Tag Archives: family

The Renovation that Wouldn’t Die

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Yet again, I’m apologizing for disappearing on you. This time, I blame my bathrooms. I’ve been elbow deep in renovating two of our three bathrooms, and when I say “renovating,” I mean supervising others who are far more qualified than I am to do the actual work.

When we moved into our house eight years ago, we knew we’d have to redo the bathrooms sometime in the near future. Well, the near future became the far future and we’re finally hunkering down to get it done. To explain the state of our bathrooms, I’ll have to give you a little history about the house. Our home was built in 1954 by an architect for his family of ten to live in. Yes, he and his wife had eight children. It’s a really wonderful mid-century modern house that’s more than large enough for Ad Man, the monsters and me, but the thought of living in it with eight children runs shivers down my spine.

There were a number of owners between the architect and us, most notably an inept contractor who bought the house when it was listed as a teardown, did a half-assed renovation and flipped it. (Thankfully, there was one owner between the flipper and us who bore the brunt of the half-assedness.) The contractor’s clumsy work was most prominently displayed in our two upstairs bathrooms. When we moved in, the tub and girls_shower_funwall tiles in the master bath had been reglazed (poorly) and the floor was covered with nondescript, beige floor tiles. Biggie and Smalls’s bathroom, which also serves as our guest bath, had reglazed tiles, the same beige floor, and an original, extremely crappy shower we used maybe once. In fact, the girls most often used the shower as a hideout or reading nook. Here’s an old photo of Biggie and Smalls in their favorite playhouse.

pink_bathroomWhile biding our time, we painted the rooms, changed out the lighting and hung some artwork. That made the bathrooms livable for a while. As time went by, though, the reglazed tiles and tub chipped and showed their true colors…1950s Potty Pink to be precise. Don’t get me wrong, if our bathrooms looked like this one, I’d be the first one out shopping for vintage poodle accessories. Unfortunately our pink bathroom couldn’t be saved. Here are a few “before” photos of the bathrooms. Sadly, we don’t have any pictures of them in their original, mid-century glory.

Master bath before
Little Biggie in kids’ bath, before
Pink tile hiding under beige
This one’s just embarrassing
Original tile hiding under beige
Kids’ bathroom during

  

When we started to demo the bathrooms, there were a few surprises in store for us. First, our wall tiles were glued directly to inch-thick concrete. Apparently, that’s how things were built in the ‘50s…strong enough to withstand a Soviet attack. So, what we thought was going to take two days (one per bathroom), stretched into a full week.

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Tub ‘o Rubble

Then, we discovered that there were beautiful, original mid-century tile floors under the ugly-ass beige tiles the evil contractor thought would be more appealing to a buyer (who is this person with a love for all things beige?). I was shocked to see what good shape the original tile was in, but it was covered in glue and filth and couldn’t be saved. It was seriously heartbreaking. I’ve been gazing longingly at my neighbor’s original tile for years without ever suspecting that a similar treasure lay just beneath my feet at home.

I’m a newbie to renovation, so this process has been quite enlightening. Essentially, it all boils down to the following series of events, just repeated over and over until the project is done…or until you kick the contractor out of your house vowing to finish the damn thing yourself.

Here’s how it’s going for me:
1) Someone asks me how I want something done.
2) I tell that person how I’d like the thing done.
3) The person tells me why it can’t be done that way and, instead, does it the way they’d already planned to do it before asking for my input.

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Our bedroom, throughout the holidays. Good thing we have a guest room!

It’s maddening! Add to this the fact that the renovation is already weeks behind schedule and you’ll understand why my stress level has been through the roof. Perfect time to have a bunch of family in town for the holidays, right?…

Update #1:

Please note that the holiday I was referring to above was Thanksgiving. I set this post aside for a few weeks since there were a few things going on (holidays, Biggie’s birthday, never ending renovation…) and suddenly here we are with Christmas just days away. One might think I’d be luxuriating in my fabulous new bathroom by now, but sadly, one would be wrong.

The bathrooms still aren’t done-done. Actually, I’m convinced they may never be. We’re damn close, but there are still a few tiny problems. For instance, we can’t seem to find a faucet for the master bathroom that doesn’t leak. We’ve been through three already. And, I insisted on black fixtures, so I can’t just pop over to Home Depot whenever we need a new one. Also, when I recently attempted to give Smalls her first bath in the girls’ brand new bathtub, water came out of the back of the faucet where it attaches to the wall, not from the actual faucet itself. I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to work like that.

We have friends coming into town from Los Angeles, and staying with us, in five days. Five! I will not be sharing a bathroom with three other adults and four kids, so the upstairs baths had better be in working order by then. I don’t care if I have to pay a plumber triple overtime and hand forge a black faucet myself!

Update #2:

We’re now weeks into the new year and guess who still doesn’t have fully functional bathrooms? You’re right! It’s me…the one with the hairy legs. It seems we still have an issue with hot water, or lack thereof. The best it gets here is lukewarm. No one ever says, “I can’t wait for a nice, lukewarm shower!” And, that’s in the downstairs, unrenovated, not-at-all-beautiful, bathroom. In the new bathrooms upstairs, you have two choices of water temperature: cold or ice cold.

It’s now the middle of winter, so it’s damn cold downstairs. Alas, I’ve been taking warm showers in a freezing cold bathroom since before Thanksgiving, hence the hairy legs. I’ve taken advantage of a few unseasonably warm days here and there to shave, but the rest of the time, it’s so freaking cold, I’d shave off my goosebumps and quite possibly bleed to death if I even tried. I’m sorry if I sound bitter, it’s just that I am.

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Girls’ bathroom, in progress

The story just keeps getting better. It seems that the problem is that there’s a spot in the system where our hot and cold water lines mix, making our tankless hot water heater get all confused and serve up only water the temperature of spit. It took two plumbers and two weeks to diagnose the problem. But here’s the fun part…we are going to have to break through one of our newly built and tiled walls to fix a valve that our “contractor” apparently installed sideways. I seriously couldn’t make this up.

So, now we’re in the process of getting bids from plumbers and contractors to undo what we spent the last few months doing and then do it again, correctly. I could cry. Considering the foregoing, you’d think we wouldn’t want to renovate or do construction ever again. In my case, you’d be right. Ad Man on the other hand, wants to sell our house, buy a lot and BUILD A NEW HOUSE. He’s trying to kill me. Please send help!

mission_accomplishedI must end this tragic story to spare both of us, but I promise I’ll get back to you soon with “after” photos. The bathrooms really do look fantastic (pre-re-renovation), but I’m too superstitious to call anything finished until after I’ve taken a hot shower in my lovely and functional new master bath. Remember this? I don’t want to be that guy.

 

But wait! There’s more.

PS: Our friends did come in town for a visit after Christmas and stayed with us. It is a tribute to them, some of our oldest and best friends (K and I have known each other since fourth grade), that they didn’t complain once about their piss warm showers. I guess they were just relieved to find out we finally have three working toilets in the house.

 

 

Another Bullshit Day in Suck City

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Cape_DisappointmentWell, I finally received some job news last night and it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The head of video production at the company I interviewed with emailed me last night and said that they can’t offer me a permanent position right now, but they frequently use freelance producers and, if I’m interested, they’d like to add me to their freelance pool. Needless to say, finding out that they didn’t have a permanent position to offer after one phone interview and two in-person interviews was more than a little disappointing.

There is a glimmer of hope, though. This morning, the person I interviewed with in the events department emailed to ask if I could meet with her next week. She initially told me she’d love to have me work with her, but was afraid that video would steal me away. That’s why she arranged for me to meet with them first. So, that’s somewhat promising. I also have a potential freelance gig for a friend who owns an ad agency in Minneapolis. He’s just trying to figure out if I could manage the project from here in Atlanta.

I know this is all very boring, but thought I owed you an update after subjecting you to my bad haiku. I’m just going to keep plugging away and taking freelance jobs until something permanent comes along. Freelance isn’t exactly the best situation when you’ve got two children and a husband who travels, but I guess we’ll just have to be flexible.

So kids, the moral of the story is that you should never stop working completely when you decide to procreate. Keep your foot in the door, even if it’s just for occasional work. Having to completely start over and knock down the door is a bitch and I don’t recommend it.

*The above title was blatantly stolen from ‘Another Bullshit Night in Suck City’ by Nick Flynn. It is quite possibly the best title for a memoir ever.

The World’s Oldest Production Assistant, Part 2

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Welcome to the second installment of The Worlds’ Oldest PA. If you’ll recall, in Part 1, I’d gotten through the first day of shooting for a show on the Discovery Channel, about which I knew absolutely nothing, without any embarrassing incidents. The only time I was really stumped was when the Director of Photography held out a camera cable and asked me if I knew how to do “over-under.” I paused briefly, giggling to myself and thinking it sounded like something sexual (I have the sense of humor of a 13 year-old boy), but it more likely had something to do with the cord he was holding.

I kept cool and said, “No, but I’m sure I could learn if you’d show me.” He didn’t have time right then, but didn’t seem annoyed, so I assumed over-under wasn’t critical PA knowledge. I did, however, vow to myself that, before the end of the job, I’d figure out what the hell over-under was and how to do it.

After returning to the hotel after our first day of shooting, the crew all headed to our separate rooms. A couple people went to work out. I hadn’t even packed workout clothes and after a day of heavy lifting and errand running, was even more convinced that was the right decision. I chatted with the Associate Producer (AP) who said she’d likely head to the bar in a bit if I wanted to join her. Feeling socially weird (nothing new there) and yearning to remove my damn bra asap, I told her I was pretty fried, but to please text me when she headed downstairs. In the hotel room, I did my best to rally knowing that I shouldn’t skip out on meeting up with the others no matter how tired I was. Instead, I gave myself a mental bitchslap and when the AP texted, I said I’d be down in a few minutes. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

I got down to the bar and found the AP sitting there with her computer and a cocktail. I ordered a beer and, when she finished up with some work, asked her about the show and specifically, the episode we were working on. I’ll tell you, I was not prepared for the horrifying story she told. I can discuss it here because it’s a matter of public record and, in fact, got tons of publicity when it happened.

NND_logoIt turns out, the show we were working on is called Nightmare Next Door and you’ll quickly understand why this was an appropriate title. In 2011, a law student at Mercer University in Macon was murdered by another law student who lived in her apartment building. They’d both just graduated and were hunkering down to study for the bar. Friends and family of the victim, Lauren Giddings, began to worry after they hadn’t heard from her in a few days, initially thinking she was just busy studying. A search party scoured Macon looking for any sign of the missing woman. One person who was active in the search for Lauren was her neighbor Steven McDaniel. Steven was quite odd and a social misfit, but Lauren was friendly with him when their paths crossed.

When the search party was unable to find any trace of Lauren, friends and family members were distraught. A local reporter interviewed a number of people, including Steven. He told the reporter he had no idea where she could be or what could have happened to her. He said Lauren was outgoing and nice to everyone and he couldn’t imagine how anyone could do harm to her. In the midst of the interview, the reporter received some news and said to Steven, “Do you have a reaction to the fact that the police just found a body nearby?” Steven was visibly shocked by the news, needing to sit down and calm his breathing for a few minutes before he returned to continue on with the interview.

Shortly before this, the Macon police had found the torso of a woman’s body in a trashcan outside Lauren’s apartment building. The body had been decapitated and the arms and legs severed. The head and extremities were nowhere to be found. DNA tests on the torso turned out to be a match for Lauren.

The police investigated Lauren’s current and former boyfriends and interviewed family and friends, but quickly turned their focus to Steven. According to the police, it was the law students’ intense and strange reaction to the news of the discovery of the body that pointed them in his direction. The police questioned Steven extensively and arrested him for burglary after he admitted to have stolen items from neighbors’ apartments. A search of his apartment turned up videotapes taken through Lauren’s window, photos of Lauren, a master key to the apartment building, child pornography, and packaging for a recently purchased hacksaw. (I’m assuming Steven didn’t get the best grade in criminal law.)

I’m sure you won’t be shocked to hear that the killer was Steven McDaniel. He eventually confessed to the crime, describing how he’d strangled Lauren and dismembered her body with a hacksaw in her shower. He was (obviously!) obsessed with Lauren and upset that she would soon be taking the bar exam and moving away from Macon, and him, forever. Steven explained that he’d disposed of Lauren’s head and limbs separately from the torso, but police never found them despite extensive searching.

The story struck me hard. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lauren’s family. I was also astounded that Steven could be together enough to graduate from law school and not set off alarms with classmates and teachers as to his mental state, when in fact, he was a psychopath capable of planning and carrying out a gruesome murder. I was even more freaked out when the field producer pulled up the video of Steven’s interview on YouTube. To watch this guy who had murdered and dismembered someone just days before calmly express concern, on camera, about her whereabouts was chilling. I, couldn’t help but think about my own law school classmates and wonder which person in the group was the homicidal psychopath!

Lauren Giddings

Lauren Giddings

It was crazy working on this story in a small town like Macon, because literally everyone we talked to knew about the murder. Many personally knew someone involved in the case.There was one day when I took a large box of police records to be copied and sent to the production company for fact checking. I was flipping through the binders, showing the young woman helping me at FedEx how they were laid out, when she glanced at a photo of Lauren on the opening page and said, “I knew her.” My stomach dropped knowing there were gruesome photos in the records. I was relieved when we decided to just pack up the entire box of documents and send it to the production company rather than making copies.

So anyway, back to the hotel bar. Controlling my neuroses and meeting the crew for dinner and drinks was absolutely the right thing to do. We chatted and I got to know them better, which was great since they already knew each other having worked together on previous projects. The DP told me about his daughter who’s between Biggie’s and Smalls’s ages, and we discussed the difficulty of juggling career and parenthood, especially in a field like production where you can be away from family for weeks, if not months, at a time. The crew also asked about my background suspecting that I wasn’t a career production assistant. They were all awesome, and said they’d tell the production company to add me to their list of field producers. I’m keeping my fingers crossed! Obviously, I couldn’t be away from home for weeks at a time, but a few weeklong jobs every now and then would be great.

The next day, we were scheduled to interview the police officer who discovered Lauren’s body and the Police Chief in charge at that time. We shot at a small, neighborhood police station that looked to me like a run-down, old Baptist church. When we walked into the building, the producers,’ DP’s and sound guy’s faces fell. It was quite possibly the worst place possible to film. The whole office had been painted white decades before and bore the grunge and scars of the intervening years. The ceilings were high with buzzing fluorescent lights, and the sound of the air conditioner seemed to be competing with them for attention. The DP looked at me and said, “Watch…the producers are going to start freaking out. I just stand back and wait for them to get through it.” And, indeed, there were a lot of concerned looks, muttered discussions and frantic phone calls made. However, they did get through it and a plan was hatched to shoot in one of the cramped offices, with the overhead lights and AC turned off. Never have I been so happy to not be in the interview room.

Before the interview, though, we set up outside for the “hero shot” (which is exactly what it sounds like) of our main good guy, the police officer who found the body. The sky was looking ominous but we kept checking the weather which indicated that there’d be no rain until the afternoon. Once the equipment was in place, I asked the AP if she wanted me to go find a Starbucks. She said yes and that I should ask the officers for their coffee orders as well. She told me to pick up some doughnuts while I was out as well. When I protested, insisting that it was simply too cliché, she laughed and told me to shut up and go get the damn doughnuts! I told you this was a glamorous job.

storm_clouds_maconMacon isn’t exactly a town with a Starbucks on every street corner, but I was able to track one down and ordered some very complicated coffee and tea orders for the crew and a couple plain, black coffees for the cops. I watched out the window, waiting for the order to be ready as creepy, dark clouds rolled toward me. Luckily, I got all the drinks safely into the car before big, fat raindrops started plopping on the blacktop. By the time I got to Dunkin’ Donuts, it was a full-on torrent. I returned to the police station dripping wet.

My hair doesn’t like humidity, let alone driving rain, so I spent the rest of the day with random waves and wings sticking out everywhere. I briefly considered grabbing a baseball cap from the car, but remembered that the only one I could find to pack was my “Ready for Hillary” hat. I wisely decided that might not go over well at the Macon, Georgia police station.

I thought I’d have an in with the police officers since my dad was a cop for 25 years, but I wouldn’t say they were the warmest guys in the world. Later, as I was getting the Chief’s lunch order, I mentioned to him that I’d practically grown up in a police station. He indulged me with a little grunt of acknowledgement, then continued trying to figure out how to maneuver through the lunch menu on my iPhone. We interviewed another retired police officer back at our hotel two days later. The AP sent me out to make small talk with him while the crew tweaked camera and sound. I, again, tried playing the cop’s-kid card telling him that my father was also a retired police officer. He replied, “Hm…good for him.” Apparently, cops in the south aren’t known for being sparkling conversationalists.

My traveling companions, sent by the girls so I wouldn't get lonely

My traveling companions, sent by the girls so I wouldn’t get lonely

There was one classic working-mom-moment on the afternoon of the police station shoot. I was out picking up lunch when Ad Man left me a message sounding stressed and saying that the babysitter (an employee of his, actually) had bailed at the last minute and we had no one to replace her. This wasn’t good news to receive in the middle of the work day an hour and a half drive away from home. I dropped the lunch bags on the table and started madly making phone calls while trying not to hyperventilate. When the AP and the rest of the crew found out what was going on, they immediately told me that I should head home and they’d just cover for me for the rest of the day. I seriously almost started crying, told them I loved them all, grabbed my lunch to-go and hit the road! I’m ridiculously lucky to have worked with such a great bunch of people.

The rest of the week was a whirlwind of interviews with journalists, prosecutors and the District Attorney. We shot b’roll (generally, scenic filler) of Macon’s famous cherry blossoms, the courthouse, the crime scene, the landfill where police searched in vain for Lauren’s missing body parts and the exterior of the FBI crime lab. You didn’t think they had one of those in rural Georgia, did you? Yeah, me either.

By the time I headed home on Friday afternoon, I was utterly exhausted. Most of my body was sore, including the butt cramp that only got worse as I added more and more hours in the car. But, regardless, I was happy and felt more confident than I had in years. Nine years to be exact. I also finished this job with the absolute conviction that going back to work is the right thing for me. While wasn’t easy, Ad Man survived, the kids survived and I thrived.

I learned two other important things by the end of the week: how to set the goddamn cruise control on my car and how to do the “over-under” method of wrapping cables! Turns out, you can figure out how to do just about anything if you’re humble, willing to work your ass off, and have unlimited access to YouTube tutorials.

Five Telltale Signs that I’m a Mother

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You know that old cliché about the married man who takes off his wedding ring before going out to a bar? Well, I might be able to take off my rings and claim to be single, but the stench of motherhood is not quite so easy to shake. I suppose I could try to flat out deny the existence of my children, but here are some telltale signs that would give me away every single time:

enormous_purse1. My purse is freaking enormous! I yearn to be the kind of chic woman who goes out for the evening with a sparkling minaudiere that fits in the palm of my hand and contains only a credit card, a tube of lipstick and a little cash for tips, but that just ain’t gonna happen. First of all, who the hell has time to switch out her purse on a daily, or even weekly, basis? I can just see myself heading out for a night on the town. Ad Man would be standing at the door, glaring at me because I’m running late, as usual, and he simply cannot abide tardiness. I’d be shouting instructions to the babysitter while trying to apply mascara, hopping on one leg to buckle a sandal and reminding the kids to pee before getting in bed, all the while leaving behind a trail of all the crap in my “daytime handbag.”

In order to dig down to the few essentials I’d need in my miniscule “evening bag,” I’d first have to remove the following: an extra pair of underwear for Smalls (just in case), two water bottles, an extensive selection of snacks to keep the kids from getting hungry and turning evil, a pair of socks from that one time we went to the bouncy place, sunscreen, four special rocks, a dead flower, a wadded up piece of gum wrapped in a Target receipt, twenty other Target receipts, seven old grocery shopping lists and one to-do list with not a damn thing crossed off. The chances of doing that without forgetting something imperative, like my ID or an industrial strength concealer, are pretty slim.

bingo_arms2. My body is a veritable roadmap of motherhood. I generally have the c-section scar tucked neatly away, but other things are harder to hide, like my poochy mid-section, the one bulging vein I blame on Biggie, the permanent dark undereye circles and the crevasse that bisects my forehead. And then there are the things I just don’t have time to deal with, like the constant five o’clock shadow on my legs and the floppy “bingo arms” that would be easy enough to firm up if I could just get my ass to yoga on a regular basis. You’ll be relieved to know that I’ve had my bikini line lasered. I find that a permanent solution is always worth the time and money. I’ll be the first one in line, with a grocery bag full of cash, when permanent Botox is invented!

Since birthing two children, I’ve learned to “dress for my body” as women’s magazines have been imploring me to do for years. This means I generally try to stick with A-line everything. I used to love me a good empire waist top or dress, but since pregnancy left me two full sizes bigger in the boobage area, an empire silhouette now makes me look like a 45 year-old carrying in-vitro induced triplets.

Effie_Trinket3. My makeup routine has been pared down to the bare minimum. I haven’t really been a big makeup person since I stopped applying it with a spatula in high school. And, I never got the whole eyeshadow thing. In my mind, it’s a fine line between painting one’s eyelids iridescent green and going full-on Effie Trinket. In fact, I recently decided that, at my ripe old age, I should at least know how to properly apply eye makeup. So, I dug through my makeup “reject pile” only to find the MAC eyeshadow I bought for my wedding sixteen years ago. Something tells me it’s time to just write that skill off permanently. (See? You gotta love a permanent solution.)

Despite the fact that my maquillage has always been at the natural end of the L’oreal spectrum, pre-children I was reluctant to ever leave the house without the basics: concealer (always concealer!), blush, powder, lipstick and mascara. My routine these days really depends on where I’m going. I no longer care about looking “done” around school moms and other women my age, so I’ve designated an “I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit Zone” that extends from the carpool line, to the grocery store, to Target, to the girls’ dance studio and home. Occasionally, I gerrymander the IDGAS Zone beyond the usual boundaries to places like IKEA or the gynecologist’s office. Seriously, who has the time and energy for constant faux beauty?

4. My brain is now merely a repository for random details like my kids’ friends’ summer camp and travel schedules, which of the natural, crunchy peanut butters is the yucky one and the twelve items I’ve promised to add to the girls’ Amazon wish lists in the last two days. My short-term memory is now completely shot. The kids have to ask me over and over for a glass of milk or to change the outfit on the Polly Pocket doll that one of them is wagging in my face. By the way, whoever invented those dolls and is now rolling around in the Polly Pocket fortune, needs to come to my house and change those goddamn dolls’ clothes every three minutes! He or she owes me at least that much.

Wait. What was I going to say? Ah yes, it must have been the fact that, even if I did manage to shake the kids, slip off my wedding rings and meet someone in a sleazy bar, I’d never be able to remember his name or whether this roofie was in my drink before I left for the bathroom or not. I guess I’d have to hope any mystery men I ran across found “bumbling” an attractive trait.

5. My body clock has been forever changed. Long ago, when I was a married, but childless, career woman, Ad Man and I would often work late into the evening at our respective offices in Santa Monica, California (mere blocks from the ocean, I might add). We’d eventually meet at home and end up eating dinner around 9 pm or so. On a weekend night, it wasn’t unheard of for us to head out at 11 pm to go see a band play or connect with some friends at a bar. Now if you called me at 11 pm, I would first freak out and assume that someone was dead. If that weren’t the case, I’d be more than a little pissed that you interrupted my blissful REM sleep.

mom_in_pajamasI am no longer eating dinner at 9 pm or leaving the house to go out in the wee hours of the night. These days, if you want to spring some spontaneous evening plans on me, I’d better receive notice no later than 4 pm. If you wait until 4:30, there’s a very good chance I’ll already in pajamas with a glass of wine in my hand, counting the hours until the kids are in bed and I can kick back with a month-old episode of Project Runway. Just off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything that would be enticing enough to make me put my bra back on once I’ve retired it for the night.

So, you see? There’s no going back to my pre-kid days even on a lark for one evening. I am a far, far different person than I was a mere eight years ago. And, really, let’s be honest…who’s going to be fooled by a woman sitting in a bar at 4 pm, wearing jeans, a well worn t-shirt and sensible flats, her face free of makeup except for a swipe of borrowed ‘princess pink’ Lip Smacker, surreptitiously stuffing handfuls of stale Goldfish crackers into her mouth from a purse the size of a Volkswagen Beetle?

Last Days of School: It’s the Crap-Crappiest Time of the Year

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overschedulednapkins

Dear Parents,

Mistee Roth and I are so honored to have been your PTA President and Vice-President this year. Thank you, again, for voting us into office last August in that hotly contested election against those bitches that were not even Pi Delts! We think it’s obvious you made the right decision.

We have just a few teeny, tiny announcements about the meetings, activities, events, parties, conferences, presentations, performances and parent self-evaluations that will be taking place over the next week and a half. First, parents are all strongly encouraged to attend their child’s art, drama, music, P.E., Mandarin and organic gardening classes this week. Their teachers are anxious to show you all the fabulous work the children have done this year so they can justify their slot in the budget for the next school year.

The kindergarten, 3rd and 5th grade plays will be held simultaneously in three different locations and it’s important that you attend each one of them. The 1st, 2nd and 4th grade music performances will begin a half an hour before the theater performances conclude. They will be held in various other locations on opposite sides of the campus. Ladies, please be sure to wear either a sundress or your finest pantsuit and heels, so no one suspects that you usually spend all day in twelve year-old, velour Juicy sweatpants and the t-shirt you stole from that guy you slept with in the dorm freshman year. Men, a suit and tie will be fine.

Don’t forget, the kindergarteners will be going on a field trip to the zoo tomorrow. Please remember to pack a vegan, gluten-free, peanut-free, non-processed, organic, no-GMO snack in a recyclable PBA-free plastic container for the children to share. All parents, you should sunscreen your child immediately upon waking so the SPF is at maximum potency when he or she arrives at the zoo. According to the school’s legal counsel, chaperones and teachers are forbidden from applying sunblock to any child who is not proven to be his or her own offspring. If your kid gets a sunburn, we will have no choice but to judge you.

If you were randomly selected to chaperone the 2nd graders on their field trip to McCaffrey’s Farm next Tuesday (because you haven’t volunteered for a damn thing this year and you’re not going to get away with that shit on my watch), please don’t forget that you’ll be required to demonstrate to the children how to milk a cow, churn butter, deliver a newborn foal and negotiate a corn maze. YouTube has some helpful videos so you can brush up on these skills before the trip. For the sake of authenticity, please wear denim overalls and a red-and-white gingham shirt.

If you volunteered for beach day this Friday, please arrive at 7:30 am, with one-hundred water balloons. The balloons should be pre-filled and individually labeled with your child’s grade and teacher’s name. Each volunteer must also provide buckets, a garden hose, beach towels, lawn chairs and enough Gatorade for the class.

Finally, next Friday, the children will conclude the school year with a multicultural parade and potluck. Each child is required to wear the native dress of his or her ancestors and provide an authentic dish for which their region is known. Parents, don’t miss this festive summer send-off. Be sure to arrive early! As you know, parking can be difficult, so shuttle buses will be provided from the Kroger parking lot.

Whew! What an exciting year, right? In closing, I’d like to urge you to make an additional donation to the PTA before walking out the door with your dirty potluck dishes next week. As you know, the PTA works hard to provide extra classes and services for our children that the poor schools can only dream of. Also, we are just slightly over budget this year due to the extravagant volunteer appreciation dinner we threw ourselves last month at the country club. (The liquor bill alone could pay for an additional ESL teacher for the next two years.) Give until it hurts, people! I mean, only if you love your children, of course.

Have a super fun summer!
Jillian Worthington-Bellamy and Mistee Roth

Calling for Peace in the Parenting Wars

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judging-new-parentsLast week, I went to hear Jennifer Senior, author of the universally lauded book on modern parenting All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, speak. I have not yet raved here about Senior’s book just because I feel like it has been reviewed and praised in so many publications already. It’s unlikely you haven’t already read a review, read the book itself, or at least seen it on the bestsellers’ shelf at the bookstore. Suffice it to say, it is a fantastic book about the changes that have occurred over the past 70 years or so that have completely changed the face of parenting and what those changes mean for today’s parents.

all_joy_no_fun_bookAll Joy and No Fun isn’t a how-to parenting book, however. Senior, a parent herself, readily admits that, like most people, she’s just “winging it” as far as raising her kids goes. We’re all pioneers in this wild new landscape of modern parenting. Senior’s book presents astute observations in a nonjudgmental way and this is one of the things I found so rare and refreshing about it.

You can go to any bookstore or spend just a few minutes on Amazon and find countless books written with the intention of convincing the reader that the author’s theory on raising children is the correct one and that all other parenting methods are tantamount to child abuse. Really, it’s come to that level of dispute and hysteria. It’s a virtual cage match between Attachment parents, Free-Range parents, long-term breastfeeders, Tiger moms and dads, No-Cry parents, anti-vaccine evangelists, family bed advocates and on and on and on.

I’m not going to claim that I didn’t delve into more than a few how-to books myself as a young parent. (Or, more appropriately, a “new” parent…I had ADVANCED MATERNAL AGE stamped on my OB’s medical files from day one!) There are a thousand different situations that arise just in the first few months of your firstborn’s life for which you have not the slightest bit of preparation and it sure would be nice to have a manual to refer to for step-by-step instructions. But, unfortunately, that’s not how this maddening parenting thing works. In reality, you do your best and then wait 18 or 30 years to find out whether you completely fucked up or not.

And yet, that hasn’t stopped an army of experts and lifestyle gurus from getting rich on books that purport to show you “the way” through parenthood. I was just reading a review of Alicia Silverstone’s new book The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning. If that doesn’t sound like a woman who thinks she has the answers, I don’t know what does. In addition to being an actress, Silverstone is also a vocal vegan, animals rights activist, fairly new mother and best-selling author of The Kind Diet. (Full disclosure, I own Silverstone’s first book and refer to it often for recipes and information about vegan eating.)

the_kind_mama_bookAs an influential Hollywood hippie-type (no judgment intended…you know I love my LA hippie brothers and sisters), Silverstone has taken it upon herself to extend her vegan, Earth-loving “brand” to parenthood. Not surprisingly, The Kind Mama advocates strongly for attachment parenting, extended breastfeeding, the family bed and vegan eating for the entire family. Some of the controversial assertions Silverstone makes in the book are that: 1) meat, dairy and processed foods “track toxic sludge through your [uterus],” 2) diapers are “pseudoscience,” 3) eating plant-based foods can “demolish your need for pharmaceutical drugs for things like depression,” 4) tampons may make you infertile, and 5) some babies are “never the same” after receiving vaccines.

As you can imagine, the responses to the review I read and comments on Amazon regarding the book itself are passionate to say the least, though the word combative seems more apt. A few responses, both positive and negative, were thoughtful and constructive. However, the overwhelming majority of comments made it abundantly clear that otherwise sane people will readily resort to insults, name-calling and threats against those purporting to tell them that their beliefs and philosophies, especially regarding parenting, are incorrect.

start_cola_earlierI’m not trying to defend Silverstone here. The author herself resorts to the same tactics when she describes forcing your baby to sleep “in a barred-in box, completely alone,” AKA in a crib, as the equivalent of child neglect. And, I personally think her anti-vaccine stance is misguided at best and, at worst, deadly. What is clear, though, is that the so-called “Mommy Wars” have now grown into full-blown “Parenting Wars.” You will now be judged not only on whether you choose to work or be a stay-at-home parent, you will be second guessed on every decision you make regarding every aspect of raising your child, from when you decide to start the kid on solid foods to whether your children will be expected to contribute toward the cost of their college educations.

You know, it used to be considered extremely rude to tell someone how to raise his or her children. Not everything was up for passionate public debate. Were there “experts,” books and magazine articles, friends and complete strangers standing by to shame my mother when she was unable to successfully breastfeed me? Hell, no. Did she have to justify her choice of diapers or where she put me down to sleep or what vaccines she “allowed” the pediatrician to give me? No, again. She sincerely did what she and my dad thought was best for me and it was no one else’s damn business.

beer-breastfeedingWouldn’t it be nice if we could return to those days? Thank you, researchers, for your findings. Thank you, doctors, for your medical advice. I am now going to go ruminate on those facts and opinions and take the action that my husband and I deem is in my child’s best interest. No, woman at the grocery story, I don’t need to know what you think of our decision. No thank you, I’d prefer not to read the book filled with doomsday predictions about the horrible things that will happen to my child and, indeed, the universe if I fail to buy her organic, GMO-free toothpaste.

Can we all just go back to viewing parenthood as a series of personal decisions people make as they’re stewarding little humans from infancy to adulthood instead of a political stance to be analyzed, debated and voted upon by all citizens, everywhere? In other words, they’re my kids, I’m doing my best and everyone else can shut the fuck up. Oh, I’m sorry. Was that too harsh? I forgot mothers aren’t supposed to get angry or swear. Surely, that outburst will have a dire effect on my children in the future.

Wishing You a Fully-Medicated Holiday

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green_smocked_xmasI’m sitting in Starbucks writing and celebrating the fact that I have, once again, survived the yearly elementary school holiday program. Ad Man is somewhere in Pennsylvania attending meetings and freezing his ass off so he’s missed the holiday celebration, yet again, this year.  I know he feels terrible for missing it, but that doesn’t keep me from being bitter. (Hell, if I wasn’t bitter, what would I write about?) Year after year, I’m the lonely mom sitting in the overheated gymnasium, frazzled from getting the kids up and on the bus looking somewhat decent at 7:05 am and managing to make myself presentable–generally by spraying lots of dry shampoo on my greasy roots–so I can get to school early and stake out my spot near the front so my kid doesn’t think I’ve forgotten her and freak the fuck out.

Smalls and the rest of the kindergarteners led a celebration of Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year and Las Posadas.  When I was growing up, I didn’t know any Jewish people, let alone the dreidel song!  Today’s holiday program did more than just give lip service to all the many holidays though. The kids learned about the culture and traditions of the diverse groups of people who celebrate each holiday and performed a couple songs from each of them.  It really was a breath of fresh air from the vanilla-white-Christian-only suburb I was raised in outside of Chicago.

Where there is little diversity here, though, is in the way Southerners dress their children for the holidays.  We were eating breakfast this morning, Smalls in her usual uniform of skinny jeans, a paint-stained t-shirt and leopard print Vans when I realized in a panic that she needed something festive for the holiday program or I’d likely be ejected from the PTA.  So, I threw her into a red Crewcuts dress with black polkadots, black tights (miraculously without holes) and sparkly purple shoes. Close enough.

Most of the other kids were all decked out in their holiday finery.  Many siblings were dressed alike, or at least, in coordinating outfits. The typical Christmas uniform for a little girl in the South is a red, green or red-and-green plaid, smocked dress with poufy sleeves.  The smocking is usually adorned with Christmas trees, snowmen, ornaments, Santas or a combination of all of the above.  The more, the better, actually.  In the absence of Christmas iconography, the dress must be monogrammed. In fact, monogram everything!  The outfit is not complete until you add frilly white socks, patent leather mary janes and a monolithic hairbow.

The boys generally wear matching holiday sweater vests or red polo shirts with plaid or khaki pants.  A few really do it up in tiny versions of their daddy’s slacks, starched shirts, sport coats, ties and loafers.  I was just glad Smalls’s hair was kinda brushed, her face was free of chocolate and she wasn’t wearing yesterday’s underwear.

Parents vie for seats at the very front of the gym to get the best view from which to watch their darling children through an upheld iPad. Moms and dads who didn’t manage to set their alarms early in order to beat the rush, worm their way to the front regardless, where they elbow other members of the mom-and-dad-arazzi for a prime spot on the imaginary velvet rope.

There are always a few working moms and dads (but mostly dads) who stand outside, negotiating deals on cell phones while pretending to peer through the smudged gym windows at their children belting out Christmas carols and doing adorable, choreographed arm movements.  These are the ones who will later cross their fingers when they hedge their bets and tell their kid that their favorite part of the performance was “when you sang…um…Jingle Bells?”

I have a soft spot in my heart, though, for the parents who rush in after the program has begun, dressed in week-old jeans and a sweatshirt smeared with spit-up or jelly, dragging along a crying younger sibling.  You can always spot the kids that belong to those parents. They’re the ones with bedhead, rocking a football jersey, pajama bottoms and untied sneakers.  These are my people.

I’ll also accept on my team the “holy-shit-I-thought-the-performance-was-at-10!” mom who you see running down the street carrying the crucial Santa hat that is conspicuously missing from her kid’s head.  You know, as she runs, she’s hyperventilating and calculating how much therapy will be needed before her child is able to trust again.

However, I’ll most likely never be friends with the festive, but tastefully dressed, mom with the perfectly coiffed hair, impeccable nails, diamonds the size of grapes, handsome husband who never travels on important days, and five well-mannered children all in coordinated holiday ensembles.  That is, unless I happen to run into her at my psychiatrist’s office and catch her wild-eyed, clutching to her breast a bouquet of prescriptions even bigger than mine.  In that case, I’ll put an arm around her, assure her that I understand and invite her over for a mid-morning cocktail.

After all, it’s the season of goodwill to all men and women…even the crazies.

Let’s Get Real this Thanksgiving

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thankfulLike many families in the U.S., at Thanksgiving dinner, we have a tradition of going around the table and saying what we’re thankful for. Generally, my response is similar every year. As always, I’m thankful for my family, health, good food and great friends. While I am sincerely grateful for those things, there are numerous other things that tend to go unmentioned and I think it’s high time I give them their just due.

This Thanksgiving, I’m really, really thankful that:

  • I’m past the stage of being woken at 3:00 am by a screaming infant who has pooped through her diaper, onesie, pajamas, sheets and into her hair.
  • I have not yet had to have a major body part replaced.
  • With email and texting, I rarely ever have to speak with another human being on the telephone.
  • The bats living in our eaves have apparently relocated, saving us $1,000 or so in animal-control costs.
  • We’ve gotten through another year without having our yard turned into an infinity pool by the neighboring creek.
  • We’ve squeezed another year out of our crappy cars.
  • My children are well-behaved and polite at school and in public and generally only act like complete shitheads at home.
  • It was slightly less hot than Hades in Atlanta this summer.
  • Ad Man has been traveling less in the last few months, though I will be considerably less thankful when he heads to the Virgin Islands for a “meeting” in a couple days.
  • It’s the most wonderful time of the year…leg shaving-optional season.
  • I have wonderful friends who hate all the same things I do.
  • Miley Cyrus is not my daughter.

I am also thankful for:

  • My beloved IUD that has kept me period-free and embarrassing-late-in-life-pregnancy-free for another year.
  • Psychotropic drugs.
  • Being old enough that I no longer care what anyone thinks if I get a new tattoo or let loose a string of expletives.
  • Binge-watching Orange is the New Black.
  • My cleaning people Digna and Erica who keep us from living in our own filth.
  • Grocery clerks who still card me when I’m buying alcohol and do it with a straight face.
  • Alcohol.
  • Clothing designers who are guilty of “vanity sizing.”
  • The scientists who did the research determining that dark chocolate is good for you.
  • Amazon Prime.
  • The teachers who educate Biggie and Smalls because neither the girls, nor I, would survive home-schooling.
  • My Orkin man because, no matter how many times people in the South refer to them as “palmetto bugs,” they’re still giant, flying cockroaches.

I hope the list of things you’re thankful for is as long as mine is this year. Happy Thanksgiving!

Advice to My Teenage Self

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1987I recently read an article, “What I’d Tell My Teenage Self” comprised of career and life advice from staff members of the TED blog to (of course) their teenage selves. I began thinking about what advice the adult me would give to the teenage me if given the opportunity. As you’ll see below, I have plenty of wisdom I’d like to share with my teenage self. Chances are good though, that me as a teen would take one look at me as a 40-something year-old and ignore every word that came out of my mouth just as I did to all other adults in my life at the time.

Regardless, here are 18 pieces of advice I’d give to my teenage self:

1.  No one cares if you have a zit or a cold sore or if your hair is less than perfect. They’re all too freaked out about their own zits to even see yours.

2.  Nothing is as bad as it seems at 2 am. Take a melatonin and get some sleep.

3.  Spend less time with your boyfriend and more time with your girlfriends. In fact, try not having a boyfriend for a while.

4.  Take Shop class instead of Home Ec. You’re going to have your whole life to cook and clean. How often will you get to play with power tools?

5.  Spend less money on clothes and more on concert tickets.

6.  You’re smarter than you think. Demand more from your teachers, your school and your guidance counselors.

7.  Take a test prep course for the SAT and go to the best college you possibly can. Work your ass off to pay for it. Do not settle.

8.  You might want to consider antidepressants. That heavy, dark cloud that follows you everywhere is not normal teenage angst.

9.  I know this is cliche but, please, please, please wear sunscreen at all times.

10.  Your friends are going to leave you at The Cure concert so they can go party with the band. You have the car and a curfew so that’s OK. Grown-ass men who want to hang out with teenagers are creepy.

11.  Your body is young, strong and beautiful. Do not spend another moment wishing it were different.

12.  You are not awkward and uncoordinated despite how the grade school gym teacher made you feel. You can be athletic. Find a sport or physical activity you enjoy and stick with it.

13.  Call your parents when you’re going to be late. They’re worried sick about you.

14.  Do things you think you can’t do. Learn a language. Play an instrument. Surprise yourself.

15.  I know you love Esprit clothes, but they’re essentially grown-up Garanimals. Remember, a true fashionista doesn’t dress in one designer from head to toe.

16.  A light hand with eyeliner is always best and that asymmetrical bob is not your friend.

17.  Your mom isn’t going to be around as long as you think. Spend more time with her. Judge her less. Ask for her advice.

18.   Aquanet will deplete the ozone layer. Put down the hairspray. Bigger is not always better.

How about you, readers? What advice would you give your teenage self if you could?

Girls, Girls, Girls

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jackie_amy_wineFrom childhood through my late 20s, I was the kind of girl that preferred the company of boys and men.  I wasn’t really a tomboy, but I would rather hang out in the living room with my boy cousins and all my uncles watching football than sitting in the kitchen with all the ladies. That may have been different if I’d had girl cousins my age, but in the absence of a female partner-in-crime, I generally stuck with the guys.

My best friend in preschool was a boy.  I still have a number of close guy friends from high school.  In college, I lived with my boyfriend and his two male roommates.  I ate meals with them (quite often straight out of a pan), helped to soundproof their band’s practice space, and published a punk rock fanzine with them.

In hindsight, I wonder if my social anxiety played a part in my avoidance of groups of girls and women.  I often found them intimidating.  Men tend to be more than happy with a surface-level depth to their friendships.  “Wait, you like drinking beer and listening to Nirvana?! Me too!” and suddenly they’re friends.  Being friends with women, on the other hand, generally requires more presence and participation.

But, something changed as I got older and had children.  Suddenly, I had this connection with other women that went far beyond the watching-football-together friendship I had with the guys.  I even felt more connected with my mother and grandmother, even though they’d both died before I had Biggie, simply because we’d shared the same experiences, albeit in different times.  I think one of the reasons my female friends are so important to me is because I don’t have my mom to lean on for advice about all the things she experienced before I did…being married, being a mother, facing the horrors of having teenagers and of entering middle age. Not that I would have taken her advice, of course.

mel_jackie_2013I now have the most amazing group of women friends any gal could ask for.  I’m still very close with my best friend from grade school and high school though we now live on different coasts.  My law school friends are friends for life.  And, I couldn’t function without my “sister-wife” who I’m so lucky to have living right next door.  It’s pretty unusual, but I didn’t meet the majority of my closest friends until after college, some in just the last few years.

There are just some things only your girl friends will do for you.  They hold your hair back when you puke and have your back when someone treats you like crap.  They’ll listen to your most intimate questions and tell you it’s totally normal (or not, and tell you to get your ass to the doctor!).  They won’t judge you when you feed your kids mac n’ cheese for the 4th night in a row or when you pour a glass of wine at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. They’ll know you’re kidding when you say you want to murder your spouse or kids or mother-in-law, but if you actually did murder someone, they’d totally help you hide the body.

This past weekend, my friend D had me and a group of other friends up to her family lake house for a girls’ get-away.  I’d met a couple of the others just briefly in the past, but I wouldn’t say I knew them well.  The rest of the ladies, I’d never met before.  We did things that men typically do when they get together, like drinking far too much, playing hilarious and potentially offensive card games, talking about work (or lack thereof) poking the logs in the fireplace and sitting on the deck staring contentedly at the lake.

But, we did other things I just can’t imagine the guys doing.  We cooked and ate delicious meals including salads and desserts, not just charred meat on the grill, we watched ‘Dirty Dancing’ (oh yes we did), we hung out in the hot tub, read trashy magazines, laughed until we cried and even did a little painting, which I hadn’t done since art school.  By the end of the weekend, we’d discussed everything from the challenges of raising a child with autism to our preferred method for bikini-area landscaping.  We bonded fast and hard. Seriously, it was like a really swank sleep-away camp.  And, I loved every girlie minute of it!