Beachy Keen

"Here's what we're gonna do," I said to the kids yesterday afternoon, and they gathered around me conspiratorially. "When I get off of work tomorrow afternoon...be ready! Because we're goin' TO THE BEACH!"
The kids smiled, then hesitated. They know that when I start sentences with "Here's what we're gonna do" and raise my hands in a grandiose style, that I'm either going to say something ridiculous like, "We're gonna go to the caves of Crystal Creek!" and dive behind the sofa, or I'm going to tell them something that we're actually going to do, but it's not that exciting, like "We're gonna go TO THE BANK!" and they all groan. So when I said that we were going to the beach, which is someplace that's not imaginary and also some place they like to go, they were confused.
"Seriously?" said Claire.
"Yeah! Why not? It'll be a Friday."
"But how long can we stay?" asked Emma.
"Til dark!" I cried.
"Til dark!" cried Christopher.
"Yay!" cried the girls, and we all did our own version of the happy dance, which makes us look spastic, but overjoyed non-the-less.

The beach at Fountainbleau State Park is not far from our new house and the kids and I have been taking advantage of this situation for the past month. It doesn't look a thing like the pictures that Michelle has from living in Hawaii for six years, but it does fit the requirements of four Louisiana natives 1) it has sand, 2) it has water, 3) it has shells, 4) it has fish that leap out of it now and again, much to our delight, 5) it has no alligators, 6) it has no oil residue. It's just lake water, and waves that don't knock us down unless a jet ski goes by.

This is a place where we can go where all four of us agree that we like it. We all don't agree on how we feel about our new house, or the new schools, or what song to listen to on the radio, or whether to eat fast food at Wendy's or McDonald's, or what movie to watch at night, or whether Emma's socks are faded black or dark blue, BUT! there are no arguments where the beach is concerned.  It's a place where we can watch other families interact and realize that there are people who are more dysfunctional than us.

Like the parents who sit on the sand chugging down beer from their cooler and yell things to their children in the water.
"LOGAN!" a bikini-clad mother croaks to her son. "Stop throwin' sand at your sister, you gonna hit her in the - STOP THAT DAMN IT, I'LL DRAG YOUR BUTT.. [sound of beer chugging, then laughter as her husband snaps her bikini bottom]...RED! Red, I'ma kill ya!"

Or the well-dressed mothers and fathers who bring their toddlers in expensive swim wear, complete with swimmie shoes, beach hats with frogs on them, and sunglasses, and then they set their darlings on the sand and don't let them touch anything.

"Marcel," says a bone-thin middle aged mother, chasing her two year old as he runs away from her. "Marcel, you're going to get sand in your eyes." She turns to her husband who is speed walking behind her. "Richard, he'll get sand in his eyes for sure."
"I'M getting sand in my eyes," complains Richard, rubbing his eyes, and struggling to keep up with the chase.
I imagine that these are people who waited a long time to have Marcel and now they are getting too old to keep up with him as he skips away from them and attempts to pull off his swim trunks, which puts him at further risk of getting sand on him.

I'm just concerned that my kids will wander too far into the lake. I keep telling them not to swim out past the pier because of boats and jet skis that whiz by, but true to form, they keep testing this limit.
"Come on, Mom," Claire hollers. "THEY'RE doing it!"
She points to three teenage boys who have waded so far from the shore that they are just silhouettes, holding their beer cans up out of the water.
"Yeah, but they're stupid!" I yell, hoping that the silhouettes can hear me.
Emma shoots me a look. "MOM."
"Well, they are. Drinking and swimming is just about the dumbest thing you can do," I say.

Then we see someone do something even dumber. We see Christopher yell "karate CHOP!" and splash water at Claire. She is enraged. An enraged Claire is more dangerous than alligators and oil spills combined. She splashes him back and a hellacious dousing ensues. It only ends when one of them goes too far and gets water in the other's eye, but after some groaning and griping, they're both laughing again.

And most of the people that frequent the beach are not dumb, or at least they have the decency not to display it. There's a big teenager crowd, but that doesn't really bother me. It bothers me when I think about how fast the kids are growing up and how it feels like just a few years ago, I was chasing their toddler selves as they pulled their swimsuits off. But that's ok too. Right now they're at a fun age where we build sand castles and then destroy them, we collect shells, and float on our backs and say things like, "When is that butler going to bring us our iced tea?" when we have no butler.

Right now is good. And I can't wait until this afternoon!

Working Mom's Guide to Making Kids Find Their Own Stuff

I just got a book called Working Mom's Survival Guide. Because, as the following conversation will demonstrate, we are just barely surviving:
Me, 7:15 AM [answering my cell phone on the way to work, seeing that it is Claire and knowing that there is a problem]: Yeeeeeeessss...
Claire: MOM! Christopher can't find his socks!
Me: Did he look in the socket basket?
Claire: Yes!
Me: Did he look on the floor by the couch?
Claire: Yes!
Me: Did he look on the floor by the front door where all that stuff is?
Claire: Ye - uh, I don't know. [to her brother, without pulling the phone away from her mouth] CHRISTOPHER!!!!! Mom says look by the door by the pile of stuff!...He found 'em!
Me: Good. Lemme go, I gotta drive.
Claire: WAIT! Where's a hairbrush?

Notice a few things about this conversation. Notice how I never suggested that he look in his dresser. How, even though things are obviously in disarray, I still had a pretty good idea where the socks were and the kids didn't. Notice how Christopher didn't call me himself, or continue to look for his socks by himself. Notice how as I speed further and further away from my children for the day, children who are old enough to dress themselves and brush their hair, I am still assisting with these things. This, people, must change. I mean, the kids still need me, they'll always need me in one way or another, but my 12 year old is really going to have to start using her hairbrush and putting it back in the place where she got it OR at least stop calling me when I'm 30 miles away and asking me where it is.

But then, her 36 year old mother doesn't put things back where they go after she uses them. Hence, the survival guide, which promises me I'll be thriving and "taking care of" myself before I know it. I'm already in a self-help program that helps me take care of myself. Really, am I ever going to learn? YES! Yes, I will if it takes me the rest of my life, so help me God I will remember to put a hairbrush back where it belongs so that my family is not scrambling around the house at 7:00 in the morning screaming, "WHERE'S THE HAIRBRUSH!!?? I DON'T KNOW!!! GET MOM ON THE PHONE!!!!"

So what would I like to do when I reach the advanced stages of taking care of myself? Beyond stuff like flossing regularly? I want to watch movies more often. I still have not seen The Artist, The Descendants, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Sucker Punch, or Wilde, the movie about Oscar Wilde that I got in the mail from Netflix about a month ago and is still sitting unopened on my dresser. I know, Sucker Punch doesn't really fit with the others but I saw half of it a few weeks ago and was mesmerized in that "this is kind of cheesy but also kind of awesome and damn sexy" kind of way.

...So what was I talking about? Oh yeah, working mommy stuff. I hope it will help. If not, I will work on accepting the chaos for what it is, and just try to watch more movies.

Culture Clash

Last weekend I went to drop off Emma at a sleep-over at a new friend's house. This friend is a kid who was teasing Emma at first for being new and then decided she liked her. So Emma was pretty serious about making a good impression with this kid, her other friends who were also at the sleep over, and her parents. And after the first few steps into the house, I knew it wouldn't work.


Crucifixes were EVERYWHERE. There were three iron crosses on the wall to my right, and they weren't spaced out, they were just a clustered together. It was like, "Here's a cross, and just in case you missed it there's another one a few inches to the left, and just in case you missed those, or might be mistaken about what it they are, there's another one over here." Further down the hall was a wooden cross, a picture of Jesus and underneath that a sign that said, "God's way is the right way." The living room and the kitchen had more crosses, more sayings about God that rhymed, a very nervous looking mom with a Yankee accent, and her husband, a Marine with a buzz cut who mentioned that he had Bible study in the morning and his daughter had soccer, so would I please pick up my daughter no later than nine.


"Sure," I said. "I gotta get up early, chant a few mantras, and make out with my homosexual girlfreind so that works out great."


I did not say that, but I was tempted to either say something shocking to that effect or run screaming in terror because I assumed that these people would not approve of me. In their house, you can't walk five feet without running into Jesus. In my house when you walk in the door and look to the right, there's a picture of a blue Hindu goddess.


But then part of me said, "Don't make that assumption about them. You never know. Think of all your friends who are devoted to their religion, but who still accept you the way you are."


Still, I aired on the side of caution and said nothing about my personal life. As long as Emma was going to have a good time and possibly make a good friend, what difference did it make if our families were different?


Then the next morning when I went to pick her I walked in on the dad telling the mom that she was stupid for putting their daughter's Cocoa Crispies in the wrong bowl, and I started to understand why she had that nervous twitch. That, plus Emma telling me that her new freind only started liking her because she knew some kind of biblical fact and she "only likes people who know the Bible" sealed it in the creepy department. Emma won't be going back, and she was so weirded out by the cereal bowl incident that she says that's fine with her.

So far the kids haven't found anyone in our new neighborhood that they're really excited about. They miss the old neighborhood, where, by the time we moved, everyone on the street knew I had a girlfriend and nobody cared. I miss it too. I know I shouldn't care, but sometimes when I say hi to someone in the neighborhood, or when I'm talking to one of the kids' new teachers on the phone I think, "I wonder if they would still like me if they knew."

I guess this is a good life lesson, if any, for me and the kids, to not be ashamed or afraid when it comes to love. The people who count love you anyway.

You Can Trust a Clear Plate

Claire took the ACT test on Saturday, which taught me a few of things. One, she's way smarter than I was at the age of 12, two, as old as she's been looking to me lately when you put her in a line of 16-18 year olds she suddenly looks like a baby, and three, a long line of teenagers smells bad. Really, I wanted to get the Febreeze out of my car and spray them all. I was proud that Claire smelled like the Bath & Bodyworks lotion that I'd put in her stocking her for Christmas. I looked around at the greasy, slack-jawed teenagers and thought, "Not only is my kid smarter than all of you, but she smells like flower, while the rest of you would make a dog faint."

I feel that I should explain that I'm not one of those moms who thinks my kid is better than everyone else's. I just think she's better than all teenagers. This will change in five months when she turns thirteen, when suddenly no amount of Bath & Body Works Paris Amour will shield the smell of hormone-filled sweat. In a few months she will walk into the kitchen, and our dog with take a deep breath and faint, and that's just the way the world works.

The other two have a few years left before they become hormone-ridden stinkbags. They certainly have their own quirks, which I am curious to watch unfold with age. Christopher (a smart kid who expresses himself...uniquely) said about our new clear, glass plates, "This is good, Mom."
He held up the plate before he put a Hot Pocket on it.
"Yes, it's always good to use a plate when you're microwaving something that will leak cheese," I said.
"No, I mean the plate," he told me.
"The plate's good?"
"Yeah. It's clear. You can trust a clear plate."
My eyebrows went up. "Can you? How come?"
Michelle, who was sitting at the table listening to the conversation, said, "Because you can tell that it's clean."
"Yeah," Christopher agreed.
"So that makes it trustworthy?" I asked. "This is a plate that you can rely on? You can trust it to show up on time and be true to it's word?"
Christopher frowned at me. "No. That's just weird."

So apparently, there's a limit to this trust. But it's important to Michelle, Claire and Christopher who care about cleanliness. For broads like me and Emma, "clean" is open to interpretation. One spot on a plate does not necessarily make the plate dirty. A few crumbs on a plate that you're going to make a turkey sandwich on? That's not really dirty. Just dust it off. A spot of mustard on a plate that you're making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on? Well, it needs to be wiped off, sure, but is the plate DIRTY? Not really. And how old is the mustard in question? Is it so old that it's hardened? Because if so, then it won't rub off on the pb&j and you can re-use it.

Emma is like I was at her age, and still kind of am. Her room is littered with dirty clothes, scraps of writing, scraps of drawings, cups and (once) a tortilla. Claire stepped on the latter and was horrified.

"MOM!" she cried from the bedroom. "There's a tortilla on the floor with a BITE taken out of it and I stepped on it!"

She said this last part "I stepped on it" as if she'd stepped on lizard guts. Really, I think she was just affronted by the idea of it - that her sister would take one bite out of a tortilla and drop it on the floor like an animal. To make matters worse, the girls share a room now and so Emma not only messed up her own room, she befouled CLAIRE'S. And Claire does not understand how Emma could allow a tortilla to happen on their floor.

But me - I understood. I imagined myself walking into my bedroom, and taking a bite out of a tortilla and then spotting a copy of Yoga Journal on the floor. "That's where that is!" I'd say and sit down to finish reading the article on how to meditate by breathing through my eyelids, and I'd set my tortilla down on the floor next to me, which I would be comfortable with because the floor is relatively "clean." While I'm reading my phone would ring in the next room and I'd fling the magazine across the room to another spot on the floor and rush to answer the phone, which would also be buried underneath several things. A day would go by and I'd walk into the room and spot the tortilla on the floor, and I'd think, "I guess that isn't good anymore. It's probably hard. I'll throw it away later, I think I hear the phone ringing." I would walk past the tortilla every day until it would just become part of the floor and I wouldn't notice it anymore.

I'm not justifying it, I'm just telling you how these things happen. Chaotic messiness is created one ADD-fueled mishap at a time. The phone rings and you fling your magazine across the room, and forget your snack on the floor. And so it begins.

And yes, twenty years ago I would have been the smelliest teenager in that line.

ps- Claire took the ACT early because she scored high in the English section of her Leap test, and she's trying out for the Duke TIPS program. Wish her luck!

Closing the childhood home

This afternoon I close on my house. I finished cleaning it on Sunday, and cried for a while because (for the first time in a long time) I remembered good things about it. Waking up way too early on Chrsitmas mornings, my dad's 4oth birthday party, playing Badmitton in the backyard with my sister April, the pet semetary where Nissa, Mittens, Dribble, Delilah, and Sky are buried, asking my sister Stephanie if I could sleep in her room because I was scared to sleep alone, the mornings I woke up to pancakes, mowing the lawn when my estranged Aunt Beth showed up walking across the yard, sitting on the blue shag carpet of my bedroom floor and writing story after story after story. In the sixth grade I walked down the hall when my dad got home from work and I told him I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. He smiled and said he was glad, and to remember that writing was hard work but that I could do it. I remember that he held a briefcase for a job he hated. I remember the exact spot in the hallway where I stood when I told him that, and where he stood when he smiled at me. I could mark x's on the floor.

After I finished cleaning I stood in the hallway, near the front door, and told the place goodbye. My voice echoed even though I said it quietly, because, you know, I was talking to a house and I felt a little silly. As I heard my good bye carry through the house I realized that it was empty for the first time in 26 years. I'd been living in it when I bought it from my parents. Then I stopped feeling silly about talking to an empty house, and went on to assure it that a good family was moving in and that they would take care of it. Then I thanked it for sheltering so many people that I love for such a long time.

And then I went to my new home.

Don't Bother Him With Names

Within his first week of school, Christopher's gotten a girlfriend but he doesn't know her name.
"It's 'A' something, I think" he told me.
"'A something?'" I asked. "You asked her to be your girlfriend today and you don't know what her name is?"
"No, I SAID I think it starts with an 'A,'" he reminded me, frustrated with my inability to recognize his efforts in the relationship.
"Honey, if you're gonna have a girlfriend you need to know her name. It's part of the deal."
"Ok, tomorrow I'll ask her."

I would have told him that it would be best not to say something like, "Hey girl I like, what's your name?" But they're in the 2nd grade, and communication seems to be a lot less complicated on this level.

Take, for example, how he asked her in the first place. A-something had asked him to be her friend on the first day of school, and Christopher said they had fun together. Then they played the next day too. He thought she was cute and wondered if she liked him, so on the third day he asked her about it. This was how it went according to Christopher:
Christopher: Hey, I was wondering if you have a crush on me.
A-something: No.
Christopher: Oh. You wanna be boyfriend and girlfriend anyway?
A-something: Ok.

And viola! Love!

Yesterday I asked him if he'd found out her name yet, and says that she told him but he forgot again. I wonder if she's noticed this. Does he just call her "girlfriend?" Or "you?" I would not put this past my son. If I ever meet her I'll tell her that I understand the frustation. Sometimes he forgets my name is "Mom." I'm just "M-something."

His sisters, whose names I have forgotten because this complex is heriditary, were appauled that he has a girlfriend in the second grade, and they, at 4th and 7th grades, do not have boyfriends.
"It's not fair," C-something said. "How come he has somebody and I don't?"
"Me too!" Something-that-ends-with-an-a agreed. "And it's only the frist week of school."
"Well, he asked her," I told them. "Have you guys asked anybody?"
"No," they sulked, hanging their poor, nameless heads.
"I don't think any of you are old enough to be having girlfriends and boyfriends anyway. There's certainly no rush."
"Christopher's DEFINITELY not old enough!" one of them declared.
"Yeah, but it's not like they're kissing or anything. They're just playing together...Christopher, you're NOT kissing, right?" I asked.
Christopher recoiled. "No!"
"Ok, well, good. See? They're just playing."

So for now, I guess, it's ok if he doesn't know who she is. When he proposes, though, it better not go something like this:

Christopher:"Would you be my wife?"
Girl: "Yes!"
Christopher: "Great! Then we'll be Mr. & Mrs. Christopher!"
Girl: "But my name is-"
Christopher: "The same as mine!"
Girl: "But I've been trying to tell you for years-"
Chrsitopher (whistfully): "The same as mine."

Fast update of worriedness

It looks like a U-Haul sneezed all over my new house. There are boxes, children and animals everywhere. The bus driver at Emma's new school dropped her off far from the house and she got lost. She eventually made it home. I don't have word on the other two yet, on how their first day of school went. Michelle has been wonderful with them today. I want to quit my job and just stay home with all of them. There's too much to be done with their new schools, getting them settled, getting the house together.

It's the next day. All three kids made it home. The animals are all contained within the house. My girlfriend, who is not accustomed to living with children, is fatally exhausted and possibly died in her sleep last night, but I don't know because I had to leave early this morning to get to work. The kids are back at school today. Their new schools. I'm pretty sure that they will all hate me for this change that I have forced upon them and will become serial killers.

That's all for now.