The Skaterboys and Momma Lame

Last week Christopher got a skateboard, and his mom ruined it by making him wear a helmet. What an insensitive bitch....oh wait, it was me. WELL! Look, I grew that kid, I saw to it that he had an intact, functional head and I would like to see it remain unspoiled until it comes such I time that I must let go and watch him do something brain-damaging like join the army or play football or get into World of Warcraft. But until that day, if he's going to attach himself to a board with wheels then he's going to wear a helmert.

Yeah, you might say, but then you took him to the skate park...What's wrong with the skate park? NOBODY wears a helmet, knee pads or elbow pads at the skatepark. When you went the other day you, Claire, Emma, and Christopher stood at the edge of the cement and watched 7 teenage boys rolling up and down ramps, leaping over picnic tables and ollying over things, and (you noticed) with no protective gear. In some cases not even socks. It was mortifying.

 Claire, mortified for different reasons, took one look at them, pointed to a tree in the park across the street and said, "I'm going to go read over there."
"Mom," Emma whined. She was wearing her rollerblades and, reluctantly, her helmet, elbow and kneepads. "Nobody else is wearing this."
"Well, they're supposed to," I told her and pointed to the sign on the wall behind us. "It's in the rules."
"MOM," Emma stressed in a "I can't believe you just pointed to the rules sign" sort of way.
"Em, go skate."
"But they're gonna think we're weird," said Christopher.
"Guys, I'll bet you they're not thinking of anyhting but their own stuff. Seriously, they're skater boys, they're not football players. Skater boys ARE weird."
"They are?" Christopher said.
"Honey, that kid is wearing a tubesock on his head."

It wasn't really a tubesock. But it was dirty white and so thin that it stuck up at the top like the tip of a skinny balloon that doesn't inflate all the way. "This park is for everyone, not just them. Go ahead, you'll be fine."
Timidly they rolled away from me under the awning and toward the cement slab where there were ramps, tables, steps that led nowhere, and a long gray metal pole that was low to the ground. Nobody used it, but I imagined it was there to give someone a head injury.

At first my kids just skated in circles around me. The older boys made them nervous, and honestly, I would have reacted the same way as Claire at her age, and just left. I wasn't a skater though, and neither is she. Emma and Christopher are. We don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood, and I'm not comfortable with them on the street, especially since Christopher is just learning. A skate park, by definition, seemed to be a good place for them to go.

The boys did leave them alone. In fact, they barely looked at them, but the threw nervous glances at me. Maybe they noticed that I pointed to the sign, and thought, "Shit! She's going to make us obey the sign!" Or maybe they thought, "Shit! Now I can't talk about my nuts." But they were wrong. I'm probably the last person in the world who would be offended by anyone talking about their his nuts - within reason. Talking about them in relation to me - no. Talking about them in general - yeah, that's fine, I don't care. I talk about my nuts in general and I don't even have any. Swearing and crude talk is fine as long as the talker isn't being a jerk. They must have gotten a feel for this because eventually when it became clear that I was not going to call their mothers for saying "Damn, I squashed my nuts!" they stopped looking at me funny and went back to skating and swearing. I didn't care, I wasn't their mother.

I was more focused on not running up to help my kids when they fell, which was a big deal for me. Christopher is going to have to squash his nuts if he's going to learn anything and I'm going to have to deal with that. After a while, when it appeared that the Skater Boys were not going to hang them from ramps by their wedgies, Christopher and Emma began skating all around the park, and even went up a few of the ramps. When they slipped and fell, I laughed. They weren't bad falls, and they were funny. You don't know how funny your kid looks until they roll up a ramp, panic, try to turn around, come to a complete stop, and then fall over.

When it was time to go, and Claire rejoined us she said, "How'd it go?"
Emma said, "We fell and Mom laughed at us."
"You were funny!" I said, and did an impression of of Emma flopping over.
Claire laughed until she remembered to be embarrassed by my behavior and abruptly stopped.
"So Mom," said Christopher, unbuckling his helmet. "Next time we come here, can we not wear this stuff?"
"No, you are wearing the gear. You are wearing the gear for the rest of your life."
"Mooom!" Emma and Christopher whined.
"It's true. Accept it."

They're still fighting me on it. But they're also still falling, so their arguments don't carry much weight. They never will, because even professionals who practice all the time still fall. They will still wear helmets and I will still laugh at them. That's the deal.

Bacchus and Christopher

A few nights ago, Chrsitopher's friend Bacchus slept over. His real name is something Biblical, so I decided to change it to something pagan for good measure. He and Christopher both go to the same school, which is a Christian school that, in the interest of privacy, I will call St. Zeus's Academy for Future Gods and Goddesses.  Bacchus is a small, skinny kid with black-framed glasses, and I swear I will marry this boy off to one of my daughters if I have any say in the matter. Not only is he incredibly smart and makes good grades, which I attribute to the power of his glasses, but when I picked up he and Christopher in aftercare, we had the following conversation:
"Hey, Bacchus," I said, strolling into the gym, which is where they keep the Future Gods and Goddesses of aftercare. "You ready to come to our house? Do you have all your stuff?"
"Yes. And I have the one thing that every sleep over needs..." he knelt in front of his school bag and reached inside. "Duct tape!" he said, brandishing the silver roll.
"Uh...what are we going to use that for?"
"I don't know. Just in case something comes up."

This enthralled me. What could come up that was duct tape worthy? A flat tire? A broken Wii remote? Thirst? I spent most of that evening asking Bacchus if we needed the duct tape.
"Bacchus, I'm parking the car. Do we need the duct tape?"
"No, Miss Genevieve."
"Hey Bacchus, I'm out of butter for the pancakes. Do we need duct tape?"
"No, Miss Genevieve. That would be gross."
"I suppose. What if I broke a plate? Could we use it then?"
"Yeah, I think so. Is there a broken plate?"
"No. Not yet. You're being too careful with it, look, it won't break that way. Don't set your plate on the table. Set it on the dog."
"I don't think she'd like that."
"Ooooh! Fine. Keep your duct tape, I don't need to see it in action."
"Christopher," he said to my son, who has had nine years to get used to me. "Is your mom always like this?"
"Yes," Christopher said.
"Ok. I like it," said Bacchus, pushing his glasses back.
That's how this kid talks. Monotone, even when he's excited, and especally when he's serious. Which is a lot.
Take for instance, our conversation about slang. He and I have a similar distaste for the term "brain fart."
"My nanny says it when she forgets something. She says 'uh oh, brain fart,' and she thinks it's funny. But I prefer to say 'I forgot' because it's not disgusting."
"Me too," I said. "And everyone says it. Even smart people who you wouldn't imagine saying such a crass word."
"Yeah! It's true! Everyone says it! Why do they do that?"
I said that I didn't know and we shook our heads at a world of brain gas that we didn't understand.
Sometimes Claire uses that term and she probably would have defended it if she'd been in the car, but the girls were at a freind's house for a sleep over, so it was just me and the boys.
"We're going to stop at Subway for dinner, guys," I told them. Then I remembered that I didn't know what this kid liked. The nanny had told me that he was allergic to shrimp, which left everything else open. But still, kids can be weird about food. Maybe just the thought of sandwiches made him wet his pants. "Bacchus, you ok with that?"
"Yeah, that's good."
"I just want a six-inch sandwich this time, Mom," said Christopher, who'd been knocking out foot longs lately. "I want to watch my portions."
"Are you on a diet?" Bacchus asked. "They say kids shouldn't diet, it's bad for them."
"No, I'm not on a diet. I just...well...when I get older and I have a girlfriend, when I go to the beach and I take off my shirt I want to show her that I have muscles."
"Dude," Bacchus said, leveling with him. "Girls don't care about a guy's molecular structure."
"Um...do you mean a muscular structure, Bacchus?"
"Oh, yes," he said.
"Because a girl's got to have some standards and most of them like molecules in a man."
"Of course."
During this conversation Christopher had begun convulsing with laughter, and then I felt bad about interrupting. Here were two nine year old boys having a serious conversation about looks, girls, and diets, and I'd interrupted to correct one of them. I should have been filming it.
Bacchus looked over at Christopher who was hanging loosely in his seat belt with his hands over his eyes. "Molecular structure!" he giggled.
"He's not going to stop is he?" assked Bacchus.
"No," I said. "Maybe now's a good time for duct tape."
Bacchus smiled. "Maybe so."

Then the two of them played computer games and talked until they fell asleep. I brought Bacchus home the next day and met with the nanny. He lives with his father, who's a surgeon and who is seldom home. But the nanny I've met a few times and I let her know that I think Bacchus is a great kid, and he's welcome over any time. Even if he didn't use the duct tape.

Roller Derby and Love's Mixed Messages

Tonight me and the kids and I went to Roller Derby. In case you don't know what that is, it looks like this:


Actually, that looks very polite. Imagine those three women shoving each other with some "bam!" and "pow!" signs around them, like in Batman fight scenes, and that's closer to what it's like.

This goes against the skating etiquette that I have taught my kids, where you DON'T shove into people and make them fall over. But in a ring with loud music, whistles blowing, and women in fishnet stockings, it's ok. This is just one small example of the mixed messages of my parenting.

Take, for instance, our conversation about love and marriage earlier today. We were driving passed the church where a bride and groom were walking briskly out of the fromt door towards the white Royals Royce that was waiting for them.
I said, "Awe, look guys, it's a wedding!"
They looked at where I was pointing and made impressed noises.
"Congratulations!" I yelled, as if they could hear me.
"Congratulations! Good luck!" the kids yelled, and we all waved.
"Mom," Emma asked me a minute later. "Were you happy on your wedding day?"
Ah. They like to do this, ask me questions about my wedding day and marriage to their father. The best I can do is answer them honestly, which I did.
"Yeah, I was," I told her. "And we were married in that church."
"The one we just passed?" Claire asked.
"Yep."
"And you really were happy?" she asked.
"Yes. I really, really was. It was a great day."
In the silence that followed there was another question floating around that I'm glad they didn't ask. "If you were so happy, why didn't it last?"
"I wanna get married," Emma sighed. "And I want my husband to have freckles."
"That would be cute," I said.
"On his face," Emma added.
"Well, yes," I said.
"And he'll have red hair and he'll wear glasses."
"Do you have someone in particular in mind? That's specific."
She ignored my observation and continued, "And we'll see each other for six months and then he'll ask me to marry him."
"Hold up," I said. "You should date him for atleast a year."
"But YOU got engaged in less time than that," Claire said.
"Uh....yeah. And...."
"And Grandma and Grandpa got engaged after just a few weeks."
"Uhhhhh...........yeah."
"They're still together."
"Yes, well, even they would tell you that it's best to get to know someone first."

Sometimes I find myself tripping over my own relationship advice because most of my relationships have been like this:


But I know that they say it's best to take things slow and I've never done that. Four of my closest friends who have been married to the same people for over ten years also dated those same people for atleast three years before that. So that's the advice I gave the kids.

But then I thought about something else.  A cousin of mine dated the same guy for ten years, then married him and they got divorced after two years. Then someone I know who was in a 29 year marriage which had started off sensibly, they had dated for a couple of years, got jobs, bought a house, had a kid and STILL got divorced. On the other hand, a friend of mine had a one night stand with a guy and she's been in a monogamous relationship with him for over twenty years. Another dude I know had an affair with a married woman. That was 14 years ago. They've been together the whole time and now they're married. Then I remembered another affair that turned out that way, one which EVERYONE was sure would never last because of how they'd started off.

"You know what," I said told the kids after thinking about all of this. "You just never know. I still think it's a good idea to get to know somebody for at least a year but I'd be lying if I told you that I know any secrets about all of this stuff. Just pick somebody who's good to you, and be good to them too. That's all I got. Let's go to Derby."

And we did. And it was like this:



Roller Derby is as risky as love, but there are nachos and men dressed as Elvis who throw candy into the stands.  Who knows maybe that's the secret to happy relationships that no one has shared with me - nachos and Elvis. Those uppity bastards and their secrets about love.

The Third Yell is the Breaking Point

I got up at 4:00...and so did all three children. I don't understand how this happens so I won't speculate, but it really throws off my writing groove. So I'll write what I can during the serious, nerve-busting, frantic time crunch that exists between the hours of When The Kids Wake Up - 6:15. Because of the commute, that's what time we have to leave to get to work and school on time.

The morning began with a cry from a kid in the shower, "MOOOOOOOOOOOM! There's no water pressure! Did somebody flush??"
"No," I muttered, staggering out of my bedroom.
But I didn't mutter loud enough. She two seconds later, "MOOOOOOOOOOO@#@#@%#@$%^??!!!OOOOMMMMMMM!!! THIS IS TERRIBLE! THERE'S NO WATER PRESSURE!"
"I know, honey. I know it's a pain." I say outside the bathroom door. Still didn't hear me.
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!"
I slap the door. "I HEAR YOU! DEAL WITH IT!"
"BUT MOM!"
'BUT WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT? I'M NOT A PLUMBER! SUCK IT UP!"

See how things turn around like that? I'm a rational, sympathetic person until the third yell. That seems to be my breaking point. The whole last part of that conversation is how I would imagine my landlord and I would speak to each other if she answered her phone.

We hate this house. The water pressure is moody, the dishwasher broke and the landlord won't respond to my phone calls or texts about it, and some of the light fixtures work and some of them don't, as if the house has had a stroke. We can not wait until our lease is up. Every time I take a shower and the shower head dribbles a tiny stream of water as if it's weeping over it's patheticness on top of my head, I begin to plot my escape. I imagine a large U-Haul truck pulling into the driveway with the same fantastical pleasure as if it was a stretch limousine with a bouquet of flowers waiting for me on the backseat. Ahhh...moving.  It'll be nice when I'm my own landlord again, but honestly I can put up with having a lousy landlord again if it means that I don't have to commute for over two hours a day anymore.

It is now 5:45 and I need to go stand under the shower head so that it can drool like a mental patient onto my hair.

How to Screw Up Laundry in 13 Easy Steps

I'm not sure how you do the laundry, but this is what I do:
1) Wear an outfit that I don't like to work.
2) Change into shorts and a T-shirt when I get home and throw the work clothes on my closet floor.
3) Four hours later, take off T-shirt and shorts and throw them on top of the work clothes on the floor.
4) Repeat process for 8 days.
5) Take a snow shovel and heap the laundry from my closet into the laundry area in the pantry.
6) Throw the snow shovel on the couch and get a forklift to gather the dirty clothes out of the kids' rooms.
7) Do 126 loads of laundry.
8) Pile clean clothes on the couch, and in the process bury the snow shovel, the remote control, my cell phone, car keys, the dog, my son's homework, and an unfinished burrito.
9) Complain that I can't find anything.
10) Begin to sit on the clean clothes pile because I haven't been able to bribe the kids into picking them up and putting them where they belong.
11) Begin picking through the pile whenever I need a clean outfit, most of which has ended up on the floor.
12) Repeat until the pile is gone.
13) Return to step one.

I am possibly the only person in southern Louisiana with a snow shovel and that's because everyone else can get away with a laundry basket, but I need a heavy tool with a wide scoop at the end. And really, I'm not sure where all of these clothes are coming from. I know what we wear! I see us every day! But tonight I came across an Emma-sized purple shirt that I'd never seen before.
"Emma," I said, "is this yours?"
"Oh yeah." She smiled, took it and dropped it to the floor. Before I could tell her to pick it up the rabbit hopped to it, grabbed it with her teeth and scurried off to make a nest. On the couch.
But where had it come from? Emma couldn't remember. How does this happen?
I know that when I was a teenager, the opposite was happening - I was constantly losing clothes and didn't know why until I found out that my middle sisters' friends were stealing my coolest band T-shirts. I couldn't blame them, but I was still pissed.
"Julie," I said, confronting one of them. "Where's my Soundgarden t-shirt?"
"Oh God that was months ago. I wore it home and then Jessica borrowed it, I think. Sorry."
"Who's Jessica?"
"I don't remember."
I don't know where these girls are now, but I hope that rabbits are making nests out of their pajamas.

Anyway, this morning, as the children and I picked through the clothes we needed off of the piles of clothes throughout the house, I made a declaration.
"Tonight!" I said. "We'repicking all of this up. No TV! No computer until it's done! Does everybody understand?"
It was 6:00 in the morning and they all made the same reply that went something like "Beeeehhlhhhhhaaaahhhhh...." like zombies pillaging a laundromat in slow motion.

And tonight when we got home, I stuck to that. I changed out of my work clothes, WHICH I PUT IN THE WASHING MACHINE (thank you, thank you, I know, you're too kind to acknowledge my accomplishment), I cooked dinner, and after the kids finished their homework, we spent the next hour organizing the clothes into piles and then putting them away.

I don't know if we'll stick to this. Not cleaning for weeks and then sudden bursts of cleaning are more my speed than a consistent load of laundry which we all pick up for five minutes a day. I'm going to try, but I'm holding on to my snow shovel just in case. It's made a comfortable groove in the couch and I don't think I could get rid of it if I wanted to.

Dead Things on the Seawall

Yesterday the kids and I went to the Lakefront for the first time since Hurricane Isaac hit. I wasn't sure we'd be able to drive all the way down there, really. The last I'd heard the lake had topped the seawall and flooded the surrounding streets. But the main street had been cleared and we were able to park by the seawall, and survey the damage.

Emma pulled on her Rollerblades and skated out of the car, and Christopher, Claire, and a friend of hers ran for the seawall and jumped on top of it to stare out into the lake.  You wouldn't think that much had happened to look at it. The sun glittered on the water, there were only wisps of clouds and besides a few tiny dead crabs on the path by the seawall, there wasn't any other sign that a hurricane had come and gone.

But as we walked on, we found other things. Like the bar across the street that was being gutted. The flooring and walls had been ripped out and were piled outside, and there was that sickening mold smell that will forever remind me of the way the city smelled in the months after Hurricane Katrina.  I swear it smelled worse than the dead alligator we found by the seawall. A full grown, I am not kidding you, alligator, washed up next to an empty gas can, and piles of brown weeds and sticks. Its jaw was open, looking ready to bite, except that it was dead, and ash pale.  Close to that we found a dead nutria rat, a small gar fish, more crabs and an otter.

"I didn't know we had otters," Emma said.
"Neither did I," I told her.
"I don't like all these dead things."
"Me neither. Could be worse though."

Could be people, I thought, but didn't want to depress her further by saying it. Sometimes I wonder, when I hesitate to say the dead, dark thoughts, if they're already in my childrens' minds. I wondered if she had realized that just seven years ago, in the aftermath of a hurricane there were people found just like the alligator, washed up with trash, and stumbled upon by other people surveying the damage. But seven years ago, she was four years old and in the safety of a neighbourhood that had not been flooded. Inconvenienced yes, but no one had died. So most likely, that thought, the thought of how it could be worse, was not in her head, and I hoped that she would grow to be a very lucky woman and she would never have to consider it.

We didn't stay long. It was blazing hot, making all of the dead things smell worse, and since the water park by our favorite beach was closed, I wanted to get home and hold the garden hose over my head.  Which I did, damn thankful for the uncontaminated water running through my hair, over my blazing feet, and in my stomach when I drank straight from the hose.

I hope it's back to normal soon. The lake's beach in Fontainebleau State Park has become our stomping grounds. We call it "our beach" and "our lake" as if it formed thousands of years ago just for us, and these hurricanes blowing through to disrupt our water time just will not do.

There are Only 5 Top 40 Songs

The kids take the morning commute with me now that they've switched schools, as we prepare to move yet again. I know, we just moved at the beginning of the year, but this is a really really REALLY good change. I'm not sure there's a limit to how much I can use the term "really" as is applies to the happiness of this situation. All four of us are happy about it at the same time, and it's a miracle when we all share that attitude about any one thing.

Like the radio. We do not share the same attitude in terms of what we should listen to during the hour that it takes to get to work and school and the hour back. The problem is I loooooooooooooooooove music, so I'm not just picky about it - a song that I don't like actually hurts me inside. And sometimes I don't even know why. It's not like "Whistle Baby" is a terrible song. The whistling is quite nice. And let's set aside the fact that it's obvioulsy about oral sex and I just don't feel right listening to it with my kids. There's something about the sound of it that I can't put my finger on that's intolerable, and if it plays for more than five seconds, my immune system begins to shut down.

So Katy Perry's "Wide Awake," doesn't just bother me. My kidneys fail whenever it plays, and it plays 70 times every five minutes. This is nothing against Katy herself. I love the song "Hot and Cold." But if I have to listen to "Wide Awake" one more time, I'm going to have to go on dialysis.

It's the same with every song by Maroon 5. When "Payphone" plays, this is what happens:
(Radio plays) I'm at a payphone trying to call home/All of my change I spent on you
Claire: Mom, are you ok?
Me (left eye beginning to twitch, line of drool falling): Yes.
(Radio plays further) Where have the times gone?/Baby, it's all wrong, where are the plans we made for two?
Me: Kids (my spleen ruptures) Can we change it?
Christopher and Emma: No! We love this song!
(Radio- the rap part in the middle of the song of the song begins, and my frontal lobe shuts down) You can tell it I'm ballin'/Swish, what a shame could have got picked/Had a really good game but you missed your last shot/So you talk about who you see at the top/Or what you could've saw/But sad to say it's over for/Phantom pulled up valet open doors/Wiz like go away, got what you was looking for/Now ask me who they want/So you can go and take that little piece of shit with you
Me: (reaching for the radio buttons with trembling hands) Must...change...station...need antedote...
All three kids: NOOOOOOOO! We love this song!
(I change it, and "Revolution" by The Beatles is playing. My brain stops leaking from my ears)
All three kids: WHYYYYYYY? Why did you change it?!
Me: Because we only left the house two minutes ago and we've already heard it 87 times.

So we have a deal now - we can only hear each song we listen to once a day. So if Adele's "Fire to the Rain" plays once, that's it. This song is bearable to me, so maybe it's not a good example. If we hear "Starships" by Nicki Minaj once, then we don't listen to it again until it comes on the next day. This is a great comfort to me while my uterus goes mad and begins attacking my liver, because the sound of Nicki Minaj turns my internal organs against each other. I think, "After this once, it's all over."

Of course, I could just assume tyrannical control over the radio. It is my right as a parent. But I also undsertsand that just because a certain song is pleasing to me, that doesn't mean that everyone else is going to like it. For instance, when I mentioned The Bealtes earlier, your white bloods cells might have exploded. My kids, though they don't have the same taste in music as I do, have the same physical repulsion to music they don't like. Sometimes they like it when I play The Black Keys, they love The Pack A.D., and luckily for their sakes they love The Beatles. But when I'm feeling my roots and I play Metallica for old time's sake?
"MOOOOOOOOOM! Turn it off! AHH! It burns! It burns!"
The other day Emma had a frank moment with me and she said, "I'm sorry, Mom, I just don't like heavy metal. I'm sorry." Dude, she was genuinely sorry. I told her it was ok, she doesn't have to like everything I like.

And this, in essence, is why we take turns. They keep me aware of Top 40 music and I teach them about music that's actually good. Win - win. Actually, I'm kidding, there's some Top 40 stuff I like. But there's some other stuff that's out there, like The Pack A.D. that not enough people know about, so I feel that I'm giving back to the world by raising kids who know about an indie Canadian chick bluesy/rockity/punkity band. Plus, I've looked at the Top 40 list for this week, and either I've heard a lot of it and don't know the names, or New Orleans radio stations only pick five of those songs and play them in a loop. Like, who the hell is Rita Ora? I don't know, but she's got the number 1 song for the week. I've probably heard it 786 times, but my ears fell from my head every time it was played and I was too busy screwing them back on to pay attention. 

I would say it's because I'm getting old, but I've always had this attitude towards pop, even at 13. The summer before I turned 13, the number one song was "Hold onto the Nights" by Richard Marx. I was so physically repulsed by that song I am surprised it did not stunt my growth. By who knows. I'm six feet, but if they hadn't played that song 11,985 times a day, maybe I'd be 6'5". This makes sense. Now that I'm older, bad music is shrinking me. The next time I have to hear Demi Lovato's "Give Your Heart a Break" I'll be 5'3".

Now I'm off to listen to The Pack AD mend myself. And since I'm plugging them anyway, here is my favorite video from them, called Haunt You.

It's Better Not to Know About the Corn

So, as we all know, the best thing to do with your kids if they're sick is to take them to the doctor, and the best thing to do before that, if you've got some time to kill is to go to the petstore and get freaked out about what's in dogfood.

I did this rather successfully the other day. I went to my favorite pet supply store, Jefferson Feed, and said to the lady behind the counter, "My dog is developing a sensitive stomach. The vet doesn't see anything wrong with her, and I'm wondering if it's her food."
"Ah," she said. "You need to talk to the dogfood specialist."
This took me aback. There is a dogfood specialist, like a person who specializes in dog FOOD? A person who just hangs around the dog food aisle and waits to share knowledge?
AND THERE WAS! Hanging around the dogfood aisle was this guy! Who specializes in dog food! And he was waiting to share knowledge! Which he did. And now I kind of wish he hadn't.

"What are you feeding her right now?" he asked.
"(Insert name of generic dogfood)"I said
He smiled. "Let's take a look at the ingredients in that, shall we?"

The first ingredient was corn, the nutritional benefits of which, for a dog, are debatable. He said it's basically cheap filler. I think the two ingredients that really got me though were the second ingredient "chicken by-product meal" and the fifith ingredient "animal fat."  He explained that chicken by-product meal is anything that isn't deemed fit for human consumption - beaks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and possibly that red thingy on top of a chicken's head. "Animal fat" could come from the fat of any animal from anywhere. This could be slaughterhouse waste, or even restuarant grease.

I imagined my dog eating a bowl full of chicken beaks with corn and McDonald's grease dressing.

I gulped. "Um...what do you recommend?"

He brought me over to another aisle where there were bags of dogfood, with flowers and chunks of meat floating around on them. He suggested one that I now can not tell you the name of, because I don't remember, but I can tell you that the first ingredient was lamb, which is processed in such a way that he garunteed me that my dog will not be eating the lamb's hooves or wool, but actual lamb meat. It has 15 ingredients in it instead of 50 and none of them include corn, or corn by-product, or the vegetable-formerly-known-as-corn.

Miraculously, it worked. Lily is happy and her tummy is no longer upset. Mine is, though, when I think about eating chicken feet, and knowing that it's probably a good idea to look at all the labels on processed food, both for humans and beloved beasts alike. Health awareness and carefully reading labels! No! It upsets my stomach!

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.

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.