Category Archives: parenthood

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Insane Emotional Parent Meeting

I had Riley’s IEP meeting today at school. IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan or sometimes Insane Emotional Parent. I think the meaning changes on a case by case basis. I fall into the latter group.

I tend to end up solo at school conferences and meetings because they are scheduled when Hubs is working or, in this case, exactly when the kids need to be delivered to school. I don’t like going alone. Sometimes you need to be a hard@ss and I’m not good at that. Hubs can do it without breaking a sweat, but I’m too busy trying to convince everyone in the room that I’m smart and well-behaved. It’s like I’ve never left the third grade.

“Yes Mrs. Ladich, I can use the word ‘educational’ in a sentence.”

I dressed business appropriate in a feeble attempt to compensate for my severe apprehension. Slacks say, “I’ve got it all together and am not actually crumbling on the inside like cheap stucco in an earthquake.”

Then Hubs gave me a pep talk and suggested that I bring a recorder to tape the meeting. I balked, as I do every time he makes this suggestion. After all, this isn’t an interrogation. I’m perfectly capable of taking notes and mentally processing all pertinent information. I’m a good listener. I have an advanced degree. I took psychology in college. I can remember exactly how much Infant Tylenol my children require. I’m a grown up. Neener, neener, neener.

I should listen to Hubs more.

If I had listened to Hubs, it wouldn’t have mattered that as soon as the psychologist said, “During my talk with Riley, she mentioned that she didn’t feel as smart as the other kids…” my mind immediately went to:

an image of Riley cutting class and smoking outside of the school. She takes out a switch blade and cuts the initials of a known felon into her arm, draining the blood into a tiny vial that he will wear around his neck. The felon drives up in a gas-guzzling muscle car and she jumps inside, does not fasten her seat belt and flicks her cigarette out the window, which starts a forest fire, killing two fire fighters and Bambi. Fast forward to Riley standing on a street corner in platforms and a short skirt, waiting for a customer. The Donna Summers song Bad Girls plays somewhere in the background.

If she were a French whore that would be different and somehow more classy. (image via dreamstime)

Stop it! That’s not going to happen. Pay attention. You are missing important information.

“…I’m also concerned about a body image issue…”

What??? At 8 years old??? But I do such a good job of conveying a positive body image to avoid just this situation. Did all of those times I strutted around naked, singing “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” and occasionally shouting “vagina power!” accomplish nothing? Okay maybe I didn’t actually do any of that, but I think I conveyed the same message with my general attitude. And then I imagined Riley as Karen Carpenter, dying slowing in a bed while I sang We’ve Only Just Begun over her. I started to tear up.

(I’m not kidding here. The thought of body image issues and my little girl made my @ss pucker. I had to bite a hole in my tongue to keep from losing it in front of professional educators. And as soon as school was out I had a conversation with Riley about her body, fat penguins and Disney starlets. Yes, I did touch on all of those talking points. I think it went well.)

Do not cry in this meeting! Do not cry! Stop overreacting. You are missing all of the important…”

“…but I think if we take those steps, we’ll avoid certain disaster.”

…information. AAAAAAAAAGH!

Okay, so maybe I’m a better listener when I’m not this emotionally invested in the topic. When it comes to the welfare of my kids I take a day trip off the reservation. Luckily the psychologist gave me a packet of everything we covered, which I will read while Hubs pokes me gently with an electric cattle prod to keep me focused.

“Hey man, cattle prods ain’t funny.” (image via dreamstime)

And next time I’ll let Hubs put a wire on me. Like an unstable undercover agent.

 

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Slumber Party Remedial School

I was queen of the slumber party in my youth. I don’t often toot my own horn but this was something I did well. All I needed was a Ouija Board, an inappropriate movie, some junk food and my dad’s trademark lax supervision to rock an event.

1984 was an exceptionally good year in the slumber party circuit.

Shout out to Dad’s super-relaxed parenting style. It’s a shame my children will never know what that’s like.

However, it’s been a (ahem) few years and some skills are perishable. I should probably have enrolled in slumber party remedial school, because despite my impressive resume, I spent a good portion of my daughter’s slumber party dropping the ball. By the end of the day I felt like I’d just returned from a 5 hour booze cruise on rough seas. I practically crawled to bed after telling the girls that there would be no more requests fulfilled due to my impending collapse.

The whole week my focus had been elsewhere on other obligations. When I woke up Saturday morning, I realized that precious little had been done to prepare for Riley’s birthday slumber party and Hubs would be gone all day having a big boy play date.

Big boys playing dress up with toys

I panicked, tapped into some mother-guilt, forgot my slacker mom sensibilities and over compensated for my lack of preparation with some ill-fated last minute plans.

Now a logical slacker mom might have paused, thought back to what she enjoyed at her own childhood slumber parties and realized that 8-year-old girls don’t want parent-imposed schedules in their sleep overs anyway. They have their own ideas about what they want to do. So here’s a novel idea: ask them. However, I’d used up all of my logic for the week and I was too busy nursing my silly idea that this, being a birthday sleep over, should be different and therefore more special.

Amateur.

So my plan went like this:

  • 1:00 guest arrival
  • 1:15ish head to our neighbors’ pool.
  • 4:00 manicures
  • 5:30 pizza and birthday donuts.
  • 7:00 movie
  • 9:00 giggling while pretending to sleep

It sounded like a great plan to me. I prematurely congratulated myself on being such a rock star.

Ever notice that any phrase beginning with the word “premature” is automatically a bad thing? Premature baby, premature ejaculation, premature menopause, premature gray, premature congratulations…all bad.

First of all, I neglected to make sure that Riley’s best friend could actually arrive at 1:00. As it turned out, she couldn’t. Then the girls hadn’t seen each other all week and wanted some time to bond over their Beanie Boos collection, which went right through pool time and into manicure time. Beanie Boos require a lot of bonding–must be the giant eyes. They’re haunting. The Bette Davises of plush toys.

They are so sweet, like tiny stuffed animal zombies.

My friend, who I’d enlisted to help with the manicures showed up and we forced strongly compelled completely disinterested girls to get their nails done.  I had conveniently forgotten that I possess the manual dexterity of a raccoon–just enough to dig through the garbage, but not enough to execute delicate spa services on tiny, thoroughly chewed nails. So I completed 1/2 of one manicure while my “client” complained about the horrible salon service, until my friend was merciful enough to fire me and take over.

This took us to 5:00, when of course the girls decided that they were ready for the pool. Because a pool is more enjoyable when you’re cold, hungry and sporting freshly painted nails. You could drive a tractor-trailer through the holes in this logic. Not to mention that the timing would interfere with the allotted time for nail drying and cut into the joyous partaking of pizza and donuts around the dining room table.

I started to illustrate the obvious problems with their plan when I was struck by either an epiphany or an aneurysm. Because of the pounding in my head it was hard to tell the difference. Whichever it was, I finally realized the error of my ways.

This was Riley’s birthday. If she wanted to spend it becoming hypothermic, waterlogged and ruining the manicure she hadn’t wanted in the first place, then by God, I should let her. I shut my trap, took the kids up to our neighbors’ house and plopped them in the hot tub. There they stayed until 8:30, enjoying pizza and donuts and partying like polar bears.

“Smile for the camera or my mom will make us get another manicure.”

Honestly, I think my headache and fatigue may have been my 8-year-old self trying to kick my @ss from the inside, out of frustration over my slumber party ineptitude.

What about you? Any birthday or slumber party horror stories? Better yet, any fabulous tips for my next one? Obviously I can use any help and pain reliever you have to offer.

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On The Road With Kid Danger

Conor’s foray into booster seat riding came to an unceremonious ending last night when he opened the car door. ON THE FREEWAY. Yep, that’s right. Apparently he wanted to begin his future as a stunt man.

I thought he had lowered the window a little for air until I saw the door sensor on the dashboard and looked behind me to see that, SWEET JESUS, the door was open! I had a mild cardiac arrest and an out of body experience while pulling off the freeway and onto the side of the road.

Ever lose your cool as a parent and find yourself launching into a nonsensical tirade, filled with things you would never actually say if you were not scared out of your ever-loving mind? Things that totally undermine your position as a sane and responsible parental figure? That’s what happened in this case.

My moment of parental genius went a little something like this:

DON’T TOUCH THE DOOR!!!!!!! NOBODY TOUCH THE DOOR!!!!!! DON’T PUT YOUR HAND ANYWHERE NEAR IT!!!! YOU DO NOT EVER EVER EVER TOUCH THE DOOR HANDLE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?????? WE WERE ON THE FREEWAY!!! [At this point I think Conor understood that touching the door makes Mommy yell and repeat things. He might have also been wondering how he would possibly exit the vehicle if he wasn’t allowed to touch the door. I did successfully establish our location, however, which is helpful.]

If you EVER do that again, I will tan your hide. [I did actually use this phrase. Apparently it was a good time to introduce the kids to cowboy terminology.] You will find out what “spanking” means, young man! [What, because I would define the word? Or would I (shudder) make him use the dictionary by himself?]

Do you know how dangerous that is??? [Obviously not or he wouldn’t have done it, so I decided to clarify, using concepts beyond his grasp.]

You could have been killed! If I’d had to swerve, or stop suddenly or been hit by another car, you would’ve fallen out and… [dramatic pause while I searched for a slightly less graphic way to say “been squashed under the wheels of a bus.”] been killed! Killed! [redundancy is key for emphasis.] Do you understand me, Conor? Killed!

You are going back in your baby seat until you are old enough to understand that sitting in a booster seat comes with responsibility. [He was probably wondering if responsibility was something akin to chicken nuggets and if it came with a side of french fries.] You have to sit up in your seat with your back against the thing. NOT leaning forward. NOT sticking your hands out the window. And NOT touching the door handle! [Sometimes when I’m very upset and flustered I lose words and can’t finish ideas, so it’s best to shut up and settle into a brooding silence until I’ve calmed down, which I did at this point.]

Conor was so impressed with my bad@ass mama lecture that he promptly lost consciousness from fear. Or possibly awe.

I took this picture when we were parked safely in our driveway.

Note: Let me preempt the onslaught of bad mother, hate mail by saying that, though Conor does meet the minimum height and weight requirements for booster seats in the state of California, I fully agree that he is not ready to be in one. I jumped the gun and overestimated his maturity. Also, I had activated our child safety door lock on Conor’s side to thwart any high-speed escape attempts, but the switches are on the individual doors and someone, probably Stuntman Junior himself, must have deactivated it.

I put him back in his car seat today. And hermetically sealed his door. And shot him with a horse tranquilizer. Because I’m a good mother.

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Bully For You

Hubs hates bullies. Essentially they are why he became a cop. I’m in complete agreement. There is no lower life form than someone who victimizes those who can’t defend themselves.

Hubs grew up in Massachusetts on the cusp of a tough neighborhood. Did you see The Fighter? That’s the neighborhood. Lowell. Or as the locals like to call it, Low Hell. Jack Kerouac lived there at one point. It has churned out many fighters, drug addicts and public servants–sometimes combinations of the three.

Hubs was a late bloomer with a quick temper and bright red hair growing up in a tough, working class neighborhood. You best believe that he had to fight on a regular basis. He became good at it. So good that some people were shocked when he became a cop and not a professional bouncer. His secret? God-given orneriness and a willingness to fight dirty. As Hubs has told me on more than a few occasions, sometimes you have to be willing to stick your finger in a guy’s nose or squeeze his testicle if things are looking bad. Many people aren’t will to do this. Hubs is.

I also grew up in a tough neighborhood but it was a tough neighborhood in Oregon. In between the fights and bullying we hugged trees under a cloud of patchouli oil. My mother was a bit of a hippie and my dad was hopelessly cerebral and fair-minded. I was raised to be strong but not aggressive.

Needless to say, Hubs and I have a very different approach to conflict resolution when it comes to bullies. Hubs is quick to label it as such and meet the problem head on with aggression. I’m more likely to take my time in labeling the situation and look for a diplomatic solution.

Here are some examples of actual conversations in our home:

Riley: Heather told me that I couldn’t wear my visor for Hat Day at school so I took it off.

Me: Honey, Heather might think she knows the rules but she’s not the one in charge. Only your teacher can tell you that. Sometimes your friends are wrong.

Hubs: You tell Heather, “Shut up and get away from me!”

Riley: But Dad, she’s my friend!

Hubs: She’s not your friend if she hurts your feelings. You tell her to shut up!

——

Riley: Conor hit me!

Me: Conor, you don’t hit. It’s not nice.

Hubs: You don’t hit girls. You can hit someone to defend yourself.

——-

Conor: My friend punched me at school cuz he was mad.

Me: Why was he mad?

Conor: I ruined his tower.

Me: Did you say sorry?

Conor: Yeah, but he punched me anyway.

Hubs: You only have to say sorry once. If he hits you again, hit him back!

—–

Riley: Sometimes the 3rd graders make us leave the lunch tables before we’re done.

Me: Tell one of the Yard Duty ladies or a teacher, sweetie.

Hubs: You let me know if someone is being mean to you and I’ll punch them in the nose.

—

I fully expect a call from the school at some point when one of the kids decides to try out Daddy’s advice. I’ve already let Hubs know that I’m referring that phone call straight to him.

And whereas I don’t think that any of these situations required quite the level of aggression for which Hubs was lobbying, I do understand his reaction. He’s protecting what is dear to him by teaching the kids to stick up for themselves and I think it’s a valuable lesson. I’ll just try to balance it out by teaching them diplomacy too. After all, there’s nothing wrong with sticking to your guns if someone is pushing you around, but it never hurts to stop and hug a tree either.

Because trees never bully. I’ve hugged enough to know.

This post was in support of findinggravity’s Anti-bullying campaign. Children shouldn’t be victimized because they’re different or just vulnerable–not by adults and not by other children.

 

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Liar, Liar Easter Bunny On Fire

"Easter bunny, are you real?" "Sure, kid. Now get in my van." (image via dreamstime)

Last year while walking down to school, my daughter, Riley and I were talking about inconsequential things, as we usually did in the morning, when without warning, she segued into:

 

“Debbie told me there’s no Tooth Fairy. Debbie’s brother told her that it’s really our parents only you will never ever ever admit it. Are you the Tooth Fairy?”

 

“Uh…”

 

Keep in mind that I was still in the sweatpants in which I’d slept, my hair unbrushed and thrown into a sloppy ponytail. I might have been prepared for discussions about breakfast cereal at that hour, but I was totally and completely unprepared for a discussion entailing the loss of childhood fantasy. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I would be having the conversation with my innocent, fairy-loving daughter in the first grade so I was caught flat-footed between my commitment to honesty and my love of childhood innocence.

 

Why didn’t Riley want to discuss something easy, like where babies come from? I’d spent numerous hours preparing for that question. I would’ve hit that one out of the park. But Debbie Downer had stolen my opportunity for parental success.

Waa Waa. (image via Wikipedia)

 

 

Who was this Debbie? And why was she heading a massive conspiracy aimed at undermining  my parental acuity? I felt the powerful urge to kick her first grade butt. She was ruining my morning.

 

Thanks to Debbie, I was under the gun with no time to Facebook my friends and set up some sort of parental poll regarding effective ways of navigating this crisis. I had to handle it on my own. Like an adult. I need to be warned before I’m asked to do that. Or at least caffeinated.

 

I longed desperately for someone to run out of their house at that moment and yell “I have something really important that precludes all deep family conversations!” but our neighbors were seemingly oblivious to my predicament. Unlike dogs, my neighbors can’t smell fear and desperation. I scrambled to buy myself some time while I wrestled with my moral dilemma.

*Hey do you smell that? Smells like a cornered rabbit." "Mmm, cornered rabbit is my favorite."

 

“Wow. Really? She said that? Huh. What’s Debbie’s deal? She sounds like a very unhappy and possibly unstable girl. And what’s up with her brother?” (When in doubt, undercut the credibility of the source.) “Can you imagine me in a tooth fairy get-up flying around, and getting stuck in your hair while trying to wrestle your tooth out from under your pillow?” (Then deflect with humor.)

 

I added a visual demonstration of myself as a fairy struggling through Riley’s hair to sell the absurdity of the thought but Riley was unswayed by my comedic genius.

 

“Are you the Tooth Fairy, Mom?”

 

In that moment I was reminded of a conversation I’d had as a child with my own mother about Santa’s existence. A boy in my school had unloaded the “Santa is actually your parents” bomb on the whole 4th grade class and I felt the need to get reassurance from my mom. Her answer: “The spirit of Santa is real.” Not the definitive answer I wanted. I asked her about 50 more times and received the same answer on loop. I desperately wanted my mom to tell me outright that Santa was real. I looked into my daughter’s trusting blue eyes and remembered my own desire to keep believing.

"I'm what you call a Christmas poltergeist." (image via dreamstime)

 

“No, I’m not the Tooth Fairy, Sweetie.”

 

There it was. Bald faced lie.

 

I felt the weight of guilt crushing my skull and I realized that my mom probably had the right approach. She didn’t lie. She gave a nebulous answer that, while unsatisfying, did afford me the opportunity to decide for myself whether or not I was ready to let go of my childhood fantasies.

I hate it when my moments of clarity come just after I actually need them. It’s seriously inconvenient.

 

I tried to make up for my misgivings and feelings of guilt with a long, rambling speech about how different people believe different things and some people just don’t believe in magic and magic is important in childhood…yadda, yadda, yadda. I can’t remember the whole speech but frankly it was embarrassing. I think I included a whole theological discourse on the differences between Paganism and Christianity. I was in the midst of a shame spiral and could not stop talking. By the time we got to Riley’s school her ears were bleeding from my verbal onslaught. She ran onto the school grounds screaming “Please stop the madness!”

 

That last part might have happened only in my imagination.

 

Flash forward to this year’s Easter. The kids discovered their Easter baskets, which I had packed full of things specific to each of their tastes and needs. Riley pulled out a box of Altoids from her basket and said with a disturbing lack of incredulity,

 

“The Easter bunny must know I like mints.”

 

Translation: I’m onto you and your little bag of tricks, you bald-faced liar.

"My mom's a big fat fibber."

 

Cue shame spiral. Somebody please get me a muzzle.

 

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Slacker Mom Confessional – Spirit Week

This morning we all woke up late. Well the kids woke up late and I uncharacteristically decided to shower as soon as I got out of bed due to the fact that my hair had molded into some sort of 4th grade art project during the night. The shower put me behind schedule.

Personal hygiene is my nemesis.

So we were all running behind when I realized that it was Crazy Hair day at my daughter’s school. This is spirit week and Crazy Hair day was the day to which Riley had been looking forward all week. She had big plans for Crazy Hair day, namely to dye her hair the color of the rainbow. All week long I told myself to prepare and all week long preparation was preempted by other, more pressing things on my to-do list, so this morning found me woefully unprepared.

However, Riley hasn’t had the best week. She’s been stressed out about learning multiplication and the upcoming state testing and bummed about a hundred other little things.  Being a sensitive, dyslexic seven-year-old ain’t easy some days. Because of that, I wouldn’t even consider scrapping the rainbow hair plan despite having insufficient time and preparation. Desperate mothers aren’t ruled by logic.

I'd dye my butt rainbow colors for my daughter if it wouldn't simply traumatize her.

I grabbed our food coloring, my creme brulee ramekins, some conditioner, a toothpick and a sandwich baggie in a rush and went to work.

Okay, so my organizational skills are suspect even when I’m not under duress. My manual dexterity is sub par. And I multitask like a drunken bachelor. This partially explains why I grabbed such nonsensical items.

You know what you can accomplish with a toothpick, a baggie and a lot of food coloring in a tiny white bathroom? Complete multicolored chaos. Like a mac truck and the Easter bunny collided.

Jackson Pollock bathes here.

The only thing that really didn’t take color was Riley’s hair, which sent me into a panic, because I just couldn’t accept the look of disappointment on her face after all the carnage. I made a last minute decision to stop rinsing the colored conditioner from Riley’s hair in an effort to keep at least a hint of rainbow on her head. Then we ran out of time before I could thoroughly blow dry Riley’s hair so I sent her to school with wet, slightly slimy, mildly tinted hair, a bright blue ear and random smudges and smears everywhere else. She was shivering when I dropped her off at the gate and well on her way to developing Spirit Week pneumonia. But she was happy about having colored hair and that’s what’s important, right? Right?? Right!

I took this picture after school. Greasy, colored hair makes Riley feel edgy like a 7-year-old runaway or a Calvin Klein model.

When Conor and I triumphantly returned home I remembered that both the rent and preschool payment were due…five days ago. Those two items were also preempted by other items on my to-do list. Understandable. It’s not like housing and education are important, right? Ask any politician.

I threw a check and one of Riley’s drawings into an envelope (my little way of reminding our landlords that we have adorable children who make up for my delinquent rent payments) and hustled Conor out to the car. We dropped the rent at the same post office that houses our landlords’ p.o. box to speed delivery. I briefly lamented about the waste of another stamp but since I can’t even remember what current postage is it’s hard to really get indignant.

We're happy even on the verge of being incinerated by the giant sun--who wouldn't want us as renters?

Then we headed to the credit union, conveniently located nowhere near our home. I like to pay our preschool in cash because they are extremely relaxed about cashing checks and Hubs tends to get excited upon finding extra money in our account. When Hubs gets excited, he celebrates by purchasing something. The preschool inevitably cashes the check right after Hubs’s celebratory purchase. And then Mama can’t go to Vegas…I mean the grocery store.

On a side note: I only refer to myself as Mama when I’m gambling or experiencing a financial windfall which is exactly never.

Now at that point I hadn’t eaten yet, which is not a good thing. Important parts of me shut down when I don’t eat: patience, empathy, motor skills, cognitive function. And Conor was overdue for his every-15-minute fuel intake as well. The inside of my car sounded like a road trip with the Bickersons of Bickerville. Conor loudly expressed his disdain for the post office, the road we were on, all roads around us, going uphill, going downhill, “pleases” officers, banks, cars, air, you name it, he hated it and I was only slightly more pleasant.

I had to carry Conor into the credit union due to his sudden attack of “pleases”officer-phobia and that took a little longer than usual because, in my low blood sugar state I couldn’t remember how to get to the front door. Afterward I couldn’t remember where the freeway on-ramp was and ended up on the wrong freeway headed to no place in particular. I should have picked up a souvenir and some breakfast.

Oh look, we're here. (image via dreamstime)

When we were finally home and I was dancing around in the hallway, waiting for my son to get done with the bathroom, so that I could relieve myself and then eat before ending up in a puddle of my own tears and urine, I remembered that I had missed the play date I’d scheduled for Conor by an hour and a half. What else could I do but light my to-do list on fire and sit down here to write my confession?

You see I’m not a slacker mom because I don’t care. I’m a slacker mom because I don’t possess the mental faculties to be super efficient and still sane. God made me mildly funny and then got distracted and left the room before he added organizational tools. I’m okay with this. I love myself and all of my deficiencies. My kids seem to be okay–I don’t think disorganized parenting caused Riley’s dyslexia or stunted their growth.

Disorganized parenting is the leading cause of messy hair and extended pajama wearing according to the Surgeon General's office.

However if you were thinking of putting me on some sort of important committee for the future of society, you might want to rethink that choice. Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow is available.

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Attack Of The Ninja Sparrow

An obnoxious bird has made a nest over our door. Don’t get me wrong. I love animals. I do. Ask anyone. The last time a bird made a nest over our door the kids and I watched in rapt attention as the nest was built, the eggs laid and the baby birds developed. As soon as the baby birds left the nest I even went out and stupidly took down the nest for closer inspection. I say stupidly because freshly used nests are full of tiny bugs and all I really accomplished with my closer inspection (after several showers and a manic cleaning tirade) was giving my children a phobia of birds’ nests.

There's our nest in all of its filthy, bug infested sweetness.

This bird, however, is paranoid. First of all, it built its nest in such a way as to discourage Peeping Toms so that I can’t be nosy and appreciate the wonder of nature. What good is having a wonder of nature in such close proximity if I can’t use it for family entertainment? And second, the bird insists on dive bombing my head every time I try to enter or exit my home like I’m some kind of predator, which admittedly I am, but if it paid attention it would notice that I prefer carefully packaged large birds for my dining pleasure. This is not the Ozarks. I don’t eat animals from my front yard. Clearly it’s confused about its location and my benevolent nature.

If I looked like this the bird would be justified in its paranoia, but I don't most days. (image via dreamstime)

I can forgive confusion, but open hostility is intolerable. And as I’m often preoccupied and possess a limited short-term memory (my pregnancies claimed that along with my six-pack abs), each avian attack is a complete surprise to me. It feels like I have a Jack in the Box installed above my front door and I don’t like Jack in the Boxes. Surely I wasn’t the only child who felt that Jack was an evil little toy who waited in a box for the sole purpose of traumatizing unsuspecting children?

No? Just me? Okay, moving on.

If you don't think this guy is waiting to jump out and skewer a tiny heart on his wire hand, you're sadly mistaken.(image via dreamstime)

Anyway, on my way to pick up my son from preschool today I was understandably still reeling from the shock of being viciously attacked by a three-inch rabid animal, when my phone, which has chosen for itself (since I haven’t properly learned how to use it) as its text notification sound, a jet plane swoosh, decided to notify me of an incoming text. The text was from my dancer friend who had just discovered her son’s tap dancing genius and was understandably excited, but that’s beside the point. The sound of a jet zooming through my car on the heels of my attack stimulated my Post Imagined Stress Disorder (or PISD), which, though not recognized as a legitimate affliction by any medical organization,plagues me nonetheless. In this heightened state of paranoia I naturally assumed that the bird had covertly gained access to my vehicle, cunningly waited until I was thoroughly engrossed in driving and then attacked. Because birds are known to be covert and cunning masters of tactical genius.

*Hey Stan, guess what? *What? *I'm a ninja! *Cool. I'm a pigeon. *I wear a hood and carry nun-chucks! *I poop on cars. (image via Dreamstime)

Now I’ve watched my husband reenact enough harrowing felony arrests to know that when under attack, one should feint to the side and quickly draw their weapon to return fire. Instinctively that was what I did.  The only problem was that I wasn’t a police officer, not actually under attack and didn’t have a weapon. What I did have was a dirty Mazda Protege whose steering wheel I yanked to the left in an unnecessary evasive maneuver, narrowly missing the back end of a truck whose driver had made the mistake of driving on the same Burbank road as a delusional mother in a hatchback. Luckily I didn’t cause an accident and the driver of the truck didn’t stop and demand an explanation which no doubt would have necessitated a psych evaluation.

Thank you to Hubs for illustrating the proper way to react to a threat. In no way did I look this cool.

You should know that I might be terrible at many things (writing thank you notes, painting furniture, organizing my kitchen cupboards) but I’m an extremely conscientious and capable driver. It’s a point of pride. Normally after making such a bonehead driving maneuver I am so contrite that I practice extreme traffic etiquette and obey every traffic law ever made or imagined for at least a full day. However, today I was so distracted by the absurdity of the situation that I made two other bonehead maneuvers in rapid succession, at which point I nearly pulled over, handed my keys to the nearest person and asked them to pick up my children from school because my children deserved the relative safety a complete stranger could offer them. Luckily my often silent, tiny voice of reason convinced me that the elderly Armenian woman with the walker probably didn’t drive and would break a hip climbing into my car anyway. So instead I continued on my way to the preschool without further incident.

A nice lady gave me her car today so I took it to the track and bet on the ponies. (image via dreamstime)

But now that nesting bird and I are really at odds. It’s overactive sense of self-preservation is colliding with my overactive imagination and wreaking havoc with the safety of the public at large.  Not since a band of delinquent raccoons vandalized our Halloween decorations and made my daughter cry have I been so incensed at an animal. I can’t be responsible for my actions. I have a legitimate made up disorder. Someone should send a representative from PETA to relocate this bird to a safer location. Like my neighbor’s house.

Then again, PETA might take issue with the collection of carefully packaged large birds in my freezer and they’re scarier than a homicidal sparrow. You know what, on second thought I’ll just use my back door for the next few weeks.

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This Little Piggy

My in-laws are in town, which means that my waist line is thicker, my kids are happier and Hubs and I got a date night. Woohoo! Date nights in this household happen about as often as a lunar eclipse. It’s hard to find a babysitter that fits my husband’s standards. Even the people who do well in the interview and polygraph usually balk at the body cavity search. Nana and Grandpa are exempt from invasive investigation–you don’t want to suggest a body cavity search to an Italian mother from New England unless you have really fast running shoes and access to a witness relocation program.

So Hubs and I got an ENTIRE afternoon and evening to ourselves. HELLO! You’d have thought we skipped our Ritalin we were so giddy. We had enough time to break our ten-mile we-don’t-want-to-go-any-further-in-case-there-is-an-emergency-and-the-kids-need-us-plus-this-babysitter-is-costing-us-an-arm-and-a-leg radius. I even put on a dress and impractical high-heeled boots. Plus jewelry. And Hubs smelled suspiciously like cologne. That’s how excited we were.

Unfortunately we sprinted out the door too fast to have a picture taken on this particular date night, but look how excited we were on a date in 2010!

We got off to a shaky start. We chose to go to an area that we both really loved when we first started dating: the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Lo and behold, we aren’t in our twenties anymore and don’t find crowds, panhandlers and street performers every 5 feet, singing conflicting music genres all that charming anymore. Plus, I was hungry and I need to be fed on a regular basis or I get a little agro and, though Hubs finds me especially attractive in that state, it’s not a good idea to start a fight in impractical high-heeled boots unless you’re Cat Woman.

Watch out for this chick. She'll roll you for your wallet and a ball of yarn. (image via dreamstime)

Luckily we discovered a cute little cafe off the promenade and I found Jesus at the bottom of my salad bowl. Well honestly I’m not sure whether Jesus was at the bottom of my salad bowl, my husband’s plate or the bread bowl, but I found him in one of those spots along with my love of mankind. A big shout out to the cook at Le Pain de Quotidien. I don’t know you but you saved some lives with your over priced salads this weekend.

I usually deal with loaves and fishes but an organic salad is also nice. (image via dreamstime)

Then we headed to REI. Hey, we don’t get out much. Don’t judge us. ‘Cause you know what? We weren’t the only couple in there on a date night. In your face!

I’m sorry. I went a little agro on you. I just need a granola bar.

Seriously, if you want to feel a sense of community, head on over to the running shoe section of an REI. Runners love other runners and they are some really nice people, which is why I pretend to be one of them. So anyway, there we were surrounded by our new besties, shooting the breeze about the merits of different running shoe styles (you are so jealous of my date night–I can tell) and the topic turns to the new barefoot style shoes. Hubs loves any new fitness gadget, so he got up on his athletic soap box and sang the praises of this brilliant invention. One of our new friends jumped on board and proselytized about the philosophy behind the shoe–how the shoe allows all of the bones and muscles in your foot to act independently in the manner in which they were meant, yadda, yadda, yadda. At that point, I had completely bought into the lie that I am a runner and I excitedly decided to try on a pair.

Barefoot running makes you younger, happier and more attractive. (image via dreamstime)

Here’s the thing: the bones in 40-year-old feet don’t want to act independently. They especially don’t want to act independently after being jammed into impractical high-heeled boots that fit much better before I was pregnant and my feet widened.

I torqued all of my shell-shocked toes into the individual toe spots inside the life changing footwear and then I jumped around and did the type of calisthenics that I imagined runners must do. However, one of my toes seemed to really dislike the shoe. Apparently I forgot to brief it on my secret identity. I decided against the purchase. Back into the impractical high-heeled boots my feet went and after a few heart-felt goodbyes, we departed REI to finish out the rest of our date night.

My husband's running shoes. Notice how they mock me and my psuedo-runner status?

The next morning, my toe woke me up bright and early with a manifesto about the horrors of barefoot shoes and delusional people who believe themselves to be runners. It’s diatribe got even louder when I tried to walk to the bathroom and continued to increase in volume until I finally considered that my toe might be broken.

My first broken bone. You have no idea how disappointing it is to have avoided breaking a bone all these years and then break one trying on a shoe. Pathetic. Seriously. I’m going to tell people I was paragliding with a snowboard in uncharted mountains.

How I Spent My Winter Vacation And Broke My Toe by Kelly Redican. (image via dreamstime)

I called a foot expert. No, not a podiatrist. A dancer. No one knows more about broken toes than a dancer and you can pay them in Diet Coke and cigarettes. So I called my dancer friend and got a very detailed treatment plan guaranteed to heal my toe and make me graceful and painfully thin. Bonus.

And you’d better believe that on our next date night, Hubs and I are going base jumping in Columbia. For real.

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Wrappers Delight

I have no talent for wrapping presents. I’m worse than bad. I’m embarrassing. If wrapping presents were a professional sport I wouldn’t even be in the game. I’d be that ridiculous drunk guy in the stands, inexplicably shirtless and painted the team colors in sub-zero temperatures. Sure he’s dedicated but you’ll notice that no one publicly claims him as family. My wrapping is that disgraceful.

Let's wrap some presents!

The truly sad thing is that I spent years working retail during the holiday season. I was taught proper wrapping technique by professionals who rivaled Martha Stewart in wrapping skills. It just didn’t take. I buy cheap supplies, I’m impatient and I ignore everything I’ve been taught. I can see what I’m doing wrong but I’m powerless to stop myself. It’s an affliction.

My husband, who will not wrap out of principle, leaves the Christmas and birthday wrapping to me. He claims to be worse than I am, but there’s no proof to substantiate his claims. I think he just enjoys watching me struggle while he drinks a beer. I’m entertaining. Like a dancing bear, but with scissors.

I'm going to wrap these presents and then eat your head.

And you know who is left to suffer? The children. Two Christmases ago we had to tell the kids that Santa hired disabled elves to get a tax credit. Terrible, I know, but I didn’t want them to think that Santa just didn’t care enough to do his job properly. It would break their little idealistic hearts.

This year, determined to better my skills and assuage my guilt, I marched out and purchased some extra fancy metallic paper. I pictured our tree surrounded by beautiful shiny packages. In my mind it was very classy.

Behold the classiness of my imagination

In retrospect, the 99 Cent Store might not have been the best place for me to purchase class. Some things are 99 cents for a reason and it isn’t because they are too classy. More often than not the reason is that discerning shoppers wouldn’t pay full price for the product so they take it on over to the 99 Cent Store and wait for naive cheap skates like me to take it home. And along I came, fresh from reading my favorite design blogs(because lord knows I long to be stylish) and, filled with enthusiasm that I often mistake for skill, I loaded my cart with supplies that I truly believed in that moment I could use to make a beautiful Christmas. Sucker.

99 Cent Store supplies in skilled hands. Seriously check out http://www.almost40yearoldintern.com --she's the MacGyver of the design world.

When I took my supplies out on Christmas Eve to wrap the presents, I discovered that the under side of the 99 Cent Store paper was the color and texture of a heavy-duty paper bag–stiff and very hard for an unskilled wrapper like myself to work with. Moreover, the slick surface of the “metallic” side made scotch tape nearly useless. I used twice as much tape to make up for it. The finished product looked as though I’d taken the aluminum siding stripped off a trailer in a tornado and made a tomb for unwanted toys. Somewhere out there Martha Stewart threw up a little in her mouth. I stuck some bows on top in an effort to distract from the white trash effect and put the presents under the tree, hoping that in the excitement of Christmas morning it would all look better.

I say we unwrap ourselves tonight and beat her with the empty roll of wrapping paper.

Then in the middle of the night, despite being fastened with yards and yards of tape, the presents unwrapped themselves as if trying to flee the humiliation. Only instead of fleeing, they just lay there under the tree, wrapping paper flung open like tiny inanimate exotic dancers.

I'm working my way through college.

It was too late to fix the carnage. The kids had already seen the evidence of my dysfunction. I had to throw out some sort of explanation. So like generations of parents before me, when confronted with my own inability to uphold the magic and wonderment of a perfect childhood for my children, I reached back into my desperate brain and grabbed the first plausible excuse I could come up with.

The elves were drunk.

Woohoo! Get out the mistletoe!

Hey, I was tired and under a lot of pressure. Don’t judge me. By the way, if my kids come knocking on your door collecting money for the Elven Rehab, just go with it. I’ll put the money toward their therapy later.

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Rise And Fall Of Super Birther

My mother was a Super Birther.  She was so gifted in this arena that she had me, her third child, in a doctor’s office without pain medication, despite my large head, and took me home buck naked in a medical supply box. (I didn’t say that she was a super planner.)  She could have just as easily popped me out in the grocery store somewhere between aisle seven and produce, picked me up and continued right on to check out. The only thing she was missing was a cape.

Hey, can I borrow your cape? This box is cold.

I always assumed, being like my mother in so many other ways, that when the time came for me to deliver my own child, I would automatically tap into the Collective Female Experience and channel my inherited birthing ability.  As it turned out, when the golden hour arrived, the Collective Female Experience’s server was down and the birthing ability possessed by my mother skipped a generation.  My body, when faced with the task of presenting a child to the world, handled it with the aplomb of an unsupervised crack baby at a Walmart super sale.

I want Star Wars Legos action figures and some candy or I'm going to shoot this baby out your nose!

The first sign that my body wasn’t up to the task at hand occurred when my water broke for no apparent reason other than boredom and general chicanery.  I wasn’t in labor yet. It just had nothing better to do. The rest of my reproductive system took momentary notice and promptly returned to its regularly scheduled programming, refusing to jump on board the birthing bandwagon.

My husband and I obediently went to the hospital anyway, because that’s what you do when you spring a leak. There I spent the next day watching my husband sleep, impending fatherhood having apparently thrown him into a fit of stress-induced narcolepsy. I also talked to various interns who came in periodically to check my non-progress and hold a mirror under my husband’s nose. And occasionally I listened to other women scream–with joy, I assume. What I did not do was dilate.

Narcoleptic Daddy--I love my family most when they're sleeping.

The hospital staff grew impatient with me. I was taking up valuable real estate and my body was showing no sign of ever producing anything but enough amniotic fluid to open my own water park. They began to think that maybe I was planning on gestating for another year, like an elephant.  So to give my body a little nudge they gave me a Pitocin cocktail.

Here I am packing my obstetrician.

Now anyone who has had the pleasure of Pitocin’s acquaintance knows that a “nudge” from Pitocin feels like a sledge-hammer wheeled by a 300 pound bodybuilder in a roid rage. My uterus began contracting with a manic enthusiasm usually reserved for stalkers and young Disney Channel actors. I’m usually fairly stoic about pain but at this point I tried to rip off my husband’s hand and beat him with it.

Your uterus on Pitocin. You can dress it up in a pink bikini but it's still scary.

The new-found fervor of my uterus made my cervix nervous. Still confused about its role as a portal to the world, my cervix felt the need to do something and so in the pressure of the moment went with door number two despite the coaching of the audience. It began to swell shut. The hospital staff shook their heads at my bodily ineptitude. The word “c-section” was mentioned immediately after the words, “whoa” and “what the heck?” My husband, fresh from his marathon nap and not burdened with any useful medical knowledge, remained optimistic, giving an inspired, if not misguided, delivery room pep talk, to which my cervix, in the middle of performing its own medical miracle, responded by giving us all the one-fingered salute and rupturing.

Goodbye natural childbirth.

So apparently I am not a Super Birther. There will be no cape for me. I did, however, earn my own special title, Medical Oddity, which possesses its own merits.

You cannot escape my uterus!

Medical Oddity: Super Birther’s nemesis and arch-villain of the birthing world. Bwa ha ha ha. I wonder if I can get a black latex arch-villain nursing bra.