Twenty Random Things I said to my Five-Year-Old this Week

March 7, 2012 By
  • No, honey.  Mosquitoes are not amphibians just because their eggs float on top of the water.  That doesn’t count.
  • Butterflies don’t make honey.  That’s a job only for the bees.
  • Where exactly are the heart pains?  Show me.
  • It doesn’t matter if bees and butterflies are best friends and they share nectar.
  • Yes (in response to “did you know that [Hey Soul Sister] is my favorite song?”)
  • I’m on a conference call in five minutes, so this is the last piece of tape I’m going to give you.  The last one.
  • No, you can’t go to [the babysitter’s house] just because you have a fever and can’t go to school and she lets you watch videos on utube.  You’re just stuck staying home with me.
  • Trillion is a word, remarkably.  Ask any government official.
  • You still need to make a get-well card for your great grandmother, despite the fact that “you’re sick too.”  You have a 99 degree temperature, and she’s in the hospital with a broken hip. It’s not the same.
  • Bees.  That’s it.  Those are the only guys that make honey.  Why is that so difficult for you?
  • Yes, you do have sags under your eyes
  • Earthworms are also not amphibians even though they wallow around in mud after it rains.  Still not the same.  But great question; I can see the confusion.
  • You’d rather have chicken-and-stars soup out of a can than this [homemade pasta with fresh spinach and feta cheese and basil pesto]?  So that’s a yes, I take it.  Super.
  • No.  I will not save that leftover two tablespoons of broth for you in the refrigerator for later.  When exactly will you eat that?
  • Please don’t keep giving your brother pacifiers behind my back. It’s annoying. He doesn’t need three of them at once.
  • I just love this necklace of yellow pom-poms and random beads you found in your dresser. I’ll treasure it forever.
  • Why did you leave me a “very special love note” that reads “glow in the dark?”  Oh, you just copied it from that puzzle box over there?  That’s cool.  It works.
  • Did I say it wrong?  The book clearly says “Repunzel.”  Oh, my bad.  “Barbie as Repunzel.”  That’s different.
  • I’m sorry your head feels like a thousand knives are shredding it into pieces. That really must hurt.
  • Right back at ya (in response to her double-hand squeeze plus two taps at the grocery store, which is our special way of saying I love you to each other in public so that it’s not cheesy and embarrassing).

And tomorrow’s only Wednesday. . .

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , , ,

blog envy

February 27, 2012 By

Let’s talk about blogs.  Some are snarky and edgy.  Some are serious and make you darn happy you don’t have a seeing-eye-dog.  But most are just fun and pretty, with creative names like “farm-girl-flower-power-cookie-pants” that make you want to stop by and visit, like you’re an old friend popping over for tea.  Except with handmade sugar cubes and madelines and hostess gifts wrapped in brown paper and twine.

If you search for half a second, you’ll find some beautiful blogger who lives on a farm and dedicates her life to building joyful memories for her children.  She bakes heart-shaped cinnamon rolls and wheat germ chicken nuggets.  She dreams up craft projects that instill character and creativity in a three-mile radius. She collects odd and beautiful things like wooden spoons or pewter vases or antique hats.   Who in the world collects antique hats?  And in case a picture is worth a thousand words, she captures the process of making buttermilk pancakes with her Nikon, the finished product displayed on a vintage china platter with little turrets of syrup running down like an afterthought.

I hate this perfect person, sipping with glee on chilled raspberry lemonade.  There’s no way I can hold in my stomach or put makeup on or get all my laundry done, much less make paper lanterns.  I tell my children to find something else to do that doesn’t involve screaming or coloring on the floor tiles while I scrub the dried baby food off the chairs or fold bath towels.  Never once do I sit down and make a wreath of dried flowers. Or have a discussion at the dinner table that’s worthy of blogging about.  Our dinner topics usually center around how many bites of a given vegetable are required before an excused exit.

“Eat your asparagus.”

“But I hate asparagus,” my five-year-old moans.

“You don’t hate it.  You might hate things like monsters and evil and rotten fish.  But this is asparagus!  It’s yummy and grilled!  It’s dusted with sea salt!”  She just stares at me like monsters and asparagus are on the same exact level.

So when I’m trying to conquer unrelated piles of old bills and insurance paperwork, mixed with children’s artwork and coupons, I feel like an utter failure.  Why am I not tying a towel around my childrens’ necks and snapping pictures of them jumping off the coach like superheroes?  Why are we not eating frittatas with arugula, or making a may pole?  Those pretty, cooking, farm-loving, crafty bloggers make me feel all inadequate and un-motherly.  And to top it all off, they make me laugh one moment and tear up like a Hallmark commercial the next.  One has a rare blood disorder and adopted three children from Vietnam.  How can I possibly hate that?

It says in Ecclesiastes that all the toil that comes from envying one’s neighbor is pure vanity and is just striving after the wind.  4:4.   So if I dropped what I was doing and made a fabulous batch of cinnamon scones, does that mean it’s all for not?  I think it depends on who I’m trying to impress.  And what recipe I used.

Hate, after all, is reserved for monsters and evil and rotten fish.

Women bloggers are lovely strangers, blessed with wildflowers that bloom every spring, with great recipes for chicken pot pie and peanut butter bars.  They are just mothers, like me, who have moments of brilliance and beauty and joy amidst the unfortunate discovery of shriveled-up hot dogs found under bedcovers.  I am glad they are raising up such strong and spirited children that make the world a better place. They are trying to live simply, and have the guts to write about it. We should all strive to reach that balance, and to plant this world with the same rich heritage seeds.

Thank God for these writers, and discovers, and healthy recipe hunters, who give us ideas and motivation and encouragement.  One rainy Tuesday, when I think of a craft project out of the blue for our two edgy children, I’ll thank them.   Our daughter will beg to watch television and our son would rather eat more applesauce or stick his hands in the dog’s water bowl.  I’ll be the one left sitting at the table gluing shards of paper onto coffee filters, and dinner will consist of scrambled eggs and toast. But still. Thanks all the same.

There’s always tomorrow, when we will have lemon buttermilk pancakes with sugared walnuts.   Too bad my camera battery’s dead and no one will ever know.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Religion, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

10 things I can’t say to my children

February 26, 2012 By

(1) You are so beautiful it makes me want to cry.

(2) Please stuff a sock inside your mouth or go someplace I can’t hear you.  I can’t take all that stupid crying over the fact that you can only have two granola bars and not three.

(3) You look really grown-up in that outfit and it’s scaring me a bit.

(4) I just don’t want to be around you right now.  Or the next few days, really.

(5) Please don’t ever leave me.  Move down the street and let me walk your babies in the wagon and we can talk about books and babies and recipes.

(6) I caught myself singing the Word World theme song during a budget meeting, and I totally blame you for that.

(7) Please remember all the things I do for you, because making bread from scratch is a real pain

(8)  You look so silly in that outfit, and if you’d only let me dress you I promise you’ll look back and thank me someday.

(9) I wish you’d learn to read more effectively because this sounding-thing-out thing is getting really old

(10)               Occasionally, when I’m watching you play, I’m so happy I can’t move for a minute.  Like I’m tipsy on good champagne and I don’t want to ruin the feeling.   Please God, don’t let me forget this moment ever.  Even if I can’t remember the president or how to eat soup.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , ,

scatter

February 22, 2012 By

Our children are spoiled rotten.  Not spoiled in the sense that they have a pony and get to eat graham crackers every morning for breakfast and win arguments by failing around their arms and screaming.  They’re spoiled because they get to live in a home with their own bedroom, packed with soft blankets and stuffed animals and books. They never have to feel hunger pains shooting from their stomachs, drink sugar water for sustenance, or live in bombed-out basements and see their father bleeding to death on pile of rubble.  My daughter skips around in peaceful oblivion, thinking of ballet and scavenger hunts and Miss Piggle Wiggle’s magic cures.  My son is learning his A-B-C’s and likes to eat peanut butter bars. How sheltered they are.

When I read about what’s happening in Syria, how families are torn apart and blown up for crossing the street or hunting for a piece of bread, it makes my heart ache.  It seems so far-off and foreign, like a movie that’s covered in mist and gunfire and the music of symphonies.  Like I can somehow shut the pages of the New York Times and it will all go fading off into the distance, credits slowly rolling.

But there’s nothing beautiful in this tragedy.  Some of those children will likely survive, which seems the worst of it.  I can only hope their mind locks down the memories, although they will surface someday in dreams, etched like a third-degree burn onto their heart.  The welling up of tears will be gone and only a hollowed-out black hole will remain, their soul empty and waiting to die.

The last few weeks, I’ve been inordinately stressed about my daughter’s educational experience, of all the silly things.  I’ve been wringing my hands about how little fun she’s having these days, learning math and handwriting and all those repetitive sound tests.  I call my mother and my good friends and say things like “Shouldn’t Kindergarten be more fun?” and “those classrooms need more color, I tell you what.”

I complain about how the discipline and structure of private school seems to tug at my daughter’s natural buoyancy, and I don’t want anyone to break her creative and independent spirit.  She might not always follow the rules and complain about having to walk too far.  She might gripe about picking up her toys or having to eat her broccoli, but isn’t that just what children do?  Let’s allow them to be young and have fun.  Why should we make life so hard for them?   Wimps, I tell you.  Spoiled rotten wimps.

Jesus, the great teacher, said that “behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.  Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.  I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.  In the world, you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:32-33.

My children are spoiled because we spoil them.  We worry about trivial things and place great emphasis on what matters very little.  We allow them to complain and whine and worry about making their lives comfortable and entertaining.  As if their lives aren’t comfortable enough.  Perhaps we should be worrying less about how fun their lives are and about how better to equip them for their own spiritual battles to come.

My thoughts drift back to the Syrians, cramped in basements and locked away from the sun or their grandmothers or a decent day’s food.  I weep for you, sweet children.  I tear my clothes and fall to my knees in angst for your innocence.

This world is a fallen, scornful place.  That is true. Your world is ugly and empty and smoldering.  In a sense we live in that same world, albeit on the opposite side of the globe, and the ugliness not so obvious.  We, too, are busy scattering like cockroaches into our own basements, except we don’t have the luxury of having nothing left to rely on.  We have BFFs and soft down comforters and bottles of wine and cheerful husbands to console us. We don’t see the reality of war.

Jesus taught us of peace.  Of taking comfort in things unseen.  Of complete surrender.  Despite the smoke and blood pouring down city streets, He has overcome this world.  My dear children, I hope you will someday feel this truth.  It makes all the difference.

Filed Under: Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

kids eat free

February 21, 2012 By

I saw it like a beacon of light on my way home from work.  Wednesday Nights.  Kids Eat Free.

I’m not usually one for such marketing schemes, but I was tired of coming up with dinner ideas, and Wednesday is my favorite day of the week, after all, and didn’t I deserve a night off?  I declared it so and announced to my husband to meet me there promptly at 5:30 pm.  I’d enjoy a bowl of soup while my kids munched on chicken quesadillas with pure delight oozing from their grateful little bodies.  It was a good moment, while it lasted in my head.

I pulled into the parking lot at 5:15 and my iphone sent me a meeting update that I had a conference call scheduled at 5:30.  One I absolutely could not miss.  So the moment my husband pulls up, I dumped two kids in his arms while talking on the phone and waved in the air like “well obviously I’m busy right now.  Please take these things off my hands, for goodness sakes.”  He stared at me with I so hate you right now eyes and schlepped the kids inside.

Finally, we are all sitting down and I quiz the waiter about the claim of free kids vittles.  He indicates that upon purchase of an adult entrée at the highest possible price, they’d throw in a tortilla wrapped up with cheese and a soda disguised as a kids meal. Since I just wanted a cup of soup below the required price limit, that meant only one of our kids was eating free.  The only logical choice was for one of our children to simply starve.

After a long wait, the waiter finally decides to tell me that my daughter’s lemonades are costing us three dollars a pop and aren’t included in the free part, so maybe she might like a refill of water? My son then develops an infatuation for drinking straws and decides he needs as many of them as possible to clutch between his tiny fat fingers.  When one drops, he screams “STRAW MAMA!” at the top of his lungs because we just haven’t quite mastered the inside voice and because straws are apparently super fun to just hold for no apparent reason.

Suddenly, my daughter whispers that she must use the restroom immediately, so I rush up to take her.  My departure makes a great impact upon my son, who seems to feel that he’s going to become motherless and abandoned right there in a Mexican restaurant amidst the piñatas and pink tablecloths.  He shrieks out my name and cries in horror, clutching his straws, until I reappear.  My husband just sits there, holding his head in his hands, wishing he was back at work writing a brief or something.  My son’s fake tears dry up the moment I arrive and he simply says “why hello, mama” like nothing ever happened.

We finally get our food, and while my husband is clearing a space for his tacos he knocks over his tea, which lands on my lap, and I’m all “this is so fun!  Let’s all have a good laugh about how kids eat FREE!  Yippee for us!”

At some point my husband makes the “let’s blow this joint” gesture, and he pays while I scoop up all the stray chips that have been flung in a four-foot vicinity of our table.  As he’s taking the kids to the car, it occurs to me that the bill is quite high.  Too high.  It hits me like the smell of bacon.

Our kids did not eat for free.

I marched up to the hostess stand and demanded my $5.95 back.  What kind of two-bit joint is this anyway? The lady just looks at me with mascara smudged on my face and crazy hair and red marks on my arm where my son was bopping me with straws. The credit card machine was busy and my waiter was annoyed and my husband wondered where the heck I was.  But I wasn’t about to walk out now.  Not when I was a sucker for such a stupid marketing ploy.  How long have I been a parent, anyway?  Didn’t I major in such foolish mind-bending communications in college?  Didn’t I know better than to get my two-year-old out in public at that time of day?  I blame it all on myself as I plunked down money for a new (and lower) grand total, putting my hand on my hip and realizing my jeans are still soaked with wet tea.

So, my friends, the next time you see such a claim about kids eating free and with wild abandon, run.  Run far and fast.  Away from said restaurant with straws and distant bathrooms and back toward home, where you can brown some broccoli and heat up some macaroni noodles.  At least life is calm, and lemonades don’t cost three bucks, and no one is screaming.

I noticed that Tuesday is Dollar Taco Night.  Sounds promising.  Maybe we should go for it?

Some people never learn.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

karaoke

January 30, 2012 By

During the week, my husband and I pass each other in the house as if we’re both servants in Downton Abbey. We give commands and trade off duties and bargain.  You give baths and I’ll read bedtime stories. You change the boy’s diaper and I’ll get a hot stone massage.  Okay, so I made that last one up.

But we’re busy folks, raising two kids and working and trying to keep our house free of small cars and doll clothes underfoot.    And we both loathe cockroaches, which means we actually have to do dishes and wipe off the crusty food from my son’s chair after dinner and take out trash.  It’s exhausting.  So this weekend, we sent the kids to grandparents.  I’m thinking great wine and late nights and crunchy tacos at 2 am and lots of rated-R movies.  I’m planning on sleeping late and catching up on laundry and taking a hot bath.

On Saturday afternoon, my husband went outside to mow the lawn and I went whistling inside to do some laundry. No snacks and naps and fits and messes.  No one to unfold my sheets and streak up the glass and whine about eating broccoli.  Freedom at last!  A clean sparkling house!

I went inside and stared at the pile of dirty clothes.  That is so extremely dull.  I walked into the kitchen and looked at a dirty pan in the sink.  Yawn.  I’ll do that later.

So I went upstairs and did what normal, healthy, well-adjusted, people-above-the-age-of-twelve do.   Watched music videos. I was having such a fabulous time downloading lyrics and memorizing songs and watching Adele belt out ballads that I stood up in front of my computer with my iphone as a microphone and busted out a great rendition of “Set Fire to the Rain” in my pajamas.   I lowered it a bit so I didn’t squeak out the high notes.  I felt strong.  Powerful.  I could so totally rock this in a bar somewhere.  Maybe I should record a CD and rat my hair up four inches.

Then I heard the back door open.   I felt like a kid caught with a sugar soda and came crashing back to reality.  I cleared my throat, minimized the screen on my computer, and went rushing downstairs to throw some clean clothes from the dryer onto the bed.  Suddenly I had a sullen look on my face as I started to fold them.  My husband walked in, crazy tired from pruning and mowing and cutting down some cedar and washing off the driveway.  I’m not sure why I felt I needed to hide the karaoke session, except for the fact that I’m a grown woman trying to memorize song lyrics in elastic-wasted yoga pants while he was out there working.

“Whatcha doin?” he asked.

“Oh, just laundry,” I said.  I rolled my eyes like I was bored to death.  I think I sighed a little bit.  Shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“All afternoon?” he asked.

“Well, you know, that and other stuff.  Boring house stuff.”  Like singing Rolling in the Deep at the top of my lungs.  Dancing.  Eating some leftover Christmas candy.  Putting on lip gloss. Drinking a beer at 3 pm for no apparent reason.

He shrugged as he headed to the shower, probably because the dirty laundry was still piled up high.

When my kids get home, I’ll be thrown back into reality.  We’ll all eat our vegetables and read bedtime stories and change poopy diapers.  But for a moment – just a blip in time – I was young again, with no worries in the world, closing my eyes and getting lost in the music.

Here’s to you, Adele.   You totally rocked my Saturday.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Music Tagged With: , , ,

no regrets

January 23, 2012 By

I’ve been thinking of the concept of fairness.   About how we human beings have a certain timeline in our heads about what is right and just.

You are born.  You struggle and climb and claw your way out of, well, something.  You find the perfect mate with good teeth.  You have children, who you set up little college accounts for.   They grow up going to church and wearing plaid jumpers.  They study and play monopoly.  You clasp your hands over your mouth when they make the deans list. Someday, they take you out to brunch and thank you for all your hard work over a chai tea latte and scones.  They get married, all white and blushing and beautiful. Then, you’ll start babysitting chubby little grandchildren while your offspring jet off to their medical practices or CPA offices.  Satisfied, you and the better half drive off into the sunset on an RV retirement adventure.  You slowly grow old and can’t remember to turn off the toaster. Finally, you die.  Everyone grieves and brings casseroles.  It’s cool. You lived a full life.  Death happens.

This, my friends, is fairness.  It’s the natural order of things. Anything less is not open to discussion.  And yet despite this view of life, unfair things happen all the time.  A young mother dies of cancer leaving two small children confused and broken.  Her husband prayed.  Her mother prayed.  But survival was not to be.  She was just fine one day, and then she wasn’t.  What about the plan?  She was only 32 years old.  What about the brunch and the scones and the chubby grandchildren?  What if your spouse died and left only a pile of dirty laundry behind? There is no love letter or made-for-television novel or some grand exit.  He was just there, and then he wasn’t.  Where is God? Why did this happen?  How will the children make it? Your fairness timetable is all screwed up.

So in order to protect ourselves, and not end up heavily medicated, we ignore reality.  We draw a circle around us and stay in close.   Like if we are home on a Saturday afternoon doing laundry, ill fate will not befall us.  Like we can somehow escape death.  After all, we aren’t those people.  We aren’t that family.  The end will come to us at a more appropriate time.  Like when our children are all grown or our minds start to fade.  We’ll bite the dust watching reruns in housedresses and slippers, screaming into the phone while our kids tell us to turn up our hearing aids.

“The race is not to the swift. . .” the Bible says, “nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”  Ecclesiastes 9:11.  This explains why the Kardashian sisters are walking around in nine-hundred-dollar shoes while children are starving in Africa.  Or why Hugh Hefner is still bouncing around the Playboy mansion with a fake tan.  Because life, my friends, is not at all fair.  It doesn’t follow our rules. “For man does not know his time.  Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”  Ecclesiastes 9:12.

I hate it when people say “it was his time” or “it was all God’s plan” when someone dies.  Really? A seven-year-old chose to die? God planned for a young mother to come down with cancer, leaving two kids behind?  I hope that’s not the case.  I think we just get caught in snares, and can’t weave our way out.

So you wake up tomorrow.  Victory! It’s true that you still must scrub toilets and go to work and suffer from headaches.  You still get annoyed when your kids scream, and sometimes you pour cereal only to realize you are out of milk.  Those stupid allergies make you crazy and you feel overwhelmed at work.  You go out to eat and get fat and don’t have any energy and are the only one who unloads the dishwasher.

Stop complaining.

Re-evaluate your life to see what really matters.  Be thankful you have children to raise and friends to talk to.  Get your head out of the television and start seeing what’s around you. You have the unique perspective that others don’t.  You actually have some element of control over your decisions and the words you speak and what do you with the hours in your day. This weekend, I started to watch an online movie preview of some stupid movie I knew I wouldn’t like.  I thought to myself – that’s three minutes of time on this earth wasted.

Think of your days as numbered, and your hours having value. You just might start to change some habits.  And then, you’ll really start living with no regrets.

Filed Under: Health, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

lessons in carols

December 30, 2011 By

I love to sing.  I sing in the kitchen and in the car.  I sing as I mop and as I dress.  I dictate instructions to my children in song – sometimes changing the key midstream to see if anyone’s paying attention.  You don’t want me all up-in-your-business singing “you came from my womb, now clean up your room, I’ll fill you with doom if you refuse me,” and don’t think my daughter can’t whip out some do-re-me action on a dime.  That’s hard-core training, people.   I can’t wait until my daughter is in junior high so she can fill up her little journal about how her mother is a total lunatic and is so totally unaware of how annoying she is.  Oh I know, sweetheart.  It’s all part of my master plan of totally family domination.  Breaking down spirits with excessive vibrato.

 

Given my natural affinity for song, however, I was naturally pumped to sing a solo at Christmas eve service. I wore black and had a wonderful pianist and stood in front of my church congregation, candles-a-ready, and began.  I was a bit worried about my lip gloss.  Priorities, you know.  But it all started out fine.  It was calm and serene, and after a moment, people started to smile and close their eyes.  It was a story told long ago, about a child born of Mary. A song of peace and new birth.   About pure hearts and renewed spirits.  A song of –

 

Uh oh.

 

Out of nowhere, I hear a bellowing cry from the back of the church. A man is practically falling over himself to escape from the aisle with a child in his arms.  A child who happens to be my son.  After getting a glimpse of his mother at the front of the church, standing alone with a spotlight on her face, he decides to declare to the people sitting around, and the old-folks home next door, and to the Burger King down the street, that his mother is there. In case they didn’t notice.

 

“Ma MAAAAAAAAA!” he shrieks with delight.  “Hi Mama!  Hi Mama!” He is fervently waving with both hands in the air.  He must think I can’t hear him, although the room is silent except for my voice and you can literally hear fabric rub together when someone crosses their legs.  He bumps the volume up a bit.  “Mamaaa!  Mama SINGGGGG!”  He is thrilled at my existence, even though I just saw him five minutes ago. I can see my husband apologize to someone as he barrels past knees and blazers and candles on his way out the door.

 

I try to remain calm.  If Oleta Adams sang this song in front of thousands, I can surely keep it together as my husband takes my screaming son into the foyer. Where, as it turns out, he sees me again on the video screens and starts with a renewed round of heartfelt hellos and fervent waving.

 

All of a sudden, out of embarrassment or distraction, I lost my place.  I was in the middle of a stanza about finding inner peace when I had a panic attack.  I drew out the note, ran through a mental checklist of oh crap, where’s the coda and I freaking sang that part already and I’m screwed, and my kind accompanist just slowed things down like the whole thing was planned.  I smiled and turned the page, which made no sense since it was the wrong page to begin with.  I’m pretty sure I did some sort of corny hand gesture. Awesome.  My husband will never let me live that one down.

 

I had exactly four beats to make a decision, so I just picked right back up, singing the exact same thing I did before, making up additional words when necessary. My daughter, now parent free, is standing in her beautiful Christmas dress at the back of the church just waving at me.  She is beaming with pride.  She doesn’t know I’m sweating and hoping no one noticed I repeated the entire second verse and praying for the song to end.  It finally did, and I sat down with a solemn heart.  What a waste, I thought.

 

But my family was so proud, and my husband laughed so hard, and when it was all said and done I felt that this is what the Christmas story is all about, anyway.  It’s not calm and morose and black and perfect.  Birth isn’t filled with candles and sweet syrupy lyrics and everyone sitting around in navy blazers.

 

Birth is crying and screaming and pushing and sweating.  It’s seeing a part of God come out in human form in front of you.  Your heart is bursting like a water balloon and you feel surrounded and sustained by pure, unaltered, unabashed joy.  Joy at living.  Joy at this child you created.  Joy at seeing someone you love in front of you, not caring how your reaction looks to the world around you.  Thank God for our son, who reminded me of this. Thank God for Jesus, born screaming out the love of God and not caring who heard it.  And thank God for Mary, who probably thought she was screwing it all up.  But she wasn’t.

And that’s the best lesson of them all.


Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Music, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

Cable is evil. And I love it.

November 8, 2011 By

We are living in a quirky old rental while our house is being remodeled. The original place was a single room built in the 1800s with walls eighteen inches thick.  The owners and their forefathers kept adding onto that one room, with bedrooms and bathrooms popping from one single hallway like a branch sprouting new shoots.  To go from the bedroom to the kitchen for a drink of water requires running shoes, and there are light switches in strange places that, instead of turning on a light, actually fire up a heater or turn on an attic fan.  I still can’t muster up the courage to head down into the basement.  My dad went.  He said it was creepy.  But I can’t imagine a more perfect place.  My children now think of it as “the 1826 house” like we just picked up and moved there.  The landlords live about ten feet away in a house adjoined with a breezeway, and they are lovely people.  I brought the landlady so much pumpkin bread that she finally had to tell me to stop because she has a gluten allergy.

The most perfect thing about our rental is not the fact that it has a dug-out basement or that it’s quite possibly haunted or that almost every room has a different type of flooring.  It’s not the grand piano or the fact that the décor contains a large amount of arrowheads or that one bedroom in the house is actually referred to as “the Africa Room” due to the collection of safari memorabilia. The coolest thing is contained within the confines of a little blue cord.  Cable. I am in awe of this majestic invention of technology that we do not possess in our actual home.

Cable is something strange and foreign to the Hill clan, and we all gather around the television like cave men, pounding upon the box with clubs and beating our chests with glee.  It causes the Hill leaders to lose sleep and feel compelled to watch long Iron Chef marathons.  After all – we have a civic duty to see what the hype is all about regarding drunken women in New Jersey whose names sound like baby blankets.

I have grown so attached to the food network that I’ve become irrationally inspired.  I see the way chefs manage to put together entire meals from wheat flour, peas, and fresh tuna, and I feel that despite my lack of formal training I, too, could whip up a soufflé if my life depended on it in thirty minutes.  Because it’s a temporary living arrangement, we didn’t haul our entire spice rack over to our new pad, so the only two spices that reside in our rental kitchen are cumin and cinnamon.  But as you know, if you watch the food network, this should not be a deterrent. With cinnamon, some black truffles, goat milk, and a Wolf range, dessert is so completely done!

So the other night, when I’m staring into the refrigerator, I see sausage, leftover rice, and remembered we had a can of black beans in the pantry.  That’s it! I can make a killer Mexican Jumbalaya! After all, we have Cumin.  So what if I’m mixing cultures? Chefs do those things all the time, people.  Think Asian fusion.

My husband came home and I mentioned that we would be dining on Mexican Jumbalaya and tamales, along with some Italian beer and Halloween candy for dessert.  Suddenly, I hear myself speaking. I realize cable has rotted my brain.  Who put this menu together, anyway? Later that night, my daughter was speaking into a fake camera that’s located somewhere in the imaginary world she lives in.  She’s telling the people in television land exactly how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, going into painstaking detail for the television audience about how to slather on the jelly without it dripping.  Then she broke for commercials.

When we move back home, we will not have cable. I haven’t read a book in a month, my daughter is now dreaming of being a TV personality, and I’m inundated with thoughts of buying a hybrid car and a Vitamix.  But I will miss cable, that fancy modern invention, broadcast among the arrowheads in our 1826 home.   Rich housewives and fancy chefs will just have to plod on without this household of viewers.  We’re heading back to the dark ages.  To the days of flipping through magazines and checking our email on our iphones.  Reading books and watching NOVA on public television.  Somehow, some way, we’ll muddle through.

Filed Under: Humor, Technology, Television Tagged With: , , , , ,

pee is icky

October 19, 2011 By

I was shocked the other day to discover a little boy in front of a children’s toy store zipping up his pants.  He looked straight into my eyes with a devilish grin like he’d gotten away with something.  As it turns out, he had.  A big dripping mass of urine, to be specific.  It was right there in front of me, soaking into the porous bricks of the strip center wall with the overflow sliding down the side.  It took a while to process.  Did that little boy really just pee on the wall?  Right here in public? Surely he was an orphan, with no mother around.  Most certainly he was left alone, abandoned and neglected, having no comprehension that boys of the world are not supposed to whip out their pee machines in public whilst other innocent citizens are shopping for pink baby doll furniture. But he didn’t have clothes like an orphan, all dirty and ripped with a funny little hat and patched knees.  Everyone knows that orphans walk with a limp, carry a cane, and usually speak with a broken English accent, but all I heard out of this little runt was a giggle.

Okay, so maybe he does has a mother.  He’s just a little brat who used immature judgment and decided a wall was a perfectly natural place to pee.  It’s hard for a little tot to distinguish that peeing freely on camping trips and in secluded backyards might be okay but storefronts, well, not so much. When this mother finds out what her little one was up to, I’ll bet she is downright horrified. . .

“Hurry up,” I heard a voice coming from behind.  It was a woman, standing by a car tapping her fingers on the door, waiting.  Who needed to hurry? What was she waiting for?  The little kid ran over to her car and hopped in.  No.  For the love of bacon, no.  This woman was just standing there?  Waiting for her son to urinate on a brick wall in public? I’m curious just how that conversation went, exactly.

“Uh, mom, I totally gotta pee.”

“Well, let’s see,” horrible mom says.  “We are standing in front of a store with public restrooms.  With urinals and running water. But instead of that, why don’t you just hop on out there and pee on the wall. It’s cool.  Just like the last time I told you to pee outside the dry cleaners.  It’s similar to that, but with more people around. Try not to poop, since that might send us to jail or someone might call CPS and there are all those flies to contend with.  But pee’s totally harmless.  It’s just reconstituted soda pop. We’re in a drought.  It’ll dry.”

“What’s reconstituted mean?” the brat says.

“Just go out there and pee already.  We’re late to the movies.”

I just stood there for a few moments, unable to proceed.  I just kept staring at this mother, and back to the store, and over to the huge pee stain.  It was like the air surrounding me was somehow contaminated with this boy’s urine.  All I could think of was Clorox wipes and dirty hands.  The mother looked down, perhaps due to shame.  Perhaps in anger.  Perhaps she thought I was judgmental or inappropriate for giving her dirty looks.  The truth hurts.

I let out a very quiet, barely audible noise – perhaps incomprehensible to some.  Or, if you listened veeeery carefully, it actually sounded something like “Are you serious?  Are you freaking serious?  Did you just let your kid pee on the wall right there?”  Okay, so most people heard it.  But only if you were really paying rapt attention and happened to be in a five-mile radius and were not on your ipad.  It was subtle, really.  I think I really made an impression.

I went home without doll furniture.  But I did walk away with a new appreciation for toilets.  And hand sanitizer. And a realization that maybe I’m not such a bad mother after all.   I might make instant pudding and not realize I can’t set the inside of a crock pot directly onto a stove burner and not notice my child playing with knives, but at least my son won’t pee in public.

Unless he joins a college fraternity.  Then, we’ll just forget this entire conversation.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

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