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Full Moons and Safety Glass
Full Moons and Safety Glass
Balancing money, time, self, and family
Member Since: April 14, 2008 Last Signed In: October 26, 2009 Blog Views: 3899 Send To A Friend Sign Guestbook Add as a Friend
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Today is the fortieth anniversary of the first moon walk. Forty years of “One Small Step,” Apollo celluloid celebrations involving Tom Hanks, and dorm room posters of the stars and stripes planted on the moon’s surface. What would life be without that scene firmly implanted on our collective psyche? What would the MTV awards be like?
Does MTV even still have awards? Or do they just convene a three-hour commemoration of the year’s drunkest 20 year-old reality star sucking face with her sorority sisters while greasing up her apartment’s stripper pole? Cuz…you know…I always used to dance on my apartment’s stripper pole while making out with my college friends. Ah…college in the 90’s…it was a simpler, less greasy time. Speaking of reality stars… Lately there has been a lot of nighttime, upward gazing activity with our family. Through his brother, Paul has developed an interest in astronomy. He’s passing this on to the girls, which is actually quite cool. He found an astronomy book written by HA Rey (of Curious George fame) that has some fantastic astronomy drawings for kids. All of the pictures look like something from Curious George Gets a Medal. It’s been awesome. And amusing. Paul has a red LED pointer light that he uses to read his star map in the dark. He has found a duel purpose for it—he flickers it around the backyard in the grass and the girls chase the light around like a couple of coked-up kittens. It’s hilarious watching them chase the light around. Hilarious…and (a little) pathetic. This past Saturday, Paul and Ava had their first father/daughter sleep over on the sailboat. This created ample opportunity for some upward star searching. Out in the middle of the lake, away from the city lights and with the favor of a nearly moonless night, they could see tons of stars, satellites, and even a little Milky Way. Over dinner the next night, Carmen and I heard all about Hercules, the Big Dipper, and Ursa Major. As not to be left out of the fun, Carmen and I also did a little stargazing on Saturday night. That night, we had hosted an evening play date with some friends—that is—three three-year old girls ran around my house while three thirty-something moms killed three of bottles of wine. Once the house emptied out, Carmen and I hit the back yard to see what we could see. It was nearly 11:00 at night, and well… we had quite a view. The whole thing has been really cool, and I totally credit Paul with pulling this out of his parenting bag o’ tricks and giving the girls a new appreciation of the skies above. There is only one problem. I fear all of this nighttime sky preoccupation has turned my children into lunar-loving, nighttime nymphs. Picture a chaotic rapture of mid-summer’s night shenanigans of Shakespearean proportions. Carmen, my once adorably sweet three-year-old who used to put herself to bed at 8:00 pm (really), constantly gets up and down out of her bed between 8:30 and 11:00. Ugh. Because the girls share a room, any disruption at all throws Ava into a total tailspin of whining (which grates on my last, pathetic, fragile nerve). And, nothing seems to be working to get them back on schedule—we cut out TV at night, started the bedtime ritual earlier than seems humanly possible (especially given the summertime sunsets), and instituted an “I’m not messing around about bedtime” policy, complete with parental growling. We are failing miserably. This means…no down time or alone time. This means, one of us invariably ends up crammed on a narrow twin bottom bunk with Polly Pocket appendages poking us in the vertebrae while trying to “settle” Carmen down. So, as you stop to gaze up at Scorpio rising, or check out Venus in the early morning sky, or watch for a large Harvest Moon…think of me, not Neil Armstrong. I am the real hero. I’m the one with bags under my eyes wondering how a kid who falls asleep at 11:49 pm has the nerve to awaken bright-eyed at 5:21 am the next morning.
In the past two weeks, I’ve been to two kid’s birthday parties. Truthfully, one of the parties belonged to my oldest whom just turned five (sob). She had a joint birthday party with one of her preschool friends, so if you count the “family only” Chuck E. Cheese festivity, the count is really three. I’m looking down the barrel of two more by the end of the month.
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the kids run around acting crazy and shoving their faces with cake and other assorted refined sugars. They run around and wear themselves out to the point that you aren’t sure they’ll ever wake up. Last year, Ava got so worn out at her pirates/princess party at the Fairytale Town castle, she literally passed out in the car on the drive home. It was awesome. I have also been known to don the over-the-top badge when planning parties for my own children. I can prove this. I have pictures. I know I am not alone in my over-the-topness. I do, after all, have friendships with other mothers. Anyway…all of this celebrating led me to an observation. The food that kids love to scarf up—the cotton candy, cake, taffy, sweet cereals, fruit punch—is all totally disgusting. Now, I am not a purist parent when it comes to food. Yes, my girls ate mostly organic the first year or so, organic-only dairy is the usual practice in our house, and we eat plenty of vegetables and brown rice. I feel a certain sense of pride that my girls will both say—unprompted—that their favorite dinner is chicken, rice, and broccoli. However, I do believe that “everything in moderation” is important. I don’t want my girls to end up like a college friend of Paul’s—her hippy parents never let her watch TV. Once she got to college she would spend eight hours a day watching re-runs of The Jeffersons and Love Boat. That said, my kids have never had soda, Coco Puffs, or Bugles. I have been known, however, to drop a little red food dye in organic yogurt to make it look more like the sickening yogurt cups marketed to the under 10 set. I have also taken the easy way out more than once and given them the 100% fruit CapriSuns. Heck, I’ve even given them real CapriSuns and used M&Ms to help the potty training process along. I have even fed them frozen mini-pancakes, fruit snacks in the shape of Scooby Doo, and Otter Pops. In the past month, I have watched them consume cotton candy “flavored” ice cream and Doritos at birthday parties. (I tried a taste of that ice cream, and truly, it was barely edible) Judge if you will, I can take it. For the record, I routinely through away excessive amounts of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day candy that seems to magically appear in my house. In spite of my trashcan tendencies when it comes to preschool goody bag booty, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad this weekend. I watched a mom scrape off the frosting of a slice of birthday cake before her kid dug a plastic spork into it. Now, maybe the kid had some dietary restrictions of which I was unaware. I know that in the age of an increase in Type II Diabetes in young children moms have to be really careful about the amount of empty calories consumed. Still…I felt sorry for the kid. Let’s face it, there is only a narrow window of time where that overly sweet, bright green frosting nastiness actually tastes good. Seriously. The geological half-life on that crap way outlasts the period of time that humans are willing to consume it. Denying kids the experience of enjoying that garbage for the five short years it will be actually be taste-bud appealing seems a little like denying them a trip to the zoo. I mean, you know the zoo is kind of cruel and depressing, but from your kid’s perspective it’s a whole other experience. And really, not even I can imagine a movie without buttered popcorn, the state fair without a corndog, Disneyland without a churro, or a summer vacation without at least one trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. Not every day. Not even every week. Just not never. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to stop by to visit my 25 year-old daughter and catch her shoving Twinkies in her face while watching a marathon of re-runs of Saved By the Bell.
(I apologize about the un-timeliness of this posting. I had planned on posting it right after Easter, but misplaced the jump drive I had it saved on and just found it.)
I was a history major in college. History is a very useful major if you like history. As a history major, you can count on a couple of truths. The first truth is that you will be constantly barraged with the same question over and over: “Oh, are you planning to teach high school history?” As if to imply that there was something bizarre about teaching high school history. I am not a high school history teacher, by the way. The second truth is that, while in college, history majors read about 300 pages each week. Three hundred is a lot of pages. While the science majors groan and complain about hours in the lab, scoffing at the “social science workload”, history majors toil throughout the night, developing intense caffeine addictions, all the while attempting to emblaze ancient royalty lineage in their memories. Or, creating intricate outlines of political and social timelines and historical triggers—all in a pitiful attempt to keep straight historical details, sure to be forgotten by the time the next semester rolled around. The best history professors always included fiction or other period-specific writing. Although this little exercise in social context is great teaching method, these novels just add more pages to the 300-pages-and-counting weekly requirement. In my current profession I never use my history degree. I don’t regret getting a history degree. I just never use it. Over the Easter holiday, though, I was reminded of a lecture that one of my first college professors gave. He gave the lecture in a stuffy lecture hall, crammed full of 200 hung over co-eds. After more than fifteen years, I still remember the lecture. I remember it because it was a lecture about rats. Yup, rats. These lecture-worthy rats infested Atlantic-crossing ships in the 17th century. These rats, apparently, had the ability to chew through iron, hold their breath underwater for over fifteen minutes, and flatten themselves into a postage-stamp sized hole. Sort of like a plague-carrying Flat Stanley with sharp teeth. The reason I was reminded of this lecture was because just fourteen short hours before my girls were to discover their Easter baskets crammed with coloring books, Barbie outfits, and candy. Baskets whose contents were in dangerous peril. No, not because of rats--because of my sister’s very cute, overly eager, overly hungry, and tenacious beagle, Ripley. When it comes to the quest for food, Ripley is possibly the most diabolical and crafty dog I have ever encountered. She has been caught in some very compromising positions attempting to steal food—sneaking food off tables, out of the hands of babies, and even chocolate-flavored Nicorette out a purse. Her shrewdness is made even harder to deal with because she is so dang cute. Her sweet little Snoopy face has the puppy-like quality unexpected in a dog coming up on ten years. It was Ripley’s cunning desire for food that nearly cost Ava and Carmen their Easter baskets. About a week before Easter, I diligently packed—and mailed—a box to my sister’s house in Denver. The content of the box included Easter presents for my nieces and nephew, my girls’ baskets, and the intended contents for their baskets—coloring books, Barbie clothes, Dora sunglasses, lip gloss, and candy. It was the candy that caused the problem. Chocolate rabbits, peeps, jelly beans, and chocolate marshmallow eggs—all of it was just too much for Ripley. Although the box had been sitting, sealed up with packing tape, on my sister’s living room floor for nearly three days, sweet little Ripley waited until we were out of the house on Saturday afternoon to find a way to get to the candy. And get to the candy she did. The amazing part was how she got into the candy. Not only did she manage to chew through a sealed shipping box, but she also weaseled into the box through a hole no bigger in diameter than seven inches. We never were able to figure it out, but somehow she got her head or whole body into the box, pulled out the bed sheet I had used as padding, and dragged out (and ate) all of the candy that was somewhere towards the bottom of the box. Poor Ripley spent the afternoon getting her beagle stomach pumped. I, on the other hand, spent the afternoon trying to find last-minute replacement candy. Not so easy to do at 4:30 pm the Saturday before Easter. Target’s shelves were totally empty. My dad and I finally ended up at a grocery store stocking up on just enough candy to make up for the candy theft. The whole situation was made even more dicey because the adults “in the know”, couldn’t talk freely about what had happened. The two four-year-olds in the house were sure to put two-and-two together if too much conversation floated around about the lost candy. By Easter Morning, though, all was well. Easter baskets were full and eggs were hidden. The magic could live on. Live on, that is, until Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday afternoon my sister called me from Denver. The box of candy and goodies that we had packed to be shipped home with all of the Easter loot had been—ahem—broken into again. By Ripley. All of the candy was, again gone. Foil wrappers and all. And, as Charlie Brown would say…RATS!
I am about to post something I never thought I would post.
As I have recently blogged, my family and I are leaving for week-long adventure at Disneyland and the surrounding area. I'm sure I will have MUCH to write about upon my return and I hope to do some posting if time and technology will allow. This is our first trip to the Big D with both girls, allowing I am sure, for much hilarity and good blog fodder. I do plan on tweeting little nuggets of observation during the trip. And, if you are so inclined, you are welcome to follow the fun. http://twitter.com/LivelyPa... I feel like a crazy person tweeting, but my lovely friend and fellow SMC blogger, Kelli, has paved the way. In the meantime, I wish all of the SMC community a great Mother's Day. And remember...they really can't do it without us!
Next week my family is heading out on a family vacation to the big D…Disneyland. The girls are already bonkers and Paul and I are, well, resolved. We know the girls will have a great time, but we also know that the car trip, tired kids, sugar highs (and subsequent crashes), will take their toll. I think Paul summed up our shared trepidation best when he asked me the other night: “Do they sell booze at Disneyland?”
No, we aren’t alcoholics. No, we don’t want the Happiest Place on Earth spoiled by the drunkest people in Orange County. We just know that it will be a loooooong four days in the park. There will, however, be wine and a portable DVD player in the hotel room. Despite my curmudgeon-sounding sentiments, I am thrilled and delighted to be spearheading this effort. I have (of course) made all of the arrangements, purchased all of the tickets (including those for the Long Beach Aquarium for when we are sick of the big mouse), and have started packing. Paul and I have fielded literally hundreds of questions and have shown the girls clips of the “scarier” rides on YouTube to reduce the freak-out factor (I am sure this effort will prove futile as the Haunted Mansion doors open). I even took them to the nail salon for “vacation toenails” and arranged for lunch with the princesses. Yes, in spite of my efforts to breed tomboys, my two girls were bodysnatched by the Disney Marketing Machine while in utero and are currently in love with the Disney Princess franchise. Sigh. Yet all of my hard work and preparation is dripping with irony. Real irony, not the Alanis Morisette version. Why? Because as most moms know, Walt Disney apparently had an inner hatred of mothers. Virtually every mother in every Disney movie is mysteriously absent (emotionally or physically), dead, or ends up dead.
Oh sure, there are some exceptions mostly taking place in the animal kingdom. The Lion King got to keep his mom, but his dad suffered death by trampling. 101 Dalmations got two high functioning parents but the tradeoff was a crazed, serial killing, chain smoker who captured them and tried to skin them like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. OK, OK, I also know that Disney merely adapted many of these stories and he isn’t entirely to blame for the lack of motherly presence. Still, I find it ironic that I have worked hard to plan this vacation over M-O-T-H-E-R-S Day weekend (and the subsequent week). So, I ask you…what should I be more afraid of next week? The sugar highs or disappearing into the Disneyland Mother Abyss?
Today one of my friends had one of the toughest moments in all of Motherdom…the day you first drop of your baby at child care. Dun, dun, DUN!
What an awful moment. I remember the first time I dropped off. I had returned to work weeks earlier but Paul had been home for several weeks with a baby Ava and now it was his turn to work. I had the dreaded task of leaving—nay—abandoning her at day care. I cried in my car. I cried at the office. I cried when I picked her up that night. Little did I know that just four short years later (aka this morning) I would be gleefully running out of day care while Carmen threw a massive hissy fit about not getting to eat pizza for breakfast at home. HA! The joke's on you, sister! I get to leave and NOT hear you scream about things that only a two year old could possibly care about (your step stool in is the wrong place, I brought out the wrong sippy cup, you want to wear two mismatched socks). Yes, once again…this all happened this morning. You know I am not making this up. Plus, you probably could hear her screaming. I could hear it all the way to my car. As working moms, we struggle so much trying to balance time, husbands, money, day care, kids, work responsibilities, chores…the list just goes on and on. For example, I work downtown. If it is my turn to pick up the girls from day care and I don’t leave before 4:50, I can guarantee that J Street will be a total cluster and the trip to day care (which should take 20 minutes) will take at least 55--making me invariably late for pick up. This leads to much guilt on my part, stink eye from my provider (sometimes even a fine), and my children crying all the way home about how they were the last ones to be picked up. Nothing is harder on a working mom, though, than sick kids. Over the past two weeks my entire family has had the nastiest stomach flu I have ever experienced. I swear that I have never seen a thing like it. We thought we were through the worst of it and then, unexpectedly last Friday (yes…two weeks after she first puked) Carmen puked and—ahem—crapped everywhere A-G-A-I-N! Of course, I had to take another day off (make that four in two weeks) and take her to the doctor. Now, I know I am lucky--very lucky. Some families don’t get paid sick time. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. Nonetheless, I missed a Board meeting and other important work responsibilities during these days at home with Gatorade, rice, and bananas. And to add insult to injury, you can now add the distinguished title of “Poo Courier” to my long list of motherly duties. Yup. I carry poo. I carry poo in three little plastic bottles labeled with Carmen’s name, date, and time of expulsion. I carry poo to a lab so that they can give me the news that Carmen is suffering from giardia, swine flu, or more likely a bad stomach flu that just won’t quit. Keep in mind that these lovely little samples had to be collected. Yes, collected. By yours truly. Next time, I am hiring a pigeon to drop the specimen off at the lab. Or even better…get my husband to do it.
About six months ago, I started to notice something.
The world has a lot of background noise. A lot. The sounds of traffic, people talking on the mobile phones, music booming out of the car next to you at a stoplight, barking dogs, crying babies--the list just goes on and on. Keep in mind that I have never been too distracted by ambient sound. One notable exception comes to mind from about eight years ago when Paul and I sat through some pre-marital counseling sessions. The therapist’s cozy one room office was situated just off the park in old Fair Oaks. The park in old Fair Oaks also housed a battalion of ferial chickens and roosters. For ten sessions, Paul and I sat side-by-side on an overstuffed couch and waited for emotional breakthroughs to occur. As a critical moment approached, a fervent ****-A-DOODLE-DOO erupted breaking all of my concentration. All I could think about was KFC for dinner. It was ridiculous. We finished up our ten sessions and never went back. I blame the chickens. With two daughters under five, there is a lot of background noise in my life these days. There is the constant background soundtrack of stupid Scooby Doo that never seems to go away. In addition, my (nearly) five year old has taken to incessantly asking questions. Seriously, she can cram twenty questions into a 45 second time frame. She doesn’t even wait for you to answer. She just jumps right to the next question. My two and a half year old screams and acts like a two and a half year old all of the time. For the record, two and a half year olds are very noisy. They are very noisy while they scream “No!” and “I don’t like you!” and “I want to pick it out!” and “I don’t want milk!” and “Go away!” You get the idea. But it isn’t just the kids. Chatter and noise permeates everywhere. To combat this, I started to do something that I never thought I would do. I now walk around nearly all of the time I am in public wearing my ipod. Podcasts, audio books, and music drown out the background noise. And I love it. When I am outside “away from it all” or at least “away from most of it” I have no problem pulling out the ear buds. I love the sounds of rushing water or birds. I love listening to my kids laugh, play, and sing. All of the background activity, though, has really started to make me nuts. I like the quiet of my own head and thoughts. I like my NPR and Adam Carolla in bite-size podcast pieces. In a weird way, my ipod time feels almost like real alone time. I can shop at Target, wait in line at the grocery store, or walk around Capital Park during lunch time and feel like I carved out a little time for myself. I'll take what I can get these days.
Like so many others, I have been unwittingly sucked into Facebook. I have found old friends, scratched my head over friend requests from people who I have no earthly memory of, found a faster and easier way to upload and distribute pictures of the girls, and discovered which SATC character/muppet/Mr. Men character/alcoholic beverage I most closely resemble.
Yes, Facebook is a time sucker and makes me feel pathetic at least once a day. Usually when I should be doing something productive like reading or paying bills and I am busy searching for the shamrock someone hid on my profile. Well, this week, I found something else as a result of Facebook. Now, it probably isn’t the expected “find”…it wasn’t a lost love or a high school rival, or the 1 millionth Steven Cobert fan. None of that. Let me back up and explain that I am one of those rare people who left high school and never looked back. I never went home during my summers from college. I have never even contemplated attending a reunion (even with year 20 breathing down my neck). I only stayed in touch with a handful of people once I left town. It was nothing personal, I was just…done. So, all of this makes me feel somewhat guilty when I get friend requests from people from high school and I totally can’t remember them. My high school was huge, so I use this as my defense for why I can’t remember anyone. Really, I think I must have just had my head up my heiney. So, I went trolling through the two boxes of high school and college keepsakes to see if I could find my high school yearbooks. No luck. I have no idea where they are. No clue whatsoever. So, I will have no choice but to continue languishing in confusion while the friend requests trickle in. But I did find something else. Something fantastic. I found six hard back, old school Nancy Drew books. You know, the old ones with the yellow covers and the 1960’s Nancy who wore “traveling suits” complete with hats. I was thrilled. Thrilled because about three weeks ago I was searching ebay for these exact books. Ava and Carmen are obsessed with Scooby Doo. They have been obsessed with Scooby Doo for at least the last two years. I will scream or barf (possibly simultaneously) if I have to sit through “Which Witch is Which” one…more…time. Ugh. As Ava recently proved—after sitting through Harry Potter for weeks while Paul read to her night after night—chapter books are now an acceptable addition to the bedtime reading routine. I could think of no better chapter book to tackle next than everyone’s favorite female detective who uses brains and savvy to solve mysteries--and all without a Scooby Snack or meddling kid in sight. Thanks, Facebook.
Is it just me, or lately has everyone’s Careful-What-You-Wish-For been showing up and slapping us in the face?
Just yesterday, I got an email from my oldest friend who—having returned to work after the birth of her twins, busted butt at work and landed a promotion—is now struggling to try and strike a balance in her crazier-then-ever daily grind. Of course, she wanted the twins…yes, she wanted the promotion. But, somehow, she now finds herself out of sorts, out of patience, and out of time. Ah, time. Remember time? Time was that thing that you used to waste on a Sunday afternoon. You’d get sucked into some kind of Bravo marathon. Or sleep in on a Saturday. Or maybe time was what you set aside for exercise, or getting your brows waxed, or even doing laundry. And now, so many of us are out of shape, with bushy brows, pulling out clothes that aren’t “too dirty” to wear. In any case…my friend’s email got me thinking about how things I had hoped for are now creating dynamics I never considered. A sort of opportunity cost for wanting this to change, move to the next phase. For example: I couldn’t wait for my oldest daughter to start talking. Boy, that seemed like a good idea at time. Well, she started talking at 10 months and she hasn’t shut up since. Seriously. She talks and talks and talks and talks and talks. I couldn’t wait for my youngest daughter to get out of the organic baby food phase. I was so tired of the trips to Whole Foods, stocking up on jars of food, stressing about carting around extra jars in case they were needed, spending all the money. Now, two years later, all Carmen will actually eat with any vigor is rice, bread, grapes, and Go-gurt. I couldn’t wait for the girls to get big enough that they actually want to play together. Lucky me, now they do play together. However, with that comes the incessant bickering over toys, arguments that often end with someone getting smacked in the head with Barbie. My list of “wouldn’t it be great ifs…” for work and marriage could also fill up volumes. Let’s not get started with those… However despite all of unexpected challenges, surprising stressors, and lost patience I still feel incredibly lucky. Everyone is happy and healthy. Our house and family is in place and runs with a kind of on-again-off-again harmony. I just really, really wish that the girls would stop fighting over that stupid Leapster.
I have one of those jobs where I have to switch gears constantly. I hardly have time in between meetings to recalibrate leaving me, at times, dazed and confused about what the agenda is for the next meeting. I spend a lot of time in confusion.
I blame the lack of sleep. Usually at home, the switching of gears is more contained. As nuts as it can get around the house, typically a pattern of predictability in the schizophrenia emerges. This afternoon, though, I was thrown for a series of loops. Loops of emotional highs and lows and everything in between…and all of these loops took place between 4 and 7 tonight. Nothing too dramatic happened, but there was just enough back and forth that it left me feeling, well, grey. And fuzzy. I feel like an old, grey, tattered sweatshirt. Used up, tired looking, with ketchup stains. The lows included…
There were some highs…
So, when Ava came out to the living room 10 minutes ago to show me the tooth in her hand, I couldn’t tell it if this was a low or a high. I guess her lost tooth was just a reminder that life just keeps moving forward despite all of the kindergarten waitlists, geeky-phases, frustrating meals, and broken bananas. |
