Bad Mother Thankful For Decent Kids

Ex. 1:

Rory packs her backpack for sports camp. She does this by herself because I know she can, because she should, and also because I am on the phone with my sister who is telling me about my other sister who is sick and in the hospital. Do it yourself, I say, and not nicely, and kinda rudely.

Rory packs sunscreen, a bathing cap, a water bottle, a towel, spare undies, and breath mints. Breath mints? Girl is wikkid prepared. If she were not 8 and headed to sports camp, I might think she was prepping for a hook-up.

She lays out her t-shirt and soccer shorts for her wake-up call. She hates mornings as much as I do.

Ex. 2:

Bridget lobbies to stay up thirty minutes later than the other two because she's 20 months older (yo) and almost ten (dude!) and I make the deal with her.  I do because she can handle it, but also because my sister calls again to explain my other sister's illness, and this makes me too tired/wired to wrestle three into bed at once. 

While I get the download on my sisters sad stomach, the extra thirty minutes passes. I wave Bridget over to me, phone still cradled between chin and ear, hug her as best I can and kiss her face. I mouth "good night" and "sorry" and she hugs me and mouths "I love you." Like a big girl, she takes her book and puts her own self to bed. 

Later, at last, I hang up the phone, relieved but feeling far away from a hospital in New Jersey. I sigh and stand up from my desk to assess the damage I have ignored for two hours.

Bridget has cleaned the three games that were laid out on the rug: plastic playing parts and cards and dice all now neatly tucked away. She has loaded the sink with milky cups and dusted cracker bits off the couch. She has fluffed the pillows. Fluffed them.

Ex. 3:

The GFYO does not wake me at 1am for a chit chat and snuggle. He does not wake me at 3am with a question about ants or volcanos. Instead, he runs to me in the morning with arms out and topless, boxers hip-slung and covered in pick-up trucks. My bedhead is so far out of control it's like art and he runs to me still, even before I've made coffee, before I've even spoken. 

He says, Mama! I missed you.

Result:

Tonight, while my sister is on the mend, the worst averted, I tell them they can walk to the ice cream store ALL BY THEMSELVES. Hoots and hollers ensue because they've been begging to do this. I am the Good Mom, the best mom, the most awesome.

'Cept I don't have enough cash. Bridget gets money from her tooth fairy fund and I write her an I.O.U. 

I owe you, I really do.

As Seen on TeeVee

(Okay, okay: there wasn't a group waxing session at Blogher either.  There was a lot of booze, a lot of funny smart women and men, some useful information, and a lot of, well, a lot of booze. JenW brought a rolling cooler and even left us a spare. And Carolyn and I were interviewed on camera which was kind of like a freak show hilarious but can only mean one thing: next stop: Oprah! But that's over now... let's move on.)

The Kid is a hot piece, a professorial looking dude with a little dash of Allman Brother hippy. He coulda shoulda woulda been a professional hockey player, if not for a strange twist of fate. Instead he is a thinker and an ad writer and a decent guitar player and also (shall I send you a resume?), in need of a little -- cough cough -- tune-up. For three months, he's been obsessing over P90x. Don't know it? Stay up late and wait for the infomercial. It's like the Shamwow but for your abs.

Once I bought some cleaning product off the teevee that promised to make my crappy apartment into something shiny and new and smelling great too but instead it was pretty much an ice cream tub of solidified pink Palmolive. It did nothing to the tiles. It did nothing to the stove. My hands? Totally extra moisturized (and smelling great too!) but I learned my lesson. Which was mostly to avoid using a credit card after midnight.

Even knowing this, having lived through it, his P90x jones would not die, and the Kid, he broke down. Five days later it arrived: a set of DVDs, a giant jug of something powdery, some vitamins that seem like your basic Centrum, a pull-up bar that fits none of our doorways, and some stretchy things with handles that have since been flung/chucked/whipped/strewn all over my house.  I'm not sure who was more excited: him, or the Short Drunk People.

The Kid thinks I'm not supportive when I say that sitting on the couch with the remote and his feet up watching people exercise will not in fact build muscles; he says he's learning the moves. The Kid thinks I am a non-believer, so he buys 8 protein bars. When I won't try the "shake" he's made with blueberries and bananas and who knows what that powdery stuff is, he says I'm a wimp (which I am: gross). When the GFYO is found kick boxing and Sumo squatting in the playroom with the P90x DVDs blaring, I go out for an ice coffee and The Kid calls after me (from his laptop), "Muscle confusion -- IT BEGINS TODAY!" 

I nod my head, give him the thumbs up and drive off, visions of congealed pink Palmolive that lingered too long in my basement, thoughts of that relationship gone bad with the Columbia House Record Club. I am a skeptic at heart (except when it comes to psychics and ghosts). I've been burned two too many times.

Yesterday: he began. Rory wanted me to feel the sweat on his water bottle. Today: he completed Day Two. He wanted me to marvel at his soaking self. He is.actually.doing.it.

Somewhere, Billy Mays smiles at the Kid. Somewhere, Billy Mays knows what he began. Somewhere, my tub of crap cleaning product fills a landfill. But maybe, maybe this time, it will all work out.

First, There Was the Panty Raid

At noon, the annual and beloved Blogher Pillow Fight started. It ended 26 minutes later because someone lost a contact.
At 12:28, all 6576 members of the Blogging Community searched on hands and knees for the missing orb.
At 12:35, SomeonesMama (or was it SomeonesMom?) found it and was awarded a decade's worth of Swiffer dry mop sheets.
At 1:00, we broke for Nabisco cookies and talked and talked about boys and stuff and shoes and Swiffer. And Walmart.

None of that happened. 

What did happen? I sat in airports and/or on an airplane for a grand total of 27 flipping hours. Let me repeat that: I sat in airports and/or on an airplane for 27 fucking hours.

Three of those 27 hours were at JFK. I did not go the bar, but the group of firefighters en route to Chicago for a bachelor party did. Those guys can drink! Hats off fellas! Too bad they couldn't predict the future because they would have seen that once we were allowed to board the plane, we would sit there for another three hours because um, NO ONE COULD FIND THE PILOT.  (Hello Jet Blue? Send money to Ms Picket.) (Also: if that guy's not dead somewhere, I'm gonna fucking kill him.) (Joking.) (But, we are SO not gonna be friends.)

Let's just say that I could go shot for shot with NY's Bravest and make way less of scene. 

I would not be yelling "when thuh friggin pilot gets here, let's ask him how he long he usually wacks it" and I would not be yelling, "where's the friggin pilot yo, where's the friggin douchebag yo" and I would not say, "listen beyotches, i have strippuhs waitin for me in one friggin owah! get the friggin pilot yo!"

This might have been funnier if I wasn't sitting next to a lovely 97 year old woman who was watching the Family Guy without a headset but who kept asking me to adjust the volume for her. Dearie. This might have been funnier if the cute toddler (so well behaved, honestly) wasn't chanting, "friggin mama friggin yo."  And I'm all for strippers, but the visual was making me a little queasy.

When the cops or the air marshalls or whatever they were boarded to, um, kindly escort NY's Bravest off the stranded plane, I actually thought the whole thing was an elaborate joke. It wasn't.

I made it to Chicago in time for the Group Hair Removal Session -- 6576 women with wax strips. Which SomeonesMama was live-blogging. So that was good.

It All Amounts To Something

She said something like "I would love to hang out with you and drink a couple of beers at the park with you but then my girls might misbehave and then I would have to leave."

I said something like "Game on" or "Dude" or "Yo" or god knows what I said, but I'm sure it was funny. What I meant to say was, I know you.

I know you. 

I know you.

I know you.

On a whim, I emailed her, Carolyn...Online. On a whim, she emailed back. 

There are no parks in the interwebs so when our kids misbehaved, we could just tell that they did and keep talking. There were no interruptions, no weirdness, no geography, no nothing to stop what became a constant, daily, back and forth of notes, of letters, of stories and truths.

(There is no plan for that, no guide for how it goes.)

It just went. And went.

Until someone got a big idea to make a book (which was me) and the other said "um ok" (that was her) and many months passed and things happened and lives changed but the Book, the idea of it, that stayed. It stayed. 

The Book became the big adventure we could hold onto. 

And so we worked and worked and edited and fretted and never once talked on the phone.

 "TO: A True Story In Letters" is where, at least for now, we ended up.

TO: is THE BOOK me and Carolyn..Online made. Compiled. Wrote. Finished.

TO: is a mix tape for your eyeballs.

TO: is everything true about being a broad, a mom, a wife, a friend.

TO: is a collection of emails and essays.

TO: is a modern relationship made in an old-fashioned way.

TO: is maybe you.

TO: is a book you should read.

(Want to? See the link at the side.)

OH GOD AND GULP.

Things You Can Count On: Rainy Summer Version

Rainy Summer Version, 1-5: Chin Up, Babe!

1) Sometimes, you welcome rainy days, but this summer, your welcome mat is wearing thin. And mildewing.

2) You go to arcades with your kids and to joints crowded with other kids. You are nice.

3) You buy art project stuff. You cram it into the Art Cabinet. You always hope for the best.

3) You go to a sad movie about a daughter dying on rainy afternoon with your own daughter.

3) You will both weep. 

4) You will be among 60 other weepers, all chicks, all gluttons for punishment.

Rainy Summer Version, 1-7: CRASH!

1) On one of the few nice weekends, an accident will occur.

2) The fact that it has occurred will not surprise you: everyone is out because the sun is and they are all um "happy."

3) The nature of the accident will shock you, scare you, make you feel badly and better about yourself all at the same time. Which will not make you proud.

4) The headline of a local paper will slur - "Drunk Crashes Boat into Trees"

5) The photo will show a 24-foot outboard lodged in the bushes of a waterfront home, having gone airborne after both driver and passenger were thrown. 

6) Driver will be of your same fairer sex and not much older than you.

7) You will be grateful no one was killed. You will be grateful you don't know the driver much better than you do. Because, um? Awkward.

Rainy Summer Version, 1-8: Little Hungover People

1) Your children will lay about the house in states of various un-dress.

2) You will ask them to put real clothes on, ask again, then command, then beg. You will give up: we aren't really going anywhere anyway.

3) You will say, with all your best Huck Finn upbeat, "anyone want to help me fold laundry?"

4) You will wonder if when stuck indoors little kids might wither. 

5) When you tell a child that her pouty 'tude is getting old, she will say "and so are you."

6) Sent to her room, you will secretly hope she might wilt a little.

7) She won't. She bounces back every time.

8) You? Not so much.

Rainy Summer Version, 1-6: Her Party

1) You will consider science and junk science and meteorology and astrology and Mayan gods of weather and decide none of that, none of them is to blame. It just sucks is all.

2) Still, you will check radar and satellite maps while holding your breath.

3) You will NOT RESCHEDULE your daughter's kickball birthday party AGAIN.

4) You will wonder if eight year olds like Charades, because kickball and lightning is only fun for drunk boaters. 

5) You will wonder: do eight year olds like to fold laundry? Mop floors? Sort drawers? What if you throw in cupcakes and a goody bag?

6) Could be a win-win, you think.

Rainy Summer Version, 1-4: (Making a) Deal With It

1) When it stops raining and the sun at last comes out, will you remember to go outside and welcome it and love it and play in it and weed in it and swim in it and enjoy it and not complain about it IN ANY WAY at all?

2) Not even when your upper lip sweats (so dainty).

3) Not even when you get those creasy sweat marks in places where you shouldn't (so sexy).

4) You will make a pinky swear to the sun that you will, you will, you will remember.

5) You better remember.

Extremeless Makeover

I like soft t-shirts and boy-shaped shorts. Trouble is: I look in the mirror and see a thirteen-year old skater boy with boobs.

I am approaching 40. I have three kids and a mortgage and a fifteen year old marriage.  I have wrinkles around my eyes and weird aches and pains and a glaring, daunting, menacing feeling that I really should care more about what I eat/drink/smoke. And what I wear.

I think Tim Gunn might spit at me. I also think I might talk him into being my new best friend, but even if/when I do, Tim will still be right: he'll just be nicer when he insults my wardrobe.

Because I think maybe it's time to, you know, "upgrade", I bought two dresses online from Target. I like 'em both, because apparently black is the new black and also that whole "blouson" thing hides a multiple of sins. It's pretty much a chic  way to wear an elastic waist-band, kind of like Danksin meets maternity wear for non-pregnant non-gymnasts. 

I try on my loot and Bridget, delighted all the time by new clothes and fashion, watches. She does not call these "dresses" by the by, as there is no crinoline and they are mostly made of jersey, but I ask her opinion nonetheless and she nods her head. Not up and down (as if to say I LOVE IT MAMA), but to the side, titled and thinking. 

She says, is that one a dress? 

Um, yeah dude, I say. 

She says, bring it here.

Which I do. Turns out that "dress" is something called a tunic.

She says, it's cool I guess --  if you want to show your panties.

Damn that kid. So mean and so smaht. If only I could woo her the way I might woo Tim Gunn. If only I could wear the MOST COMFORTABLE DRESS EVER (which is not really a dress) and not show my cotton underroos at the same time.

I hate fashion.

Drunk Unemployed Carpenter Seeks Rough Woman With Cigarettes

This is the honest to God true classified dating ad posted about my friend.  By his so-called friends. Not nice, right? (He did get 52 replies though.)

Tonight the drunken carpenter, come looking for smokes at my back door (from a rough woman?) became a hero to me. 

Not twelve minutes before he showed, before I could call anyone, there was rustling off my porch. It was racoonish but more man-sized. I heard it, and then saw it: a man at my back door at midnight. And he left something on the step.

And the Kid is away.

The drunken carpenter, come for butts, said, wait! Are you kidding? and I said no. He checked the pathways around the house, he checked the driveway. He checked the outside of my house like a cop or a hunter. He looked at the porch, and sure enough: he found proof. Someone was here, lurking, and they left an empty bottle of wine. I don't drink wine, yo, which that carpenter knew. He was suddenly sober and on high alert. 

I said, shit. He said, stay close.

There is a longer story about this, the man who did that, who is harmless to me but creepy. It's not worth telling really as it is so pathetic.

But what is worth telling? 

It's that the drunken carpenter who likes rough women with smokes is the guy you always need around.

JOBLESS still

Tonight, I will write about my innermost feelings a funny story about Short Drunk People some more More Truth the fact that it kinda sucks that The Kid has to strong arm the business world to (please dear God) employ him while also strong-arming his kids who have yet, YET, to understand that Daddy is working even if he's here all the time.

I wrestle the kids into the car for the three-minute trip to the beach. The prep and the cajoling and the yadayadabullshit takes at least an hour: bathing suits feel weird, shoes are lost, towels aren't "right", someone's hungry. We say -- and it's either me or him, can't remember -- "you are so lucky to live so close to the ocean!" and one of the Short Drunk People says -- I can't remember which one -- "Doesn't everybody?" after which, me and the Kid proverbially pound our proverbial chests and say nearly simultaneously, "NO! No, they don't!" and then say, perfectly in tune this time: "GET.IN.THE.CAR!"

I try to leave him be as best we can, take the posse away, give him time and quiet. He plays catch with them more than he ever has; he loves it. I try to make space for him. He feels guilty if he doesn't take them on a ride in the boat. I worry. He worries. 

It's a longer ride, this jobless one, than we thought we would be on, and a weirder one, too. The sun shines, the kids whoop and holler, the boat pulls into the dock and plans are made for pizza and beer at a neighbors. That's normal and good, but everything is different: he could never do this on week-day before. Everything is different.

It sneaks in ALL THE TIME. I am losing my ability to see the upside, to see the great, wonderful benefit here for my kids and for us maybe. I am hating different.

I am scared.

The Last Firsts

Today on the boat, while I was at home alone (at last) after four days solo with the Short Drunk People at my mom's house, the GFYO made me an official "older mom."

He lost his first tooth out at sea. Blood spilt all over the fiberglass and now his smile is marked and different. Underneath the funny words he still uses and his love of sippy cups and his blanky and kisses all the time from me, a grown up boy pokes through. There's no stopping it: the tooth, like everything with kids really, forces its way up and gone. My grasp on his littleness is flimsy now at best.

Last night, I stayed up with my nephews. They are 17 and 15 and talk and look like men. They are smart and funny and sweet and polite and I changed their diapers and kissed their booboos long before I was a mother myself. They don't remember me snuggling them or tucking them in or lifting them from sweaty sleep, but I do. Last night, I played them my music and they played me theirs and we both took notes to remind us what we liked. We ate warmed-up enchiladas off of one plate with three forks, like pals.

The GFYO stands in my nephews' shadows, awed and desperate. He farts on them for fun, and like troopers and dudes, they high five his every bit of boyness.  I think they see themselves in him sometimes, just as I do: little tiny boys become these big men, these big nearly grown men I love but cannot cuddle, adore but cannot pinch, wish to hold and keep and cradle forever but who now stand so many inches above me. How did we get here so fast?

The GFYO lost his first tooth, and it's the last time this first will happen for me. As my friend Kimba said, this is last of so many other firsts: first day of school, first stitches, first girlfriend. These firsts end with him. 

Soon enough, he too will tower over me. Soon enough, if I'm lucky, he will share one plate with me, late at night, telling secrets. Soon enough, he will be not be my toothless GFYO.

Things You Can Count On: In Real Life Version

So after I rolled out the red carpet, which was disappointingly mostly just crimson crepe paper, I went to a neighbor's house for a mimosa a holiday brunch. I was late and not even fashionably so, what with all the Major Preparations for the Great Arrival of Carolyn...Online and her Georgian posse. All our friends gathered there were already all a flutter about it.

"What if this is what they do," they said, "like for a living!? What if they've 'met' lots of other naive fools friends on the interwebs and this is just the beginning! I mean, their Robbing Road Trip could start right here at Picket's house?"

While I appreciated the concern and the mimosas brunch, I laughed away all the paranoid non-believers: if anything, Carolyn would actually be Carl and 72 and I was pretty sure me and the Kid could handle that. Plus, I had costumes for all the Pickets, even me and the Kid, so if the vibe seemed weird, THEY WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND US once we split for safety.

So costumes adorned, Red Carpet unfurled, I awaited Carolyn's "we're close" message by emptying the car of sandy beach bags and soggy towels. I was lugging the loads up the back stairs when I heard Bridget (fuzzy halo and boa) squeal "they're here," gasped a bit (what about my surprise, the whole American Gothic pose we would take?!?!), wondered if the Kid still had the pimp hat on or Rory the beard or if the GFYO had zipped his zipper and adjusted his helicopter-esque beany, dropped the bags in the doorway, turned the corner into the kitchen and before I could fluff my feather headband, there right in front of me, right there in my house: it was not a Southern Belle in some version of a summer prom dress, it was not a pack of gypsies come to rob us blind, it was not anything but exactly what I knew it would be.

With my right arm still wrapped around her, I reached out my left, as if I could scoop Tempel (!) and Parker (!) and Scott (!) up at the same time in one giant swoop of a hug. (Who knew I was such a hugger?) I am not totally sure what happened next, but Bridget gave a tour, the GFYO gave up a high-five, and Parker and Rory and Tempel jumped on the trampoline. Then we went to the beach, which with five kids, a cooler, and some (stolen) beach chairs is never an easy feat, but it was as if we had done it a hundred times already: taking turns barking orders -- you go over there! watch the cars! carry this! keep going! look out! -- until we camped out on our spots in the sand and let the sun and the crab catching and the beers take over.

It was like... old times.

The rest, I will keep to myself (mostly to protect the innocent -- and the guilty) except for:

Things You Can Count On; Meeting In Real Life

DAY 1

1) Both your children will forget their use of speech -- and then remember it. Neither will make you especially proud.
2) Your friend Carolyn will wink at you and grimace for you and you will shrug together.
3) Neither of you will have use for speech when it comes to needing a cold beer: an eyebrow raise will do.
4) Your husbands will go bar-hopping while you get chick chatty with Dana's Brain and For Myself.
5) You will welcome your man-folk home. And probably (promptly?) scare them away.

DAY 2
1) Neither of you will have use for speech: only coffee and Advil.
2) You will take turns soothing a child with a splinter. You will not speak of your strategy beforehand: you will just act. You know what to do even though this kid is "officially" new to you.
3) Even these children are like old friends; nothing about them surprises -- delights? Yes. Never surprises.
4) Eventually, on a small boat, all your children will act like puppies brought home from the pound, like siblings: they will tackle and tickle and tease each other with abandon.
5) You will both feel proud and happy and relieved.
6) You will decide on two things simultaneously: book the babysitter, order the Bloody Mary.

DAY 2/Evening:
1) You will bring an extra fleece for your Southern friend. She will not believe that "you actually did that" but the coat fits her perfectly.
2) You four will share food. Tell stories. Deep ones. Funny ones. Ones from college.
3) The college stories will surprise you: wait? wha? haven't we all known each other longer than this?
4) Reality will come to you in tiny bursts just like that, a fleeting thought to remind you -- YOU HAVE NEVER MET BEFORE.
5) Eff that, you will say.
6) Let's get another drink or drive around so we're sure the kids are all asleep. You will laugh and laugh, at the same time, at the same things. It's like old times.

DAY 3/Departure:
1) You will pack luggage and five kids into a car to drive four hours to another state, another stop for her and her kids.
2) Torrential rains will fall upon your precious cargo and oddly, healthy food options McDonalds will be remarkably far and few between.
3) She will break up your kids squabbles with a skilled swipe of the arm to the back seat while you apologize to your husband for taking his only set of car keys with you on your trip.
4) She will say everything to you to make you feel better.
5) When you get to her destination -- such smart and savvy women you are -- your children will exchange addresses and hugs and toys, and you and she --Carolyn no longer online for you, but in real life with diet coke and french fries and spilled coffee and falling, fading pony tails -- you and she will unpack the car at the end of this part of the trip and say a kind of good bye and hug each other quickly.
6) You hate goodbyes. Both of you.
7) You will drive away, you and the Short Drunk People, and before you reach the UPS store to send the keys to your husband overnight, you will miss her. You will miss her kids. You will miss Scott. But you will miss her most of all and you will wish you could go back and get her and you will feel so incredibly, unbelievably happy for wifi and emails and for blogs and for airplanes and for cars and you will sigh and play classical music on the radio to lull your kids to sleep.

THEN
1) The first email will chime in ten minutes later.
2) Like old times. Thank GOD for old times.

T Minus 2

Last 4th of July, I dragged my lovely mother from party to party and from boat to beach for three days in a row. It was a non-stop living diorama of my life to try to prove that I did have a life here. The year before that, I freaked out that I had kids who could swim unattended and kayak from island to island. This year? 

This year will include a whole new kind of life-changing weekend.

Carolyn...Online is gonna be in my house. In. My. House. With her kids and her husband.

(I know, right?)

A few people have asked the question and the answer is: No, no, it won't be weird. Yeah, we've never spoken, like with our voices, but, dude, we have talked. The written word... 

Sometimes it's the fastest road to the best friend you've never met

Why YOU Need This Book

Need proof? (Also: this is for Carolyn...