Come back here!

It was an idyllic morning here in the Northeast so I decided to take Little Man to the park. Picture the two of us running around the playground, me catching him at the bottom of the slide as he giggles joyfully, LM squealing with delight as I push him in the swing. That. Is. A. Fantasy.

Reality? I spend an hour running after him hunched over as he is still so unsteady on his fat, little feet that the least variation in the topography - one wood chip too many or an errant twig - sends him toppling over. Add in other factors such as his enormous girth, the fact that he barrels around most times as if Keanu Reeves were behind the wheel of his bus-like body and the close proximity of several slides, and ladders and he's a head wound waiting to happen. The joyful abandon with which he flings himself down the slide regardless of which end is facing forward or whether anyone is there to break his inevitable fall makes me break into a cold sweat whenever I see a playground. And imprisoning him in the swings so I can catch a break and actually talk to another mother for more than two seconds? Puh-lease.

Acting as a human airbag for a tiny, biped tank with a faulty internal gyroscope (seriously, sometimes he just rotates in one spot to make himself fall over) made me wonder during the exhausted car ride home - how the hell did human babies survive in the wild? Think about it. Did cave mothers have to spend their child's entire toddlerhood chasing their progeny around to prevent Grog from cracking his head open? I'm spent just thinking about her life since, you know, her whole house was made of stone. Did cave babies wander off into the woods with abandon as my son does at the local nature preserve, not caring is a saber-toothed tiger was lurking in the bushes?

And it's not just my son. My girls had this freight-train period too (I was pregnant for #1's phase and you don't know back pain until you have to crouch-run after a toddler while expecting). Shouldn't there be some innate protective instinct that protects children from themselves? Yeah, yeah, I've heard all about that instinct babes are supposed to have to prevent them from crawling off an edge. The goose egg my daughter sported for a week pretty much put that theory to bed in our house.

I don't think I'm the only one here. At Madison Square Garden this weekend, I was not alone chasing after Little Man who kept trying to run head-first down the aisle, in the dark, while my older children enjoyed the circus. It was like well dressed calf-roping. But perhaps I'm insane and should stop allowing him so much freedom. I feel too guilty since he spends a large portion of his days in and out of shopping carts of various entertaining varieties (Look! It's a plane! It's a car! Never mind that restraining belt!) as I accomplish my motherly tasks, so when I can let him loose I do. I'll tell you though, whoever thought up those backpack things that are really kid-leashes is a genius. Most people judge parents when they spot one using them, and even though I don't, I still can't get up the nerve to buy one. Let me get a few more weeks into this spring though and I'll probably have one in every shape and color (see above).

My shame wears lycra....

After you're done laughing yourself into an asthma attack, take a minute to contemplate how much I really must love you, dear readers, to place before you this humiliating peace offering to attone for my long absence. Consider this picture my penance.

This is a picture of me in eighth grade before my jazz dance recital. What the hell kind of dance style is "jazz' anyway? It seems, in my experience, to be a catch-all created for the sole purpose of allowing the parents of those too uncoordinated to continue to study tap and ballet in the adolescent years an opportunity to shell out hundreds of dollars for their daughters (and gay sons) to flail themselves around a dance studio once a week in $100 Capezio shoes (they were in on the pyramid scheme of jazz dance as well) and bad spandex ensembles. All of this culminating in the yearly recital where said parents had to sheild their eyes from the glittering horror of their besequined offspring gyrating on stage not fully in control of their newly developing bodies.

Please take note of the awesomely stylish hair as well. At this point in my beauty history I was growing out an ill-advised layered bob and apparently, had not discovered the face-flattering powers of a side part. And as to the presence of our golden retriever, Corky, in the background? He was never all that bright and must have been drawn toward the sparkly lights reflecting off eighty-five million sequins and the shine of hot pink lycra.

So there you are, dear readers. With this gesture, I am ending my long absence and will begin writing again, in earnest, tomorrow. I hope this makes up for my abandoning you to surf Youtube all day.

And if putting this picture on the internet weren't good enough, my sister and brother in-law also used this photo in a rehearsal dinner slide show/roast of Hubby and myself that contained every bad picture of us ever taken in a festival of second-born revenge the likes of which have not been seen since Cain and Abel.

It's good to be back.

Limbo...

..is not the in-between spiritual world where babies with wings fly around, as formerly defined by the Catholic church, it is buying and selling a home.

Please forgive Mean Mommy's long absence, dear readers, as I am a slave to real estate.

Post to come soon. Remind me to tell you how fun it is having to clean the house top to bottom and jam all the toys that won't fit neatly into the toy chest into the van along with all three kids and the dog, ala the Beverly Hillbillies, every time someone wants to see the house .

Yeah, yeah, I'm not wearing green. Shut up.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all. Since you all know how I feel about this holiday I thought you would appreciate this image from someecards.com (they rock for inappropriate, but hilarious ecards).

I have been running around like a crazed maniac getting our humble abode ready for an open house today so please excuse my absense since all I'd be writing about anyway is touching up trim paint and cleaning out my garage. Yes, indeedy, Mean Mommy is trying to move. Don't worry, a post where my sanity is definitely called into question is coming soon.

So enjoy your day celebrating stereotypes of my people, you bastards. At least I can drink wine to manage my moving-induced stress without guilt.

Oh my Google!

As I discussed last week, Hubby and I have seen the error in our ways* and returned to church with the offspring and, as predicted, this has produced a lot of good material for you all to enjoy here. Because it's not really about bringing God into my children's lives, it's about amusing all of you. So to start back on the road to salvation, I had to bring Hubby and the offspring in for a meeting with the priest (whom I will refer to as Padre from here on out), presumably, to grill H and confirm that it wasn't just me brow-beating him out of his sweatpants and into church on Sundays.

Said meeting went along relatively as expected, my oldest gave a puzzled look to Padre when he asked her if she'd like to start going to CCD, meant to convey, "Um, I really don't know what the hell you're talking about, and please stop talking to me while you're at it.", daughter #2 shrank away from Padre as he tried to give her a high five in greeting and Little Man managed to crawl under the priest's desk and almost pull every single wire out of its socket. As we started to wrap up, thinking coming back to church wasn't really painful at all, Padre dropped the bomb. "I'd like you both to come in for confession before you recieve communion again as we begin this whole process." Wha??? Padre continued, "I can do it right now if you want to take turns watching the kids." I looked at Hubby, praying he would read my mind from the frantic look in my eyes, "Hell's, NO!"

Now, it's not that I didn't want to go to confession, it was more the fact that I haven't been to confession since the eight grade and neither has Hubby. For those of you unfamiliar with confession, there's a series of actions and phrases the priest assumes you know and after twenty years that brain space has long since been taken over by the names of all The Backyardigans and who got voted off on last week's Survivor. So we put Padre off, telling him we'd come to confession on Saturday and immediately rushed home to consult with the other all-knowing entity in our lives. Google.

Yes, we Googled "How to go to confession", and amazingly, or not so, I guess, hundreds of matches came up. So rather than have to embarrass myself and tell Padre I didn't even know what counts as a sin anymore - other than the big guns, obviously, but I haven't killed anyone lately (not for lack of desire). I combed the various normal and totally religious and wacko sites and was still stuck with my lame second grade list of lying and taking the Lord's name in vain (Christ on a bike, I do that a lot). So for good measure I threw in, at times, not being as supportive and kind to my hard-working husband as I should be (aka, ripping him a new one when he comes home late and doesn't email me or forgets to take out the garbage). Sure, I know I could throw in being judgmental, but then what would you all have to read?

So Saturday comes and H and I decide I'll cleanse my soul this week and he'll do it next week as our exciting schedule of kids' birthday parties and basketball games prevents us from both being able to go and I depart with my list of sins and my printout of the appropriate prayers (seriously), already drenched with panic-sweat. And....

It wasn't bad. Padre was nice about it and walked my through the process gently. He even paused to give me time to realize after blabbering out my lame list of wrongdoings that, to quote, "Maybe my ten years of godlessness?" counted as well. Oh, that. And since penance is part of the whole confession equation, I was readying myself for the eighty-five rosaries Padre would have me say for being a godless heathen for so long. But he didn't. I guess the church is pretty desperate these days, or otherwise, is taking a cue from today's modern, lazy parents, and told me to come up with my own prayer of personal thanks to god for all I have been given. Easy! And, I have to admit, awesome. So rather than making me feel like a huge jerk, I got to come back to church on a positive note.

So I drove home feeling lighter, relieved of the burden of (some of) my sins and thinking this church thing is going pretty well so far. Included in my prayer of thanks? Internet access. Thank you, dear God, for Google so I didn't have to look like a schmuck.

*Read: are tired of answering questions about what happens to things when they die.

He's Just Not That Into You

A few weeks back, I snuck away for the day with a friend and saw the movie He's Just Not That Into You. It was entertaining enough and had a decent storyline, but I left the theater with a bad taste in my mouth - and not just from the bitter aftertaste of synthetic, melted butter.

The premise of the movie, which I'm sure you are all nauseatingly familiar with the media blitzkrieg that occurred after a character used this phrase in a Sex and the City episode four years ago and a (pretty awful) book of the same title was published, is that men send women very clear signals concerning their interest in a relationship and we, as a gender, are just too stupid to see them. Women delude themselves into thinking men are complex, make excuses for their bad behavior and jump through hoops to make the wrong guy into the right guy all in the pursuit of coupledom.

The most enraging aspect of the movie is it actually seemed to perpetuate the problem, rather than help fix it by enlightening the female movie-goer. The worst story line in the movie is that of Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck. Having been together for seven years, with no wedding in sight thanks to Ben's belief that marriage is "just a piece of paper", Jen languishes in the relationship watching, tearfully as her younger sister gets married.

Sidebar - I take issue with cohabitation. And yes, I know I'm going to piss people off. And yes, I know you and your husband lived together before you got married and, no, I'm not talking to you. Who I worry about are the women like Jen in this movie, who use living together as another relationship milestone akin to saying "I love you" for the first time, or bringing him home for the holidays rather than having it be part of the marriage package and shacking up before they've had the "You are definitely the one, but we need to save some money/finish grad school/get a real job first" discussion. Couples who move in together as a test of their relationship are fooling themselves. I also love how these same couples adhere to the ideology that you get to know someone better by living with them first. Please, in this post-"Wake Up Little Suzy"-world, we all know sleepovers abound pre-nuptials and during said nights, you learn all you need to know about someone's habits and lifestyle. And let's be honest, no marriage ever ended over the way someone puts on the toilet paper roll (because if he does at all he's a keeper!).

Anyway, Jen eventually leaves him and after many twists and turns, including some highly emotional dish-washing at her sick father's house, they get back together after Aniston says she doesn't care about marriage, and he is already husband enough to her emotionally. Blah, blah, he sees the light because now he's not being given an ultimatum and he proposes. I almost left the theater covered in twenty bucks worth of regurgitated Diet Coke and JuJuBees. And all of this made me want to stand up and scream the question - when did women stop doing the choosing and become the ones to be chosen?

Remember all those old novels we had to read in high school? Suitors, courting, where did all that crap go? Women used to hang out at home and while men came to call - all for them to be like, "Um, not so much" until the right guy rang the bell. Even the language we use today when a couple becomes engaged is a time capsule showing us what it used to be like. Proper etiquette dictates to the engaged woman you say, "Best wishes" and to the betrothed man, "Congratulations!", since he is the one who got lucky getting the broad to accept his sorry ass! Nowadays you might as well say to the woman, "Good job hooking this loser. Glad he didn't get away!"

And please spare me your bile since, I know, I got lucky meeting Hubby in college and being married young. But as I have said before, the reason it worked out is because I didn't take any crap off of him and I didn't chase him. Once, early on, I thought he didn't seem that into me,and I moved on. Guess who was on me like white on rice after a few days? Mmm-hhmm (meant to be read in the voice of Jackée Harry of 227 fame).

Maybe I am out of touch. Maybe it is a different world out there with Facebook, Myspace and texting. But I think the essentials always remain the same for women. You are an amazing, creature who some man (or woman - no judgment here!) is going to fall, madly, ridiculously in love with and you need to start acting that way in order for him to find you. Because how is The One, who you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with, and father your incredibly cute babies, whose pictures you'll force me to look since you'll use them as your Facebook profile picture, supposed to find you if you've settled and shacked up with some loser who won't have anyone tell him when he's really "committed" to someone (he uses air quotes) and you spend Saturday nights home washing his skid-mark undies? Please, realize you're just not that into him and move on.

Little Asylum on the Prairie

I was reading aloud to the girls from Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in the Little House on the Prairie series made famous by the fabulous 70's television show of the same name starring the lushly, curly-locked Michael Landon, when I reached the chapter about the long winter. Wilder describes how their little log cabin was almost lost in snow drifts and how they spent long, cozy days by the fire and I began to ponder a question.

How the hell did Ma not lose her damn mind and wind up rocking in a corner dressed in a dirty nightgown come spring after having spent four months cooped up in a 500 square foot house with her three children?

This winter, dear readers, has been the longest of my life thus far, including the four I spent in upstate New York, during college, where snow storms that dumped eighteen inches were the rule rather than the exception. Trying to keep three children under the age of seven occupied, relatively clean and alive has taken the better part of my sanity. Now, I know, I know, I am in a hell of my own making. Nobody told me to have three kids in quick succession, but this long season has brought into even clearer focus the amount of interaction we feel we need to have with our children and how they themselves have begun to expect it.

Do you know why Ma was sane come spring? Because she did not feel it her duty to allow her two older daughters to paint a six foot by two foot craft paper mural in the laundry room, while trying to keep her eighteen month old, who is panting with desperation to get in on the action, from tromping through the door and across the paper since her younger daughter keeps knocking over her cup of paintbrush rinse water, requiring Ma to come clean up and refill, while her older daughter squeals, "She's wrecking everything!!" No, Ma had butter to churn, bread to bake, and laundry to wash by hand, which not only prevented her from allowing her daughters to change out of a perfectly clean pair of pants because a drop of apple juice fell on them at lunch (since she really needs one more pair of pants to drag across the damn washboard) but required her children to amuse themselves if they wanted anything other than this morning's cold mush for dinner.

While I do pride myself on the fact that I make my children spend a decent amount of time playing alone, something happened this winter that made me backtrack and I found myself slogging around under the heaving weight of my guilt if I surrounded the baby with his favorite cars and trucks in order to put away some laundry. I know I have written, time and again, about the theory of parenting I believe in, handed down from the Yoda of child rearing, Dr. Spock, called "benign neglect", which allows children to become more self sufficient and able to entertain themselves without needing a power source, but I needed to remind myself of it.

So you are not alone, dear readers, in your fervent prayers that spring get here before your loved ones are reading about you in the papers. So go about your work with a light heart knowing Ma, with the three spare minutes she had for Laura a day, managed to produce a child who grew up to be a prolific author. And know in a few short weeks we will all be able to utter the sweet, sweet words that herald the beginning of the warm weather seasons, "I don't care if you want to. I told you to go outside and play."

They get my vote...

Aaaaahhhh! In my search for a RuPaul t-shirt (yes, I am obsessed) I came across the perfect nexus between two of my loves - Ru and Michelle. In real life though, the three of us get together for a boozy champagne lunch. OK, maybe not real life, but at least in that scenario Michelle doesn't have to tuck.

Baaaaa....

You all know, as of late, I have been struggling with the spiritual state of my little brood and, very recently, have toyed with the idea of returning to the Catholicism much to the surprise of my peers, religious and otherwise.

Well, I'm back.

Please. Save me the, "What the fuck?"s and the "I always thought you'd come back"s as I am hearing both, equally, in my own head. This decision was not one I entered into lightly, but after a lot of soul searching over the last few weeks. And, of course, in my anal retentive fashion, I made a pro/con list to see if there was more up or downside to going back to the faith of my youth.

Pros
- My children would develop a concept of God and spirituality, in general, as the some total of that thus far has been sudden outbursts of "Christ on a bike!" from Mommy and talking about this really nice guy, Jesus, at Christmastime which really just confused them as his relation to Santa was not discussed. Even though I would love if they went lighter on the whole "Jesus died for your sins" bit, I look back fondly on those quiet moments in church as kid when you could feel that there was something bigger than you out there and I want my kids to have that. I want them to know there is a deeper meaning to life and my feeble attempts at prayers before bed was not getting that message across.

- My kids would also have the shared experience of church and all the weirdness that entails to share with their family and peers. While I will try to shield them from the famous Catholic guilt, there is something cool about knowing how to do the whole sit/stand/kneel aerobics routine finally, FINALLY!, getting your first taste of the disappointingly stale host during your first communion, as I have mentioned before.

But the other aspect of this commonality is having a place to mark the passing of time and to celebrate the milestones in life. I have discussed, ad nauseam, how my father shang hai'd me into having a full mass for my wedding, but to be honest, I really loved that we did it. After we were pronounced husband and wife I really felt different. Being in a religious space lent a solemnity to the act of being married so that I truly felt like a different person when it was all said and done. I'm not sure I would have felt the same after a ceremony of my own design.*

Looking down the road to my own death, I don't want my kids to have to make up some cockamamie ceremony, or worse yet, feel like shits if they do nothing at all. At least this way when I kick it they can put it all in the hands of the priest. And, of course, if they choose they can celebrate the new lives in their own families by baptizing their kids if they wish.

- I have a history with the church. Going to mass last week, by myself, felt like a homecoming of sorts. They really brought out the big guns and played the song they played during the recessional at my mother's funeral, but even if they hadn't I felt more connected to my mother there. She was your typical guilt-ridden Irish Catholic, and maybe that wasn't so healthy, but it made me think of all the Sundays I spent in church with her and gave me more time to think about her than I have in years. There was something so visceral about it it brought me to tears.

- The last pro? The one I am most ashamed to admit? Is that I am lazy. L-A-Z-Y. I am too lazy to do what my girl Sasha did and actually go to mass at different kinds of churches. I know the Catholic church and all its foibles and, to me, all organized religion has an element of crazy to it and the crazy you know is better than the crazy you don't know. It's kind of like that old boyfriend who was ooh-kaaay during senior year of high school who you stayed with because you needed a date for prom, and went back and hooked up with over fall break because you needed reassurance you were still cute despite the freshman fifteen. A sad reflection of my religious devotion? You betcha'. But true? Yes. I am not wild about the church, but will use it for the purpose of teaching my kids about God and piety. And the speed with which the priest returned my call did make me feel wanted despite the beer weight on my soul.

Cons

- The church's ridiculously archaic stance on birth control, abortion, and homosexuality.

Well, then.

True, that is one big, giant, stinking turd of a con. So how am I balancing that against the pros I have listed? Well, I was raised a cafeteria Catholic, picking and choosing what I believe in and that is exactly what I will be teaching my kids. Because do I believe in the whole "Give thanks to god and don't sin" part? Yes. So that's the part I'm focusing on. Do I feel like hypocrite? Also a yes.

This whole experience has been such a roller coaster. It felt good to go back to church, yet I felt ashamed telling my gay sister of my decision, despite her unwavering support of my doing what I feel is right for my kids. As a modern woman, it's hard to explain to those not in my situation how I feel. Hence the rambling in the is post. The answers? Again, don't ask me.

So call me a sheep, dear readers, for returning to this dysfunctional flock. I will keep you posted on all my adventures as we have a meeting scheduled with the priest to discuss baptizing all three kids (should be fun considering #2 hates having her hair washed and #1 is as tall as a third grader), he has already requested H and I come in for confession, and I still can't remember if you it's right hand or left on top to receive communion (forget having the priest put it right on my tongue - gross!)

*No hate to those of you who were actually able to write beautiful ceremonies of your own. Hubby's and mine would have been, "Do you?...Yeah!...Do you?...Of course!...(awkward silence)...This is queer. Are we done?"