSICS in high school??? SHEESH.
where ARE you people going in such a rush? to your graves? my G-d. if you aren’t having a heart attack, stroke, or baby, you really need to slow your speed-loving ass down.
ARGH. it actually drove me to take my mp3 player off random and put it on James Taylor’s Greatest Hits on the way home. i needed sedation. and if i heard anything remotely punk-like, well, i don’t think it would have been a good moment for motherhood on the road.
people on 'ludes should not drive
…and people who are on a 24-hour liquid diet pre-general anesthesia should not go food shopping. which i did, ‘cos i’m the most super brilliant mom alive. i walked in for bananas and walked out with $100 worth of groceries, very little of which i can eat today except for:
- peach jello
- peach jello
- chicken soup (clear, nothing in it)
- coffee
- pineapple jello
- orange jello; and
- popsicles.
now, this regimen, sans the soup and coffee (in which i can’t put milk today, so why bother?), might seem like nirvana to BC. but the natural fact here is that i cannot eat anything red. no red popsicles. no red jello. no red nuthin’ (unless i want my gastroenterologist to die of fright thinking i’m hemorrhaging inside.) this, of course, causes a problem because red is my favorite flavor. (i’m pretty indiscriminate when it comes to red. i don’t really care if it means cherry, strawberry, raspberry, razzleberry… ha! caught you there. 😉
fortunately, it appears that my friends at jello have branched out a little and added peach and pineapple to their non-red jello repertoire. thank G-d, too, because the only way i’m having green or lemon jello is if someone makes them into shooters. you should know that i don’t really like jello all that much, but today, it is officially dubbed food of the gods!
on the bright side, my fingernails will grow strong.
now, because i am extra brilliant, i failed to consult the calendar back in may when i made this appointment. and guess what else is tonight? yup. Back to School Night. back to school night falls squarely in my domain; while BS is an involved and caring dad, i know probably leaps and bounds more about BC’s daily existence than he does. but i have a feeling that i will be feeling about as pleasant as old garbage tonight. so i will stay home with both kids (yay! fighting over the toilet with jools will be something to look forward to!) while BS goes through the hallowed halls of a school he has not yet entered. i think. (honey: make a right when you walk in the front door and just keep walking until the school ends. that’s her classroom.) it’s probably a good thing, i’m sure. he’ll meet BC’s teacher (who i see every morning when i’m dragged down the hall), see the locker she never uses, and enjoy the fact that there are no reports of girlfriend tearing the place down.
that, my friend, will not happen until the day jools enters school.
don’t worry. i’ll be sure to schedule something a little more lasting for that day. like a medically-induced coma.
super why!
please G-d, get the super why! theme song out of my head!
it all started when i heard about this great new pbs kids show called super why! a wonderful reading show. i looked it up at pbskids.org to find it was not on yet. of course, they had a first episode on line, so jools immediately hooked himself up to it. and he hasn’t stopped since.
now, we TIVO the show, in spite of WETA’s and TIVO’s disagreement over when the show is actually on. and i’l be darned if the theme isn’t catchy, in that overblown, love boat theme meets something groovy circa 1972. (i wonder if lenny kravitz might be behind the music somehow.)
if it helps jools start down the happy course of reading, well, i’ll get over myself r e a l l y fast.
i can't cook
one day, my family is going to buy me a t-shirt. on this t-shirt, i will be quoted with something i say often after attempting to cook a healthy, somewhat interesting meal:
there is nothing more rewarding than cooking for a family.
BC will tell anyone within striking distance that her mommy can bake pretty well (no one can beat my brownies, i tell ya!), but her mommy cannot cook. period. and she isn’t too far off. see, if i had my druthers, i would be trying all sorts of vegetarian fare every single night. this is problematic: BS is an affirmed carnivore, BC hates most things that aren’t full of salt or sugar, and jools? well, he’s the kid who lost weight at his well-baby visit last time, remember?
last night’s rosh hashana dinner pretty much proved the point.
*i roasted a chicken — not too hard, and nobody fell ill with salmonella.
*i made matzo ball soup, which the kids liked even though some of the matzo balls fell apart in the soup (BS wouldn’t touch it), looking like something nasty. (i’ll refrain from the rest of my description as a public service.) taste 6, looks, -12.
*i made a cauliflower concoction in the slow cooker that no one, not even i liked — and now i have a major slow cooker mess AND the house smells like bad gas.
*i made jewish apple cake, which wasn’t my best effort — the kids turned up their noses because it wasn’t too sweet.
*and i bought challah, which was stupidstupidSTUPID — that’s the one element of the meal i can ACTUALLY MAKE WELL. but see, the folks from great harvest were nice enough to come on sunday to shul and show all the hebrew school kids how to make challah. and after they brought all that dough for us to bake and eat, it only seemed fair to buy some challah from them to show them some love.
when the matzah ball soup began to fail, i threw some rice into the oven to bake. (joy of cooking has a wonderful baked rice recipe that results in almost foolproof rice.) i know, i know. not exactly traditional ashkenazi holiday jew food. of course, when i took the rice out of the oven, i burnt my wrist, right in the wrist-slitting position. VERY attractive. (note to BS: i need a really nice bracelet now to conceal this scar. in case you’re wondering.)
so mom, if you’re reading this, i didn’t try to off myself after realizing that i am the world’s worst cook. i just need to realize what you realized long ago. sometimes, the best thing you can make for dinner are reservations.
my brave boy
we all know that officials from the district of columbia move in mysterious ways. very little can explain things like this, for example. hell, very little can explain how marion barry continues to have a career in politics. but that’s the beauty and wonder of DC.
so it should come as no surprise to anyone that the licensure people from the district came to my son’s school the other day. for years and years, no one from DC licensing cared when kids’ lead tests were done. and here in VA, no one really cares after the 1st necessary one at a few months old.
surprise!
now they do. and if all of us folks don’t get lead tests on our kids by early october, well, there will be fines. inadvertent preschool dropouts. cats and dogs. living together. mass hysteria. you get the picture.
so today, instead of having a special day with jools, i had a morning of nooooooooooooo, mommy. i don’t want to have a blood test!
noooooooooooooooo!
now, i can’t blame the kid. of course, i get poked or jabbed at least once a month these days (and yesterday, i had a whopper of a shot in my knee, so believe me, i am empathetic). but when its a rare thing, like it is (thankfully) for poor jools, well, damn, it’s hard to explain. so you do what any sane parent does. you employ the most important survival tactic known to parents everywhere.
you bribe your child.
let’s see: the kid got a lollipop (before lunch! he gleefully told anyone within earshot! yep. a day without mama the hardass.) the kid got to eat chips from taco hell. and when we visited the library, the kid got to spend 30 minutes on the kids computer. 30. whole. minutes. and i neglected to find a book to read before that. so i sat and enjoyed the silent screen version of bailey’s bookhouse. for. 30. whole. minutes.
[somebody please help me. i’m melting.]
but you know what? the dude earned it. we sat there, with gospel music blaring from the phlebotemist’s radio, and the dude barely even whimpered. he even thanked the lady for the bugs bunny band aid. maybe it was the gospel stuff. who the hell knows.
all i know is that i can hardly wait for flu shots…
all i want is everything
with sincerest apologies to southside johnny and the asbury jukes…
i feel good today. r e a l l y good. don’t know how long the feeling will last, and nevermind the fact that i have to go get a CT scan of my chest and an U/S of my abdomen. (bahaha. i want a doctor to take your picture so i can look at you from inside as well.)Â i. feel. good. (dagnabit.) when i feel good, i feel like i can think about the future. cos when i feel good, i feel like i’ll be around a loooooong time into the future.
so, i was mentally cataloging things this morning while waiting in the hematologist’s office (platelets=190~ IVIG is my friend!). things i want.
1) eight consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep.
2) well-adjusted kids who seem relatively happy doing what they’re doing.
3) a rest for my BS who could definitely do with one.
4) plenty of time to play.
5) plenty of time to write.
6) plenty of time.
7) an opportunity to see family and friends who i don’t get to see all that often.
8) an opportunity to apologize to people i was horrid to when i was a teen (i have been reading my journals from high school, and there are a few people i inadvertantly messed about a little. not intentionally, of course — i was a mixed-up kid, just like the next one. i just didn’t see the view from 40,000 feet like i do now.)
9) time to be what i always wanted to be as a grownup.
10) repeat.
i feel good. so i sort of have everything. already.
mommy already passed the third grade
and now, the deluge.
for two whole days, BC has been doing pretty well at her new school. yes, there was trauma when the gym teachers told her she needed to wear lace-up sneakers and not velcro; yes, there was sturm und drang when her PE teachers at her old school told her new gym teachers that she was “good” (“mama, there’s SO MUCH PRESSURE on me now to do a good job!” she wailed at me. in fact, i told her, they probably meant that you’re a good kid. which you are, by the way. you do know that, right?) yes, there’s trauma in the fact that lunch tables are assigned (and doesn’t start until 12:50), that new places in the school have to be found and noted, new friends need to be made. girlfriend seemed to weather things okay, even though she ended up playing by herself on the playground yesterday.
until this morning.
we walked into the auditorium where the kids wait to be let into school. we sat near the third grade enclave. only, the girls sat like little noah’s ark refugees. two by two, they seemed to be paired up in unbreakable groups. apparently, this was too much to bear. BC put her head on my shirt and started to weep. my shirt became very wet very quickly. i patted her back and tried to help her calm down, but it was of no use. when it was time to walk to her class, girlfriend put a deathgrip on my arm. we walked into her class, BC firmly implanted into my side. i smiled at the teacher, and the teacher, bless her, came over and tried to extricate. but extrication was futile. “you know,” she said to BC, “your mommy can’t stay in third grade.”
“no,” i added. “i already passed the third grade.”
the teacher smiled. “yes, your mommy will answer all the questions and not give the other kids a chance to answer them. it won’t be fair.”
(is this woman psychic? 😉
but nothing doing. a few minutes later, a little girl came over and asked BC if she wanted to read with her. so together we moved over to the reading corner, where a few girls and a boy sat. one girl looked at BC confused, wondering what the heck was wrong with her. i put on my best mommy voice and said, “you know, it’s hard to be the new kid. i bet you all were new kids somewhere sometime.” one girl said that she was new to the school in kindergarten and didn’t even know how to speak english. other kids nodded on the new part.
BC continued the deathgrip.
finally, it was time for the class to listen to another teacher tell a story about a dog. BC’s teacher came over and told her that she needed to come pick out a sticker and that i needed to leave. the sad, red face looked at me. i tried to say “have a great day” in my cheeriest tone. she scowled. and i left.
and i walked out of that school as fast as i could so that no one could see me crying.
when i got home after hitting the grocery, i saw i had a message. oh, no. i bet they’re punting her for crying, i thought. when hellboy was three at BC’s old elementary school, i would get calls when he’d had an accident in his pants. could i come and clean him up? apparently, no one there could, and i’d race to the school, wondering how long my kid had to walk around in soiled pants, especially when he had a clean pair in his cubby. if her old school was pretty easy about sending kids home or calling parents in, i wonder what her new school does…
i listened to the message. the teacher wanted me to know that while she was teary after i left, BC bucked up and was having a good day and was now in music class. she thought she’d call and tell me because she’s a mom, too, and she knows what its like.
i think i’m going to like the third grade. again.
phone call never made.
one time — BC couldn’t have been more than 3, for i know i had not yet gotten pregnant with jools — BC and i took a walk through our neighborhood. we walked often before dinner; i loved to take her around our block to admire the colonel’s wife’s flowers, miss maxine’s flag, step up miss jeannie’s steep steps, and end up with miss hattie and maybe mr. bob out on his back swing. this time, though, we went a little further afield and walked around to the next street.
while we were walking, we came upon a woman and her two little girls, one the same age as BC and i think the other was slightly younger, though i don’t recall. we stopped and BC played on the lawn with the girls, rosemary and anne marie. i really enjoyed talking with the mom, and we exchanged phone numbers, hoping to start up a little playdate fun.
unfortunately, i worked, and i suspect she did, too. and as all well-intentioned folks can foresee, we never got together. i held onto the slip of paper for a few years, and finally, one day, i tossed it, figuring that they would not remember us.
fast forward to now.
anne marie is in BC’s class. BC said she’s such a nice girl. and anne marie told BC that she remembered her from all those years ago. sadly, though, her mother died last year, so the family will be moving back to presumably where more family lives.
i guess i couldn’t do anything to stop certain events from happening. but i cannot help feeling a sense of loss over a person i never really got to know.
trainwreck day
i really loathe long weekends. i know; i should look forward to time spent with family or friends. but somehow, it never ever works out the way i would have liked.
take today.
today actually starts as last night. see, on the same weekend before BC starts at a new school [READ: stressful, teary nights ahead], i also decided to start night training jools (who will hate me for writing about this one day.) last night, BC fought bedtime due to fears; jools had nightmares from 1-2 a.m.; BC had nightmares from 2-3 a.m.; jools started right back up at 3 until i don’t know. and then, he awoke for good at 6:15.
when people are tired, they respond to exhaustion differently. me, i get weepy and sick. others might get angry or psychotic. but it’s hard for me to fathom why the day just kept getting worse and worser, so to speak.
my usually brave and intensely independent jools is currently terrified of his own shadow. apparently, his nightmares involved “knights, scarlet knights, (something else) knights.” he refuses to go into detail beyond that. [maybe it has to do with all the Rutgers paraphenalia that BS and i, both alums, have. i dunno.] he doesn’t want to sleep alone; he doesn’t want to visit the bathroom alone; he doesn’t even want to go to his room alone. i tried to show him some funny knights, but nothin’s doin’. is it because of the nighttime potty training? or something else?
meanwhile, back at the neurosis ranch, BC is freaked out about, well, basically everything. bullies. mean people. hell, give her some time and she’ll be freaking over knights, too, i guess. she won’t sleep.
and BS is way overtired, too.
i took the kids out this afternoon to the pool so that BS could attempt a nap. we returned, and the world seemed calmer. then, while getting groceries at harris-teeter, something happened while i was at the meat counter. BS and the kids were going after a smaller kids cart for the kids to push. i saw BC walking with a kids cart but with no one else. she had lost BS. so we went to the front of the store, where i saw BS, who mouthed at me: “where’s julian?”
my heart fell into my feet.
teary and bleary, i grabbed BC and we walked in the fruit and veg section, parallel to BS, who was walking over to the area by the carts at the front door. then, when we walked back, i saw BS with a dazed-looking jools. long story short, jools decided he wanted out and started for the door. on his own. at least he was safe and sound.
so we’ve had dinner and baths and books. jools wanted someone to sleep with him (which won’t happen), then promptly crashed. meanwhile, BC is still up and asking me to stay up until she falls asleep. ironically, i think i’m the person with the least amount of sleep in this house, and i’m too upset to sleep.
pleasepleaseplease be a better day tomorrow.
please.