I'm not being paid - you are.

Do you know how big Central Park is? I do, because today I dragged three kids over every square foot of it searching, first for the Marionette Theater, which was completely devoid of a sign so I traipsed passed it three times, then looking for the one playground with sprinklers, which proved to be challenging as we were lured here, there and everywhere by the sprinklers the grounds crew had set up on every patch of grass in the park. After a certain point even I had to admit to the kids that, yes, it did indeed suck, and thankfully we found the theater right when we were reaching crisis point, meaning I had no more Goldfish with which to buy their silence.

After my Bronx Zoo-induced fear that the quaint, Swiss cottage theater would not be air conditioned was allayed, we settled into our seats, the lights went down, and I prepared myself for forty-five minutes of basically sleeping with my eyes open, surrounded by Manhattan nannies and their young charges. The plinky fairy tale score plays as and the narrator begins his shtick, "ARE YOU READY KIDS???" Cue excited screaming. Then, "ARE YOU READY PARENTS???" Cue half-hearted murmurs of assent (since 95% of the adults in the room were not blood relatives). This, apparently, was not good enough for this guy, "I SAID, ARE YOU READY PARENTS???" At this point, the portion of the adult audience who is on the clock, and afraid of being narced out by their charges when Mommy gets home, gather their energy and respond with some gusto this time. And me? I just dragged a combined one hundred and forty pounds of offpsring on a West Side Death March and you expect me to get it up for you and cheer? This why I hate live childrens' performances.

Remember that scene in A Christmas Story, where Ralphie and Randy are in line for Santa, and the characters from the Wizard of Oz show up and the Wicked Witch of the West attempts to engage with Ralphie? "My, what a tasty little boy!" Ralphie's response? "Don't, uh, bother me, I'm, uh, thinking." That in a nutshell is my exact feeling when I am forced to interact with childrens' performers. I can not stand their overly enunciated, loud voices and saccharine turn of phrase. I can't stand my own pity for them, wondering what their real thespian aspirations are and knowing, deep inside, there lurks complete disdain for their role as The Big Good Wolf, which they are covering up with a fake grin and crazy eyes.

If you want me to interact with you, join The Blue Man Group. Well, that's a lie, because I don't enjoy interacting with any performers, if I'm really telling the truth. Even if I were faced with Dame Judi Dench delivering a Tony-worthy performance, during which I was required to participate, I would sit in my seat, uncomfortably trying to avoid eye contact. Having third row seats to see Cats on Broadway in high school was even more of a hell on earth than seeing a play about, well, cats, as all those damn cat-people sneaked off the stage and scared the shit out of you when they popped up behind your seat in the audience. Don't even get me started about my family's day at the Renaissance Festival, which H was fortunate enough to be dragged along to (further proof that a teenage boy in love will do anything if he has even the slightest chance of copping a feel including "come with me and my parents to the Renaissance Fair"). This nightmare involved the same B-level thespians, this time dressed as tradesmen, lepers and women of easy virtue. H, even worse than me when it comes to audience participation avoidance, was in a terror sweat all day, especially since my sister insisted on playing along with the actors, drawing attention to our group. Quiet a good actress herself, she mercilessly harassed one of the lepers, asking him to show her his sores, until the poor guy ran off, knocking over a table of pewter dragon jewelry in his haste.

It is a rather unfortunate position to be in with children as I am constantly surrounded by puppeteers, over-zealous birthday party magicians and (gulp) clowns, but I will suffer through gritted teeth to give my children the experience of live entertainment. I will use my tried and true method of tending to Little Man and avoiding eye contact in order to make these outings more bearable. And you can bet your ass I'm not raising my hand to volunteer when they ask, "Which mom or dad wants to come up here and play one of the Three Bears?"

Don't bother me. I'm thinking.

Urine is sterile...urine is sterile...

Is there really anything more disgusting than the bathroom at a public pool or beach?

Each morning begins with the floors still wet and the bleach fumes so reassuringly strong they nearly knock you out. As the day progresses, errant pieces of paper towel wind up on the floor and begin to degrade in what one hopes is chlorine water run-off from bathing suits. There is a marked increase in the urine odor as the sun approaches its zenith, intensifying the heat and stink in a humid, un-air-conditioned, enclosed space. The older kids arrive in full force early in the afternoon, and now clever tricksters will begin locking the stalls from the inside, causing mothers to groan in frustration after they have barely made it to the bathroom with a toddler in tow doing the pee-pee dance, only being comforted by thought that the idiots responsible had to crawl through what is now almost an inch of mystery liquid* on the floor and most certainly have some kind of skin condition for their efforts. At this point in the day, the place really stinks, and one would gladly stick one's face in a vat of Clorox to avoid inhaling the stench. Whole rolls of toilet paper are found in the bowls, as the dispensers are empty and small children fumble unsuccessfully with industrial-sized replacement rolls left on the shelves. The trash bin next to the diaper station is reaching maximum capacity, and disturbing brown drips are seen on the floor around it**. One wonders if, upon searching out a toilet to use, if an outhouse with a hole in the ground in Calcutta would not be a better option.

And explain to me again, why some mother gave me the stink eye at the beach when she overhead #2 telling me she went into the ocean to pee.

*Is that water sloshing over my flip-flop exposed toes, or pee?
**For which I was responsible last week as Little Man took The World's Most Inconvenient Crap while standing in the pool, which I could tell by the serious look on his face a as he crouched in the shallow end, barely whisking him away to the bathroom in time before brown streaks started running down his legs.

The Shoulds Part II

I had an interesting experience on my sister's recent visit - carrying on most of my regular mom duties and regulations with an audience, and one that is not afraid to comment. Being a mother, you can get trapped in your own head and not even think about what you are doing or why you are doing it, but occasionally you hear a voice from the outside that makes you pause and reconsider.

For example, I was out with K, shopping for her wedding suit, and had to call to confirm successful drop off of my children, by the babysitter, at a playdate. Unfortunately, that mother had been running late dropping her own son off at camp, and my kids were waiting in the driveway upon her arrival. This produced many apologies on her end and much, oh-my-God-don't-worry-about-its from me. Upon hanging up, K observed, "You and the moms you hang out with are really good at helping assuage each other's maternal guilt." To which I screeched, "Guilt??? What guilt?" For someone who doesn't have kids, K is quite the mothering sage - she is also the one who asked when I was contemplating whether or not to have ann epidural with Little Man, "Would you think I was a better person if I had a route canal with no Novocaine?" - and this observation was more food for thought.

She's right. At least in my personal experience, guilt, and fierce, visceral love (in order of frequency) are pretty much the two strongest emotions associated with motherhood. We might not see it as such, but guilt is a strong motivator when it comes to mothering. Sure, I love reading to my children, but I do it, not only so they develop into strong readers, but because I am filled with self-loathing if I don't. I hate checking their teeth after they brush at night, since I'm so tired I barely have time to brush my own, but the guilt I felt after #1 had her first cavity has turned me into an amateur dental hygienist.

This negative motivation is part of the problem with modern motherhood. There are endless lists of things we "should" be doing, other than keeping our kids alive, fed and clothed, that we can sit up at night berating ourselves over when we fall short. Last night, I was up for an hour and half, despite my Bronx Zoo-induced exhaustion*, worrying that my kids only impression of me from the day was of a sweaty, camel-smelling mother hissing, "Don't touch the glass!" or "Stop complaining, I know it's hot!", instead of a calm presence explaining different things about the animals and habitats were were seeing. I, unfortunately, let the guilt expand to suck all the oxygen out of the room, and began to obsess over Little Man not counting in an itemized way, #2's lack of interest in learning to ride a bike and #1's trouble making connections in her writing according to her last report card and the fact I had done nothing to improve that over the summer thus far. As a mother, it can become disheartening, when you perceive all you are doing is stopping bad things from happening. Sure, we can blame mothers themselves, since it is a state of mind, thinking this way. Why not think of doing a craft with your children as a way to expand their creative horizons instead of something that has to be done? But it's difficult to do that when all you read in the parenting rags how stunted they will be if not given a creative outlet. I blame the media, and myself for being affected by it. And, yes, I have stopped reading those publications, you really can't escape the fact the overriding message out there is if your kid winds up fucked up, it's because of something you did or did not do. Only you can prevent your children from growing up to be math-phobic, non-bike-riding, bad writers.

There is a parenting philosophy that we really have very little real effect on how our children turn out outside of their physical health and basic emotional well-being, that they will be who they will be regardless of what we do. I, for one, would like to start a whole magazine based on this philosophy, but I'm not sure it would sell ( with articles such as "Baby Einstein? Sponge Bob? It's all good!"). Because, hand in hand, with the idea that we can consider ourselves no longer responsible for anything "wrong" with our kids, is giving up any claim on anything they do "right" and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that. Sometimes the only thing that gets me back to sleep at night are thoughts like she might not be able to ride a bike, but at least #2 can read.

*Gotta keep up with the summer field trip schedule. I sort of forgot that all of the indoor exhibits are not air-conditioned. The Monkey House smells awesome on a 95 degree day. Also, awesome? Riding a camel with a forty pound toddler who is sweating like an NFL lineman during pre-season training.

At least it's not Hamburger Helper...

I hate cooking. There, I said it. The unfortunate thing about this hatred of anything culinary is the fact that is figures prominently in my job responsibilities. Sure, I’ll bake a dessert every now and then, but I get no pleasure out of adding a dash of this and sprinkle of that to create the perfect dish. I am extraordinarily lucky in that I am married to a man who loves to cook so much, he considers it a relaxing hobby and will prepare elaborate meals on the weekends for me while I sit at the kitchen table reading magazines and drinking wine, but the regular, everyday cooking falls squarely in my wheel house as a stay at home mom. I sort of don’t have a leg to stand on, being home all day and then asking H to prepare dinner when he walks in the door at seven thirty.

Back in the day, H and I shared cooking responsibilities equally. If you can call what we did “cooking”. Most nights it was takeout or random, over-priced salad components picked up at the Korean deli on the way home. Once the kids came though, running out to pick up hummus, tabbouleh and a rotisserie chicken every night at six o'clock stopped being an option and I started having to plan a menu each week. Poor H, my early menus were pretty much composed of the same five dishes every single week and three out of five featured ground turkey, which is pretty much the world’s most flavorless food unless you really doll it up, and as I stated above, I have no interest in doing. My preferred method of cooking is following a recipe that requires dumping a whole lot of crap in a pot and letting it cook, hence our repeated consumption of turkey chili.

Looking at my childhood, it’s no wonder I didn’t turn out to be Julia Child, considering my mother’s spice cabinet contained, salt, pepper, garlic salt and beef bouillon cubes. I had never seen fresh garlic in use until H and I met and my grandmother’s spaghetti sauce recipe called for ketchup – seriously. The Irish have never been known for their cooking and my family held strongly to the belief that unless all color and flavor have been boiled out of the dish, it isn’t done yet.

The roots of my five meal rotation were firmly planted in my formative years with our family menu having the culinary regularity of a elementary school cafeteria. Two of our favorites were Shake ‘N Bake pork chops with Rice-A-Roni, and spaghetti with Ragu and heaping pile of Kraft Parmesan cheese (oh, yes, the kind that came out of the green can) and fish sticks. I have no idea why fish sticks were thought an appropriate pairing with marinara sauce, but then again, since Ragu really isn’t marinara sauce, I guess anything goes. There were regular meals my sister and I didn’t exactly look forward to, such as hamburgers and hot dogs. Strange, no? Well not if you consider the hamburgers were cooked to the consistency of hockey pucks in a skillet and rather than buying real hamburger buns, we used slices of Wonder Bread that absorbed the hamburger grease and formed a pasty carbohydrate sludge that had to be scraped of the roof of one’s mouth. And one could never be sure hot dogs would indeed be “hot dogs”. My father, thinking himself quite the culinary explorer, would try to sneak in some bratwurst which he tried to sell as “really big hot dogs”. The week’s menu was also usually rounded out by a wild card entrée – overcooked roast beef that used to have a sprinkling of garlic salt on it until my father declared himself “allergic”, or in later, my mother's more adventurous years, tacos. Of course, she used the Old El Paso kit since all of our ethnic foods must come a large American, processed food plant.

Thankfully, I have changed my ways and actually have a recipe folder and I even rotate which recipes I pick from according to the season, since I figured out H didn’t really love eating a big, steaming bowl of turkey chili in August. But even though the food has improved (and I do a little dashing and sprinkling now), I still can’t say I enjoy it. It’s part of my job and I do it because I have to. When my kids complain about what’s being served , I like to trot out that favorite phrase, heard by children world wide, “Back when I was a kid…” Even H knows to keep his trap shut if the grb's not great, since he’s really enjoying not having pot roast made with a mixture of Lipton’s dry onion soup and Campbell’s cream of mushroom, creating a gravy of processed goodness. And if he gets to lippy, I just threaten him with that sauce recipe of my grandmother’s.

Why did they bother?

As you can tell by the length of time it took me to write about seeing it, my reaction to the Sex and the City 2 was....eh. It doesn't even warrant on "m" to make it "meh".

To be honest I really wasn't expecting very much, trailers with footage of the ladies riding camels, dressed like the Arabian Village people, complete with ridiculous tiny, cowboy hat for Miranda, did not bode well. I knew going in to keep my expectations low since this was obviously an attempt to squeeze more money out of the franchise and it would be impossible to top the emotional roller coaster of the first one, that tied every story line up in a trite-but-I'm-a-sucker-for-happy-endings-so-I'll-take-it bow. Sadly, even my low expectations were akin to Tom Cruise's hopes to be on top again - way too high.

First of all, the premise of the movie is retarded - as in it must have been conceive by the mentally challenged. The big question is whether or not you can make your own rules in marriage. This question is first brought up during Stanford and Anthony's wedding which was such a gay stereotype brought to life, I thought it was a dream sequence when the ancient Liza Minelli came out in thigh-high boots and did a geriatric version of "All the Single Ladies". Before they exchange vows, Anthony blurts out to the whole crew that the only reason he's getting married is that Stanford will allow him to cheat. This really pissed me off. As if homosexuals everywhere aren't fighting hard enough to have their marriages seen as "real". And that fact that this was said in front of Miranda who turned to look blandly at Steve, instead of saying, "And what do you think about that, cheating asshole?", as I would have done for the rest of his natural life, was the cherry on the sundae.

The "rules" of marriage are brought up again when, later in the movie, Big suggests they use Carrie's apartment as a getaway for each of them and spend two nights a week "off" from each other. Carrie is toying with the idea, even after Charlotte, with her married lady common sense, tells her marriage is two people sharing a home and a bed and a life every single goddamn day, good or bad. To get to the bottom of it and really work on her marriage, Carrie runs away to join the girls on a all expenses paid trip to Abu Dhabi courtesy of Samantha who, apparently, was wearing her too tight, bad idea jeans thinking she belongs in the Middle-damn-East. Oh, and Samantha's in menopause, which you will be reminded of a million times over the course of the film, in a we-know-she's-too-damn-old-but-we'll-keep-having-her-admit-it mea culpa.

While in Abu Dhabi, who does Carie run into, in a spice market, wearing an outfit that would surely have her dragged through the streets by her hair by an angry mob, but Aidan. And then a space ship lands. Yeah, both pretty believable. Anyway she winds up kissing Aidan, only to realize she loves Big, Samantha gets arrested for doing some dry-humping on the beach, and then everyone's back in New York. Meh.

Sure, there were some touching scenes. Such as Miranda force-feeding Charlotte drinks until she confesses that motherhood is not everything she dreamed it would be, asking, "And we have full-time help! How do mothers do this alone?" To which I shouted in the theater, "WE DRINK!", but on the whole this thing was turd and I wish they had never made it. I for one am going to pretend it doesn't exist.

Definitely NO snaps in a Z formation.

O, Carnival Goldfish, we hardly new ye...

This was the title of the witty post I already had composed in my head as we left the town carnival back in the middle of June, with a goldfish sloshing away inside his gallon-sized Ziploc bag in the cargo hold of the stroller. Of course, having three children, I was not stupid enough to start playing a ring toss game that offered aquatic creatures as a prize, knowing after spending thirty dollars to acquire one, two more would need to be won. This arena is entirely H's responsibility, which I feel no guilt foisting upon him since I took care of the whole, you know, birthing them thing. I carefully steered the offspring away from that booth after spying it on a bathroom run, but as we were exiting the area, explaining to the crying #2 that she still had fun playing the squirt-the-water-into-the-clown's-mouth-game, even though she did not win the four foot tall stuffed penguin (which is, of course, bullshit, but seemed gentler than saying, "You can't win 'em all kid."), a kindly teenager in her Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirt and booty shorts came up, bag in hand, and asked if we would like her goldfish. Shit. Of course I had to say yes. The kids were beside themselves with glee at the offer of a free pet. I, however, was uncharacteristically harsh with my children, telling them, "Listen guys, we'll bring him home, but most likely, this fish will be dead when you wake up tomorrow", hoping to keep out of our home any pets on the forbidden list.

I am not prejudiced against pets of the piscine variety. There are other animals on the verboten list such as snakes, lizards, or reptiles of any kind. Anything I might have to feed live mice or insects can hunt on its own and get the hell out of my house. And the fact that you can catch salmonella from these things makes me question the sanity of anyone who does own one. Then there are hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbit or any other rodents. If your cage smells like a homeless guy on the Seventh avenue bus in August, requiring me to shovel out piss-soaked wood chips every week, you will be "escaping" into the woods round my house before the kids get home from school. And, lastly, birds. With their manic, fast-moving eyeballs, claw-like feet, and ear-splitting squawking, it's no wonder these beauties are such popular pets. And I'm sure they harbor no resentment at all over their wings being clipped and won't try to snap your fingers off while you replace their birdseed.*

The next morning dawns and instead of seeing his underbelly floating at the top of the fishbowl and planning a fish funeral, I was greeted by the sight of Harold (yes, they named him, despite my explaining the futility of the gesture) giving me a yeah-I'm-still-here-lady stare. This did not bode well. And here I am a month later with Harold still going strong despite H's (who I have given full responsibility for this creatures care since he would not let me flush him down the toilet while the kids were at school) constantly forgetting to change his shit-clouded water or Harold being fed Potato Flyers for the first week of his life as I had no time or inclination to make a special trip to the pet store in the final jam-packed week of school.

So what is my problem with fish? Unlike the other bestia non grata I discussed, they do not really smell, make noise, or require too much care. Fish, in and of themselves, are not offensive, but what is getting to me is what I perceive to be Harold's loneliness and boredom. H beat me to the punch and picked up a fake plant and some purple stones to liven up his environment, as I was beginning to feel guilty watching Harold stare into vast emptiness, and my interim plan of surrounding his bowl with a ring of Little People wasn't really working out, and just drew Little Man's attention to the area, with resultant splashing and toddler-induced fish terror. The idea of getting Harold a friend has also been discussed and this is where I really get to the heart of the issue. One fish can live in a bowl in the girls' room, but two fish requires an aquarium, and that? Is simply not happening. Aquariums are the domain of single guys in their twenties, before they have a serious girlfriend and should just come with a black leather couch, glass coffee table, neon beer sign and flat screen TV in a Single Guy Living Room Set**. There is no way I am bringing one of those things, with that weird light you put at the top, into my home. Before I know it, I'll have 100 gallon tank in the living room, with empty pizza boxes and beer cans littering every surface, with LM watching Pardon the Interruption instead of Go Diego Go.

So we shall see who will win this battle of wills, as I pointedly forget to remind H of his fish-keeping duties and pack the weekends with activities to distract us from taking a trip to Petco to find Harold a sibling. Do I feel guilty about denying him company, merely because the housing it requires clashes with the aesthetic in my home? A little. Doesn't mean I don't avoid his beady little eyes when I go into the girls' room. And maybe there's another motivation behind my having the girls put away their own laundry this summer, as they tend to close the dresser drawers a little too hard causing a things left too close to the edge to rattle around precariously. I'm just sayin'...

*Of course, cats aren't even on the list since the very idea of having the devil incarnate as pet is laughable.

** I'm looking at you, Gault.

Let's Talk About Sex

I know, I know. Save me your tsk-tsking and agitated foot tapping. Yes, it's been a week since my projected return date, but an unexpected series of vacation days taken by H resulted in many day-trips to the beach and other area amusements and I am now left with a wreck of a house, a funnel cake hangover and more wet towels than I can possibly count.

So I was reading an article in the "Personal Journal" section of The Wall Street Journal - a section title that always makes me think of a flower-covered notebook I scribbled in the ealy 00's each day, in an Oprah-induced fit of self-exploration, before I began unlaoding all of my emtional baggage on you, my lucky readers - and the cover story was about the American libido. Various statisitcs were thrown about and, as usual, I rolled my eyes after reading, yet again, how many times a day the average man thinks about sex. I really do not believe this is true unless you write, film or perform in the porn industry, I am convinced the average man spends more time thinking about bacon or beer. The article was the basic "how to get more sex in into your life" kind with a dash of "when to admit you're in a sexless marriage" thrown in for good measure. And while none of this was earth shattering stuff, two of the stats did catch my attention and gave me pause.

The first was the average number of times a year couples younger than 30 have sex (111) versus that of the above-30 crowd (58). Really? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!, that the number of coital interactions plummets right around the time most couples are in the throws of raising children. As I have said before, having children definitely adds an element of difficulty in finding the time and space to be intimate. Now that naptime is a distant memory for #1 and #2, and they roam the house like caged animals between craft projects during Little Man's siesta, there are markedly fewer skyrockets in flight around here. So I think including this number in the article is nothing but alarmist (and ageist). Talk to me in ten tears when all three offspring can understand the term "privacy" other than for the potty.

The other factoid I reflected upon, was that 70% of men think about sex every day, while only 28% of women do. While I can not speak for my gender as a whole, I also think this is an accurate account - at least for those of us with children. Whether you work or stay at home, a mother's life is a tsunami of to-do lists in an ocean of minutiae, that tries to drown the libido. On top of the constant chatter in our heads (no thought is sexier as you take of your bra than "Did I send in the field trip permission slip for Tuesday?" or "I have to call the dentist!"), is the added strain of sleep deprivation. One part of the article discussed female Viagra and the slow move to get it to market. Don't bother. Female Viagra is called sleep. Ever wonder why couples have so much sex on vacation (other than because of the lack of tiny, peering eyes)? It's because they are getting some damn rest! I am so tired come Saturday night, H has to time making a move like reentering earth's atmosphere - waiting for all three kids to fall asleep, give me time enough to decompress, but before the second glass of wine and I konk out.

H is really going to want ot murder me for this post, but I don't care. For parents, finding time and energy to have good quality sex is like trying to find fat free, organic chicken nuggets that don't taste like donkey shit - very hard, indeed. But we all need to keep fighting, for the sake of our marriages and our sanity. And also, so that in ten years you can all be statistics in my article about the new sexual revolution among parents of teenaged children who understand "knock before entering".