Puppy Politics

The Los Angeles mayoral election is on Tuesday. I have yet to make a final decision based on a thorough evaluation of each candidate’s record and position on a myriad of important issues facing the city. However my opinion is being swayed by an informal survey we’ve been taking in our house and based on that, Wendy Greuel is in trouble. In our survey, we take the annoying cardstock political mailers that have been clogging up our mailbox for the last few weeks and put them on the floor by the front door before we leave for work each day. Our dog, Franny, an adorable, but amusingly destructive terrier with abandonment and anger management issues, has taken to selectively destroying the mailers. Based on what is done to each candidate’s mailer, we determine how much our dog likes or dislikes the politician and their record. Eric Garcetti was on the floor for 3 days before our dog chewed off his corners. Kevin James was shredded after a day, along with Jan Perry, who received some similar biting. Wendy Greuel was left alone for a week. We thought, based on our survey, that she was the winner until Friday afternoon when I came home to find that not only had she been shredded into hundreds of tiny little pieces, but after a careful sniff, we suspect our dog relieved herself on the mailer as well. Not a good sign. I don’t know what Wendy Greuel did to enrage my dog. I can guess that maybe it had something to do with the city trees in our neighborhood, the district Greuel used to represent. The trees were scheduled to be cut only once every 50 years. Let me repeat…EVERY 50 YEARS! But we had branches falling all the time, damaging cars, destroying lawn furniture and eventually, falling and narrowly missing my then toddler who was playing in the yard. I called Wendy Greuel’s office repeatedly to see what could be done about getting the trees trimmed but was constantly transferred from on assistant to the next. I finally went to the source, spotting a city crew working down the block on some other trees. I told the supervisor about the near miss with the city tree limb nearly taking the life of my first born and he agreed to send a few of his crew down to trim the trees on our block years before they were due for their 50 year haircut. Dogs like trees, but not ones that fall on you. Sorry Wendy, but I suspect my dog was voting with her teeth. I haven’t yet decided who I am going to vote for to be mayor of Los Angeles. But based on our canine survey, Wendy, it doesn’t look good.

Twenty Tiny Coffins

Yesterday marked one month since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. After listening to all the coverage and the comments by the parents of the twenty slain children, I asked my nine year old Natalie if she was worried about security at her school. She didn’t bother to look up from a rerun of Gravity Falls on t.v. as she waved off my question and said, “Don’t worry, mom, I think Mr. Martinez has it handled.” Mr. Martinez is her principal, and yes, I think he does. I’m glad she thinks so, too. But I wanted to find out more about what made her feel safe at school, so I brought the question up again later. She looked at me as if she thought I’d developed early Alzheimer’s and repeated her early comment about her principal, this time talking louder on the off chance I just hadn’t heard her the first time. “Yes, that’s what you said before,” wanting to reassure her that neither my hearing nor memory were defective. “But why?” She rolled her eyes. I get a lot of that at my house these days. Eye rolling and requests for money. I used to kid myself that it was only a phase that would end once they graduated college until I caught myself over the holidays doing basically the same thing to my own father, rolling my eyes at his comment and secretly hoping he'd offer to pay for the very expensive meal we'd all just consumed. But I digress. What made her feel safe? She launched into a scenario of what would happen if a “bad guy” came to her school. “My teacher, since she’s the nicest person in the world, would try to reason with the bad guy,” she said, “She’d convince him to put his weapon down." Then she went on to describe how the science teacher would throw chemicals at him, the music teacher would sing a note so high that his head would explode, and she reminded me that the maintenance man “… has a baseball bat, a signed baseball bat.” She felt the signed part was very important and surely would make a difference. She went on to describe how one of the fifth grade teachers, a woman who used to be in the military, would beat him up, and how another - whose bark often overshadows his skillful teaching – would go on one of his tirades and scare the bad guy off. Then I asked her about the front office, and one staff member with a reputation for gruffness who has to put up with more stuff from the parents than most on campus. “Oh her," Natalie said, "She’s probably packing!” I didn’t even know my kid knew the term “packing,” let alone how to use it. And on second thought, if anyone would be packing, it would probably be this woman and I wouldn’t blame her. I laughed and smiled when I watched my daughter explain with great certainty how her school staff would keep her safe, endowing them with almost superhero qualities. She trusted them, as we trust them, with her life. That’s asking a lot more of them than teaching reading, writing, and enough math to get them through to middle school. That didn’t hit me until the tragedy in Connecticut - until I saw the twenty tiny coffins of the victims. Twenty children, six educators lost. I grew up in Connecticut, in a town fairly similar and not too far from Newtown. My father still works in the schools there. Now what happened there is not far from my mind every morning when I drop my kids off at school. We entrust the teachers with the lives of our children…pro ball players get fifteen million a year, some actors get twenty million a film, teachers get…not that much…certainly not enough to justify asking them to take up arms, real or imagined, to protect our kids. Isn’t asking them to teach enough? Maybe Natalie was right, they're superhuman after all. Visit www.sandyhookpromise.org

Figures

So I decide that 2013 is the year to get healthy again. I'd already returned to doing yoga and started running every week with an athletic neighbor who'd already tackled a triathlon and was kind enough to slow down and let me run along side her for a couple of miles while she trains. Yeah, so 2013 I decide to get healthy again - like I was in my 20s, hiking and swimming and running 1/2 marathons. I decide to get healthy; my daughters decide to start a business making homemade ice cream. Now my refrigerator is filled with more heavy whipping cream than anyone should purchase at one time and ingredients like mints and chocolate bits and caramel are stacked to the ceiling of the pantry. The girls are creating ice cream flavor names like "Sassy Cinnamon" and "Heavenly Hazelnut" and tasting each batch as it comes out of the freezer. Of course, insisting that I, as the major (only) investor in their business, taste each flavor as well. The only good part about their new enterprise? It forces them to clean the dishes - a lot! Yup, I vow to get healthy, my kids turn into Ben & Jerry. Figures.

Happy New Year!

The Mayans threw a doomsday party but nobody came. A fiscal cliff was diverted. And I finally got out to see a movie which didn't feature animated characters, need to be viewed in 3D, or have a median audience age of 8. If that's how I'm ending 2012, 2013 is gonna be great. Happy New Year!

Big Brothers, Little Sisters, Goat Cheese and Why My Children Talk So Much

We were sitting at the table the other night and of course there were four different conversations going on at the same time – which is difficult to do when there are only four people (and one dog) seated at the table. But given the love of gab that we all possess, somehow we managed to make enough of a cacophony to drown out what each other was saying, and making us all talk louder to compensate. Nicole kicks me under the table, it was intended as more of a nudge, but because of her sheer excitement in sharing a story with me it turned into a full blown kick. I howled and she apologized and then launched into her story. It had something to do with her friend’s brother who played a trick on her, not Nicole, but the friend. Now sometimes, at that point, when I know I’ve heard the story before or when it is a story which will add nothing to my life and in fact take up three or four minutes that I will never get back, I put on the listening mother face and check out. I’ll think about what I want to read before I go to bed, if I’m going to leave the dishes in the sink tonight and do them in the morning, or struggle to remember if I’d crossed all the must do’s off of my to do list for the day, all while nodding my head, smiling and looking like I’m enjoying every minute of her story about the cousin’s uncle’s brother’s sister’s niece. Oh, come on, you know you’ve checked out, too, I’m just the only one stupid enough to admit it in print. Someday, when my daughters are in therapy, they will look up this blog – because you know that NOTHING you write on the internet EVER goes away – and show it to their doctors as proof of my bad mothering…but until then… So, I’m busy not listening to Nicole, when she says something that catches my attention. She says, “My friend’s brother tried to convince her that goat cheese is made out of goat feces.” Well, that stopped dinner conversation. For whatever reason, I found it incredibly funny and very big brotherish to try and convince your little sister of something like that. My brother used to do things like that to me all the time, including the time he tried to convince me I was adopted. So I found it very, very funny. David didn’t. He made a nasty expression as he tried to choke down the last of the ricotta cheese from his lasagna and Natalie, who only caught half of the conversation, misheard it and asked, “What about goat faces?” Again, more laughter. Nicole went on to explain, and now I was really listening, that her friend’s brother not only told this to his little sister, but backed up the claim by putting up a fake entry on Wikipedia explaining how you make goat cheese from goat feces...not goat faces. Oh, this was getting better and better. David shouted at Nicole, telling her that goat feces was not appropriate dinner conversation. But he said the word feces again and like a group of kindergarteners, a poop word, even a sophisticated one like feces, made us start laughing all over again. I was impressed, in the 21st century a big brother could use the internet to convince and gross out his sister…note to self, reason number 907 not to trust entry postings on Wikipedia. So I asked Nicole if the posting was still up. She wasn’t sure, but said it was under, “How to make goat cheese…” save yourself the time, I looked it up and it’s not there. His parents probably made him take it down. But probably only after they had a good laugh themselves. This came after a week of weird dinners. We must all be a little punchy, tired from all the end of year activities and eager for our summer to start. A few nights earlier, on a Sunday night, we hadn’t managed to get ourselves fed before 8:00pm and as the clock drew closer to 9, decided we better get dinner in us before it was time for breakfast. Unsatisfied with what was in the cupboard and with me temporarily on cooking strike – I was ready to cook at 7pm but nobody wanted to eat then – David decided that we should go out to eat. We arrived at the restaurant and there were only two other tables taken. We ordered and for some reason, the more water the girls drank, the funnier they thought everything was. The waiter didn’t help the situation. He kept complimenting them for their manners and humor –one of which all kids should have – if you have good manners, nobody cares if you’re funny and if you have a good sense of humor and make people laugh, they’ll put up with a little bit of bad behavior…but only a little – so with all the attention, my girls reallly decided to put on a show. They were laughing loudly, guzzling back water to the point where I made a comment about them being camels and that launched them into another conversation about another friend which I really didn’t need to hear…particularly at 9:00 at night when I still haven’t eaten. But in our house, you can’t mention camels without mentioning Nicole’s best friend, who LOVES camels. So I tuned out for a bit, wondering when the waiter was going to bring my gluten free beer, if gluten free beer would be any good, and why I even bothered to order beer of any kind since I was headed for bed in less than 30 minutes. And Nicole continued talking about camels, and her friend, and next thing I know, I’ve agreed to let her and her friend go on some camel safari in Morocco for their sweet sixteen birthday! Hell, all I got for my sweet sixteen was a watch, which broke, and a warning that you could get mono from kissing boys. But my kid, she wants an international adventure tour. Serves me right for not listening. Oh, and next time, I’ll skip the gluten free beer. BTW – I asked Nicole something the other day and she looked at me blankly and said, “Sorry, I wasn’t listening to you…just blanked you out.” So clearly, I’m NOT the only one who does it.

Books and Boobs

I was reading Time Magazine the other day and found myself inspired by an article about John Irving. If you haven’t read him, you should. Books such as The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany are a few of his creations. He is a writer’s writer. His work always cuts into me, shocking, funny, honest and accepting of humanity often overlooked. The article about Irving was the only reason I cracked open the magazine. I almost canceled my subscription to Time a few weeks before when they featured an attractive 20something mother on the cover breastfeeding her (very tall for his age) 3 year old son with the caption, “Are You Mom Enough?” Are they kidding? The article was about Dr. Sears and his attachment parenting theories and how it encourages women to breastfeed their children long after their children can not only say the word breast, but spell it, type it into the computer, and tweet pictures of themselves sucking from it. No prude am I, but seriously folks, in my opinion, if your child can get the milk out of the refrigerator and pour a glass all by themselves, they have no business still breastfeeding. Appalled as I was about the idea of breastfeeding into the toddler and elementary years – one woman was breastfeeding her 8 year old until he recently self-weaned – I wondered why hadn’t anyone called DCF (department of children and families) on these parents and on Dr. Sears himself for advocating this. But then I read the article and you know what? Sears’ theories didn’t seem as extreme as you’d think. It seemed more like his followers were the ones taking it to the extreme and Time was using that to sell more magazines with its titillating (pun intended) cover. Actually, to my horror, all the components of attachment parenting where pretty much things my husband and I had done when raising our children – Breastfeeding , co-sleeping, babywearing, childled learning, etc. - we just hadn’t read a book about it and weren’t following “the method.” We had done attachment parenting – except for the extreme breastfeeding part. I breastfed both girls until they were about 12 months and/or until their teeth came in and they thought it was funny to chomp down hard on me while breastfeeding and watch me scream. The first time that happened with both was pretty much the last time I breastfed. Because honestly, after all the things your body goes through to have a baby, I think getting bit on the boob is the final indignity and really just shouldn’t be tolerated! So, I was a little worried to realize that what we had done was part of an actual parenting movement. I’ve never been a joiner of movements. In fact, I think I’m more an anti-joiner, taking pleasure in my steadfast refusal to participate in organized group activities – Brownies, Girl Scouts, cheerleading, college sororities, etc… David and I hadn’t tried to be part of a parenting movement. Honestly, we aren’t that organized. When our kids were babies, we were just trying to stay one step ahead of them, not be out numbered, and try to keep them alive until they were old enough to call 911 on their own. Attachment parenting, eh? Who says having your children adore you and be attached to you is a good thing? Our girls are now 9 and 11 and they can’t get enough of us. In fact, they like us too much if that’s possible. They want tell us everything, go everywhere with us, want us to play every board game, Wii game, and video game with them. We will need to stock up on dynamite to get them out of our beds. I think it’s time for a little detachment parenting. I keep waiting for the time when they will turn into surly teenagers and want nothing of us. What a relief that will be! Well, maybe not a total relief. It will probably be too quite around the house and I’ll miss the board games just a little bit. But at least we’ll get our bed back. The other day, my husband saw a baby being pushed in a stroller down the street. He cooed at it. Have you ever seen a grown man coo? It’s not pretty. That was fine, I ignored him and kept walking, not to be impressed by every pretty babyface I see. Then he turned to me and said, “Hey, maybe we should have another one…” and this isn’t the first time he’s said that recently. I screamed. I couldn’t control it. It just burst out of my mouth. “Do you know how old I am?” My mind was trying to grasp what he was saying as if he had suddenly started speaking in tongues. “Do you know how old you are?” He looked at me, slightly hurt by my response. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d called him old or because I said I didn’t want to have another child. I continued. Sometimes you have to hurt the ones you love. “Besides, you want to know the most important reason we can’t have another baby?” He waited for me to bestow my great wisdom on him. “We can’t have another baby because if we did, we’d be outnumbered.” So much for great wisdom, but he knew I was right. We already have two children. Having a third would put us at a disadvantage. He’s a numbers guy, he knows about things like that. He agreed, said he was just having a moment. I suspect it was the leftover beef he had for dinner. So I learned about attachment parenting because I wanted to read about John Irving and his new book. I’ve always admired his work so I guess it was worth going back to Time Magazine (which I still hold with some disregard for that sensationalistic cover.) But I had to read about Irving. I love reading about writers, particularly novelists, who (in my opinion) I believe have a much more challenging job than screenwriters. Yet despite Irving’s many critical accolades, he humbly believes that every time he sits down to start on a new work, to go head-to-head with a blank piece of paper, he is a beginner, learning the craft anew. I imagine that’s what it would be like if I tried to have another baby. A beginner, starting anew with a blank piece of paper. We could do that...or we could just get another dog.

Nest of Freaks

I’m back. Not that I’d gone far. I just haven’t been able to write for a few weeks, maybe longer. It’s not because I’ve had writer’s block. It’s just the opposite…I’ve had writer’s diarrhea. I have been writing so many different projects at the same time that something had to give…and sadly it was the non-paying (but often much more therapeutic) writing of the blog.But it was a momentary pause, not a full stoppage. And even if I cannot write about the craziness of juggling marriage, work, and family, it doesn’t mean the insanity ceases. The chaos of family life didn’t stop. In fact, the waves of chaos have grown to a full blown tsunami. It got so bad at one point that I thought about getting rid of my husband and children. Not in a nefarious way…despite all the CSIs I’ve watched, I’m still not a good enough liar to get away with much more than parking in a red zone without falling apart and giving a full confession under cross examination. No, I was going to get rid of them the old fashioned way. One day – I think it was the morning that started out with the kids forgetting to feed the dog they begged for 8 months ago and complaining about taking her out, spilling chocolate on the sofa they weren’t supposed to be eating on, and not caring that they didn’t empty their lunch bags from the night before and whole sandwiches, cheese sticks and yogurt which could have been saved had to be thrown away - I was so fed up with my kids (ages 9- “but I think I’m 40” and 11 “but I act like I’m 2”) that I decided to take them back to the hospital. I rationalized, I gave birth to them at Cedars and Cedars can take them back. I was going to write out a note explaining why I was returning them, pin it to the backs of their shirts, drive by the hospital entrance and slow down just enough to push them out without them scrapping anything on the pavement. I went as far as to write the notes. They read, “Dear Hospital, I am sorry that this did not work out, but I am going to have to return these babies. I know they are no longer babies. That is the problem. They have grown to the point where they don’t listen, talk back, and constantly ask me for money…particularly at the mall. Please return them from whence they came.” I even signed my name to the note, taking no shame in my return decision. After another incident which involved throwing food at each other, (them, not me, although I probably would have felt better if I had thrown some food), I told them my plan to take them back to the hospital and read them my note. They thought it was hysterical. They weren’t mortified at all. It didn’t cause them to recognize their bad behavior and regret not only driving their mother to the edge, but actually over the edge and into the ditch. No, they laughed so hard, I was afraid they were going to pee in their pants or spit food out of their noses…something else for me to clean up! Nicole’s biggest issue with my note was my use of the word, whence. “Who uses the word ‘whence’ anymore?” she complained. Having clever kids sometimes has disadvantages. Natalie pointed out that even if I got rid of them, I’d still have daddy around. I had a plan for getting rid of him, too. I wrote another note. This one was addressed to his mother and read, “Dear Mama Jewel, I am sorry that this has not worked out, but I’m going to have to return your son. I know there was all that mention at our wedding about ‘until death do you part,’ but clearly, I can’t wait that long. You did not inform me that he does not listen, talks back, and does not know how to cook. Please accept this return…” More laughter from the girls. They pointed out that grandma wouldn’t take him back. They’re right…she’s too clever for that. She’d decline delivery, write “Return to sender” with a Sharpie on his butt, and ship him right back to me. Writing the notes was very cathartic. It also made me laugh to realize I had almost the same complaints about both the girls and David…except the girls can cook. They’ve all been on better behavior recently. Maybe the notes put the fear of God in them after all…or maybe not. I think the change has come more with me than with them. I’ve learned to better accept and not get so frustrated by my family’s dysfunctional functioning. In some ways, I think I’ve embraced it. A dear friend of ours was describing her workplace and lovingly dubbed her co-workers, “A nest of freaks.” We have now embraced that as our family description. Anytime anyone does something…usual for our family…I sigh and think, “Yup, that’s us, nest of freaks.” Laughter is good for you. So I promise, it won't be so long between posts anymore.