May 19, 2004 | What do I do all day?

Last night I noted that I needed to help a friend after the kids were in bed. By “help a friend” I of course meant that my friend Eileen is too chicken to color her own hair, and in the logic that only a best friend can have, figured it was somehow safer to come over to my house, ply me with alcohol, and let me do it. I am pleased to report that we did indeed wash that grey right outta her hair and it was a fairly early night. I didn’t even dye much of her face.

However, lightweight that I am, it seemed somehow wrong to try to sit down and do my reading for my church study group after an evening fraternizing with Mike (purveyor of fine hard lemonades; in this case, cranberry flavor). So, I turned in early and actually set my alarm, something I rarely do as I own two loud, unprogrammable alarm children already.

I did it. Got up before the smaller lifeforms, did some reading, hopped in the shower. Enter Waldo. Waldo and I have been facing off for a couple of days, now. I haven’t quite worked up the nerve to do something about him, and he hasn’t had the decency to disappear.

Waldo is a humongous spider. I don’t tend to be too squeamish about bugs and other creatures. But I have my limits. Although I firmly believe in leaving spiders be to eat the other, more disgusting insects who have rudely invaded my home, Waldo is too big to be a common house spider. He’s too big to ignore. And it appears that he has taken up residence in my bathroom.

Upon entering the bathroom Waldo was nowhere to be seen, even when I did an inspection of the shower stall. So I went along my merry way, got the water started, hopped in and started getting my hair wet. Then we came eye-to-uh… hairy belly. (Anyone who thinks the hairy belly is mine needs to leave now.) Waldo had set up shop between my shower curtain and the transparent liner, and I found myself staring at him through the blue-tinted plastic. I think he was laughing at me.

A quick mental calculation assured me that there was no way I was going to be otherwise confronted with him or have to touch him or anything, so I went about my business. I washed my hair. I started to shave my legs. I glanced over and Waldo was… gone.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to shave your legs, wash, and condition your hair with an industrial sized bottle of Pantene clutched in one hand, ready to strike?

He’s still MIA. But I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be back. It’s the where of it all that’s gonna give me nightmares.

May 18, 2004 | What do I do all day?

Honestly, I’m a glass-is-half-empty kind of person. I don’t want to be. I’m trying to change. For me it’s something that requires real effort, and of course I suspect that for others it comes easily and that only contributes to my frustration.

It’s evening, I have plans to help a friend with something tonight after the kids are in bed, and I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. Today I didn’t:

• pay the bills…
• balance my checkbook…
• call the lawnmower repair guy…
• write the letter I need to write to get my summer camp money refunded…
• fold the @&%#! laundry…
• receive my child support payment (3 days late, now)…
• remember to remind the Ex about the child support payment…
• manage to order that fan off of Amazon before it went out of stock…
• exercise…
• do my reading assignment for my small group study tomorrow…
• clean the crap out of the car that I keep meaning to clean.

That’s my glass, half-empty. But this is the New Me. No more woulda-coulda-shouldas for this girl, no sirree bob! But ya know, the New Me is in many ways remarkably like the Old Me (who wasn’t, in my humble opinion, such a bad sort; just a little more neurotic than necessary). Here’s the only way I know to make my glass half-full. Today I didn’t:

• swear when I took the bills out of the mailbox…
• spend any money…
• forget to shower…
• bite the Ex’s head off about the child support…
• so much as secretly fantasize about something large and heavy falling on the Ex…
• walk into anything…
• watch any TV…
• run the car into anything…
• harm either child, even when said children tracked mud through the house after I’d just asked them to take their shoes off…
• harm the child who came over for a playdate and peed all over my freshly cleaned bathroom…
• eat anything that was not more or less life-sustaining and appropriately caloric.

This is progress, right?

May 17, 2004 | I'm dating the television

I have a confession to make. I have been watching The Swan on a regular basis. Smack me. Hard. Please. I watched it tonight. I have no valid excuse, other than that my choices were to sit on my couch and watch that or actually haul my butt upstairs and fold laundry. I’m not out of underwear yet so you can see that this was really no choice at all. (There may have been more choices earlier in the evening, but after the post-bedtime hour of “get back in bed,” “if I have to come up there again someone had better be either on fire or bleeding,” “could we please have this crisis about your feet in the morning?” my brain had narrowed the field.) (Yes, a foot crisis. Don’t ask.)

So have you seen this abomination of a program? “Ugly” women are selected for complete, radical makeovers and half of them are then selected to compete in a pageant after their transformations, with one winner ultimately being crowned “The Swan.” I think that if there were truth in programming, they’d crown this woman “The Barbie.” I think every contestant, after the unveiling, should have to imitate the little segment of Tour Guide Barbie telling everyone good-bye during the credits at the end of Toy Story 2. (”Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, so long, good-bye!”) So far, every woman I’ve seen has received breast implants (except one, who had a reduction down to a D cup), and all have had hair extensions and basically identical Barbie hairstyles at the end. Spooky.

Oh, don’t worry, enlightened women! This isn’t about physical beauty only. No no no. You see, part of the team of Swan miracle workers is a therapist. After your gazillion surgeries, in addition to spending 2 hours a day at the gym with your personal trainer, you get to go to therapy to work out your issues and become beautiful on the inside as well. Hurray! What do you suppose they talk about during therapy?

Ugly Duckling: “I’ve always felt so ugly and like an outsider… I just don’t know….”

Therapist: “Of course you did, but now get a load of those knockers! Plus they sucked all the fat off your ass and injected it into your lips. Trust me, your troubles are over.”

Tonight’s episode included a contestant who was a mother to three and stick skinny (a major achievement in my book). In addition to a tummy tuck–which I didn’t think she needed, being so thin, but okay, there was some preggo-skin there–she was placed on a 1700 calorie/day diet as part of her “rehab.” Lemme tell ya, I nearly choked on my ice cream.

And we women wonder why we never feel comfortable in our own skins. Every brain cell in my head enters a hypnotic trance when The Swan comes on and then unites with the others, Borg-style, to send a single message: I’m fat. (Let the record show that I’m a size 4. What’s wrong with this picture?)

One the one hand, I’m horrified, outraged, disgusted. On the other, I’m thinking damn they got all that for free? Bitches. Maybe they’ll decide on a mini-version… maybe call it the Chesire Cat pageant, where they only do the dental work… and then I could sign up and get really white teeth (which is about the only procedure I’ve seen on The Swan which I’d be willing to undergo)?

I wish I’d folded the laundry….

Offspring: ecstasy and agony

For a Monday morning, today was fabulous. I don’t know what I did to deserve it or what horrors lay in wait for later today or tomorrow, but I’ll take it.

Monday morning is Back To School, and Monday morning is often also Battle of the Cranky Tired Ones. If the Monkey (my 4-year-old son) is overtired, he gets up at the crack of dawn (”crack of darn” as he has aptly named it), comes down to my room, and is as unpleasant as possible until I get out of bed and run away to the relative seclusion of the shower. If the Chickadee (my 6-year-old daughter) is overtired, she just doesn’t get up. (I think she’s smarter than he is. Don’t tell.) At some point I have to drag her skinny butt out of bed to get ready for school, and let’s just say she isn’t a morning person.

Today, well, I think maybe they didn’t know it was Monday. The Monkey was kind enough to sleep until 7:00–positively, sinfully late for ’round here–and bounded his way into my bed in rare form. He didn’t even smell bad! (Still in nighttime pullups; and yes, I think he’ll be headed to college in them.) First we had to play with his stuffed puppies for a while, which I actually don’t mind when he’s in a good mood. (When he’s in a bad mood, I invariably make one of the puppies do or say something unacceptable and then he screams at me.) Then he got all snuggly and cuddly and started talking about his upcoming trip to Grammie’s and how much he’s going to miss me when he’s gone.

“You’re gonna hafta call me,” he informed me, in all seriousness.

“I am? What should I call you? Monkeypants? Monkeypants!” Now let me tell you… you may not find me amusing, but in fact, I am just about the most hilarious person on the planet. At least the Monkey believes I am, and I care more about his opinion than yours. This little “misunderstanding” on my part caused him to lose all composure. He laughed so hard I was extremely grateful he was wearing a pull-up. He fell over. He tried to explain to me what he meant, inbetween giggles and gasps. I put on a contemplative expression and nodded at everything he said and responded to every attempt to clarify with, “Okay… MONKEYPANTS!” And I thought I was easily amused. After he stopped falling over so much I of course started just pushing him over at odd intervals for the fun of it. (Point to ponder: I do not allow jumping on the bed, but I am perfectly okay with knocking my children flat to the mattress for my own amusement. Hmmmmm.)

After a while we settled down, and who should come bounding along but the Chickadee. She was awake (obviously) and cheery, which was nice even if a little unsettling. The Monkey recounted the hilarity of how silly Mama is that she doesn’t know what it means to call someone when they’re away, which the Chickadee graciously responded to with giggles and compliments to her brother for trying to set me straight (rather than her new favorite I’m-a-cool-kindergartener-and-you’re-a-small-creature little-brother-soul-crushing response of “So what? You’re boring”). Then, of course, I had to knock her down on the bed for a while, because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.

They dressed. They brushed teeth. I brushed their hair. They ate breakfast. I packed lunches. I announced that anyone who said I was the best Mama in the world would get a rice krispy treat in their lunchbox, and they both did (the Monkey immediately and whole-heartedly, the Chickadee after several other declarations such as “You’re the best shower curtain in the world”… I have no idea where she learned to be such a smartass), and they might have meant it. No one cried. There was no bickering. No one spilled their milk. They put their dishes in the sink without me asking. They played together nicely in the car. We arrived at school early.

Is it a full moon?

May 16, 2004 | What do I do all day?

Ooooooh noooooooo. The kids will be home from Daddy’s in about an hour. They will probably be unfed, definitely be wound up, and I haven’t gotten enough done in their absence. I have this fantasy, you see, that some weekend they will leave for Daddy’s and when they return I will have the house In Order.

Don’t ask me to define it. I told you it’s a fantasy. I can only verbalize parts of it: The refrigerator and pantry would be freshly stocked (I forgot to get to the store this weekend), the house would be clean for a change (I don’t think I’m in line for a CFS bust or anything, but it could be cleaner around here), the laundry would be put away (it’s still in the basket, albeit clean), and I would have completed all the tasks on my to-do list (ha!). Plus… I would feel refreshed and ready to start the week. I’m beginning to suspect that “refreshed” is an unattainable state for single moms.

On the up side: we went to the girls’ tea, and my daughter won the hat decorating contest, which put her over the moon. I did get a fair amount of gardening done. And last night I attended an interfaith benefit concert with some friends, plus we had–please allow me a moment of indulgence in a New England expression of reverence–a wicked thunderstorm that lasted several hours. In fact, there was a huge flash and crash and the lights went out while one of the performers was singing “I hear the rolling thunder” in How Great Thou Art. I defy anyone to say God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

But Sunday nights are hard. Sunday nights–especially the ones where the kids have just come back and I’ve finally wrestled them into bed–find me fighting those woulda-coulda-shouldas. Sunday nights are lonely. Sunday nights mean it’s almost time to get up Monday morning and face another week.

Does anyone have easy Sunday nights?

It’s okay. I’m gonna go finish up a few things and in a little while I’ll be listening to one of the many battles of the Chickadee vs. the Monkey while they both talk over the other, trying to tell me all about their weekend. It’s way too brief, but the snuggling on Sunday night is the absolute best, bar none. Even though I’m fully aware that our offspring appear adorable to us so that we won’t eat them, I fall for it every time. Long live the sticky, giggly kiss!

May 15, 2004 | At least he pays child support

If you get divorced in New Hampshire and you have children under the age of 18, you are required by the state to take a seminar in co-parenting before they will sign off on your divorce. This is a fabulous class filled with wise tidbits about why you shouldn’t call your ex an asshole in front of your kids, and they show little video snippets of “what not to do” wherein actors guild rejects scream at each other while little Johnny sits on the step and cries.

I was awarded primary custody of our two children, and my ex–oops, I mean, my co-parent (positive lingo helps the process, dontchaknow)–has very generous visitation. For any faults he may have, he does love the kids more than life itself, and always wants to maximize his time with them (which is usually a good thing).

This weekend the children are at Daddy’s, but it just so happens that our church is having a girls’ tea this morning. I carefully broached the subject with the ex weeks ago, offering him extra time at another point in exchange for “borrowing” our daughter for a few hours so that we could participate in the tea at church. At 6, this little girl still pretty much lives for any mommy-daughter stuff, and as she’s had a very rough time of it with the divorce (6 going on 16, this one) I thought it important that we go. The ex agreed.

Well, I’m out at a friend’s house last night (I do not socialize on the evenings/weekends when I have the kids unless it’s a family thing, so this is a rare treat), having a good time, when my cell phone rings from my ex at nearly 10:00. I answer the phone with great trepidation and ask if one of the children is sick. No, he says, they’re not sick. But they won’t go to sleep. (Cue overblown “peace-shattering global event” music here.) I bit my tongue, tried not to laugh, and asked him what exactly he wanted me to do about that.

“Well,” he says, “I just wanted to let you know that I just said if she doesn’t go to sleep in the next five minutes, she’s not going to be allowed to go to the tea tomorrow.” Oh, my. What is wrong with this statement? Let me count the ways:

• Our daughter had been threatened with a huge consequence, while our son was “just having trouble settling down.”
• Our daughter has a slight cold and even the ex admitted that perhaps that was part of the problem.
• She is acting up for her father so the punishment is to be less time with her mother.

(I’m not even going to touch the fact that I parent these kids 24/7 without calling him to whine about it, and I certainly wouldn’t be calling anyone on their cell phone at 10:00 at night on a rare free evening unless there was blood or fire involved….)

So, what did I do? I was calm. I suggested he give her some cold medicine. I asked him to call me in the morning to let me know how it all worked out.

This morning I took a deep breath and informed him that he is not to threaten my time with the children in response to misbehavior with him, that he’ll need to find another way to deal with it and if I ever did such a thing (”You kids better knock it off or you’re not going to Daddy’s!”) he’d probably haul me back into court, and that I was very disappointed with how he chose to handle this. Like the gentleman he is, he responded with… complete silence. When pressed with “Do you disagree?” he said that no, he didn’t. He didn’t apologize. (Huge surprise, that.)

We’re going to the tea, by the way.

Okay, I will need to continue dealing with this until the youngest graduates from college… so that’s only… 18 more years… ooooohhhhhh yeah… I think I need to go outside and dig in the dirt for a while… maybe bury myself completely….

May 14, 2004 | What do I do all day?

Yesterday I mowed the lawn and got my flower beds prepped. Today I got my annuals planted. The frenetic I-must-accomplish-something-tangible drive that I experience these days demands that the outside of the house look good. When I was still married, I didn’t care as much. I mean, I cared, but what didn’t get done didn’t get done. Now I’m paranoid; I’m convinced that if the grass gets too high or my flower beds remain neglected for too long, the entire neighborhood will be gossiping about how I just can’t keep it together without a man. How pitiful is that?

It’s even sillier when you consider that where I live, you’re lucky if you know your neighbors’ names. Winter lasts… oh… about 8 months of the year, here. So folks aren’t out and about all that much except in the summer, and even then a lot of people kind of stay to themselves. Given how few people I actually know in this neighborhood, surmising that my landscaping is even a blip on the radar is probably the height of narcissism.

Anyway. Back to my flowers. I planted. I mulched. I watered. I repositioned the resin turtle band figurines which my children picked out last year because all those huge flowers weren’t enough decoration, apparently. I got all dirty and sweaty and smelly after a while, which was of course when the oil delivery guy and the cute UPS guy showed up. Oh well. When it was all done I came inside and cleaned up and gave myself a little mental pat on the back for Getting Something Done (the main goal of my life these days).

While I was out there working in the dirt, I felt very calm and happy and zen-like. Well, inbetween swatting at bugs, I did. My mind emptied… I thought mostly about the task(s) at hand… the feeling of sinking my hands into the cold soil on such a warm day… wondering what the heck that flowering tree at the front of my lot is that smells so good… methodically picking out rocks for one pile and carefully returning earthworms to the soil in an undisturbed corner…. I wasn’t inside for two minutes before I started obsessing over every to-do list and annoying bit of minutiae I need to attend to. I don’t get it. What is it about having dirt imbedded under your fingernails and mosquitoes in your hair that makes you more mellow? Do you suppose that if I just stopped showering I could maximize these effects?

May 13, 2004 | About

My friend Marcey came to this startling revelation the other day while we were discussing the fact that although we hold six university degrees between the two of us, neither of us has any practical household skills (plumbing, electrical, etc.). Marcey, however, is gainfully employed… whereas I have fallen into that large crack in the economy reserved for Imperfect Engineers. There are many things that can render an engineer imperfect in today’s market; in my case, I stepped off onto the “Mommy Track” and wiping noses and changing diapers full-time for several years has apparently dragged down my IQ by 40 points or more. At least this is what I surmise from my complete and utter failure to solicit any interest in my resume.

But hey; I’m flexible. I’m willing to train. I’m open to doing something else. I’ve applied for a broad range of positions, and the bottom line is always one of two: 1) You’ve been out of the field too long for us to believe you still know how to be productive in a way that doesn’t result in more human beings or 2) You are overqualified for this crappy job and even though you are a single parent with a mortgage payment and would happily give even this job your all, we don’t want to talk to you because there are things on your resume that we don’t even understand, therefore it would be dangerous to let you work here.

I’m sure my parents are very pleased that the thousands of dollars they spent on my education have brought me to this point. I know I am.

I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last year wallowing about my career plight (among other things). But that’s over now. (Probably. Maybe. Well, this week, for sure.) I’m working on a whole new strategy to get me in a more forward-thinking place, as I’m often guilty of the woulda-coulda-shouldas. This blog is part of it; perhaps it will give me some accountability I need to keep from slipping back into old (bad) habits.

So as regards the career plans: Summer Vacation. School is out in less than a month and the kids and I are taking the Summer off. Why should they be the only ones who get vacation?? I need a break from surfing Monster for hours, and wracking my brain to compose enticing-yet-witty-yet-serious cover letters for jobs I either will never get or don’t really want. I need a break from trying to figure out what I want and need out of life aside from being a mom and how I can make that happen while paying a daycare bill that exceeds my mortage payment.

And let’s face it… the world kinda blew up for me and the kids this last year. I am ashamed to admit that I have sarcastically referred to my ex as “Fun Daddy” so often that my youngest actually calls him that, now. (Oops.) I want a shot at being Fun Mama. I want to build sandcastles and go on nature walks and swing on the swings and not have to race to school in the morning, not be distracted and stressed out and constantly trying to plan for that job that might show up but never does. Sure, I’m going to have to figure it out eventually… but not this Summer. This Summer, I am going to play with my kids. And enjoy it. So there. I’m pretty sure they’re just as impressed with my degrees and resume as everyone else.

So if you need me in late June, or July, or August, my useless over-educated ass will be at the beach… with no regrets.