Don't Forget to Take Your Pill

Have you ever seen that show on the Discovery Health Channel (AKA the Freak Show Network) called, “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant?" I haven’t either, but the title is pretty self-explanatory. What amazes me is that it is a series rather than a one-time special. Apparently, there are enough women out there who either have extremely asymptomatic pregnancies or who are very out of touch with the bodies. And, of course, an audience of people who want to know all about it.

A long time ago, I worked with a woman who found herself in this very situation. She was a clerical worker in the office, and while very sweet, she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She was an ample woman, almost as wide as she was tall. She started having what she thought were intestinal issues about six months after she got married. She went to her doctor, who did not diagnose an illness or offer any treatment other than she needed to change her diet and eat more fiber. The doctors just couldn’t find the reason this woman kept having problems with abdominal pain. One day, when she felt really miserable, she stayed home from work to rest. At some point, she thought she needed to make a bowel movement, so she sat on the toilet to do her thing. Imagine her surprise when she went to take a crap and instead shit a screaming baby into the toilet bowl.

True story. The baby was full term and completely normal. The woman thought, looking back, that the symptoms she must have had in her first trimester were just nerves due to her upcoming wedding. She was actually already three months preggers on her wedding day and had no clue. I always felt so bad for her baby boy, because everyone knew he was born in a toilet and mistaken for a really big poo. That’s the kind of thing that will haunt him for his whole life. Truly, it is one of the worst birth stories I have ever heard, and that includes the cashier at Wal-Mart who was on bed rest for placenta previa and suffered a broken pelvis caused by her developing baby.

Well, last week I heard about yet another one of those surprise births. The daughter of one of our acquaintances suddenly got sick, and no one knew why. Like the woman I knew many years ago, this girl was also not petite, but no one noticed or suspected anything making her grow larger over the course of the past nine months, including her. I could see how at 19, with no husband, she might have been concerned about telling her parents of her condition, but apparently it was a surprise to her as well.

She was admitted to the hospital after suffering what the doctors thought was a seizure, even though she never had seizures before. While inpatient, shazaam, she had a baby. It turns out that isolated seizure was actually preeclampsia. I asked the person who told me the story if the girl had a boyfriend, but he said she did not have a serious one. I guess it’s more serious than she thought. She might not have a boyfriend, but she does have a baby daddy.

It is hard enough becoming a new mother with eight or nine months of warning. You can plan for the baby, buy all sorts of stuff for the nursery, take your pre-natal vitamins, and stop drinking and smoking and eating brie and tuna fish and snorting coke, if that’s your thing. But to not know? To go to the hospital because you don’t know what is wrong with you, or to sit down to take the monster dump of a lifetime and end up a new parent, well, that’s just as fucked up as a two-headed snake.

To all those unaware moms out there, I offer up my sympathy. Nature has truly made you the butt in a sick joke that you will have to think about for the rest of your life, never quite getting the punch line. If that doesn’t turn you into a hypochondriac, I don’t know what will.

The Ass Capades

If humans were meant to ice skate, we would have been born with steak knives on the bottoms of our feet. I don’t care how easy the hockey players make it look; we should not be teetering around on sharp objects, be it stiletto heels on some Jimmy Choos or blades on the soles of ugly boots. My children, who can barely walk down stairs and are still incapable of riding a bike without training wheels, agree with me when it comes to ice skating. We don’t ever think about it. In fact, we don’t even watch figure skating on television. But last weekend, we had to overcome our discomfort long enough to attend a birthday party for one of my daughter E’s friends, with mixed results.

When you go ice skating in winter, you should expect a crowd at the rink. I didn't know that, so I was quite surprised at how many people would turn out in crappy weather. I had to drive around the parking lot four times before I could snag a space. I took the girls inside only to see masses of people everywhere, but not in any real sense of a line. It looked like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, only everyone was wearing sweat shirts. We finally found the party room and put down our stuff before rejoining the jumble of people waiting to rent skates. I had to help both my daughters get on their skates, which is scary as the mom because what if those blades sliced off my fingers? But I couldn’t share my fear of getting cut, just as I couldn’t share my fear of skating itself.

So I booted them and myself up, and then I had to pretend to be brave and wobble my way back to through the throngs of people to rent a PVC ice walker thing for my youngest daughter, S, to use. It looks a little like a goal cage, only it is less sturdy and has no net. You use it just like a walker, and it shaves across the ice, making snow cone piles while the user hangs on for dear life. I coerced S into tottering over to the ice rink. My other daughter was already baby stepping her way around the rink with her friend, who is an experienced skater and didn’t really understand the reason we were all so scared. S and I got to the doorway of the rink, and against her will, I got her to step one skated foot, then the other, onto the ice, while we both clung to the walker. She just stood there. I showed her how to march on skates, just like she would on land in regular shoes. She just stood there. I showed her how she could hold onto the walker and glide a little. She just stood there. I told her how the people behind her were trying to get off the ice and she needed to move. She stood there some more, and then she began to cry. I pleaded with her to try just one lap around the rink, and if she still didn’t like it, she could take off the skates. She yelled something at me that I couldn’t hear because of the crying, and stood there, unmoving.

I thought for a moment about how much I don’t like to skate, how scared I am of falling, and why, exactly, I continued to try to convince her to make an effort. When S doesn’t want to do something, there is no reversing her position. So, fuck it. I wasn't going to break my arm to get her to skate

I finally got her to move back to the gate and get off the ice, then forced her to stumble back to the benches to take off the skates. She glared at me through her wet, clumpy lashes, as if this were all my fault. I stomped back to the counter and got her shoes for her.

“You are going to have to sit by yourself or with one of the other moms while I help E skate,” I told her. She sat on the cold bleachers, and I trudged back to the ice to look for E.

Meanwhile, E had been balancing her way slowly across the ice, and had yet to complete a full lap around the rink in the time it took for S to freak out and get pissed off. I took the walker with me in case E wanted to use it, which was a lie. I wanted to use it, but I also wanted to use my daughter as my cover for using the walker. I convinced her to hold on to it and let me hold on to her so she wouldn’t be scared. Ha. We made a few laps around that way, like the Polar Express out of control, only we never crashed. Every time we passed where S was sitting, she would glare harder at us. I am surprised she wasn’t able to melt the ice.

I left E to her own devices to check on S again, who wanted to know how much longer she had to sit by herself. “Until the skating portion of the party is over,” I told her. “I am going to go around one more time and then I have to stop because my feet are killing me.”

She started to quietly cry again, and I rejoined E, who wanted to try holding my hand while I continued to hold the walker in my other hand in case she needed it. I don’t know how anybody was able to skate around us, with the human chain we had formed on the ice, E with all the grace of a newborn giraffe and me like her Hobbit mother. After two more laps like that, I left her again and went to take off my skates. S was going on and on about how it was the worst party she has ever been to, how much she hates skating, and how she is never going to do it again. I inspected my feet for water blisters, of which there were three, as well as the inflamed tendon along my right ankle. I kind of agreed with her at that point.

We walked back to watch E’s progress when I noticed someone helping her across the rink. She was crying and moving slowly, so I rushed over to the doorway to try to help her off the ice. But before she could get through, a large, and by large I mean a really super fat woman, got off the ice right in front of her. Her backside was pretty much in S’s face, and her pants picked that moment to fall down below her buttocks. She stood there, trying to get her other foot off the ice with her bare ass in my kid’s face. The woman didn’t seem embarrassed at all; she just hiked up her jeans over her rump as if it happened several times a day. S was delighted. She laughed and laughed, her eyes all twinkling. You would have never known she had spent the last hour sitting on the bench like she was in the emergency room instead of at a birthday party.

E, it turned out, had been kicked in the back and knocked over by a wayward dad who didn’t feel the need to stop and offer assistance, but just left her sprawled on the ice. Her back hurt, so, ironically, we put ice on it, which seemed to help some. Luckily, it was time for the other party guests to remove their skates and eat some cake, which was the only reason S wanted to come in the first place.

I doubt any of us are ready for another foray onto the ice anytime in the near future. But I did find it amusing how E started off happy and ended up miserable because of another person’s thoughtlessness, whereas S started out miserable and ended up happy due to a large naked ass. I guess it wasn’t a total bust.

I've Got a New Attitude

Kids these days, they seem to grow up faster and faster. When I was a girl, puberty and all the fun that went along with it was reserved for those awkward middle school years. I was unlucky enough to get my boobies in the fifth grade. They were no D cups, but they were certainly enough to fill out my training bra in a mortifying way. I don’t really remember the fun of armpit hair or worse, hair down there, but obviously I matured like everyone else. My period started (like it’s any of your business) in the seventh grade, and m moodiness hasn’t yet stopped. All in all, puberty was a journey that took several years, from about ten to fourteen, or so the textbooks at the time purported. We were in the fifth grade when we were separated by gender and shown films. The girls learned all about the curse; I still don’t know what the boys learned. But I am pretty sure the school district picked fifth grade because they knew it wasn’t really happening yet, so we would all be too embarrassed and disgusted to ask questions.

Now, thanks to improved nutrition, or more likely added hormones and antibiotics in our food supply, kids these days seem to start “the change” younger and younger. Girls today are beating the school district to the punch. They are carrying preemptive panty liners in their backpacks as early at the fourth grade. What used to start at ten now starts as early as eight. As much as I want my babies to stay babies, I know with each sprout of armpit hair that my daughters will grow up because that is what they are supposed to do. And while the breast buds and B.O. are slightly disconcerting, no puberty change seems to hurt quite like that hormone-driven nasty moodiness.

It comes out of nowhere and strikes like a viper, and you are hit before you can even run for cover. You are left floundering and twitching as the venomous bad mood seeps into your very core. Irrational misery loves company.

Take the other day, for instance. My daughter, E, woke up later than usual after what I assumed was a good night’s sleep. We had plans with friends that morning, and when I came downstairs to fix breakfast, she was lurking around the kitchen with a scowl on her face.

“What would you like for breakfast? Cereal? Waffles? Want some scrambled eggs with cheese?” I asked her.

“I’m kind of in the mood for muffins,” she said.

“We really don’t have time to bake muffins this morning, baby. We slept in a little late and need to get ready in about a half hour. That’s not enough time to bake something. Would you like toast instead? With Nutella?”

E glared at me. “I’m so sick of you,” she said.

I guess that meant toast with Nutella was out. As was my morning happiness. Now, generally when someone is nasty to me, I want to be nasty right back. So it took a lot of self control to let it slide. E did later apologize for her remark, and the morning proceeded with no further outbursts.

When we got home from our play date, I told the girls to get their homework done. My youngest daughter had the usual amount of math and spelling, but E was working on a big graphing project for math. She had already finished her poster and only had a reflection paragraph left to write, which she had been putting off for a few days because she didn’t want to do it.

E normally loves to write, except when she has to, in which case she generally whines and fusses and carries on and cries. I tried to point out to her that this was merely a paragraph, not a five page essay, and it was also about how she felt rather than what she learned. In essence, she had to write a “dear diary” entry. But she insisted she didn’t know how, because they didn’t cover it in class. She soon realized that I had no plans on helping her further with it and pouted on the couch with a pencil and a piece of notebook paper.

After she finished, I reviewed her paragraph. It started out fine—blah blah blah graphs blah blah pie chart blah blah blah bar graph blah blah. And then I got to the snake bite ending, written in ink rather than pencil like the rest. And here I quote: “I found this project frustrating because I had to redo my bar graph three times and my pie chart four times and no one taught me how to write a reflection paragraph.”

“Oh, E,” I called. “This last sentence here, do you think that’s a good idea? Think your teacher will like this part?”

“Probably not,” she said, drawing a circle with her toe.

“And in ink too?” I pointed out.

“And?” she said defensively.

“And now you can rewrite the whole thing, without that last line. I don’t think that is going to help your grade any.”

She stomped off to get a fresh piece of paper.

It might not seem like much to you, but from my normally sweet, loving daughter, that level of obvious contempt was like rubbing salt in my eyes. A double dose of her unbridled temper in one day is but a small taste of the bitterness to come. I only hope between now and the unleashing of her teenage puberty hell, I find a good supply of thick skin. Is that available on the Internet?

The Age of Experience

Eight might not be a milestone birthday in your world, but in mine, eight is magical. Eight is when you get your ears pierced. I know that in some cultures, baby girls have their ears pierced, but they have enough needs as babies, so I never understood why add daily disinfecting of earlobes to the already extensive list of things you must do to care for a baby. I picked age eight rather arbitrarily, since that was the age I got my ears pierced, so it seemed good enough for my daughters as well. I rationalized that at eight, my daughters could decide for themselves if the pain was worth it, and they could also be responsible enough to clean their ears and not lose their jewelry.

As you may recall, my baby girl, S, turned eight recently, and she decided she wanted to get her ears pierced. We went to the mall because really, where else are you going to go? We headed straight for the Piercing Pagoda, bypassing Claire’s Boutique, since I didn’t trust those mouth breathers to not make her head all lopsided. Plus, it has “piercing” in its name, which somehow adds a level of credibility to the whole operation. The Piercing Pagoda is an open counter kiosk rather than a closed mall shop, meaning there is no privacy, but it also feels cleaner and airy, instead of boxed-in, cluttered, and germy, like that nasty Claire’s.

S and I walked up to the counter and were greeted by a young man with the deepest voice, which I wasn’t expecting since he didn’t look like his testicles had descended yet. He was relatively clean looking and sported little diamonelle hoops in both ears. He had the most sausage-y fingers I have ever seen on a person of normal build, the body of a regular guy, the hands of the morbidly obese.

He asked how he could help us, and I told him that S wanted to get her ears pierced. He turned his booming voice directly to her, asking her age, and her date of birth, what kind of earrings she wanted. He was extremely patient with her, answering all her questions about how to tell if her ears are infected and when she can change her earrings. He was like a kind older cousin, calling her sweetheart and princess in a way that was barely creepy.

He gave me some papers to sign, and I handed them back to him and said, “So I have to ask, how long have you been doing this?”

“Oh, forever,” he said. “Since April.” I counted back from January in my head.

“It’s so easy, a monkey could do it,” he added. I didn’t say anything, but really, eight or nine months piercing ears at the mall is a pretty long time. I’ll bet those cretins at Claire’s haven’t even been tying their own shoes for that long.

“Plus,” he went on, “I am a tattoo artist. I’ve been around piercing for years.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, reassured. Because, really, nothing is more reassuring than handing your eight year old over to a pre-pubescent tattoo artist with less than a year’s experience poking holes in people’s earlobes. Then I remembered that tattooing hasn’t even been legal in our state for more than a year. He mentioned moving here from Pittsburgh, as if he could read my thoughts about the tattoo thing, but that started a whole new wave of panic. How exactly does a young man find his way from Pittsburgh to a mall in Greenville, South Carolina? Where did he learn how to pierce and tattoo, anyway? Prison?

As he got all his stuff ready, I watched him, letting my mind wander. It never occurred to me to take S to a body piercing salon. I could see us walking in one of those places, S perched on a stool getting little gold balls in her ears while behind her, some troll was getting a Prince Albert, his slab on a stainless steel tray. No, I thought, I’m not interested in getting my labia pierced, just my daughter’s ears, thank you.

S, as if reading my mind, leaned over and whispered, “I’m never getting anything pierced again. Just my ears this once.”

“Good,” I told her. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

The guy let us behind the counter and S hopped up on the chair, holding onto her stuffed llama tightly. He drew dots on her ears, then stepped back, checking to see if they were even. He erased her left ear dot and made a new one, looking at her left, then right, then left again, then straight on, until he was satisfied that they were even.

“Okay, sweetie, here’s what we’re going to do. Count one, two, then breathe out. When you breathe out, I’ll do it. You’ll feel a pinch, but the breathing out helps you relax. You should do that when you go to the doctor and he gives you a shot,” he told her.

Or, when you shoot up, I thought.

S gripped my hand like an alligator jaw, and he counted, “One, two, now breathe out, honey.” The first gold ball was in, and S’s face was a flushed combination of fear, pain, and delight. She tried to look at the mirror behind her, but I told her to keep still until he did the other side. She did, holding onto my hand, and before we knew it, she had two freshly pierced ears.

We left the Piercing Pagoda, S beaming wildly, practically skipping around the mall. We held hands and swung them high. S said to me, “Are you proud of me? I didn’t even cry!”

“You were so brave,” I told her. “Did it hurt?”

“Not too bad, just a little,” she said.

That night, at home, it was time to clean and turn the gold balls for the first time. By that time, her ears were swollen and red, not from infection, but just from the trauma of having been perforated. I swabbed her fresh wounds with cotton balls soaked in some special ear cleaning solution, and then came the fun part, the turning. When you get your ears pierced, you have to turn the earrings or else the holes won’t heal properly. I turned the stud in her left ear, and it spun easily. Next I tried the right one, which was a little more swollen than the left. At first, the stud resisted, but then I felt it give and spin. And bingo! There was the crying.

Yes, eight is a magical age. An age of new beginnings, of no longer being a little kid, and after experiencing pain as a result of voluntarily having your body mutilated, it is also an age of regret. At least for the next six weeks, until the thrice daily stud spinning is over.

Dropping the F Bomb

Have you ever done a Pilates class? It’s not really like yoga at all, other than you need a mat to do it. Yoga is more a total body thing, involving balance, strength, control, breathing, and the powers of the mind. Pilates has similar elements, but with more of a concentration on core strengthening and the elongating of muscles. It can be done on a mat or on a special piece of equipment called a reformer that is reminiscent of that bad Mariel Hemingway movie, Star 8, sort of part torture device, part sadistic sexual prop. Pilates has long been a popular form of exercise with dancers, which is funny because the majority of people who do Pilates in a class have the grace of an elephant, me included.

In the Pilates class I take, the instructor spends a lot of time, and I mean a lot, on making sure our form is good. We squeeze our butt cheeks. We contract our lower abdominal muscles. We keep our spines in neutral alignment. We turn on our cores. We don’t allow our rib cages to boink or our shoulder blades to wing. And we do all of this through all the exercises, because in Pilates, form is everything.

Well, last week, amidst all that control, one poor lady lost hers a bit. Well, more than a bit. This sad sack, somebody’s grandmother, farted during an exercise where you wouldn’t think a fart was possible. And I am not talking a demure dainty lady fart. I am talking loud chili dog eating truck driver cheek flapper flatulence. It escaped her control and bounced off the walls in an amazing demonstration of the room’s acoustics. And after it was released, floating around the room, it was accompanied by an odor that made me think she didn’t just fart, she crapped herself. Now, I ask you, do you think you could have held all your muscles contracted and breathed into your rib cage while mustard gas was descending upon you like a WWI fox hole attack? In an act of defiance, she didn’t get up and sprint out of the room in tears. Instead, she went right on with her rolling like a ball and bridges, like nothing just happened, like people emit loud gas publicly as a routine thing, as if the gym were no different than a Thanksgiving table. I didn’t know if she needed to check her hearing along with her underwear.

Well, I might not have been able to control my lower abdominal muscles, but I did, in an act of considerable self containment, control my laughter. I come from a long line of people who think gas is funny in most of its horribly embarrassing forms. I am sure way back when, during the pogroms, there were, among my ancestors, a couple of old Jews who were being beaten by Cossacks that had to laugh if one of them farted during a pounding. From generation to generation, members of my family have enjoyed a good laugh at the expense of someone else’s accidental anal emission. It was in my DNA to laugh at that lady’s fart. But I didn’t, and not just because I could barely breathe.

In a rare show of human empathy, I felt badly for her. How mortifying. Even if she didn’t stand up and say, “Excuse me, fellow Pilates students, but I am the one responsible for the air bomb that descended upon you all, and for that I offer my most humble apologies,” everyone near her knew it was her. Perhaps the majority of us were each thinking, thank G-d that wasn’t me. But surprisingly, no one even snickered or chortled, or even hung around after the class to laugh about it. We all pretended like it didn’t happen, and continued with the torture that was the abdominal series known as “the fives.”

Now, I have seen or experienced some pretty funny and weird shit at my gym. I have seen instructors fall in step class, and I too have tumbled in the most ungraceful fashion on my ass on a step bench. I've seen the occasional person go flying off the back of a treadmill, which is good for a laugh from a distance, but if it happens near you, you have to stifle it and offer assistance. There is a man who looks exactly like Fidel Castro, before he got all sick and skinny, who works out most mornings. Another guy is growing and molding his beard into what resembles the inside of a rhinoceros horn, hanging like a freaky hair stalactite from his chin. One time, I walked in on a man doing what I hope was peeing in the unisex bathroom, although I can’t be certain since the door was left unlocked and he didn’t seem all that surprised to have been discovered. Once, when I was in a spin class, a woman spun so fast her boob popped right out of her little tank top. I noticed it but couldn’t tell her since I didn’t think I would be able to talk without cackling, but someone finally pointed her nipple out to her and she tucked it away. If that happened to me, I would have had to cancel my gym membership.

And definitely, I have heard someone fart in Pilates. It happens quite frequently, in fact. But usually someone acknowledges it, giggles about it, or at the very least, confesses to it, and we all move beyond it. This fart was unique in that the entire room denied its very existence. I don’t know if that was the kind of control Joseph Pilates had in mind, but it was pretty fucking impressive.

That's How I Roll

Since when is everyone so comfortable sharing their unsolicited opinions? I’m not talking about general rudeness here, like when someone says,” I liked your hair better without bangs,” or “I didn’t think people with your skin tone could wear pastels.” No, I am talking about when people boldly question your judgment, decisions, or choices, as if you owe them an explanation. Not everything is a democracy or open for debate. If I didn’t ask for your advice, then don’t give it to me.

My small sense of outrage is coming to you live from the front seat of my brand new car, since my only free time these days is spent sitting in line waiting for the last bell to ring at school. And yes, I did say new car. New new, not new used. Brand spanking new. Newborn new. When I saw it for the first time today at the dealership and noticed what looked like a scratch in the paint on the passenger side, I made them take it back and buff that fucker off. Because it is so new, it can’t come pre-scratched. If my car is going to get a scratch, let it happen in the Target parking lot, not before it even leaves the dealer.

You know how you talk to your peeps and they ask you what’s new? Well, I told some of them I was going to buy a new car. And the first response, almost always, was why? Was there something wrong with my old car? How old was it, anyway? Four years? That’s not old. How many miles did it have? Sixty-four thousand? That’s not even high mileage. Did I need a new car? Jesus, it’s not like I was adopting an orphan crack baby or a new kitten. Why the new kitten? Was there something wrong with the old one? Did it die? No, I just wanted a new kitten.

Even my daughter’s friend felt comfortable in engaging me about the reasons for my new purchase. She just moved here from France, so she has a unique perspective, combining a child’s natural curiosity with a mild distrust of American consumption. I found myself trying to justify my choices to a nine year old, one who in fact doesn’t understand the idea of a family having two cars, let alone buying one when the old one still works.

This is the one and only time I am offering up an explanation. Buying a new car is not such a rash, impulsive thing. Nothing was wrong with my old car, unless you heard me braking, in which case nothing was wrong with it that couldn’t be fixed. It was four years old. It was no longer under warranty. It was in need of new tires soon. It was on the brink of no longer getting a good trade-in amount.

I bought my new car through Costco’s auto buying program, proving that yes, you really can get everything you want or need at Costco. Employee pricing. All manufacturer’s rebates. Owner loyalty discount. And a $500 Costco gift card. That’s a whole lot of pita chips and paper towels.

The car that I bought also comes with five years of free maintenance. It was, in essence, a sweetheart of a deal. I would have been a fool to not consider it seriously. My husband and I hemmed and hawed for a good month. He researched blue book values. He cleaned the interior. We compared interest rates. When we looked at the numbers, we realized we could get this new car for less than what we paid for the old car four years ago. If we didn't get it, I could still drive my car for a few more years, and repair things as they broke. But this deal had a time limit, and the time was almost up. All the pieces fit right in place, and it just made sense.

So I gave you the detailed rationale of why I got a new car. Here’s the short answer. I wanted a new car. I wanted one, and I could afford one. So, I bought one. Not only that, I replaced my old car with the same exact car. I liked my car just fine. I don’t have any adjusting to do. I didn’t even have to test drive it. And maybe this time, I might actually read the manual to figure out the cock-a-mamie cruise control. I didn’t have to do any getting used how the new car drives. I knew exactly how it drives; it drives like my car, only without goldfish crumbs under the floor mats and little dings all over the steering wheel.

I remember when it was normal, even expected, that people would buy a new car every four years. Some people chose to lease a vehicle, which meant they had new wheels every two or three years. But times got tough, and as people bought cars they couldn’t really afford, that four year financing stretched to five and six year loans. And the next thing you know, I am the only person buying a new car, and practically everyone else is giving me crap about it. I am just stimulating the economy. I am just exercising my consumer confidence. I am just being patriotic. And while I’m doing all that, I am also enjoying the new car smell.

Vignette Vinagrette

As the majority of you pack up your holiday decorations, you are ready to put the festive season behind you, start that new diet or gym membership, and hope to stick to your New Year’s resolutions. It was all fun and games, but now it is time for a return to the daily routine. Moms everywhere are glad for the start of school and the opportunity once more to have a daily slice of peace and quiet.

Well, I have one more week to go. My youngest daughter’s birthday is this week, exactly two fast weeks after Christmas. While most people are glad to get rid of the leftovers, stash the wrapping paper, and find homes for all the new stuff, I am still shopping, cooking, cleaning, and party planning. It is hardly S’s fault that she was born three weeks early and so soon after Jesus’ celebration that her birthday becomes the last thing on my exhausting to-do list of the holiday season. So, rather than bitch and moan about the eleven girls coming over for her birthday party, or the fact that I have to figure out what to get for the girl who literally got everything she ever wanted two weeks ago, I will instead treat you to a few of my favorite recent stories featuring S.

S wanted two Webkinz for Christmas. Webkinz are stuffed animals with a special code included for the Webkinz website, where your child can spend more sedentary hours in front of a computer screen playing with a virtual version of the stuffed animal you just paid $14.95 for her to ignore. Luckily, S doesn’t give a crap about the website; she prefers to sleep with the Webkinzes, dress them like hobos and gypsies in old rags, and talk for them, which is cute for a child to do, but scary when it’s the adult next to you on some form of public transportation.

Anyway, the two Webkinz she got were a llama and a walrus, which S refers to as a “sea pig.” We saw a walrus last year at Sea World, and it resembled Jabba the Hutt more than a creature from our planet. She was fascinated by it, but couldn’t remember what it was called. So she renamed it sea pig, and now she is in love with them. I am sure that love will last until she catches a National Geographic documentary that involves a walrus hunting, killing, and eat a baby seal, or possibly even walrus coitus. She named the walrus Whiskers, which makes him sound like the town drunk.

The llama she named Spray, for obvious reasons. It is currently sporting a jaunty scarf crocheted by E, my other daughter, and has two barrettes on its ears for earrings. If you get to close to Spray, S will stick it in your face and make a spitty hissing sound.

Clearly, this is not a child who is into all things Hannah Montana.

S has been channeling my dead grandmother lately.

For starters, she refers to all sorts of things as “good-looking.” She came downstairs after getting dressed and announced she was wearing a “good-looking” outfit. She called the neighbor’s Labradoodle a “good-looking” dog. I made a “good-looking” turkey for Christmas dinner. The only thing missing from her delivery is a finger gun pointed at you when she says it.

S was in the Nutcracker before the holidays and had to wear tights and a leotard before changing into her costume. On the first night of stage rehearsal, every girl in the theatre came up to her one at a time to let her know they could see her underwear peeking out of the leotard. So, like my grandmother used to do, S decided to go bare back. Muby (that was what we called our grandma, a combination of Mom-mom and Bubby) used to wear her nude and suntan reinforced toe pantyhose with nothing underneath, because she believed the panty was built in. Watching S pull her pink tights up to her armpits with everything cleaved brought back childhood memories of my grandmother waltzing around her bathroom in a fresh pair of L’eggs, dabbing some brown Estee Lauder on her pulse points. I am still haunted by that sight.

The other morning, on the way to school, S and I were stopped at the red light near Chick-Fil-A. Chick-Fil-A is without a doubt her favorite fast food, and pretty much the only place we will pick up from when I don’t feel like cooking. She can put away a whole chicken sandwich by herself, as long as you remove the limp pickle slices, because she doesn’t like pickles, but likes the way the pickle juice makes the bun soggy. She eats Chick-Fil-A often, so I was surprised when S said to me, “I finally get that Chick-Fil-A sign.” You know, the one with the large fancy C that looks like a chicken? “What did you think it was before?” I asked her. “A big squiggle with some weird blobs,” she answered. “Maybe that’s the Polynesian sauce,” I said.

We had friends over to celebrate New Year’s Eve. All the kids went upstairs to hang out, but they couldn’t decide what to play. What began as a discussion dissolved into a big argument. S tried to separate her friends to stop the fighting. One of the girls came downstairs and reported, “S is putting everyone in time out.” We had to think of another solution other than S disciplining her peers. I think it involved a DVD and some chocolate.


S turns eight this week, and I expect she will continue to treat me to delightful stories for the next year as well. She is easy with a smile and a laugh, prefers skipping to running, and still wants hugs and kisses. And I always know that no matter what I think about something, S is guaranteed to have a perspective I never would have thought of, which is a great reminder that she is her own person. Happy birthday, baby!