Just a little off the top...

“What the hell happened to his head???”

This is me, screaming, after H returns with Little Man from, yet another, trip to the Supercuts.  It seems their version of a boy’s haircut involves sticking his head in a pencil sharpener.

“It’s your fault”, H protests, “If you would just take him to the damn barber already, we could stop having this argument every six weeks.”

Every six weeks.  While I have thoroughly enjoyed the daily no-maintenance aspect of male hair care for the under-ten set, the frequency of my son’s trips to a hair professional of some sort rivals my own. Once Little Man was old enough for his first haircut, H insisted the town barber shop was the way to go.  But one walk by, and I knew the seventy year-old Italian who runs the joint was going to have little patience for a squirmy two year-old.  So we were off to my salon where the gals had seen him go from source of nausea, to baby bump, to toddler with a mullet, and they would be as invested in his looking good, and not crying while getting there, as I was.

His first haircut was an ordeal, as expected.  Both of us covered in a drape,  he sat in my lap, crying at the trimmer, wiggling so that, eventually, the rest of the cut had to take place with his facing me and me holding his head between my hands.  Sam, my hairdresser, was so sweet and patient with him, as we chatted about celebrity gossip over the crying. I doubt I would’ve been so comfortable with the barber, Little John, across the street, who probably would’ve been enraged by my soft parenting, eventually screaming at LM, “SHUTUPA YOU FACE!”  After a few haircuts, LM eventually figured out the whole sitting still thing and that after the haircut waits a whole table of baked treats, and pretty women to cluck over how handsome you are, and got with the program.

We would’ve sailed along nicely if H hadn’t stuck his nose in my business.  Indulgent as he is about the amount I spend on my hair, he, and OK, I, could not see adding to that amount with a pre-schooler’s ‘do.  Also, I felt like LM’s personal grooming was something he should be having more of a hand in, since shaving and other things I know nothing about are coming down the pike.  But still, the barber was not working out for us because the place is PACKED on the weekends, the only time H can take him.  And they don’t take appointments!  What is up with that?  Giving men yet another excuse, along with mowing the lawn, for getting out of the house for long periods of time.* All of LM’s sitting-and-being-quite time would be eaten up sitting on those ancient red leather chairs I see in the windows, rifling through old issues of Golf Digest.  Hence, the Supercuts.

Then I made the appointment for the holiday picture.  I could not bear the thought of future ribbing at the Christmas Eve table, as LM’s future wife looks through our old photos and, seeing this year’s, asks me, “How could you have done that to his hair????”.  It was time to make friends with Little John and his band of merry WOPs this Thursday.**

We walked in at ten o’clock this morning.  I figured, by then, the guys trying to get a cut in before work would be gone and all the old guys would all be done, and save for one guy getting his head shaved, the place was empty.  It took a minute for anyone to acknowledge us, since they were all busy reading the New York Post, so I got to really enjoy the faded pages ripped out or hair magazines and taped to the faux-marble formica that covers eighty percent of the walls and counters.  If I were looking for feathered layers for LM I’d have many examples to point to. Where is the receptionist who knows me by name to take our coats?  We were unceremoniously waved over to a chair, thankfully, belonging to the youngest of the staff, since I was still worried about behavior-related confrontations. 

“What we gonna do, bella?”  OK, mild flirting from Italian men is a soft spot of mine, especially if they are old.  I had learned enough back at my salon to know the trimmer level they use on LM, but had to explain that the top gets scissor-cut to deal with his massive cowlick.  This is half the reason LM’s haircuts are so difficult.  True to the meaning of the word, it looks like a cow licked him right up his face.  His hair, left unattended, tends toward a Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary sort of look.  So, Nick, our barber, whips out scissors and comb and starts combing in an upward motion and snipping at lightning speed.  I am instantly terrified.  There is no slow and careful snipping.  No checking in with me about how I think the length is, just hair flying everywhere.  Little Man, himself surprised, starts to lean away from the scissors, causing Nick to simply rotate to the other side of his head to force him back the other way.  I can’t look.

So instead, I look around me.  Where the walls aren't covered in aforementioned formica, they are covered in oak paneling.  The barbers have old school, red leather chairs with the adjustable headrests.  Little Man is even sitting on a coordinating red leather booster.  Each barber has his name over his station on faux-wood plaque, with family photos taped up around their mirrors and old copies of Il Messagero on their countertops.  The two men who came in after us chat comfortably with Nick, Joe and Little John about town politics, the lottery and the weather and if they don't want to talk, they flip through the paper.  Joe puts a hot towel on one gentleman's neck before shaving him with a straight razor. There is a clubby relaxed energy, or lack there of here that is distinctly male.  I'm sort of falling in love with this little place.  It is what it is and if you don't like then, vaffanculo!*** 

Then, with a quick swish of that fluffy white brush covered in talcum powder, all the hair bits are whisked off LM’s neck, a quick smack of some pomade, and there was my little boy, looking clean and handsome.  Maybe Nick put a little too much product in his hair and his cowlick stood a little too straight-up giving him a distinct Pauly D vibe, but it was better than him looking like a #2 Ticonderoga.  For the bargain price of fifteen dollars, Little Man had a fresh cut and was even offered a lollipop out of the little basket by the cash register (that had actual buttons) and I had a new appreciation for this male enclave.  

I used to tease H when he came home smiling after his visits to this shop, wondering what all the fuss was about.  Now I know, just like when I go to the salon, I can turn into a female stereotype, chatting about intimate things with women I have nothing in common except we both have tin foil on our heads, while reading Us Weekly, and H gets to go to the barber shop, hang out and be a guy.  There's nothing wrong with my son experiencing that too.  And I love how unpretentious this place is that provides that experience.  All these hip, "old school" barber shops that are opening, offering hot razor shaves and all that jazz?  These guys are all, "What, who's not doing that?", proving not everything in the world needs to be fancy to be good.

So farewell, Supercuts, you have hirsutically assaulted my child for the last time.  I leave him in the capable hands of an Italian sporting a mullet.

*Do I make being home sound like prison?  I don’t mean to, it’s actually an insane asylum.

**I reserve the right to use both Irish and Italian ethnic slurs. Deal.

***"Fuck you!"

Dear Diamond Industry,

You probably don't remember me, since we haven't had much contact since my wedding (more on that later), but I just had to write about your holiday advertising campaign.  Which one you ask?  Every one.  Every single one I have had to endure for the last fifteen years.

We've all seen them a thousand times so we know you are forever, every kiss begins with you, blah, blah, blabbity blah.  And every year there is some new must-have piece of jewelry, many with emotion-inducing names like eternity necklaces and Open Heart necklaces (designed by Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman herself, Jane Seymour).  Then there are new kinds of stones, like diamonds with their own serial numbers engraved inside or chocolate diamonds.  I suppose in instances of theft, the former is useful, the latter, however, just reminds me of the "champagne diamonds" from that movie Beautiful Girls ("It's a new trend in the diamond trade, they're trying to create a new market...Oh, right, right. yeah. They were callin' 'em "piss", but they weren't moving any units.").  Just like the kids trying to get their mitts on a Wii U, women everywhere are dropping not-so-subtle hints to their mates about the new "it" bauble.

Crazy creations aside, it is really the commercials we are bombarded with that drive me mad, or rather the demographic you are marketing to.  I will give you a pass on the ads featuring young couples getting engaged.  The holidays are a popular time to pop the question.  Mean Mommy herself was proposed to at Christmas time at the tender age of 22.  But other than ads for engagement rings, why are you marketing to anyone under the age of fifty?

One particular ad features shots of a woman through courtship, marriage and early parenthood, with the husband voicing over, proclaiming his love for her and how he'd be "nowhere without her".  Well, if you are like most people in your stage of life, buying her that necklace you'll be somewhere -the poor house.  Rather than buying his wife a stone to hang around her neck (and probably have their toddler rip off and flush down the toilet), this guy should be worrying about paying for preschool and saving for a first home.  Tiffany, you try, I grant you, with the Silver Fox* and his wife who actually has crow's feet, but they look forty-five, tops.  The average person of this age also has better places to put their money, like college funds and IRAs.  You can't tell me that many people have every other financial necessity in their lives covered.  

Can't we please have a representation of the people who can actually afford your products?  Is it the fact that older people are "unsexy"?  I know, I know, you want to create a lifetime customer, and, let's face it, old folks ain't got that much time, but I still can't help but say shame on you.  Shame on you for making men think that putting themselves in debt is the only way to show a woman they care.  And shame on us for buying into it.  I, personally, can't justify buying any rocks and then having my kids have to take out Stafford loans.

You know what else is forever?  A bankruptcy on your credit report.  Ok, really seven to ten years, but you get my meaning.

XO - MM

*Pre-mature grey makes you look old?  Um, more like SEXY.  Shout out, H.

Right here, right now

Happy Thanksgiving Eve-eve, dear readers!

Tomorrow I will be on my way into the city with the kids to watch Macy's inflate the Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons.  I hope there aren't any balloon-escape incidents as there were last year, but this year we are stoller-free, so perhaps there will be a Mommy-pulls-out-her-back-carrying-Little-Man-around-the-Upper-West-Side-incident.

I have been giving this year's entry in the Thanksgiving Book some thought.  As I have mentioned before, my entries in the earlier years were pretty easy, since we had major life events to write about, some sad, some happy - miscarriage and unemployment, births, and new homes - but for the last few years, the lives of the Mean Mommy clan have been steadily chugging along with few major events.   Each day is full of school and friends and work and home improvement projects and laughter and tears.  And this year I am not only grateful for that, but for the perspective to enjoy this phase.

Our lives are busy, but with all wonderful things.  Sure, the hectic nature of raising three children can get to me, but I know that I will look back on these times and realize how young and strong and vital H and I were.  How I was the cog that kept the machinery of this family urning on a daily basis. How H busted his ass night and day to provide fuel for our engines. How this well-oiled unit we have created is the center of our children's universe.  How our children were in the nascent stages of becoming who they are and what a miracle it was to take part in that.  Homework, soccer games, giant carts full of groceries, Play-Doh, trips to the playground - these will all , at some point, be just a distant memory. We are in the glorious, messy, vibrant thick of it.

For many of us in this stage of life, our families, both nuclear and extended, are at that delicate tipping point.  Our children are growing up, but not yet grown, we ourselves are still young, and our parents are healthy and active.  We are in a moment of abundance and attention must be paid.  To use some Thanksgiving imagery, I feel like this state of being could be represented by a cornucopia, filled not with things, but with blessings.  It is called the "horn of plenty".  Plenty is defined as "the state or quality of abundance".

Then I have plenty.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Blog-a-versary!

"No one told me it would be like this..."

It's been five years, dear readers, FIVE, since I wrote that sentence in the dark depths of my basement playroom, in my sweatpants, half-deranged with sleep deprivation.  Yes, I said sweatpants.  I hadn't even discovered yoga pants yet, that's how long ago it was.  Mean Mommy, B.Y.P.

If I were being completely honest with myself back then, other mothers did tell me how it would be.  In fact, the minute you announce your first pregnancy every Tom, Dick and Mommy is ready to unload all the nursing/colic/no sleep horror stories in their arsenal.  But being convinced you will be a much better parent than they are and your baby can't possibly turn out like their shitty baby, you ignore everything they say, even if some of it is useful.  And then you find out you're wrong and wonder why nobody warned you.

Five years later, having made it through my baby years, I still feel completely unprepared for what parenthood throws at me.  I find myself saying even more often now, "No one told me it would be like this".  Although we ignore the stories, baby and toddlerhood is pretty similar for all parents.  We all just want our kids to eat, sleep and hit their developmental milestones.  Once our kids reach school age though, those clear mile-markers are gone, and we are left to navigate parenthood's dangerous highway without a map.  Five years ago, I envisioned my life as the mother of school-aged kids as a nirvana of mid-morning exercise, blown-out hair and copious writing time since all three of my children would be in school for at least half the day.  I thought there might even be the possibility of my going back to work, because how much could they really need me once they were no longer babies but bonafide kids?

I wrote the post The Fourteen Month Itch when Little Man was tiny, expressing the reawakening most women experience once their babies reach toddlerhood.  Your baby's need for you, specifically you, has greatly diminished.  Your baby is usually no longer feeding from your body and really any able bodied person could keep them alive for extended periods of time, often times without your child even realizing you are gone.  You begin to look around and wonder if maybe you couldn't do something outside of the house.  The years between the ages of two and four are the years you feel like you could be accomplishing a lot more.  These years are the calm before the storm.   Once your kids hit elementary school, they will need you almost as much as when they were babies.

I hear you laughing at my perceived helicopter parenting, but overly-orchestrated playdates are not what I'm talking about.  I am talking about the millions of little interactions and teachable moments that help shape your child into the person they will become.  School pick-up, for example.  There's a reason I have to drink a large cup of coffee at three o'clock.  That's because at three eighteen I am hit, full-force, with a days' worth of success and despair from three small people, all whom need my full attention equally.  "Lisa didn't sit with me at lunch"..."I lost at Coconut Island in gym, again"..."I won Student of the Month!"  Each of these events needs to be addressed and have their attendant lessons discussed and it begins from the moment I meet my kids at the school doors, continues into the van, as we walk through the front door and right to the kitchen table for snack.  By the time I am doling out the pretzels, we have covered how to deal with it when a friend hurts your feelings, how to be a good sport and how hard work does pay off.

The kids settle in for homework and then it's time for me to harass #1 about her handwriting and check #2's math since she notoriously does not fully explain her answers.  She also needs to find an article for current events and we spend twenty minutes discussing the bear hunt issue in New Jersey once we've found one.  Litte Man needs to work on his fine motor skills so I'm trying to convince him to chop up a Toys R Us catalogue to make his list for Santa.  Now #1 needs a thesaurus because we both agree she has used the word "rocky" too many times in her report on Maine. As this all winds down and it's time to start dinner,  I am dizzy, but I feel so so grateful I am here for all of this madness.

Please, please, do not take this as an anti-working rant, because it is decidedly not.  I give so much credit to the women who work all day then come home and do all the things I just described, just much later and, probably, feeling much more tired.  My point is, that while the physical care of my children has greatly decreased, I feel, in some ways, they have never need me more and I am still surprised by it at times.  I can only imagine what I'll be hit with as my kids approach their teen years.  Again, I imagine a life of ease, may be even joining a gym.  But seeing how accurate my last five year prediction was I'm not getting my hopes up.

I suppose, with the title of that first post five years ago, I unknowingly described parenting - everyday brings the unexpected. No one told me it would be like this.

But could they have?

Walk this way...(don't take a friggin' cab)

I was tempted to just jump right back into writing, blatantly ignoring my long absence sure no one would have noticed, but then I received a few concerned comments on the blog, asking if I was OK after Hurricane Sandy, so I felt like I had to at least acknowledge my hiatus.  I barely remembered the password to my Blogger account today.  My writing muscles are weak, so this post is the literary equivalent of doing your first Sweatin' to the Oldies video after you've had a baby.  Be kind to me, dear readers.

So, yes, my nuclear family and I are just fine after the hurricane.  I have major survivor's guilt since we never lost power when most of our town was out for nine days.  While many families I know were going to bed at 7:30, huddled together under blankets to keep warm (shout out Donna), I was drinking a lot of wine with various guests we have had since the storm.  We felt the best way to make up for our good fortune was to feed people and get them drunk so they could pass out comfortably in ur poorly heated attic bedroom. My body is currently protesting the lack of refined sugar and alcohol, since after the 7th night in a row of drinking and binge-eating Halloween candy we never got to give out, I had to get back to real life, otherwise, I was going to wind up attending Weight Watcher's and AA meetings for all of November.

Some very close family and friends did not fare so well, which is a stark reminder that not everyone was watching movies at night and wondering when the kids would be going back to school.  Or, more like, wondering when your husband would go back to work, since he was stalking around the house after a week like a caged animal.  My children have known no wrath from me like that I exhibited when they got upset about Halloween being a bust for the second year in a row.  One, two, maybe even three bouts of disappointment I can understand, but when people you love dearly have no home, you can shut the hell up about not having a pillowcase full of Butterfingers under your bed.  And I would've taken all of those anyway.  A lot of people are still really suffering, so for those of my readers who are not local, and would like to help, please consider donating to the Red Cross relief effort.

I can't blame my lack of writing entirely on Sandy.  Well, I guess I can't blame Sandy at all since we had power.  I'll blame my husband and children for being under foot for almost two weeks.  I will also blame it on preparing for, and recovering from, the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to all of my readers, many of whom I have never met in person, who generously donated to my walk fund.  The walk in New York alone raised 8.3 million dollars.  Yes, I am proud to have helped with that, but I am even prouder of the fact that I actually finished the walk.

I have to confess, when I signed up I thought, "How hard could it be to walk 39 miles over two days?".  I've run 13 miles then gone about my regular day!  My partner and I did a few "training walks", ten miles or so, mostly to break in our new walking shoes.  I got into the car at 4:30 Saturday morning to head into the city sure this would not be a problem.  You know where this is going.

Fast forward to 2:30 in the afternoon at mile 26 and I am on the verge of tears.  My partner and I had been walking the streets of New York for eight consecutive hours, stopping only to pee, get water and grab a sandwich at the lunch station.  I developed a huge blister on the back of my left heel and my left calf was cramping after hours of altering my gait to compensate.  The course had begun at Pier 84 on the west side of Manhattan, and snaked uptown, downtown and across three bridges.  We walked past landmarks I had never seen up close like the Intrepid and  Grant's Tomb.  We walked near the latter and further north during the wee hours of the morning, thanks to the sharp planning of the walk coordinators.  I was glad we had a motorcycle escort at six a.m., since the residents who were awake in those neighborhoods were not at all psyched about thousands of women dressed in pink racing along their sidewalks.

That's right, I said motorcycle escort.  We had quite the tough gang of bikers, many with pink accents hanging off of their bikes, meeting us at various crossings to ensure our safe passage.  The walk people really made sure, not only that we made it out of the 'hood safely, but that the out-of-town rubes didn't get mowed down by a city bus, by having crossing guards as well.  These were less consistent in their type and quality.  There were many lovely volunteers who cheered us on our way appropriately.  Then there was Inappropriate Hugging Guy and the guy shouting "Do it for the boobies!".  And you didn't just run into them once, they ran all over the city to get ahead of the pack.  By our third meeting with IHG, he knew to stay the fuck away from me or get a swift one to the nads.  I would've taken a guard of any type and quality though, at noon on the Brooklyn Bridge.  Between hipster wedding parties taking Instagram photos of the beautiful day and European tourists screwing up the flow of pedestrian traffic, it was like a game of Frogger.

The walkers also varied in their type and quality (more on that).  There were plenty of two and three person teams such as my partner and myself.  There were also families and the survivors they were supporting.  There were corporate groups with professionally embroidered golf shirts such as the Testes for Breasties team.  There were A LOT of breast puns.  There were huge fundraising teams who were doing their 10th walk together, many decked out in costumes.  Pink boas and tutus abounded.  While cute, I could only imagine the chafing and sweatiness they would generate come mile 10.

Now about walker quality.  Don't get all judgy.  I don't mean the survivors, or the elderly.  I mean the able bodied gals, like myself.  After the first few miles, the pack thinned out according to pace, and you generally found yourself walking near the same people on and off again.  This was fine unless you wound up walking five miles next to Loud-mouthed Lucy and her partner Megaphone Marcy.  No, I don't care how your neighbor's house is in foreclosure or about your sister's prolapsed uterus (I do not kid), so pipe it down, sister.

The other walkers I took issue with were The Cheaters.  At mile 13, we happened upon some boa-sporting ladies at a red light who asked us incredulously, "Jeez, are you guys running?".  When we pointed out we all seemed to be keeping the same pace, they guffawed, "We went to breakfast and took a cab here!"  We passed another team on the Upper West Side who was waiting for a flea market to open to do some shopping.  All of this made my blood boil.  I know this walk was not a "race", per se, but, true to my type A personality, I took it on as a physical challenge, and my partner and I wanted to finish in the top 100.  How demoralizing to be numbers 20 and 21 at Rest Stop 3, then 62 and 63 at Rest Stop 4 because pople were cab-hopping all over the place.  In the post-race survey, I recommended some kind of chip for those who wanted to keep track of their progress and no chip for those who wanted to go to brunch.

All in all, the walk was an incredible experience that I highly recommend.  Walking, or hobbling, through the balloon arch at the finish on the second day, I felt like I had really taken part in something wonderful.  I had raised a lot of money ($2100!) and pushed myself through physical pain, for a good cause.  And, once and for all, proved I should never run a marathon.  Walking one almost killed me.  And no, I'm still not putting a queer sticker on my van.

So I am back, dear readers.  Expect more posts next week.  Unless there's an earthquake or swarm of locusts.