On Spaghetti

Many of you know that I do not like chain letters. In fact, I have often responded to mass-email writers imploring them to remove me from any distribution list that includes the message, "If you do not send this email on to 100 of your friends, evil things will befall you and everyone you love." You know, seriously, I feel like I have had my fair share of badness these past few years, and I don't want even a hint of that kind of energy around me.

But, come to think of it, I don't really like the happy chains either. Recently, a mommy at the boys' school asked me if I wanted to participate in her Amish Friendship Bread chain, which, apparently, involves creating a bread mix and passing it on and on and on to make a friendship "circle." Call me Scrooge, but I didn't want the pressure. I asked her if refusing her Friendship Bread would mean that I couldn't be her friend. She just shrugged.

So I winced when Krystal, my niece, mentioned me on her blog this morning. Apparently she has "tagged" me to participate in some sort of blogging recipe chain thing. My first response was, "Oh no, my blog fans will NOT like this. I only write about serious matters, like politics and...holidays."

But then I got to thinking about how Krystal is pregnant, and pregnancy brings with it a whole host of indignities. There's the back pain and the hip pain. There's the sudden, maddening hunger that seems to come around only when you're impossibly stuck in traffic. There's also the urgent need to pee, again somewhat correlated with being stuck in traffic. And, of course, there are the tears. One minute you're sitting calmly on the couch eating a pint or two of Ben and Jerry's, and the next minute you find yourself crying uncontrollably at a commercial for laundry detergent.

So I said to myself, "How hard would it be to participate in this recipe chain? It would bring Krystal joy, and joy is good." And there's also the sheer humor of the fact that she tagged ME to distribute recipes. Ummm.....Step 1: Buy a Trader Joe's frozen pizza. Step 2: Take it out of the packaging. Step 3: Heat in oven.

It's really no secret that I am not domestically inclined. How many of you have had dinner at our house and have thought to yourselves, "This meal tastes remarkably like takeout from the deli section at Whole Foods." Ahem. Well. What can I say? I may not be very adept at cooking, but I am GREAT at making selections at the grocery store. Bon appetit.

Because I am such a giving person, I am going to enter the chain JUST THIS ONCE. Per the instructions, I will leave you with two different recipes for one thing I CAN make myself: spaghetti. Only the best for you guys.

Recipe #1: Fancy Grownup Spaghetti

OK, what you're going to like about this one is that it's a MARTHA STEWART recipe. You might be wondering what in the world I, of all people, am doing anywhere near a Martha Stewart idea. I actually discovered this recipe while reading Martha's magazine on the elliptical machine at the gym one day when all the copies of People and US were taken. I have modified it slightly to make it more suitable for the average person (e.g. you do not need to make your own noodles or grow the olives yourself).

You'll need:

1 and 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup black olives (Gaeta or nicoise), sliced into small pieces
1/2 cup Italian-style green olives, sliced into small pieces
3 tablespoons capers
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 can (28 oz) diced tomatoes
1 sprig fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
spaghetti
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1) cook your noodles

2) Heat oil and garlic in a large saucepan about 30 seconds

3) Add olives, capers, red pepper flakes, and tomatoes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Add basil and oregano. Cook for 10 more minutes

4) Toss spaghetti with sauce. Add cheese on top.

Recipe #2: Spaghetti that you can call PASTA

The key to this spaghetti recipe is that you NEVER use spaghetti. What makes it different than the spaghetti that we eat the other 6 days of the week is that it takes CAVATAPPI noodles. This adds an air of sophistication to the meal that is unmistakable.

You'll need:

fresh spinach
1 package cavatappi pasta
olive oil
1 can cannellini beans, rinsed
2 garlic cloves
lots of shredded Asiago cheese

1) Cook your noodles

2) Heat oil and garlic. Add spinach. Wait until the spinach gets all droopy. Add the beans and heat them up.

3) Combine everything with the noodles. Dump lots of Asiago cheese on top.

4) If you separate some of the noodles out, you can give your kids just the noodles with the cheese on top. That way, there won't be a hint of "healthy" anywhere near it. And it can be differentiated from the macaroni and cheese they ate at lunch, because it's CAVATAPPI. Remember?

Now, I am going to assume that there are at least 3 of you out there reading this thing. And if I get the gist of what Krystal is saying, I'm supposed to persuade you to somehow add a couple of recipes to the chain. So, if you want to, post a recipe or two in the comments section. And if you don't want to, well, that's OK, too (but you might find yourself with a big lump of Amish Friendship Bread on your front porch tomorrow. Consider yourself warned).

Caucus Video Issues

I know that those of you with PCs are not able to see the whole video (about 9 seconds gets cut off at the end for unknown reasons). I have spent most of my day trying to figure out why this is happening, but I still don't know how to fix the problem. If you can't tell which candidate I chose in the end, you have a few choices:

1) Go buy a Mac.

2) Drag the video cursor beyond the point at which the video stops. You will then be able to see the last 2 frames of the video.

3) Email me, and I'll just tell you what happened.

The Caucus

Doing My Part

Alright, Democrats. You didn’t make things easy for me with your votes on Super Tuesday. I was looking to you to make a clear choice in your states’ Democratic primaries so that some of the pressure would be off of me on Mediocre Saturday, when I will be participating in the Washington State caucus.

Usually, by this stage in the political game, there is already a front-runner, and my vote is nothing but symbolic. But this year, I feel like I really have a say. The only problem is that I don’t know what that say will be.

I am undecided. Really undecided. This is a new feeling for me. Part of the issue is that the two candidates on the buffet menu are both moderate Democrats who, more or less, propose similar ideas. But I also think that I’m struggling with something bigger, some larger question about what matters to me.

It occurred to me that, for the first time, I am no longer a “younger voter.” And I guess the issue is whether I am still able to feel like a younger voter and whether I want to. In the past, if a candidate said that he was going to have us all stand together on the top of a mountain and hold hands and find common ground across division, I would have followed him up the hill like he was the pied piper. But now, I hear the calls for UNITY! And CHANGE! and HOPE! and I think to myself, change doesn’t happen just by wishing it so.

Or does it?

Obama gives me the opportunity, if I’m willing to take it, to reconnect with a type of idealism that has been slippery and elusive. He is not the first to promise a new set of civic relationships, a new way of solving problems, a new world order of sorts that has capital J Justice at its core. He is not the first, but he delivers his message in a way that sounds so authentic, so real, so almost-there possible. I miss that feeling, and I am hungry for it. But I am also wary, because I know that we, as a country, have a crappy track record of translating good vibes into meaningful action.

It would feel right to jump on the sails of Obama idealism, but Hillary Clinton represents a different kind of idealism for me. I’ll be honest. It’s exciting to me that we could possibly have a left-leaning, competent, persuasive female president, even if we have to spend the next four years analyzing whether she’s too female or not female enough (Too many tears? Too few? Too much cleavage? Matronly pantsuits?). I read an essay by Rebecca Traister on Salon.com that has come the closest to expressing my feelings about the gender component of this election. She writes,

"…I think of how, when I was 9, my dad took me into the voting booth so that I could pull the lever for the first female vice president, and how he told me that he hoped that in my lifetime I would have the opportunity to vote for a woman at the top of the ticket. And I think about the fact that this is it -- my chance to pull that lever for her, so that I can do it again come November.

Who am I to turn up my nose at her because she's imperfect? I always figured the first female president would be a Thatcher-style Republican -- how can I complain about a Wellesley-educated Democrat who once resembled the second-wave women who fought for my ability to control my own reproduction and get paid as much as my male colleagues?

How could I ever tell those women that I voted for Barack Obama? What do I tell my aunt, my mother -- women who aren't crazy about Hillary's politics either, but whose extra decades on the planet have left them more acutely aware than I about the fleeting opportunity she presents. What if I have a daughter someday and she asks me about why we've never had a woman president? Do I tell her that we once came close, but that Mommy was really digging Obama that day?"

And so I struggle, but I sure am glad to feel the power of choosing again, to feel that a struggle is worth it. I have a sense that I will walk into the caucus site this Saturday still unclear about what I will do. Perhaps I will be one of those people who shifts position in the middle of the caucus! Wouldn’t that be fun?

Stay tuned. I’ll be doing a little filming this weekend as we make our way from the boys’ school pancake breakfast to the polling place. Live coverage of my indecision – it doesn’t get any better than that.

Celebrity Blog, Part II

Here's the second volume of my answers to your most probing questions. Never fear, next week will be business as usual. I'm sure you're weak with anticipation to hear about the boys' unit on water snails or a synopsis of the class preparation for Groundhog Day.

Now that you teach, I imagine your perception of university life is a bit different than when we were the "customers." Do you think the students are different, or might it be just us? What do you think of students who don't bother to attend your class each time?

Oh, don’t get me started. But you know, I didn’t feel like a customer when I was in college. I felt “lucky to be there,” or at least that’s what I was told over and over again. What was the magic bullet that let me in the door to my alma mater, and not the 7 other kids from my high school who applied and were rejected? (It must have been that poem about nuclear war that I sent in along with my application. Ha.).

But I definitely feel like my students are customers, and I am the server. Or, as I told a friend the other day, I am a waitress of ideas. Low wages, bad tips. I’ve said it before, but I feel a tremendous pressure to keep those customers HAPPY.

That said, many of my students are incredibly active, and my class is just a tiny spot in their lives. A student might be an Assistant Manager at Blockbuster AND President of the Student Senate AND Co-chair of the Save the Elephants Auction AND an intern at Microsoft. When I was in college, I just read books (oh, and I also drove a recycling truck. But that’s a different story).

The thing about the kids who don’t come to class is that I get 30 emails afterwards asking me what they missed. And I say, “You missed class.”

I do wonder how you select your reading list for your books, and how do you find time to read on top of everything else?

Do you mean the books I assign in my classes? I tend to pick books that have a good, narrative style, because I’ve found that many students, especially younger students, tend to connect emotionally with a topic before they connect intellectually. (Plus, good stories make them HAPPY).

But if you mean the books I read on my own, I tend to choose those by browsing around. I read Nancy Pearl’s suggestions. I check out new releases on amazon.com. I’m on goodreads.com, and I poke around there. I read the New York Times Book Review. And I like to go to bookstores, too. And as for the time thing, I’ve always been a big reader. It’s like breathing to me. The TV writers’ strike helps, too.

We want to know what is the favorite ethnic food at your house and do B&G ever eat it too?

We definitely have pan-Asian palates. Japanese, Chinese, Thai…And yes, the boys eat it, too, in large volumes. After all, noodles are beige.

Do you want to live overseas? Even if only for a six month stretch? How old would Blue and Green need to be before you would take them out of the country for that long?

It would be fun, but I think I’d rather do something like that when the kids are older and better able to entertain themselves. Right now our lives are consumed by trying to keep the boys busy and fed and exercised. That seems so much harder if you’re sitting in some cobble-stoned little village where you don’t speak the language and you’re under tremendous pressure to drink a big bottle of wine during the afternoon siesta and again in the evening. But you should ask ECM and Shawn, two of this blog’s loyal readers. They’re currently hanging out in Rome for three months with their five year old and are having a great time. I’ve heard that the kid keeps busy by licking the peeling lead paint off the walls.

When you drive/fly/ship Blue and Green off to their respective colleges of choice, how will you know how you did as a parent?

I don’t think that moment will be the point of measurement. I’ll judge success ten years later by seeing whether one is able to buy me a big house with a view of the water. That’s all I care about. I’ll leave it to their professors to make sure that they’re HAPPY.

If you find out that you're going to die tomorrow and you can choose whatever you want for your last meal, what would you choose and why?

Well, I think I’d have to combine elements of my some of my favorite meals into one big multicultural feast. (Warning: This probably won't mean anything to you unless you live in my city). I’d start with some calamari from Toyoda Sushi. And then I’d have a margarita and a green enchilada plate from Santa Fe Cafe. And some fried spring rolls from Araya's Vegetarian Thai. And I’d end with a cup of Gold Medal Ribbon ice cream from Baskin Robbins. Why? Well, why not? If I’m sick the next day, who cares?

How do you tell Blue and Green apart from a distance? Do you regard dressing them in different colors as a kindness to others, and if so, should we thank you when you do this?

From a distance? Hmmm. Green is a little thicker. Blue has two cowlicks in the back of his head, giving him rather noticeable sprouts of hair. Green’s head is round like a basketball, while Blue’s is a bit more oval. Blue is usually the one who is jabbering.

Their teacher has thanked us for color coding them, so we keep doing it. But you know what’s funny? There have been at least three occasions when strangers have approached me and started a conversation that goes like this:

Weirdo: Are they twins?
Me: Yes.
Weirdo: You might want to get that checked to be sure. They don’t really look alike.

When did the Scotch thing start?

You’re referring to my enjoyment of single malt scotch. I think I first tried it in my twenties, when Michael and I went to a scotch bar (long since closed). Scotch is fun, because it’s half snooty refinement/half tough-guy cool. And it makes me happy without causing me to slide under the table.

Of course, my love of scotch can get me into trouble. When the kids were just two years old, we had a little backyard party. The boys came outside with sippy cups filled with apple juice. They proudly told the crowd, “Look at our scotch!”

No, really, I don’t drink it that often. And the kids only get some after they finish their chores.

Who’s going to be the first sponsor of your blog?

What, you think I’m going to sell out?

Uh, anyone want to sponsor this blog?

Celebrity Blog, Part I

Thanks to you all for your questions. It was so nice to sit down today and not have to puzzle over what to write. If I didn’t choose your question today, never fear. We’ll be doing this again next week! Aren’t you excited? Good – because I need you to send in more questions. Keep 'em coming.

Who is your favorite dwarf and why?

OK, I ‘m assuming that you’re talking about the famous 7 dwarves here. I confess to not really remembering them all, so I went ahead and looked on Wikipedia for a refresher. The seven dwarves are: Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Dopey, and Happy. I guess that the only way to pick a favorite is to try to identify with the names. Doc? The boys call me “not really a doctor,” so I guess I’ll scratch that one off the list. Sneezy? Not usually, so I won’t choose him, either. Bashful? Ummm, not exactly. Dopey? I hope not. Happy? Well, down deep, yes, but do I walk around grinning all day long? No. Hmmm. Grumpy and Sleepy – those are two that I can identify with. I think I’ll go with Sleepy as my favorite dwarf.

But here’s an interesting twist! There were lots of dwarves that didn’t make the cut. Here are the others: Blabby, Jumpy, Shifty, Snoopy, Scrappy, Cranky, Dirty, Awful, Silly, Daffy, Flabby, Jaunty, Biggo Ego, Chesty, Bald, Gabby, Nifty, Sniffy, Burpy, Lazy, Puffy, Dizzy, Stuffy, Sleazy, Tipsy, Titsy, and Tubby. This list is much more interesting. If I am going to pick a favorite from this list, I’ll have to do some categorizing before I make a choice.

I am never: Chesty, Bald, Dizzy, Awful, Shifty, Stuffy, Tubby, or Titsy

I am sometimes: Blabby, Jumpy, Snoopy, Scrappy, Cranky, Dirty, Daffy, Flabby, Jaunty, Sniffy, Burpy, Lazy, Puffy, Sleazy, and Tipsy

I am always: Silly, Biggo Ego, Nifty, and Gabby

Of those five, I think I’ll have to choose Biggo Ego, because it is truly the best name I’ve ever heard.

If you could do anything – and I believe you can – what would it be?

I immediately approached this question as a career question, though I’m not sure that’s what you intended. If I could do anything, I would be the next Sarah Vowell. She’s got it made! She sits around and writes clever essays, gets paid to read them on the radio, and occasionally gets to do cartoon voices for hit movies.

In my dream last night, you had given me instructions for a performance that we were giving together; we were supposed to introduce writers to an audience. I was ready for this, until you announced that this was just a rehearsal, which had to do with everyone eating a lot of cake at your house. Also, a set of twin girls about the age of Green and Blue were there, and my husband moved in with your family. Overall, I felt panic. Can you interpret this for me?

Well, of course you are panicked. I spent the whole day bossing you around, and then I went and stole your husband. I hope I at least gave you some of the cake.

What happens when you combine bottomless, strong margaritas, chips, salsa, and guacamole?

Well, first of all I turn into two of those rejected dwarves – Tipsy and Tubby.

Then I start to spill my secrets…

Have you ever been abducted by aliens?

Yes, almost six years ago. Their names are Blue and Green.

Do you wear underwear?

Often.

If you could go back and “do it all again,” would you?

I don’t think so. There are certainly things that would be fun to relive, but I assume that “doing it all again” would involve the bad as well as the good. Plus, ultimately I would want to end up in the same place (but with a bigger house and tighter abs).

If you could go back in time and impart one piece of knowledge to your high school/college self, what would it be?

I’d tell my young self to take a risk. I was always timid in my choices.

Oh yeah, I’d also tell myself to throw away those stirrup pants. What a mistake!

Can you tell me why I am thinking up questions when I should be sleeping?

Because this is so much fun!

Do you budget your family expenses and why?

Not so much. I do a little mental budgeting, though – like, “If I give up Diet Coke for a month, I will be able to buy X.” But then I don’t usually give up the Diet Coke.

How has becoming a mother changed you?

Well, it made me lose YEARS of sleep. I will be at a deficit for the rest of my life.

I also never expected to become REALLY GOOD at sucking boogers out of a baby’s tiny nose with a bulb syringe. It really is an underappreciated skill.

And there’s a whole cavity in my brain that is filled with horrible songs. Do any of you remember the Wiggles? The boys have totally forgotten the show and the characters, but I will be humming “Toot, toot, chugga, chugga, Big Red Car!” throughout eternity.

I have also learned to really value privacy, because I no longer have any. Yesterday I was in the shower, when I suddenly heard the bang and slam of people entering the bathroom. The boys began a deep and animated conversation about ferry boats just inches from the shower curtain. “Hello!?,” I shouted. “Why is there a party in here?” They were still in the room when I got out of the shower, and despite my efforts to conceal myself, Green said, “Mama, you have bumps like a camel.” Fabulous.

But, seriously, I guess I would say that becoming a mother has amplified everything. I find the world so much funnier with the boys in it. I laugh louder, and I scream louder. My capacity for happiness is enormous, as is the potential for grief.

You are so amazing and talented. How do you manage to do it?

Thank you. Thank you. I’d like to thank my manager, my publicist, my personal trainer, and YOU, the fans! Where would I be without my fans?

Blog Fatigue

I have to admit to having a bit of blogger's block these days. We've been at this blogging thing for six months, you and I, and I'm finding it a bit difficult to come up with new and exciting things to babble about.

This week I considered writing about the Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration at the boys' school. I happened to be volunteering last week when the kids abruptly abandoned their lesson about goldfish (They're gold! And they swim!) to practice their Martin Luther King song and dance. Yes, you read that correctly -- a song and dance. It starts off like this: Martin Luther King/You make my spirit sing/You mean so much to me/'Cause you taught us how to be free. Combine that with a little foot stomping, hand waving, and wiggling, and you're ready for the Martin Luther King assembly (pageant?) on Thursday. I was also there when the teacher tried to generate a discussion about "brotherhood," but that quickly dissolved when the five year olds started raising their hands to say things like, "I have a brother!" and "I have a sister!" and "My brother is mean!" At that point, the kids were quickly dismissed to go work on their tooth fairy pillows (in preparation for February, which is Tooth Month).

But, you know, I feel like I've already made the case that this school is capable of making any serious holiday hilarious. I think I need to do something different for a few weeks. I'll come out and admit that I've read more than a few celebrity blogs. On these sites, fans write questions to the celebrity, and he/she answers. I think that's what we should do! After all, I can be a pretty big diva. But, of course, this plan only works if you ASK ME QUESTIONS. They can be funny or serious. You can pose them in the comments section, or you can send me an email. But you have to do it, and if you don't, my feelings will be hurt. And if my feelings get hurt, I'll have to post a video with me crying. Let me tell you, that's not a pretty sight.

To get us started, certain young people agreed to be the first question askers. Here is what their inquiring minds wanted to know:

Do you eat lunch while you're teaching?

Sadly, yes I do. One of my classes runs from 10 am until 1 pm, right through the lunch hour. And if I get hungry, as some of you know, I am not a nice person. And if I am not a nice person in class, I will not get good teaching evaluations. And if I don't get good teaching evaluations, I will not be rehired.

My lunch looks like a kindergartener's lunch: peanut butter sandwiches, applesauce, Chips Ahoy cookies. This is because there is no grownup food in our house.

Do you have play time at your school?

Uh, no. I have some bad news for you, Sparky. After kindergarten, you'll find a substantial reduction in fun.

What do you do while you're teaching?

Fly by the seat of my pants. And show movies. There's nothing like showing a movie to kill an hour of class time.

What is your favorite grocery store?

This is a tricky question. We have many, many grocery stores near us, and they all serve different purposes. The closest one is our local organic coop, where we can go and spend a lot of money but feel happy about ourselves and our choices. This is the place we go for produce, dairy, and general good karma. But if we want Chips Ahoy cookies, we need to go somewhere else. We tend to go to the place that has the free child care, because in addition to buying Chips Ahoy, you can take a little time to get a coffee and read a magazine. Now, if the coop were to offer free child care, I would move in there! Good karma and babysitting at the same time!? Can you imagine?

What do you like to eat for breakfast?

Little kids.


OK, there you have it. Now it's your turn. Send me a question. I'm waiting.....

Politics

So we were all sitting on the couch a few mornings ago flipping between the three national morning shows. I was marveling at whatever process it is that allows three anchors on three different channels to interview the same presidential candidate at the same time. At one point, the big, grinning image of John McCain popped up on the screen. Blue started cackling wildly, holding his belly because he was laughing so hard. “What is it?” we kept asking him, but it took him a while to regain his composure. “That looks like Grandpa,” he finally answered. Then, as we were contemplating this idea, Green said, “Look! That one looks like Daddy!”

It was Mitt Romney.

I just about peed in my pants.

Michael and I are progressive people. We live in a progressive town. We wear fleece a lot and enjoy a good spotted owl. But, as fate would have it, we have a son who is not so progressive. Do you remember the 1980s show, Family Ties? It was the one with the hippie parents and the Ronald Reagan-loving son. I have a feeling that’s going to be us in a couple of years.

Green is conservative. He loves his routine and his rules (one does not put one’s underpants in the hamper until AFTER the Curious George show ends). He eats the same food for lunch every single afternoon. One day a while back we asked him whether he would like to try something different, something new, just to spice things up. “Mama,” Green said, “I do not like different.”

Well there you have it.

But you see, Michael and I DO like different. And no matter how many times we screech Change! Change! Change! like a couple of overcaffeinated Democratic presidential hopefuls, Green is not interested. He likes tradition, consistency, and the status quo. I'm pretty sure that he is going to grow up to be the kind of guy whose idea of a good afternoon involves a can of beer, a recliner, and a Packers game.

I bring this up, because we came to an interesting realization the other day. We’ve made it through babyhood. We’ve made it through toddlerhood. We’ve made it to the point in our family life where we might actually be able to DO STUFF again. Except there’s the teeny problem of Green, who has no interest in broadening his horizons.

Last year we took a little weekend trip to Portland. We stayed at a hotel out by the airport, because we wanted an affordable suite. It turns out that this hotel was a conservative 5 year old boy’s nirvana. It had a view of the runway (planes taking off and landing! Woo!), lots of elevators (and buttons to push), a swimming pool, and a free buffet. Green was quick to mention that he saw no need to go out into the city and actually do anything, when there was SO MUCH FUN to be had at the hotel. And when we did leave at the end of the weekend, there was considerable sobbing and screaming. Michael and I needed to promise that we would someday return to that hotel and stay in the exact same room.

Green and I recently had a meaningful conversation about traveling. Here's a piece of it:

See what I mean? It looks like we're not going anywhere exciting any time soon. But if you have an Embassy Suites in your city, let us know. You can join us for the free breakfast.

New Year's Eve (the Parental Version)

Back in the day, New Year’s Eve was a marker of one’s essential coolness. When asked, “What did you do for New Year’s,” you wanted your answer to stand out: “We went to Club Whatever until midnight and then sat on the beach until sunrise” or “I went to this fabulous party with the most creative, interesting people, and we made sculpture out of broken clocks by the light of the moon.” It was understood that New Year’s Eve wasn’t an ordinary night; rather, it was one that had to generate a STORY.

Well, then we had kids and lost any semblance of essential coolness. I know, I know, some of you have kids and are still cool, but we aren’t. Somewhere along the line, we decided to let our young, cool selves go into hibernation. We figure that one of these days, we’ll wake up and be revitalized, older cool people, and that will be OK. Until then, however, we’re just tired.

But New Year’s Eve is still noteworthy no matter how boring your life is, so we had the idea that we could celebrate the east coast New Year’s Eve – that way we could be wild and crazy until 9 pm and then go to bed like usual. To that end, we invited some other parents-of-a-kindergartener over to join in our nutty early evening festivities.

You may not know it, but Michael can make a mean margarita. A REALLY mean margarita, the kind that makes me pretty stupid after just a couple of sips. So it was 5:00, and the grownups were sitting around the kitchen table with a huge pitcher of lemon-lime goodness. After just a few minutes, we were giggling like kids about old prom stories (what color was YOUR tuxedo?) and bad hair and questionable fashion choices. Every once in a while, a kid would come in and ask something like, “Mama, can you take the top off of this toy?” And I would say something like, “Umm, you’ll have to wait a minute until I can reconnect my brain with my hands.”

But here’s where that essential coolness problem comes in. It’s was now 5:45, and we were all feeling kind of bad. We looked around at our disheveled selves and thought, “We could just go to sleep right now.” But, no. There were 3 hours and 15 minutes left until “New Year’s.” Wouldn’t it have been embarrassing to go to bed BEFORE the east coasters did their countdown? Wouldn’t it have been pathetic to go to bed when it was technically still daytime?

Never fear. We made it until 9. Oh yes we did. And I am proud.

All of this got me thinking about New Year’s Eves in the past, and I was startled by one memory. I’m not sure what year it was – sometime in the late 1990s. We were in Minnesota, visiting Michael’s family. New Year’s Eve fell toward the end of the trip, and all of us were feeling weary of the constant celebrating. That night’s activity consisted of sitting around together watching the Access Hollywood Year in Review special. But there was one funny twist. Michael’s sister told us that changing your underwear at midnight could bring you special luck, provided that the underwear’s color was aligned with your wish. If I remember correctly, yellow meant money, pink was love, and white was happiness. So at 11:59, all six or seven women, including Michael’s mother, took off for the back bedroom where we stripped, changed, re-dressed, and returned to the living room by the stroke of midnight.

And we’ve never spoken of it since.

I wonder, did anyone get their wish that night? Can well-chosen unmentionables bring prosperity or romance or just general good energy? Next year, I will try again. And if you find me with a wad of cash in my pocket in January 2009, you will know why.

The Camera

I don't have any clever ramblings today, but I really want to see if I've managed to get video to work on this blog. You probably need to double click on the play button.

Green suffered through the night and most of the day with a stomach virus. Stomach viruses are like train wrecks in our family, knocking each of us off our tracks one by one. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to a thrilling New Year's Eve.

While Green was sleeping/throwing up, Blue and I spent the morning freeing a plastic shark jaw from a rock. In case you're wondering why he's wearing such stylin' specs, they're "safety goggles."

Aftermath

We have had an exciting couple of days. It turns out that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus were scheduled to arrive on the very same night. Yes, Green's front tooth fell out in his Cheerios on Christmas Eve morning, prompting me to sing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" over and over again until Michael threatened to take my present back.

So we set out two plates of cookies, one for the Big Elf and one for the Fairy. Santa got a glass of milk, but the Tooth Fairy did not, apparently because fairies don't get thirsty. Coincidentally, I was just reading about a Tooth Fairy/Santa Claus encounter. In Father Knows Less Or "Can I Cook My Sister?": One Dad's Quest to Answer His Son's Most Baffling Questions, Wendell Jamieson tells the story of the unfortunate loss of his sister's tooth on Christmas Eve. When his sister awoke to find her tooth untouched under her pillow in the morning, she asked why the Tooth Fairy did not show up as planned. Her father told her that the Fairy did not forget-- it's just that she had been run over by Santa's sleigh. Apparently, that did not go over well. (Lucky for us, the Tooth Fairy was watching where she was going and managed to slip a little cash under Green's giant melon head).

Now, I know that every family that celebrates Christmas has its own little traditions. Some people open gifts on Christmas Eve, while some wait until Christmas day. In my family, we manage to do both. You see, my MOTHER wakes us up before the crack of dawn to open gifts, making the whole enterprise over and done with before the sun even rises. This year was no exception, and she broke a cardinal rule of parenthood which is YOU NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING CHILD.

Imagine our surprise when we heard the screech and bleat of a marching, singing toy Santa Claus at 5:20 a.m. It did not turn off until we were all out in the living room with our hands covering our ears. Fortunately, the holiday joy of small children outshines the outrage that comes from being violently uprooted from sleep.

The kids got what they wanted from Santa, and so did I. I have been coveting those cute little Flip video cameras that you can carry in your pocket, and one was waiting for me under the tree. We have a camcorder, but it's rare that I have it with me to capture the excitement of my everyday life. So be warned -- I'm going to try to get video up here, so you're likely to be exposed to a LIVE ACTION version of me cleaning the garage.

Now THAT is something to look forward to!

Merriment

Sorry about the small blogging hiatus. I was socked by my annual Christmas virus, which coincided with the end of the teaching quarter. I found myself shaky with fever, preparing for my inlaws' visit, and tackling the grading of 40 papers all at the same time.

I have a small problem when faced with big tasks. Rather than address whatever unpleasant project is at hand, I divert my attention to a different but still monumental endeavor. Here's an example. Back when I was in graduate school, we lived in this little 1960s apartment (complete with bright orange sink and avocado green gas fireplace). It also had the original refrigerator and ICE BOX. Over time, the ice box would freeze over, and the food would need to be rescued. So it was finals week, and I had 3 large research papers due on the very same day. I was woefully unprepared. On the night before the papers needed to be turned in, I decided that RIGHT THAT MOMENT I needed to chisel out the ice box. Of course, it took hours to get the ice out, and then another hour to clean up the puddles of water on the floor. Michael asked me why, when there was so much reading and writing left to be done, I would find it imperative to address the freezer situation. I shrugged. I may not have finished my work, but at least the tater tots were free from their icy prison.

So, here I was last week with those 40 papers, and it occurred to me that there had been a funky smell in the kitchen for awhile. All along I had been blaming the odor on Green's poor hygiene, but I was beginning to suspect that the problem might reside in the refrigerator. So what did I do? All the food came out, and all the shelves came out. And there, underneath the vegetable crisper boxes, I found the source of the aroma -- a small but pungent arboretum.

5 whole hours later, the ecosystem was destroyed, the appliance was pristine, and I was sufficiently disgusted. But I still had those 40 papers to deal with, and there was only one day before grades were due. When my inlaws arrived, I barely had time to raise my head out of the pile of puzzling essays (Here's one of my favorite sentences from the batch: "The purpose of American schools is to produce intelligible citizens." What? If that's the case, we are clearly failing.). But at midnight, I penciled my last grade onto the bubble form, and I was DONE.

Finally, we were able to rev up the Christmas merriment.



The boys had been antsy to visit the jolly old elf for awhile. We had been using Santa as a threat for weeks: "Blue, you need to get your dirty underpants off your brother's bed right now! Santa's watching!" or "Green, if Santa sees you hit your brother on the back of the head with that pirate sword, he's not going to bring you any presents!" Both kids were a little skeptical that one pudgy old man at the North Pole could monitor the behavior of all the world's kids at the same time. Did he have a bunch of cameras installed in everyone's house? Since I am unclear about the exact nature of Santa's surveillance equipment, I told them they should ask him themselves.

So Granny, Grandpa, Blue, Green, Michael, and I headed downtown to visit Santa. Afterwards, we rode the holiday carousel:



And we went and saw a gingerbread model of the Kremlin:



And that evening, we ate an eclectic pre-Christmas feast of grilled salmon and mashed potatoes and green beans (and ketchup). After that: presents! The boys were wild with excitement, and so was I. You see, I had found my father-in-law the perfect gift. He is a man who continues to have particularly strong views about the Clinton presidency, so I bought him a talking Bill Clinton doll. There was nothing more entertaining than watching him cringe when the doll said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...."

But anyway, the build up to Christmas is such a funny thing. It starts before the leaves drop from the trees, and there's such a pressure to buy, buy, buy. And in a world so full of trouble, the cheery cards that say "Peace on Earth" seem to sit in an ironic pile on the dining room table. But when you have a five year old (or two), something really does crack open when the Christmas tree lights go on for the first time, or when Santa places a candy cane in his nervous little hand. I wish I had a picture to capture the instant when Blue opened his first present from Granny and Grandpa, when he jumped in the air with his hands above his head and screamed, "Oh Granny, how did you know? How did you know this is just what I wanted?" Sometimes life can be so hard it brings you to your knees, but there are moments, like that one, when I know that everything is right and good and possible.

Rain, Rain, Reindeer

OK, so this post was supposed to be titled, "Let it Snow." You see, we had a little treat on Saturday. It was a bit colder than usual, and it began to snow -- the fluffy flake kind that's sticky enough for fun. It doesn't snow much here, so when it does, people go outside and play with wild abandon. And that's just what we did.

Michael was so happy to have the chance to release his inner-Minnesotan. I was able to get some use out of my cute green hat. And the boys? They got some hot chocolate. About half-way through the outdoor merriment, I went inside and excavated some old packets of Swiss Miss instant hot cocoa. You know, the kind where you pour hot water and stir. When the boys came in and sipped some of that, they said, "Mama! How did you ever learn to make such good stuff?" "Boys," I said, "I am a domestic diva. This is my special, secret recipe."

Anyway, when it snows in the Pacific Northwest, it's BREAKING NEWS. All of the newbie news reporters get sent out to various suburbs, and they have to stand around and report on whether or not flakes are falling in that particular location. Actually, the funniest thing is when it's supposed to snow but then doesn't. The poor reporter has to stand by the side of a busy road and say things like, "If it were 10 degrees colder tonight, it would be snowing. But, as you can see, it's not."

This time, those young reporters were in for a little fun. The snow gave us an hour or two of winter excitement, but slowly, slowly, the temperature crept up. Our snowmen began to lean into each other and droop. By Sunday night, it became clear that we were in for a teeny tropical storm. Oh no, wait, not just a tropical storm, the remnants of a TYPHOON. Fabulous. On Monday morning, it was nearly 60 degrees and pouring buckets. I had my nice hour long commute to work that morning, which ended up being an even longer commute through standing water on the freeway. 24 hours later, some bridges are gone, and several schools are flooded and closed. The road we take to the beach has washed away.

I was lucky that my mom was taking care of the boys during my hellish commute. However, when I pulled up outside the house after my crappy day, I heard an odd, piercing screech. Imagine the sound of a sick cat, and combine it with the noise generated by 30,000 nine year olds shrieking for Hannah Montana. I covered my ears and walked into the house. This is what I found:

I'm thinking that this particular gift was delivered with a touch of hostility. What's the matter, mom? Are you getting me back for that driving trip to Cape Cod in the early 80s where I made you play my cassette tape of Rick Springfield's Working Class Dog over and over and over again? I'm sorry, OK? I will never sing "Jessie's Girl" again.

To those of you who saw the grim coverage of our local weather situation on the Today show, fear not. We are fine. Michael is not travelling to the office in a rowboat. A river did not swallow up our house. But if you happen to hear the wails of a musical toy reindeer as it disappears down a sinkhole, I take full responsibility.

Assessment

A special thank you to all the folks who sent love my way after my shameless shout-out for feedback. I really did just want to see if anyone was actually reading this anymore, but I am very pleased about the fact that my blog made so many “What I am thankful for” lists.

This weekend we discovered that the thing that we are truly grateful for is ketchup. Without ketchup, our kids would not have eaten any of the Thanksgiving feast. Without ketchup, there would have been whining and moaning and sulking. So thank you, ketchup, for your amazing capacity to disguise the taste of any food. Thank you also to chocolate sauce, which accomplishes the same thing, except without the antioxidant properties of lycopene.

While they were waiting to eat their ketchup on the holiday break, the kids had to do a particularly perplexing homework assignment. Here were the instructions:

Write down what you would do on Thanksgiving if you were a turkey.

Ummm……WHAT? Was the purpose of this assignment to make the kids aware of the connection between the horrors of industrial farming and their own food consumption? Did the school intend for the students to cast a critical eye on the process of coloring cute, feathered farm animals one week, only to eat them the next? If so, it worked! Blue said, “If I were a turkey on Thanksgiving Day, I would be all chopped up.” Fabulous.

One thing about last week that I haven’t mentioned yet was that we attended our first parent/teacher conferences. Oh, the stress. I want so much for my kids to be happy and well-adjusted and curious and comfortably above-average. This was our first chance to find out where on the cosmic scale of happiness and adjustment and curiosity and above-averageness they each land.

What I was unprepared for was the extent to which the boys’ abilities have already been measured, quantified, and categorized. At our conference, we sat down, and the boys’ teacher promptly took out a massive sheet filled with numbers and rankings. Then she had to explain how the evaluation sheet worked. “So you see,” the teacher said, “Level A means kindergarten level work, and the number that follows the letter suggests whether your child is below, approaching, at, or beyond standard for the year. This number corresponds with the assessment done on September 20, and it suggests the anticipated outcomes from the assessments delivered on November 13. If you place these numbers on a graph, you will see if your child is gaining skills and knowledge, losing skills and knowledge, or just waiting patiently each day for recess.”

For those of you who plan to enroll your child in kindergarten any time soon, here are three tips to maximize your child’s score on the key first trimester exams:

1) Geometry is very important. Any kid can learn squares, circles, triangles, etc. from watching a half hour of Dora the Explorer, but you need to make sure that yours is familiar with all the obscure shapes most of us encountered for the first time in the 10th grade. Green, for example, could not name the trapezoid, whether it was right-side up or upside down. He was an ace at naming the rhombus, however. Atta boy.

2) It is crucial that your child learn how to draw well, or, to use the correct term, draw “smart.” You know all those times you’ve exclaimed with happiness when your child brought home some silly scribble from preschool? Stop it right now. Start prompting your child to make his drawing more exact by saying things like, “Sparky, why doesn’t your rendering of the ice cream man include a big, fat wallet? By drawing his wallet, you will help the viewer understand why the ice cream man is charging so much for his products.”

3) If your child has sufficient practice at drawing smart, she will do well on the tests that she will be taking over the course of her kindergarten year in preparation for the big state-wide standardized test in the fourth grade. Here is a sample question that Blue and Green each answered correctly:

Shawn had 3 cookies, and Erin had 2 cookies. If you put their cookies in a bowl together, how many would they have?

The answer is 5, right? Well, the tiny test taker needed to do more than simply offer that 3 + 2 = 5. He needed to DRAW THE COOKIES IN THE BOWL to show that he understands the math problem conceptually. Blue and Green were savvy enough to draw cookies with chocolate chips in them, which made them look like actual cookies. Smart cookies!

The good news is that Blue and Green do indeed appear to be happy, well-adjusted, curious, and above average. If they stay on this course, they will likely pass kindergarten. The teacher did point out that we need to focus on that trapezoid problem and the general bad handwriting.

But, really, I have trapezoid problems, too, and I think I’m doing OK.

Thankful

Here we are just a few days before Thanksgiving. The boys have the entire week off from school, and I am struggling to maintain my sanity. Right now, if I hear them correctly, they are shooting pirate toilets across the living room. A good parent would investigate what, exactly, this activity entails. But clearly I’m not a good parent. I don’t want to know.

Once the Veterans’ Day hoopla died down at their school, the boys and their classmates moved into a unit about Thanksgiving. My volunteer work on Thursday involved helping twenty wiggly, snotty kids follow very explicit directions in a Mayflower craft project. Once again, I proved to the world that I am not astute enough to do kindergarten crafts, because I inadvertently encouraged the kids to put their glue on the front of the ship instead of the inside. I was quickly reassigned to manage a painting project in which each child was asked to add their handprint to the back-end of a turkey. I think their prints were supposed to look like feathers, but the whole thing got so smeared and drippy that it didn’t look like much of anything at all. When the teacher came by to check on things, she frowned. “It kind of resembles a peacock, doesn’t it?” I asked. She didn’t reply.

One of the last projects they did before the holiday hiatus was to write about what they were thankful for this year. Green believes that it’s important to follow directions. He understood the intent of this assignment and searched his brain for an appropriate answer. His choice? “I am thankful for having a nice mommy and daddy.” Good boy! Blue, on the other hand, decided that this assignment was a cliché. Or maybe he’s just more honest, because he produced a surprising answer to the teacher’s question. What is little boy Blue thankful for? Do you think it’s his ramshackle but warm house? His opportunity to live on the dumpy fringes of a really nice neighborhood? The abundance of organic macaroni and cheese in his kitchen? No. Blue is thankful for...

Bugs.

Yes, Bugs. I don’t know why. When I asked him about it, he said, “The idea just came to me.” OK. Bugs it is.

In the spirit of irreverent thankfulness, I’ve come up with my own list. So here are the things Jennifer is thankful for in 2007:

1) Netflix. Obviously this service is good because of its efficiency, delivering your movie selections right to your door. But for me, it’s something more. It sort of makes me feel like we have a social life, a built-in plan for the evening, even if we never really go anywhere. Netflix allows for structured TV watching. Otherwise, I fear that our nights would involve aimlessly flipping between “The Biggest Loser” and “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team.” So thank you, Netflix, for adding a little quality to the time we spend staring vacantly at the box.

2) Portable DVD Players. Really, how did our parents survive without them? Have you traveled lately? Did your 3 hour plane flight with the family suddenly turn into a 7 hour odyssey? You needed one of these. The rest of the passengers needed you to have one of these. I think that all the research that says that kids’ screen time is detrimental to their health does not take into consideration the social good that results from having kids watch cartoons on an airplane.

3) Snapea Crisps. Have any of you tried this product? It’s genius. Whoever thought of the idea of taking a potato chip and dying it green and shaping it like a vegetable deserves an award. If you’re inclined toward the occasional midnight binge, this is the snack for you. If it looks like a vegetable, and you bought it at the health food grocery, it must be a vegetable. Right?

4) Senorita Margarita Hot Salt Scrub. OK, so imagine this. You’ve just faced a moral dilemma with your class of undergraduates. Upon reading their last stack of papers, you discover that they have no knowledge of the basic rules of grammar. They don’t know that “they’re” and “their” and “there” are three different words. And if you really look closely, you see that they don’t understand that splitting their ideas into different paragraphs is helpful to the reader. Complicating the issue is that this particular group of students plans to be TEACHERS. So, do you break away from your plan to investigate the ins and outs of school funding to teach grammar? Do you risk getting bad course evaluations (and therefore not getting hired again) by telling them that something they did was less than fabulous? It’s the end of this headache-provoking day, and you step into the shower. Suddenly you’re transported to the warmest, sauciest cantina in all of Mexico. The smell of this bath scrub is so good and so real, you could drink yourself.

5) Living with Tech Support. I have a lot of problems with computers. Really, the fact that I got this site up and running ALL BY MYSELF was the most amazing thing I did all year. But usually I’m not that independent, and I need to ask for help. I feel so lucky that I live with a person that has such talent with computers that he can solve just about any issue that confronts me. Plus, he’s always so cheerful when I interrupt his very important meetings to ask him how to fix the margins on a paper I’m writing.

5) You. Yes, I am so thankful for you, my loyal readers. I would love it, however, if you would let me know that you’re out there. Leave a comment. Send me a sign. What do you want to hear more about? My cauliflower butt? My hideous garage? My adventures at the gym? Let me know. Your wish is my command.

Veterans' Day

I know it seems like all I talk about are the holidays, but it's hard to avoid them this time of year. Just as the pumpkins on the front porch started to rot, the boys came home from school last week to announce another round of school-based festivities. "On Friday," they chirped, "we're going to celebrate the people in the cemetery!"

"What?" I asked. I was confused. Halloween.....er, Harvestoween had passed. The posters of mummies had been taken down. The books about feisty witches were removed from the classroom shelves. I had no idea what the boys were talking about. And frankly, neither did they.

"Are you going on a field trip to the cemetery?" I asked. They shook their heads, no. I pushed a bit more. "Well, did your teacher tell you how you were going to celebrate the people in the cemetery?" Blue answered, "She said we were going to sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of the cafeteria."

Ah! An assembly! "Is someone coming to talk to you?" I continued. "Yes," Green replied. "It's gonna be a soldier that plays a horn." Things were becoming clearer. I had a feeling that the arrival of the tooting soldier meant that Blue and Green were going to have their first ever lesson about war.

Michael and I have kept the boys pretty sheltered. They don't play video games. They haven't seen many movies. They don't watch the news. And they don't really know that people, if left to their own devices, are not always very nice to each other. Basically, we've done a crackerjack job of preparing them for a world that doesn't exist.

So on Friday, I anxiously sent the kids off to school to learn about Veterans' Day. I think my trepidation was influenced by my own experience with Veterans' Day assemblies. When I was a kid, veterans' organizations were working to get folks to remember the horrors of the Vietnam War. The people who came to speak to us didn't bring cheery tales of heroism. Instead, they talked about their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They talked about the innocent people they killed. They talked about friends that had died. It was grim and gruesome and shocking.

Apparently the message has changed over the last 30 years. This was not an assembly about war. This was a military pep rally! Blue and Green broke away from their morning lesson on squirrels to listen to the high school band play a medley of foot stomping, patriotic tunes. Then a member of the Air Force spoke about the meaning of the flag. And get this: each child was given an Air Force football as a souvenir. It's the kind of trinket that recruiters give away at their booths on college campuses. RECRUITERS.

The boys love their footballs, but they may have missed the message. On the way home from school, I asked, "Boys, what is Veterans' Day about?" Blue answered, "It's about the military." "And what's the military?" I asked. Green shrugged. "I dunno. Something about Yankee Doodle." OK, I guess they're not signing up for service just yet.

Of course, Blue and Green had some Veterans' Day homework to complete. Each weekend, a kid in the classroom gets to take home the class "pet" (a stuffed mouse puppet). The student's job is to write a booklet describing all the things that the mouse did with that particular family. And this weekend was Blue's weekend. On the way out of the classroom, the teacher said, "It would be great if you could take the mouse to do something related to the holiday. You could go to the cemetery!"

What is it about the cemetery?! No, I was not going to drag the kids and their smelly puppet around the cemetery in the rain. Instead, we went to visit one of our favorite veterans, who kindly pulled out all of his pins and medals to educate the rodent about the armed forces.


Thanks, Grandpa.

New Month

Well, phew. I’m glad it’s November. All the harvest celebrating got to be a bit much. There were the two trips to the pumpkin farm. There was the in-school party, the after-school party, the jackolantern carving, the costume buying, and the inevitable craze that was the actual day of Halloween. I’m exhausted.

I think what we need is another holiday in October to offset the maniacal build-up to Halloween. Columbus Day is clearly not helpful. It seems as if that day’s claim to fame is that all the people in the neighborhood get to wander around wondering why the mail isn’t being delivered. I’m not sure we know what to do with Columbus anymore, now that his big discovery has been challenged. In schools, teachers are left with a bunch of curriculum materials that are historically problematic. But, not wanting to waste all those “Columbus Was An Explorer. Are You An Explorer, Too?" signs, educators have simply watered down the old message without addressing the controversy. As a result, Blue and Green received a host of bland Columbus-related social studies worksheets, including one that said this:

Columbus sailed on a ship.
He landed in America.
He met the people who lived there.

Now there’s an exciting story! Way to bring the drama of history to life!

But anyway, Halloween. Trick-or-treating pulls something primal out in me. The truth is that I wasn’t ready to give it up at age 13 and would probably STILL ring people’s doorbells for candy if it were at all socially acceptable. When I was a kid, it was all about strategy. The size of the candy bar was often in inverse proportion to the size of the house. Older people often gave out TWO pieces, probably because they didn’t want leftovers. People with little kids were often too distracted by their own goblins to pay adequate attention to their candy supply. And so on. I learned how to maximize my candy acquisition in the shortest possible amount of time.

To my dismay, Blue and Green are not strategists, at least not yet. Despite my exhortations to hurry! hurry! to get the most candy, they happily ambled along. At about 7:30, after an hour and a half of reminders about the importance of saying “thank you,” Green announced that he was ready to go home. “WHAT?!” I hollered at him. “You’re done?! How can you be done?” But he was, so Michael took him back to the house. I convinced Blue that it would be worth his while to do one more block. And sure enough, I was right – he scored several more reese's peanut butter cups (his favorite). “Blue,” I told him, “you’re learning from a master.”

The sad part is that I don’t really crave the candy anymore. I’ve had a piece or two, the “fun size” kind, but I’m not crazy with lust over the remaining bowl of Hershey bars that we have sitting on the kitchen counter. When did that leave me? When did I learn to be happy with small squares of organic dark chocolate, you know, the kind with ANTIOXIDANTS? I’m certainly glad they didn’t tell me that as a child. Can you imagine the depressing high school assembly, entitled “Things You Never Guessed About Adulthood?” Here’s what they would say:

1) No matter how old you become, you will always get pimples, especially on important days.

2) McDonalds food will stop tasting good, or at the very least, it will make you feel incredibly crappy if you eat it.

And

3) You will no longer want to consume an entire bucket full of Halloween candy in one sitting, and if you do, it will feel like a shameful binge instead of a joyful celebration.

On that note, I will leave you with assorted Halloween photos:

Choosing the biggest pumpkins in the patch




Carving

Doctor Green, Doctor Blue, and Me (Not Really a Doctor)

Holiday

At Blue and Green’s school, today is Halloween. Well, it’s not really Halloween. It’s Harvestoween. We certainly would never celebrate anything connected to the underworld, but farming? Yes! We love farming! Though we all live in the city, we go to the farmer’s market every weekend to get our organic produce. So yes, let’s celebrate the farmer and his/her bountiful pesticide-free spinach.

I shouldn’t poke fun. I understand that holidays are complicated for public institutions, but this one just cracks me up. For the past week, the boys have been studying nothing but traditional Halloween symbols. They painted jackolanterns. They designed elaborate pumpkin people. The hallways are filled with signs that say, “Boo!” Last week, the school dragged all 85 kindergarteners to a rural pumpkin patch, never mind the driving windstorm and pounding rain. On our permission slip, the administration promised that this trip was intricately tied to the goals, objectives, and learning benchmarks of the kindergarten program. But in truth, the kids took a tractor ride, slid down a big slide in a hay maze, and were able to pet several bedraggled rabbits.

Besides the absence of the actual word “Halloween,” several other things have changed about this holiday since I was a kid. First, the children are not allowed to wear full costumes to school. Instead, they can only decorate their heads. I assume this rule emerged to make costumes less distracting, but I’m not so sure that’s working. I saw one girl this morning who fashioned her long hair into a foot tall palm tree on top of her head. It was painted green and had noisy, dangling coconuts on it. Another little boy almost peed in his pants because he was so excited about wearing hair products for the first time. “Look at me! Look at me!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. I overheard his teacher say, “Brent, you need to sit down and take out your homework.” “I can’t,” he responded. “I’m wearing mousse!”

The other thing that is different about Halloween is that there's no candy. Instead of in-school trick-or-treating, Blue and Green are going to experience a healthy food bonanza at their classroom party. I told the boys that they weren’t going to need their lunchboxes today, because each child was bringing in a wholesome dish to share. “What about dessert?” Blue asked. “Ummm,” I stammered, “Your friend Linus is bringing in dried apricots, and some people might consider that a dessert.” “Mama,” Blue said, “An apricot is fruit. Don’t you know that?”

Well, yes, I know that. I am also aware that as I write this, my picky-eater boys are struggling over whether to a) go hungry or b) eat the mini soy corndogs that Lucy brought in, or c) try the honey dew melons that Schroeder contributed, or d) sample the “mini raisin lemon pancakes” that Pigpen’s mother stayed up late last night to make. I have a sense that Green is going to stomp out of his classroom this afternoon and announce, “Harvest time is no fun.”

Another problem with this holiday is that it is being muscled out by Christmas. When I was at the drugstore the other day looking for appropriate head decorations for the boys, I found one measly aisle devoted to Halloween. But if you were out that day looking for a wreath or a stocking or some reindeer wrapping paper, you would have been in good shape. And if you were really paying attention, you would have heard the instrumental version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” being piped over the airwaves, just to get you ready for when he really does come to town in TWO MONTHS.

And of course, all this ho!ho!ho! retail spirit is getting the kids geared up for greediness. Blue and Green are already hard at work on their Christmas lists. In particular, Blue wants a custom-made, gas powered garbage truck that he can drive up and down the neighborhood streets. “Uh, Blue,” I said to him, “I don’t think Santa will have room in his sleigh to bring a garbage truck of that size.” “He’ll make room, Mama,” Blue replied. “You told me that Santa is magic.”

Maybe the Christmas rush starts so early to give parents enough time to work themselves out of moral dilemmas like this one. But, just in case, I have to ask: Does anyone have a spare garbage truck they could donate? The stinkier it is, the better.

Lost Youth

I had to go get my driver’s license renewed yesterday. I remember the last time I went, when the boys were tiny and screaming and unmanageable. Other people may have hated the idea of wasting so many hours, but I thought there was nothing more appealing than sitting alone for an afternoon (even if I had to be surrounded by anxiety-provoking signs that said things like “Intimidating a State Employee is a Felony”).

Anyway, this time I was nervous. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit this, but I was worried about getting my picture taken. There’s something about having two identically staged photos side-by-side to make you aware of how much time has passed, how much wrinkle-causing water is under the bridge.

I’ve been noticing my age lately. It’s not that the number itself is an issue, but I’ve just been feeling slower. In years past, if you had given me the choice between a) going out and doing something exciting or b) sitting on the couch and watching Grey’s Anatomy, I would have chosen going out without even thinking. These days, I often find myself in my pajamas at 8 pm. And I wonder, have I become the stodgy adult I swore to myself I’d never be?

The truth is that there are consequences to staying up late. First off, there’s Blue and Green’s marching band, which starts its rehearsals at 6 am. And let me tell you, the sound of a toy guitar with weak batteries before dawn is enough to break a person’s spirit until lunchtime.



Second, for every hour I spend with a margarita in my hand in a dark bar, I pay for it with an entire day of feeling crappy. Why is that? Going out on Saturday night should not render me useless until Thursday.

There was a time in my life when I could stay up late and return to form the next morning. In college, it seems like I would routinely stay up all night to write some dumb paper and then go out the next night to celebrate getting it done. And then, when I finally did get to sleep, some kid down the hall in the dorm would set the fire alarm off because he wanted to test whether or not the fireproof doors were really fireproof. Out we would all go in our pajamas into the blustery Chicago night air. But it was alright – the next day I could drown my drowsiness in one of those large plates of “breakfast potatoes” that they always served in the cafeteria. I learned then that french fries in the morning are a miracle cure for whatever’s ailing me.

But here I am facing another birthday, and I’ve been feeling like I need to rekindle some of that lost youth. So last weekend I decided to throw caution to the wind. I gathered some friends and had them take me to a fun place that served big, fruity drinks. I actually put on lipstick and dug out my good jeans, not the usual ones that are covered with macaroni and cheese stains.

When we got there, I noticed right away that my good jeans didn’t really cut it. There were girls in tube tops and stilettos, and lots of people were wearing my favorite outfit from 1984: the Flashdance ripped sweater over leggings. If only I had made more headway cleaning the garage! I’m pretty sure I have that outfit tucked safely away in a box labeled “bad memories.”

To offset my discomfort about my attire, I ordered a margarita right away. One of my friends began the evening by making a rule: no talking about kids. This left us with discussions about politics (depressing), work (stressful), and movies (never get out to see any). But it only took a few minutes for me to generate a great topic. MEN! Isn’t that what youthful women talk about when they go out on the town?

I wish I could share the scandalous details of that conversation with you, but I can’t remember it. It was so funny and fabulous that I accidentally drank two of those margaritas. And if you know me well, you are aware that two margaritas are 1 ½ too many for me. I leaned over to my friend somewhere along the line and said, “I hate to ask you this, but can you carry me to the bathroom?”

As I was being escorted across the bar, I watched the room spin around me. And I had a strange sensation, a psychic vibe of some sort. Though I couldn’t see anyone, I knew that one of my students was there. Oh yes, THIS is why I don’t go to bars very often. People don't want to see their drunken, middle-aged professor stumbling and sloshing past their dinner table.

Not much longer after that, my friends wrapped me up and returned me to my quiet, family-friendly neighborhood. I came through the front door with a huge smile on my face. Michael was watching me from the couch. “Baby,” I said, “Look at me. I ‘m getting older, but I’ve still got it going on.” He rolled his eyes, unimpressed. I poured a glass of water, got some aspirin from the medicine cabinet, and joined him on the couch. “Let’s watch Grey’s Anatomy,” I slurred.

A few hours later, the marching band began to play “Jingle Bells” at top volume. I woke up and put on those cheese-stained jeans. “Mama,” Green said to me as I poured a strong cup of coffee, “your butt looks like a cauliflower.” “Thanks so much, honey,” I said, and I gave him a kiss. Growing older is OK. It really is.

The Race

Blue and Green's teacher has created an elaborate incentive plan that rewards good behavior while simultaneously preparing the next generation to participate in the market economy. For every positive act, each child is presented with a fake dollar bill (a dutiful dollar), which they can then spend at the "store." When they learned about this plan, the boys were thrilled, thinking that the teacher was going to take them on a wild spree at ToysRUs. In reality, the "store" is just a paper bag filled with pencils and stickers, but its allure is still enough to get my kids to toe the line happily each and every day.

On Wednesday, the mother of one of the boys' classmates asked me, "Did you hear about the counterfeit dutiful dollars?" I hadn't. She lowered her voice and told me the sordid tale. Apparently, some child brought in a homemade stash of pretend money and quietly stowed it in his pencil box along with his other, honestly-earned dutiful dollars. When it came to light that this kid was suddenly much richer than his peers, his scheme was revealed.

But see, there's more. Rumor has it that the counterfeit dollars were made by scanning a genuine dutiful dollar into a computer and then copying it. The question naturally emerges about whether it's possible for a five year old to do this by himself. And if it's not possible, does that mean that a parent was an accomplice?

Now, I'm pretty suspicious about the whole story. Information that weaves its way home through the mouth of a kindergartener is usually part fiction, part wish, and part maniacal, exhausting, run-on blathering. But what's interesting about this case is its calculating, competitive nature. Whether or not the story is completely true, it's not totally inconceivable that a parent would lie, cheat, or steal to get his or her child to the head of the class.

Parents are everywhere in this school, all day, all the time. One thing we noticed -- and loved -- when we visited the school for the first time is that there are always parents cheerfully helping the teachers. I joined these ranks recently, giving up one of my precious hours each week to offer my expertise in the classroom. Every Thursday afternoon, I do things like help the kids finger paint the trunks of coconut trees or glue sea shells to the tops of shoe boxes. But really, I'm watching. I'm watching how my kids play with others. I'm watching how well they write words. I'm watching to see if the numbers they put on their worksheets look like actual numbers. And, if I'm honest, I'm watching to see how they compare to other kids.

I think it's natural to think that your own kid is a genius. I mean, come on -- you knew him when he couldn't even raise his head off the mattress. Now look! He can count to 110! He can write the words "stay out of my room" with just a little assistance! Sure, he might have a few annoying habits, like needing to rip the toilet paper precisely on the perforation line, but otherwise this kid emerged from his amoeba-like form and turned into a real phenom.

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from my stint as mommy volunteer feeling a bit dispirited. I was in the midst of a rather hectic craft project with seven kids, trying to get them to make patterns out of sequins. It is very difficult to get that many kids to focus on a project like this. In their eyes, it would be much more fun to organize the sequins haphazardly. There's more splash! More pizazz! But no, this is school, and they're supposed to be learning. One boy had a red, blue, red, blue thing going, when he suddenly inserted a yellow. "Why did you put a yellow there?" I asked him. "Because it's pretty," he answered. "But, honey," I said, "remember that you're supposed to be organizing these sequins into a pattern." "Why?" he asked, looking at me with an unflinching gaze. Why? Why? I had no idea. I wanted to say, "Because I need to get a good grade in volunteering."

Anyway, I was in the middle of this chaos, when Blue and Green's teacher came up to me. "I'd like to talk to you about the boys' writing," she said. I smiled at her. My kids are fabulous writers! So creative! So inspired! But the teacher frowned. She said, "They have very immature grips."

Oh.

Now this isn't completely surprising. They do come from a long line of folks who have poor penmenship. But, still. She's saying my kids are immature? Why didn't their preschool teachers alert me to this problem? Why wasn't I working with them all summer to get them better acquainted with correct pencil form? How will they get ahead? How will they ever pass the test to get into the Smarty-Pants Program? How will they get into college? Ack!

It's in the air, this pressure to excel. Yesterday, I approached a group of mommies standing at the edge of the playground after school. They were whispering and pointing at a kindergarten boy who was sitting and reading a book. "Is Fred reading a chapter book all by himself?" one of them exclaimed. Another nibbled on her fingernails and said, "I just don't know what to do about Daphne. She would rather play with her ponies than do the worksheets I give her. How will she ever learn to read like Fred over there?" Everyone clucked sympathetically. One woman cleared her throat and said, "I hear there are more kids who are qualified for the Smarty-Pants Program than there are spaces available. I wonder if there's a way to help my son Shaggy become better prepared."

I wanted to squinch my eyes closed and cover my ears like the boys do when they don't want to hear what I'm saying. My kids are five years old. There are leaves to jump in, pumpkins to carve, jungle gyms to climb, castles to build. I want to give them this time. Doesn't the window for childhood joy seem pretty narrow? But I also know that the race has started, whether I like it or not.

Ready, set, go?

Ramblings About Growing and Building and the Ph.D

The fall season is definitely here. The leaves are turning, the air is cold, and giant pumpkins are sitting in the parking lot of every grocery store, waiting like pound puppies for a good home.

Do you remember how I said that we’re participating in a pumpkin growing contest with the neighbors? Well, things are not going well. First off, my pumpkin plant decided to escape. One night we heard faint screams coming from the yard. If you listened closely, you could hear a voice wailing, “Let me out of here!!!!!! She’s killing me!!!!” And then the next day, I noticed that my pumpkin plant had grown itself out through our fence and was heading away in search of a more suitable family.

There are only a few weeks until Halloween, and the plant's two pumpkins are pretty puny. I don’t even think you can officially call them pumpkins yet. Is there such a thing as a fetal pumpkin? And the sad thing is that someone has taken a hearty bite out of the side of one of them.



It’s not all that surprising, considering I have never actually nurtured a plant successfully. I don’t have that je ne sais quoi, that green thumb, that whatever it is that makes some people able to cultivate a nice yard. I’m not even sure that it’s fair to call our yard a yard; it’s more like a plastic toy-filled jungle.

But anyway, I like to think that the reason why I’m not good at plants is because I’m showering all my love and attention on my kids. You know, all the bushes in the front of the house might be dead, but look at these robust, flourishing children! Woo!

Apparently, Blue and Green think differently. The other day, when the sun had not even come up yet, I felt a small tap on my arm. “Mama?” Green said. “Huh?” I garbled, not yet awake enough to communicate. “Where are the hammer and nails?”

I almost said, “They’re in the top drawer under the microwave,” but something nagged at me. Why would a five year old be asking for the tools? “Green,” I asked, “why in the world would you need a hammer and nails?” “Because,” he answered, “today Blue and I are going to build a house just for us where we can make up all the rules.”

Well, there you have it. The pumpkins left me, and the kids are moving out.



In the meantime, however, the boys are cluttering my world with all sorts of building projects. One hot activity is creating a "nurse's office" out of their bedroom. To make this work, they gathered all of their plastic medical equipment and drafted some architectural sketches:



And now they are in debate about one crucial element. Who's going to be the nurse? Neither one wants this job. While they were working out the details of the project, I overheard this conversation:

Green: Mama can be the nurse, because she's a doctor.
Blue: No, wait, she's not really a doctor.
Green: She used to be a doctor, but now she's a teacher.
Blue: I think we need to find someone else's Mommy to be the nurse.

I'm glad to see that my confusion about my career does not belong to me alone. The Ph.D is such a vague thing. On the one hand, it's a badge that represents lots of hard work. But on the other hand, I get to wander through life being "not a real doctor." The boys asked me to tell them about what we do in my classes. I could see on their faces that they were expecting me to talk about the kinds of things they do all day: drawing apples, counting, finger painting. "Well," I answered, "in my class we talk about ideas and issues." They both blinked. "Mama," Blue said, "that doesn't sound like very much fun."

Blue actually has a sense of what he wants to be when he grows up. This boy is not going to hang around for 10 years trying to earn a degree that no one understands. He has decided that he's going to be a "plan maker." And he's already practicing. Sometimes, at the end of the afternoon, I stand in the school hallway and spy on the boys. More often than not, Blue is perched on a chair that towers above all the little kids building castles and forts with the wooden blocks. When I ask him why he's just sitting there, he tells me that he is "hard at work being in charge."

Smart kid. This one's gonna make me proud.

Literature

I feel like I was a bit of a voyeur at the state fairs. Truth be told, I'm not really that comfortable with weird food or scary rides or kiddie rodeos. But September always brings a wacky event that is just my speed: the Friends of the Library Book Sale.

I really love reading. I always have. I was one of those kids who looked like she was doing the phonics worksheet on her desk, but she was really reading a novel on her lap. I think that reading, especially reading fiction, has made me a much more creative person. And these days, I'm pretty proud of my eclectic tastes -- I can enjoy the Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece, but I can also appreciate the finer points of a schlocky thriller.

People who read like I do make up a geeky bunch, and there's something pretty funny about bookish nerds competing to get their nail-bitten hands on the best used paperbacks the city can offer. Twice a year, the library system puts on these huge sales in an abandoned Navy hangar. There are thousands and thousands of books on every subject, and waiting for them are thousands and thousands of slightly furry people wearing wool socks and Birkenstocks.

Today's sale began at 9 a.m., and my mom and I arrived at 8:45. The line had already wrapped itself around the building. People came with empty suitcases and stacks of cartons and boxes that they could use to haul their treasures home.

It was cold outside, but the anticipation in the air warmed us all up. Despite the classical music being piped out of the building and the aroma of coffee from the nearby espresso stand, this was a line of tense people. Whose child would be the lucky new owner of that fresh copy of Walter the Farting Dog? Who would be the first to claim that first edition of the unauthorized biography of Anna Nicole Smith?

There was a lot at stake.

Apparently there's also a bit of a controversy about the book sale. I learned about this in the newspaper this morning. ON THE FRONT PAGE. I guess this is a big story! It turns out that online book dealers tend to snatch up all the books and pull them off to the side. Then they scan the barcodes to check the going price on the internet, leaving behind their piles of discards in the corner. In the meantime, the regular shoppers don't get a chance to see those books. Horrors! The efficient sale volunteers came up with a new rule to solve the problem: "You can still use [handheld scanners], but you can't take books off the table. They can scan only as they walk up and down a table. That's settled things down considerably."

Well, phew! I wouldn't want to see a brawl between a scanner-wielding capitalist and a bearded fellow holding a ceramic NPR mug.

I managed to avoid conflict as I gathered up 30 "gently loved" children's books for Blue and Green. I'm so pleased that the boys are avid readers, and I try to keep up with their interests. Books about reptiles are big this season, as are Magic School Bus science books, and the Magic Treehouse series. I also picked up a classic about slime. It begins, "Slime in my pocket, in my shoe. Is it custard? Is it glue?" How could I resist that?

These days, Blue and Green also like to browse through grown-up books, pulling out words that they recognize and inquiring endlessly about ones that they don't. Green is fond of "reading" the dictionary. He'll pick out a word and recite all the letters. "Mama," he'll say. "What does a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g spell?" Blue, on the other hand, has a few special grown-up books that he returns to again and again. We don't know why. Here's a favorite:

I'm so happy that they are little book lovers, but I'm a bit worried that school will strip the joy out of it for them. Already I'm concerned about that one homework assignment where they're supposed to fill out a checklist for each day that they read for twenty minutes. When I told them about this assignment, Green asked me, "Why do they say that reading is work?"

Why, indeed. For most of the people at the sale, reading was anything but work. There were the two frizzy mathematicians searching for gold in the science fiction aisle. There was the guy in the corduroy suit with his hefty stack of poetry. There was the way-too-cool pierced hipster with her bucket of literary theory. Nobody was working today, and I was loving the quirky wonderfulness of it all.

Everyone seems to have their own favorite sections of the sale, and I tend to stick to the kids' section and the literature section. But as I was waiting in line to check out, I became transfixed by the nearby Self Help table. I realized that I've missed out on so much by lingering in my usual zone. All this time, I could have been reading this:

Or, better yet, this:

I'll keep these two fine selections in mind as my classes start this week. On Monday, don't be surprised if you hear me holler, "Oh inner critic, let me give you a hug! I'm feeling stressed out today, but I'm LOVING IT!"