Keepin' It Classy In New Town

I know how you all love when I share my most deeply embarrassing parenting, and non-parenting moments, with you dear readers, so please, enjoy in it's entirety, the email exchange I accidentally had on the school website this morning:

The email I received:

"Dear Parents,
As noted on our website, Visitation Day is Wednesday, November 4 from 9:00-11:30 for Pre-K through grade 5 and from 12:30-1:15 for PM sessions of Pre-K and kindergarten. No siblings please."

My response:

"How the f@ck am I supposed to do this alone? I am so tired of being between a rock and hard place with these schools assuming you don't have any other kids."

This message was intended for H, and I hadn’t even realized it had not gone to him until this mother kindly wrote back:

"Hi Mary,

I'm not sure who should answer this. I forwarded your email to find out who could answer your question.

Random Mom"

So imagine the scene as I read this email. All the color drained from my face as I stared incredulously at my Blackberry screen. Having sent the email from the home computer, I started moaning, “Oh no, oh no”, under my breath, #2 asking as I threw her off the computer, “Mommy, what’s wrong?”. And there I saw in my Sent folder, I had replied to the school mailbox rather than sending my missive to H.

I. Was. Screwed. Let's dissect my mortification, shall we?

First, notice the lack of salutation. If I had only prefaced this rant with "Hubby", anyone not named "Hubby" would know this had to be an error. I normally do not greet H in emails, so this came in handy allowing anyone who read it to think my rage was directed at them.

Second, oh yes, the f-bomb. I drop them so frequently in said non-salutatory emails, I have been blocked by H's office's compliance software. Hence my clever use of the "@" symbol. While I still look like a classless, sewer-mouth who should be hiking up her low-rise jeans, trying to light a Newport, while simultaneously pulling Little Man out of his car-seat-less spot in my Chevy Nova, at least I look like I was trying to tone it down a tiny bit. Kind of like Lil' Km wearing that pasty. You all know my love of swearing when aggravated, but I wasn’t quite ready to let the citizenry of New Town know that just yet.

Third, I go beyond railing against the sitter-less-unless-it’s-Thursday confines of my existence and go on to attack the school. I do have a valid point, since if younger siblings are not welcome, who, but the stay at home parent of all school-aged children, would be able to attend this event? But being new to town, I’m not about to go all Norma Rae and start shouting from my soapbox – yet.

Notice how Random Mom's language is all don’t-rattle-the-cage-y? She isn't even going to acknowledge my obvious mental instability. Like ignoring the guy who's shouting at you while peeing in the corner of the subway car. Email would not be fast enough to prevent my kids forever being known as “the children of that crazy, foul-mouthed redhead”. I immediately Googled her, got her number and called. Thankfully, she was totally cool, laughed, and went on to tell me she is in the same boat herself, as are many other moms and they are all pissed. She also mercifully informed me that only she checks the school account, not the principal and the entire PTA, as I had feared.

So in the end, dear readers, Mean Mommy has not yet earned herself a reputation here in New Town. But now that I know the parent body is behind me, perhaps I need to start a letter writing campaign about this no sibling nonsense. And this time, mine will be expletive free.

I Do, Now I Don't...

The title's of today's post comes from a website highlighted during the human interest portion of the early, early news. This is a website that traffics in once cherished, now unwanted, jewelry - specifically engagement and wedding rings. And while you would think, I would have objections to a site such as this, concerning wearing other people's misfortune on your finger, I actually think this idea is genius - if the guy's an asshole and dumps you, why not sell his ring and buy a car?

It was the couple they interviewed during the segment who got the wheels turning.

The couple, who were featured shopping this website, were the typical type who wind up on Bridezillas, Whose Wedding Is It Anyway and all the other voyeuristic nuptial-related programs conveniently aired on Sunday evenings so I can enjoy them while working on my Sunday night glass of wine. She, overbearing and demanding, with a this-is-my-day-and-I-will-be-a-princess-no-matter-what-the-cost attitude and he, subdued, beaten down by the daily onslaught of criticisms and demands, staring sleepily into the camera, waking only to mutter a "Yes, dear" when prompted.*

She began to tell the story about their betrothal and how everything was smooth sailing until the issue of the ring came up. His budget? $5,000. Hers? $10,000-$15,000. And this is the point I throw my water bottle at the screen, screaming, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????" This, to me, is part of the bigger problem of divorce.

It seems to me, the focus on all the bells and whistles of a wedding, rather than on the marriage itself, is causing a lot of post-honeymoon "So now what?" let downs, and the ring is just the starting point. Look at engagement rings. This ring is supposed to be your partners offering of love to you in exchange for your spending the rest of your life with him.** It should not be a piece of jewelry that will put him in debt until your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary just so you can impress the girls at work. In my opinion, this ring should be a reflection of where you were in life when you got engaged, not where you plan to be in twenty years. If a half a carat is all he can afford, then so be it. And horror of all horrors, maybe you even accept a ring that's not a diamond.

Now don't get me wrong, I went through a massive period of ring lust around the time H and I got engaged and you all know I am a major jewelry whore, but looking around at women my age, who did receive huge rocks, it just didn't seem right. Like they were playing dress-up with their mother's jewelry. Isn't the beginning of your marriage supposed to be about building a home and life together? Didn't Frank Sinatra say "The Best is Yet to Come"? My ring may not be the hugest on the block***, but when I look at it I see twenty-four year-old H, doing his best to buy the nicest ring he could for me, running downtown to the jeweler on his lunch break, with a wad of cash in his pocket, having palpitations he was going to get mugged going on or coming from this errand. (And don't get me started on women who are there when their fiances buy their ring. Can we say "control issues"?)

Even wedding rings, I think, have taken a turn for the worse. There are loads and loads of songs that make reference to a "band of gold". Will the kids of today even know what that means when all they see are diamond eternity bands on the married women around them? And before you ask me how the sour grapes taste, I honestly, honestly, did not want an eternity band when I got married. Diamond lover that I am, I don't even wear my engagement ring on a daily basis for fear of the stone falling out at the playground or falling down a drain. So an entire band of diamonds seemed like sentencing me to a life as an amputee on a practical basis so afraid would I be to use my left hand.

Our wedding bands was one of the few areas of our nuptials in which H had a strong opinion. Obviously, because it was a non-time-telling piece of jewelry he was going to be wearing for the rest of his life, but also because he felt it represented us as a team. He was adamant about our rings looking very similar. I did him one better and got the very same ring as he did. A thick, solid, platinum band, with a loving sentiment engraved on the inside seemed to reflect us. If the engagement ring is a symbol of your circumstances when you decided to get hitched, then I wanted my ring to be a symbol of our marriage - strong, durable, able to go through anything and maintain its understated beauty.

And before you all send me loads of hate mail, yes, I do know plenty of great couples in which the wife has a large engagement ring and/or an eternity band. What really pisses me off is people buying these things who can not afford them or merely want them as status symbols. If you are happy and flush, then bling-bling away. I just wish the message were out there that all that extra stuff is not what a marriage is about and if you don't feel you can marry someone without being presented with the Hope Diamond then I pity you the day one of you walks through the door bearing the financial burden of a pink slip or an unexpected positive pregnancy test. Well, maybe not, because then at least you can hock the ring.

*Who does that remind me of? Hmmm...
**K, for simplicity I am referring to the parties as male and female in an obvious hetero-centric way - no hate. And you and Chrissy did an awesome job on your rings!
***Keep your shirt on, H. I can already hear the complaints "Nice to make me look like a cheap bastard!" My ring is lovely, people.

My Mexican Mary Poppins

Two posts in a row! And during a week H is traveling for work, nonetheless. Can you believe this? I can, and do you know why? Because of my new babysitter, S. That’s right, dear readers, after all my bitching and moaning, hemming and hawing, and finally escaping the world’s smallest house, I have hired a sitter. And it is a miracle.

This is a miracle that almost didn’t happen. S is the sister of a nanny here in New Town and was looking to fill some extra days since her employment with another family was dwindling as the kids aged. I was reluctant at first, when my neighbor told me of her availability, still feeling nervous about the new financial situation we were in since the move, and then the summer ended and H got back to work – with a vengeance. Most days he is gone before the kids get up and home moments before they go to bed. And the travel. Sweet Jesus, I think I’ve seen him for about four hours this week. He got off a red-eye from California yesterday morning and got on a shuttle to DC today at nine. Basically, Monday through Friday, I have become a single parent.

Now one would think, with the kids going back to school, I’d have loads of time to get the laundry, cooking and cleaning done and still find time to write. One would be wrong when one factors in the unexpected bullshit that fills up my life like preparing my presentation for the Daisies parent meeting, trying to find a Jerry costume (of Tom & Jerry fame) for #2*, changing out everyone’s fall and summer clothes (which is my job in hell, by the way), and trying to set up a family-room-closet-toy-storage system that does not result in Little Man being buried by an avalanche of Thomas trains and Geotrax every time he opens the door. Obviously, this left very little time for writing or, you know, sanity. So after much discussion and pouring over the finances to convince me I was not putting our family in the poor house or, at the very least denying my children ridiculously overpriced swimming lessons, I asked S to come for an interview.

Other than her pathetic attempts to hide her mortal fear of Reilly**, S was perfect. Shockingly young, about my age, I think I was more expecting an hispanic Mrs. Doubtfire, she came right in and got on the floor to play with Little Man while we chatted. She would not only keep my children alive when I needed to leave the house, but when not occupied with the kids, like during LM’s nap, she would do housework like vacuum, empty the dishwasher, or fold and put away the laundry. She had me at “light housework” and we made arrangements for her to come once a week for six hours. But first she had to check with her mother.

KABOOM! That’s the sound of my nuclear warhead of white guilt exploding, covering me in a radioactive layer of self-doubt. Turns out S has a two year old daughter who stays with her mother while S watches upper-middle class white women’s children so they can get Botox injections or meet their personal shoppers – or at least that’s what , I’m sure, S must think of me, wrenching her away from her own child to sing endless rounds of The Wheels on the Bus in heavily accented English to mine. Also not mitigating these feelings? Reading The Help, a novel that takes place in 1960’s South, and focuses on the black women who raised generations of white babies while suffering the indignities of segregation.

S left ready to come to work the next Thursday, but I still wasn’t sure I could do this. My interview with her sowed the seeds of insecurity. Did I really need the help? Couldn’t I do this on my own? Sure, I haven’t been to dentist or gynecologist in two years, but all three kids will be in school all morning next year, surely my impending route canal, lady-bit problems and writing career, could wait. I mean this poor woman would probably kill to be home with her kid and here I was bribing her to take mine off my hands.

Thankfully, I had my amazing stepmother to talk to. Born in Brazil, she regaled me with stories, as she had done in the past, of her days as a young mother back in her home country with a housekeeper and babysitter. These services are standard there, with almost every mother, not just the upwardly mobile, employing one or both on a regular basis. I remember the look of sheer terror on her face as she left at the end of her two week stay after Little Man’s birth, incredulous as to how I would manage to cook, clean ad do laundry for five people while caring for three children under six. In her experience, it was not humanly possible. And hearing that made me feel much better. As for my guilt about keeping S from her child, my stepmom reminded me the very decent salary I was paying her (I opted to go right to the pay S was earning with her other family after two years rather than start low and give raises along the way to assuage said white guilt), was way more than she would make at any other job she would be able to get with her language skills and questionable immigration status***, and would, therefore, benefit said child.

After our conversation, I also came to the realization that I do not have to hang on the cross to be a good mother. In fact, all I was doing, trying to do it all, was preventing myself from being the mother I want to be. If I could by a few precious hours to write and have someone help shoulder some of the some domestic burden, I was a fool not to. As I found during my short stint working at Planned Parenthood before I became pregnant with LM, having something productive of my own, made me a better mother. Nobody’s checking for stigmata at bedtime and handing out awards.

Women today are in a precarious situation. Most of us do not live close enough to our families, our mothers specifically, to have the regular, day in, day out, help, once just a shout up the apartment building stairs away****, that made a trip to the grocery store a pleasant jaunt where one could price compare and haggle amicably with the butcher, rather than the modern sanity-endangering gauntlet of today, pushing three kids in the cart to prevent them from knocking over displays, leaving just enough room for the food you barely check the price on as you toss it in the cart, jealously eyeing the women, unaccompanied by minors, who actually have time to stand in line at the deli counter. We need help, yet feel the sting of guilt thinking of our mothers or grandmothers doing it on their own. In reality, they were not alone, when the kids could just run down the block to grandma's for an hour. So I asked myself, what exactly the difference is between having a family member watch my children gratis and paying someone to do the exact same thing? Not a damn thing but some Benjamins.

So while I will continue to suffer from white guilt, mother guilt and financial guilt (So many flavors! Try them all!), I will remind myself that the small weekly price I pay for my sanity, my sense of self and, for the love of all that is holy, the satisfaction of someone else matching and putting away a week’s worth of three different sized little-kid socks, is worth every damn penny. And if all of this sounds like justification, so be it. I'm really too damn tired to care.

*Which she has seen exactly ONCE, but now my life revolves around finding a brown, NOT GRAY, mouse costume.

**Why is it the less someone wants his affection, the more obsessed Reilly becomes with them? If he had not cut out the jackassery and ruined this for me I would seriously have considered putting him out on the street wearing a "Free Dog" sandwich board.

***There goes my political career I suppose!

****Yet again, I betray my Bronx roots. Do you have the stereotypical Bronx Irish image in your head of my grandmother shouting out the window with a kerchief on her head, “Just let me hang out the wash and take the potatoes off the stove!”?

Say Cheesy!

So today is school picture day for all three kids. Of course this is also the day #1 has her heart set on wearing her tackiest Hannah Montana t-shirt, Little Man wakes up with the world's worst case of bedhead which resists even the most determined minstrations with water and a comb*, and #2 decides tights make her legs feel "too soft" forcing me to search for the only pair of leggings that match the dress she insists on wearing. So after finding appropriate and not-too-soft attire, bathing LM to tame his wayward locks, brushing, braiding and polishing my offspring, they were all ready for their close-ups.

This made me think of my own school picture days and, frankly, I don't remember such parental acrobatics. Being the child of a dual income family, many times photo day was forgotten entirely and I wound up being snapped in an unfortunately strawberry covered turtleneck in the third grade. I do remember trying desperately to show my recently lost lower front tooth in second grade, resulting in a rigor-mortis-like grimace. I remember how unfortunate it was to have pictures after recess, which produced a rather windswept appearance in photos, despite my best attempts at using the awesome free comb the photographers gave out with their names embossed on the side. I had so much hair, it would wind up stick in the back ala Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington.

So who remembers those backdrops? Of course there was the plain, sky blue one, but there was also the diagonal neon lights, the fake fall foliage (and equally fake rail fence to lean on), and my personal favorite, which I will call The Floating Dead Kid. This was the pose my mother chose nine times out of ten (not for my kindergarten picture, above, obviously). This photo was comprised of a smiling front shot of me standing before a black background, on which was superimposed a larger, translucent, non-smiling side shot of me, that seemed to float like my soul itself above my left shoulder. Dear GOD, do I wish I could find the one from second grade. It not only includes the Joker grin discussed above, but on the straight face, you can clearly see a huge scratch which was battle scar from the previous night's bedtime scratch fight with my sister.

And the class photo. Not until I was a teacher did I realize what a logistical nightmare these are. It is never as simple as putting the kids in line shortest to tallest, but which kid can't be next to the other kid because they start telling fart jokes. Try looking good as a teacher smiling through clenched teeth, hissing "Kevin, if you don't cut it out now you are inside for recess today!" And as the tallest kid in my class for the majority of the school year, standing in the back row, never getting to be front and center next to that little black sign with the class name and year was a total bummer.

So my children, living in the suburban Shangri La of New Town, had their pictures taken in the grove of oak trees in front of their school, hair perfectly in place and appropriately attired. My oldest, not yet tired of it, reveled in being the second tallest in her class and, word on the street has it, #2 even smiled (her preschool picture, which I can not find after the move, has a decidedly "fuck you" vibe, shocking). Don't ask me how they got Little Man to sit still though. I have a feeling his proofs will come back with nothing but a blur that seems to be wearing a blue oxford.

* I now regret my evil thoughts as teacher when my male students would come in each morning looking like Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary. I was all, "Jeez, people, ever heard of a comb and water?". Now I know, little boy hair, like little boy pee goes where it wants and can not be tamed.

Mean Mommy's got some competition

I think this might be a new low, rifling through my daughter's belongings for writing material, but I just HAD to show this to you, dear readers. Look! Her first book! She is so secretive about her work, like many authors I know, she has hidden it in various locations in her room, which, of course, I discover during the course of my usual clean-up each day. Finally I just had to ask her to tell me where she had put it and swear I would respect her privacy. Which is a total lie, as you can see.*

She has recently been reading the Nancy Drew series so I suppose this was the inspiration for this "mystary" novel. There are so many things I love about this writing I don't even know where to begin. I love that she has chosen to keep the last name Drew for her character, but substitute her friend's first name, yet leaves herself entirely out of it. I love that she uses dialogue ("hmm...mm") and that she is also the illustrator. I love that she sets the Kelly character up as the theif who uses the guise of borrowing her "six colored pen" to steal her friend's party invitations. She based this on the four colored pen I bought her, but is using artistic license to make the pen even more enviable. I love that she used her real kindergarten and first grade teacher's names.

But most of all, I love that she is writing! The fact that she just had to put this down on paper, in the middle of the night, wearing her spelunker's headlamp (I'm not shitting you, my dad bought them as night lights and they are GENIUS), using her four-colored pen, makes me dance with joy. I can help but sneak into her room every night to see what she has written. There are very few times as a parent you get hard proof that what you do affects them in a positive way (Not like, say, letting her drink water out of a wine glass and watching Project Runway with me Sunday evenings.**) I will revel in this one for the next month, using it to distract me from #2 still not wanting to go to school (Tears, still? Really?).

So forgive me, dear readers, for forcing you to look at my kid's stuff, and please, I want no emails about how great a writer she is and all that jazz.*** I struggled with the decision to do so, feeling like one of those moms who use their kids' pictures as their Facebook profile shot (talk about an identity crisis, get some therapy, woman).

One thing that upsets me about this book, though? She's already completed the first chapter of her first book and my book? I've got nothin'.

*Family members, you obviously can say NOTHING about this or I am screwed and will never be able to work this deal with her diary when she's a teenager.

**Keep your shirt on, I pre-screen them so I can fast-forward any bleeped language, inappropriate dialogue or the entire drag-queen challenge (too many fake breasts).

***Comments about what an inspiring parent I am, however, are welcome!