The End of an Era

     Today was my younger daughter’s last Religious School class. After thirteen years of going most Sunday mornings during the school year, she, much like her sister did two years ago, will find herself able to sleep late on Sunday mornings. She will no longer be able to complain about getting out of bed or getting dressed or sitting in the sanctuary with a bunch of wild younger kids or singing along or trying to make friends with kids that she doesn’t have much in common with outside of her religion, such as it is. Her faith may not have stuck after her many lessons about Judaism, but her Jewish identity is strong, for which we have religious school, and the rabbi, to thank.

     She started when she was three, attending a monthly pre-school class that did not always hold her interest. As a three-year-old, she was head-strong, stubborn, and non-compliant, which dominated both her Montessori experience as well as her religious school hours. No one had determined yet how to make her participate in anything she didn’t want to do. I recall her pre-school teacher at temple asking me if she understood how to color, or if she even knew her colors. I knew she just didn’t want to do what she was told to do, and she didn’t want to do what the other kids were doing, and pretty much fuck you, but in a three-year-old way.

     When kindergarten started, everything changed. A girl her age joined her religious school class, and suddenly, she had an instant friend with whom she could relate, rather than the rest of the class, all boys who liked boy things and didn’t appreciate her passion for fashion or stuffed animals. The new girl did, and they became best friends.

     Suddenly, we had another family to be Jewish with. We celebrated holidays together. We had cookouts. As the girls got older, they had sleepovers at both of our houses. We took vacations together and generally looked out for one another.

     When fifth grade ended, her best friend, along with the rest of her Jewish family, moved up north, where they quickly assimilated into a community with probably ten times the number of Jews, if not more. My daughter went back to being the only girl in a religious school class of boys at a time when they were all on the verge of middle school and puberty. It wasn’t an easy adjustment for her.

     She rallied a bit for her bat mitzvah, and because she loves our rabbi, she agreed to continue past her b’nai mitzvah year to confirmation. Those few years saw more of her religious school class leave, either just because they had enough, or, like her best friend, they moved away. She tried to be involved with the youth group as a way to stay connected to her Jewish peers, but the experience wasn’t really for her, even if she did make a few friends.

     Which brings us to this year, her confirmation year, her last year of formal religious school education. She half-heartedly continued to join in youth group events out of obligation, but she made a point of being present and engaged for her class with the rabbi. It was her and one other boy, the only two who made it all the way from the beginning together. They are friends and share a bond that comes from shared experiences, but I suspect they too will grow apart as their paths diverge with each of them going to different high schools and having different interests.

     They have one joint shabbat service left, and then, well, it will probably be high holy days and holiday celebrations at home here on out. In a couple more years, she will go to college, and she may or may not decide to participate in Hillel or other Jewish college groups. She may take her Birthright trip, or she may never make it to Israel. And as she grows up, she may get married and have children and have to decide if she too will enroll them in religious school so that they can understand the faith that goes along with the culture.

     In the meantime, we can sleep in or go out for brunch on Sunday mornings. Our lives will spill over into that time slot that for over a decade was devoted to being Jewish, and chances are pretty good, at least for now, that another time slot won’t open up on a different day to replace it. Will she miss it? Will I? Does anyone miss going to religious school?

     Thirteen years ago, I drove her to religious school. Today, she drove me home from the temple. It feels so final. Of course, we can go to temple whenever we want, but will we? 

Is This Organic?

Do you ever think some people take the organic food trend too far?

I started buying predominantly organic food for my family about seven years ago. When I first had my girls, I bought organic milk because I was concerned about the added hormones. I didn’t want my daughters to start first grade and their periods at the same time or fatten up for slaughter. As our household income went up, I started adding more organic and local foods to our weekly grocery shopping because we could afford it, gradually replacing most of the conventional food we ate. That organic shit ain’t cheap, my friends.

Nowadays, my weekly grocery shopping has turned into an almost every day errand. I rotate between three to five stores, depending on what’s on sale and what I am planning to cook. With the amount of fresh produce I buy, I do have go shopping more frequently because we either finish it all or it spoils without all those chemicals to keep it in pristine condition past its prime. It’s practically a full-time job, all the grocery shopping and cooking. I don’t mind really, unless something goes wrong, like when the free-range chicken is spoiled or when I crack open an avocado and find a giant pit surrounded by dark brown bruises mocking me.

Sometimes, it’s something worse.

Last night, I made what I hoped was a healthy and tasty meal for my people. I had vegetarian Italian sausage, which I happen to love because it doesn’t contain gristle or indeterminate white hunks, and a large bunch of green kale. I sliced the “sausage” and sautéed it with chopped onions and red pepper strips. After I stripped the kale from the thick stems, I rinsed the leaves in a colander, shook off the excess water, and chopped them before adding them and minced garlic to the pan. Salt, pepper, a splash of chicken broth, also organic, went into the pan to simmer while whole wheat rigatoni boiled in a pot of kosher sea-salted water.

I made up dinner like I usually do, pretending I am on “Chopped” or some other cooking show where you have a few random ingredients and have to make a tasty entrée to present to the judges. In my case, the judges are my family, none of whom particularly like any of the same foods. One hates the fake sausage. One detests kale. One thinks rigatoni is stupid. My goal isn’t so much to impress my panel, but rather to see if I can create a dish that none of them thoroughly enjoy, except for me, because I pretty much love everything I put in it. That’s the benefit of doing the cooking. If they don’t like it, they can take a turn at the stove.

I do get some comments, usually in the form of a backhanded compliment, like “this sausage doesn’t have a funny aftertaste” or “the kale doesn’t taste as bad as I expected.” You can imagine how motivating the feedback is.

Three of us sat down to eat the rigatoni with Italian vegan sausage and kale, presented in lovely porcelain pasta bowls, with a sprinkle of chopped parsley and shredded parmesan. The missing person, S, was at her dance class, but rest assured there would be plenty for her to sample when she got home. Everyone enjoyed it.

My husband devoured all of his, even though he doesn’t really care for any of the foods individually, including the pasta. I am married to the only man I know who hates noodles of all shapes.

I was attempting to mindfully eat my food, enjoying the contrast of textures and flavors, taking time to chew thoroughly and really taste it.

My oldest daughter, E, tends to unhinge her jaw and swallow whatever is on her plate in one breath. The pasta was no different, except she left a small pile of vegetables at the bottom of the bowl, which she moved around with her fork. We chatted about our days, and she sat, listening to or ignoring us, playing with the few leaves of kale.

Then she freaked out.

She threw her fork down and stood up, open mouthed, hands on either side of her face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” my husband, her father, asked.

“Bug! Oh my god, there’s a bug in my bowl! There’s a bug! I almost ate a bug!” She paced around the kitchen sink, open mouthed, not really gagging, but you could tell she wanted to. “I’m gonna be sick! I almost ate a bug! Didn’t you wash it? What if I ate its eggs? I’m going to die!” E was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.

“Of course I washed the kale! I washed it and dried it and then chopped it. Are you sure it’s a bug?” I defended myself, feebly, because it really didn’t matter what I said. She was already over the edge.

“Look at it! It’s got legs and eyes! I know what a bug looks like! I almost ate it! I’m going to be sick!”

“Just calm down,” my husband said. “Lots of cultures eat bugs all the time. Protein. We have a certain allotted amount of insects and feces in all of our processed foods. You don’t think you eat bugs in every bowl of cereal, anything that contains flour?”

“You’re not helping,” I said. I picked up her bowl and took a peek. All I saw were chopped leaves of kale. Except one of them had an interloper, a small oddly shaped insect with its legs compactly folded against its exoskeleton. “Yep. It’s a bug. I think it’s a stink bug.”

“I’m going to be sick!” she shrieked and ran upstairs.

I showed the bowl to my husband, who pushed it away. “I don’t want to see that,” he said.

“I kind of wish she ate it, She would have never know it was there,” I said, looking at my own bowl, which contained the rest of my dinner. “I really liked that. I guess we have to throw the rest away.”

“Well, I’m not eating it,” he said.

“So, I guess I can’t really save some for S when she gets home from dance, huh?”

He gave me a look.

I got up and dumped the rest of the meal into the garbage. Then I went upstairs to soothe E, who was in her bed, looking at her phone.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I could have eaten that. I probably ate its eggs. It’s probably infesting my intestines as we speak. I’ll be dead before breakfast.”

“Seriously?” I said. “There are no eggs implanting in your digestive tract.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because I cooked it. No eggs would still be viable. I suppose that’s the end of kale for a while, huh?”

“Six months at least. No leafy greens for at least six months,” E declared.

“But it’s salad season,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“At least you know it was organic,” I said before gently closing her bedroom door and going back downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes and mourn the rest of the meal, lying in the top of the trash can.

When S got home from dance, she ate a frozen dinner, but it was also organic. 

Kids Say the Darndest Things

When kids are young, they love to share things they’ve learned with their parents. I remember those days well. My daughters, E and S, always seemed eager to tell me about school. Maybe it was something that happened on the playground, or a lesson about their favorite animal, or maybe learning about the moon or the planets. Everything was new to them, and they were pure and innocent and curious.

Now, my two girls are teenagers, and while they probably tell me way more than their friends tell their parents, it is just not the same. Maybe it’s because, at 16 and 14, they are already a bit jaded and burned out from too much homework and being able to tell when assignments are a waste of time. Maybe it’s because they are not learning anything new that’s worth mentioning. Truth be told, there is less excitement over, say, logarithms then there would be over manatees. Even the stories of their classmates are more shocking than amusing. Let me illustrate that point for a second.

S (about two weeks ago): Hey Mama, you know that boy who is always looking at my butt? Well, he got suspended for a week for making Lean in the bathroom. I won’t have to deal with him breathing on my neck in math! Praise the Lord!

Lean, for those of you who are neither the parents of teenagers nor in the hip-hop community, is a recreational beverage involving codeine cough syrup, Sprite or Mountain Dew, and a Jolly Rancher candy. Also, this boy likes to make my daughter uncomfortable regularly. It’s not just her and not just that boy; it’s kind of how a lot of middle schoolers interact with each other. Perhaps you remember?

Here’s another one.

E: Hey Mom, guess what happened at school today. This girl got into a big argument with this asshole boy that no one likes and today someone spray painted a large blue dick on the side of her car and it was probably him cause he’s done that kind of thing before. And her car’s white! Ha! That shit isn’t coming off without a fight.

These are the teenage equivalent of what happened at school today. It’s enough to make you not want to ask anymore. The stories tend to involve girl fights, drug arrests, or naked snapchats from the 8^th grade mattress back that the whole school sees. We have moved past the conversations about showing kindness and compassion or not joining in on the gossip because what if it were them. According to both of them, all the stories are true, all the time. And sometimes they are documented, so even if they do sound fucking ridiculous, they can still be true.  They reassure me they don’t talk like this at school, but save it up for me when they get home.

I don’t really feel reassured.

For the record, my kids go to pretty good public schools. Mostly affluent area of town, lots of overachievers and competition for good colleges and honors and AP classes. Also lots of entitled brat narcissists with Jeep Wranglers and a pocketful of Mom and Dad’s prescriptions. Seriously, what is the definition of a good school today?

Every once in a while, however, they will come home with something new they learned, and it’s almost magical, that despite the fact that they, nay, all teenagers, know everything, they can still learn something new.

E, who is almost finished with her sophomore year, came home all excited a few weeks ago. Normally she comes home and scowls, eats anything she can find in the pantry, and then lumbers upstairs to sleep it off. Sometimes, she comes home and cries. Excited is not usually what the coming home looks like.

E: Hey Mom, do you know how sloths mate?

Me: Um, no. Should I?
E: Yes, you should. I’m going to tell you all about it. It’s really cool. The female sloth gets all worked up, but she is too lazy to leave her tree, right?
Me: Right.
E: So to let the male sloths know she is ripe and ready, she starts to scream, like this.

E emits this high-pitched screech. It was quite unpleasant, like a girl who sees a bug in her bathroom or when two girls run into each other at Target. Here is an actual sloth making the same sound:

Me:  I get it, you can stop now. So then what happens?

E: Well, she just hangs from the tree, screaming like that. And then a male sloth might hear her and think, oh snap, it’s time to smash…
Me: Where did you learn this, exactly?
E: Just wait, so he gets out of his tree and follows the scream sound until he finds her.
Me: And then what happens?
E: They smash.
Me: When did smash become a thing?
E: You’re old. It was always a thing.
Me: So what do they do?
E: They mate. I told you.
Me: Well, what’s so special about sloths mating? I thought that was the point of the story.
E: It was mostly the scream.
Me: Ah. Thanks for sharing that. Great story.
E: Why don’t we have anything good to eat?

If you have little kids, talk to them every day. Act interested in all the stories. Comment and really participate. Because one day in the not -too-distant future, those stories will either stop altogether or morph into something you aren’t sure you want to hear.

 

Dress to Kill

School began two weeks ago, and I am already tired of fighting about clothes.

My 15 year old daughter, the older and least responsible of my two children, has been pushing my buttons over what to wear to school in the mornings. She refuses to pick out her clothing the night before, no matter how many times I ask her to or threaten to do it myself. Instead, she waits until the moment she should be getting in the car to decide on something questionable at best, making her late and causing an argument at the same time. We both start the day in a bad mood.

I wish I understood how this game is played.

Before school started, we did the whole back to school shopping thing. She has pretty high standards in attire, which I indulge due to a combination of Jewish guilt and a childhood of wearing hand me downs or just going without. There was no such thing as back to school shopping in my childhood experience, so I admit, I overcompensate for my girls. I prefer things be on sale, but I understand that some jeans cost a hundred bucks, and I rationalize buying two pairs if they last the whole school year.

Despite the trips to Anthropologie and Lucky Jeans, my daughter claims, falsely, to have nothing to wear. Honestly, when you look at a lot of her clothes, her Birkenstocks, her ripped jeans, her oversized beige cardigan sweater, she looks like a wealthy homeless person.

What she does have, in addition to her Big Lebowski chic, is an entire wardrobe of summer only clothing, things that don’t follow the rather specific school dress code. The code involves things like no spaghetti straps and no shorts more than three inches above the knee and no yoga pants or leggings and no jeans with tears or shreds or rips and absolutely no midriff showing ever because bare stomachs are like windows to your vagina.  I don’t know if you have gone shopping for teenage girl clothing lately, but the only things available are specifically what the school prohibits.

I would like to point out that the dress code issue is primarily one for girls. The boys don’t have to worry about spaghetti straps or yoga pants or short shorts. They might have an issue with inappropriate graphic t-shirts or wearing loose pants too low, but other than that, they don’t generally get sent home for being a distraction. Not that there’s a double standard or anything.

What would solve this problem, in theory, are uniforms. If we went in the khaki pants and polo shirt direction, we might have the issue of mine is nicer than yours, but we wouldn’t have the problem of how short is too short in a dress.

The other morning was particularly rough.  At 7:30, the exact moment my daughter is supposed to back out of the driveway, she stood upstairs at the balcony overlooking the family room and said, “Does this look good?”  She was wearing an old stained white cami top, an unbuttoned chambray shirt, and a pair of pants that she got from a friend who outgrew them. They are somewhere between a yoga pant, a sweat pant, and a pajama pant, none of which meet the dress code.  I refer to them as her clown pants.

“It looks okay, I guess,” I said.

“That’s exactly what Dad said,” she groaned.

“Well, I guess the consensus is it’s an okay outfit. Do you know what time it is?” I asked.

“I’m going to be late and I have nothing to wear and you don’t like this,” she complained. “I wear shirts like this all the time. It’s no big deal.”

“I don’t care about the shirt, it’s more the clown pants I don’t like’, I said.” But I am not the one wearing them.”

“I guess I have to change,” she yelled as she ran back to her bedroom.

Five minutes later, at 7:35, she stomped down the stairs. This time she was wearing a short black dress with the same chambray shirt open on top. The dress was not three inches above her knees; it was about two inches below her butt cheeks. “I’ll probably get sent home for this,” she said.

“Then why did you put it on?” I asked her.

“It’s really short. I know I’ll get in trouble for it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. I am pretty sure she was waiting for me to say it was fine or not to worry, which I was not about to do.

“I’m late and this is all I have,” she said loudly, not quite a scream, but almost.

“Why did you take off the clown pants?” I said.

“You didn’t like them, but they fit dress code,” she snapped.

“Well, I didn’t tell you to change. But I am now. You can’t wear that to school, so you better go change again. Why don’t you wear one of those short sleeved shirts I bought you a couple of weeks ago?”

“I don’t want to wear one today,” she said.

I just stared at her. “Sure am glad I took you shopping for things you could pick out and then reject,” I muttered.

“I don’t have time for this!” She finally reached the yelling stage.

“Make time for it,” I said. “Now. Go change into something that isn’t going to get you in-school suspension. I am not about to bring you a change of clothing because you wore something you know you shouldn’t.”

She stomped back up the stairs and slammed the door. I continued to eat my breakfast.

Five minutes later, at 7:40, she came barreling down the stairs. She had on the original cami with the chambray shirt and a pair of jeans.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked.

“Thanks a lot for ruining my morning and making me late,” she pouted as she grabbed her lunch box but left her water bottle on the counter.

“My morning isn’t exactly off to a good start either. Don’t forget your water bottle!” I said.

“I don’t have time to stop for it,” she said.

“But you have time to have a fight about it!” This time I yelled at her.

She slammed the door and left, leaving me to wonder how fast and careless she would drive. Did I mention she was fifteen? Fifteen year olds aren’t known for their ability to compartmentalize their emotions and focus on being safe or cautious.

When she was a little girl, she and I would spend time together every night before her bath and bedtime picking out an outfit for the next school day. She would lay it out, finding matching socks, maybe a hair ribbon, so she was all ready to learn bright and early the next day and look sharp while doing it. Now she is a few years away from a college freshman who sniffs the armpits of a t-shirt to see if it is clean enough.  

I blame the school dress code.

Run for Your Life

Last summer, my older daughter E began training for the high school cross country team.  It didn’t really involve me much, so I didn’t mind. I didn’t have to drive her often, and since the season had not officially commenced, I didn’t have to sit through races or relays or meets or whatever it's called when cross country teams compete against each other.  She carpooled most mornings with a generous mom in the neighborhood who liked to get her morning run in while the team ran their designated course or did their conditioning, which mostly involved lots of crunches and planks on old beach towels in the parking lot. The park did feature a sexual deviant who hung out in his car and watched until some vigilant parents alerted the authorities, but he never really interacted with any of the kids. All in all, it was a good season, and E enjoyed it enough to go for another year.

This summer, E hasn’t really gotten into the team spirit. We spent much of the summer traveling, which put a real damper on the training and conditioning. She packed her running shoes for our trip to London and Paris, but she really didn’t have time to use them. Running in another country isn’t the kind of thing you do as a novice runner or a novice traveler, and she was both. Her running shoes sat unused for the whole trip.

We went to the beach soon after, and again, she wasn’t much in the mood for training. The beach has all that humidity, even in the wee hours of dawn, and you have to be a pretty devoted runner to get up before sunrise to get moving before the temperature surpasses the humidity level.  Add to that her fifteen years, her general ennui, her love of sleeping in, and yeah, ain’t nobody got time for that. We did have plenty of time for croissants and pastries overseas and hush puppies and ice cream at the beach. E is a trooper though, and she came home and cold turkeyed most of that at the same time she started running at least three mornings a week.

Seriously, the struggle is real.

Her cross country season doesn’t start until the school year begins, but the coach encourages the team to condition all summer long. Since we’ve been back in town, E has been getting up and out of the house before seven to meet her fellow team members at the park across from the high school. The good news is the park is as sketchy as ever.

How sketchy? Well, let’s see. Last summer, as I mentioned, there was the constant presence of the pedophile in the parking lot. During the school year, the team would meet there and run after school, where they were joined in the park by the pot heads who would get high and harass them. The coach would encourage the burnouts to leave, but he never called the police. Honestly, what was he going to do, call it in every afternoon? At some point, he needed to do the business of coaching. It’s the kind of park where you expect to see broken glass and cigarette butts in the sand box and used condoms on the asphalt. It’s a real community park, open to everyone.

This summer has upped the ante. Last weekend, a gunshot victim was found in the park. I can’t say for sure if he was murdered there or just dumped, but regardless, a lifeless body was found with some exit wounds and no breathing. This is not the kind of thing a mom wants to hear.

I waited for some communique from the coach, an email or text or something to address this little piece of  bad news, something to reassure us parents that our children would be safe, that he took their welfare seriously, that their well-being mattered to him as much as their pace.

I am still waiting for that, by the way. I didn’t contact him myself because, let’s get real, I have a fifteen year old daughter who can barely function from all the mortifying humiliation I cause her. She begged me not to say anything, pointing out that the dead body had already been collected by the coroner and, therefore, the park had returned to the status quo. So I did nothing, waiting instead for E to let me know all was well.

I played twenty questions with her that first morning practice after the alleged murder. No, there was no yellow caution tape in the park. Yes, there was a clean-up crew pressure-washing the area of discovery.  No, there was no white chalk outline. Yes, there were still some mystery stains. No, the coach wasn’t there. Yes, the team captains were instructed to warn the kids about running alone. 

E also let me know there was a new sexual predator hanging around the parking lot, although she wasn’t sure if he was interested in the cross country high school team or the little league baseball team. She also reported that someone dug a hole in the back of the park and filled it up with dirty diapers, the stench of which almost made her puke.

For all you parents who have kids on other teams, take a moment to appreciate what you have. The kids who show up in the heat to play football on the practice field. The girls hitting the volleyball court hard. The basketball games in countless gyms. Those kids all do their sportsing in a designated sporting area, the school gym, the fields near it, the swimming pool. Not so the cross country runners, who like the big mammals of the ocean, need space and miles to do what they do best. These are as close to free range children as there are anymore, and for good reason.

I have to tell you, we live in a nice area of town. I shouldn’t have to worry about homicide, sexual assault, or illegal diaper dumping when I send her off to practice her team sport. I don’t want to discourage my child from participating, so I try to disguise my fears with some advice. You don’t have to be the fastest runner on your team, I tell her, just faster than the kid next to you.

A Bad Case of the Mondays

Do you ever have one of those days when everything irritates you?

The day started pissing me off during my 8:30 spin class.  I like going to spin class because it’s dark and the music is loud and everyone can work at an individual pace, so there isn’t a lot of competition. Unfortunately, my ADD inhibits my ability to tune out the people around me, but this morning was worse than usual.

Two women sat in the back near each other, and they managed to annoy about half the class. One of the ladies is regularly aggravating. She wears a baseball cap which she pulls down low on her face. She parks her phone in the center of the bike’s handle bar/water cage, and shops while she spins. She has no interest in doing what the instructor directs or what the rest of the class is doing. She just sits on her ass, pedaling slowly and shopping online. The light from her phone in an otherwise darkened room is pretty fucking rude, and if you don’t believe me, think about that the next time the douche in front of you checks his texts during a movie.

The other woman is another one of those misguided fools who thinks she knows better than the spin instructor.  Like her nitwit friend, she refused to do what the rest of us were doing.  Instead, she opted to add as much tension as the bike could tolerate before breaking, as she struggled for every turn of the flywheel. The bike wasn’t just under tremendous strain; it actually called out for help in a series of unpleasant mechanical noises louder than the music.

Have you been in a spin class? The music is pretty loud.

So here was this pair of ladies, one with the hat, shopping and barely moving, the other struggling to ride up Mount Everest. They decided that spin class was the perfect opportunity to have a very loud and animated conversation. I almost couldn’t hear the sound of the bike breaking over their chatting.

I go to the gym to exercise, to relieve stress, and yes, to socialize. I make a point of limiting my chit chat to the start of class or after it ends rather than solidly through the entire thing.  I might sing along with the music, but at least I am singing the song that’s playing.  I wanted to ride my stationary spin bike over to their corner and knock the hat off the one twit’s head while pushing the other one right off her seat.

After I left, I got in the car and drove around to run a few errands. I listened to the radio as I drove. I don’t have a satellite subscription, so I listen to actual FM stations like it’s 1992 in my car. The DJ on one station was talking about getting out his kilt tomorrow for St. Patrick’s Day. I wanted to call in to the station just to tell him what a moron he is.

Since it wasn’t the first idiotic St. Patrick’s Day comment I heard on the radio today, and not even the same station, I feel the need to say a few things.  First of all, I could give two shits about St. Patrick’s Day. I’m Jewish, not Irish. The only person of Irish descent that I know well is my piece of shit step-dad. I try not to hold that against the rest of the people from Ireland, so here goes:  I love potatoes.

While I am not down with the all the Irish stuff that goes into a proper St. Paddy’s Day celebration, I do know a few things.  Kilts are worn primarily by Scottish people. It’s called the Blarney Stone, not the Barney Stone. I don’t want to kiss you because you have a button or a green t-shirt, and just because you have red hair doesn’t make you Irish. We are not all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.

Also, the pressure to wear green is fucking ridiculous. I am tired of having a debate over turquoise and teal. You see blue, I see green. Can we agree to disagree without you feeling justified in assaulting me? Why do we have a holiday that allows for unwanted physical contact because we can’t agree on what green is? I don’t want to be pinched because I don’t own any green clothing that I am willing to show you. Leave me the fuck alone.

And while you’re at it, that applies to my children as well. Right now, I have a thirteen year old upstairs crying in her room because she doesn’t think she has enough green on her shirt to avoid being attacked tomorrow. The other one wore a green shirt today because she is fifteen and the brain doesn’t fire accurately. She does have another green shirt, but it has spaghetti straps, so she can’t wear it to school without something over it. I pointed that out to her but she wanted me to figure out the something over it part. “What do I look like, Stacey Fucking London?” I said to her. I love that she is fifteen and I can say fuck now.

Since I’m already venting, here’s a few more things. To my kid’s science teacher: Stop fucking assigning major projects with less than a week to work on them. Even a bank takes 5-7 business days to do a bank to bank transfer. Why does my daughter have to create a video or write a story or create a colorful comic book that is LOL funny in four days or less? Also, never write LOL on a rubric. You are just trying too hard, and I am pretty sure anyone who wants a project about digestion to be LOL funny isn’t going to be the best judge of funny.  You just gave the seventh grade free range to make fart and poop jokes in an effort to get extra credit.

Whew. I am starting to feel better.  Almost good enough to fold the laundry, except that all the socks are still wet because the people in my house refuse to unball them. UNBALL YOUR SOCKS, PEOPLE. I don’t mind doing the laundry, but have some common decency.  I have a feeling Lizzie Borden’s parents left their socks in balls, and they got what was coming to them. From now on, all the inside out t-shirts and underwear and balled socks will be folded in the condition in which they are found. If you want your undies outside out, you can refold them. I don’t care anymore.

 No, I am not pre-menstrual. I am just sick of today.

All That Glitters is Gold

Sometimes, I have a story I want to share, but I don’t think I have enough details to make it blog worthy.

Actually, this happens all the time, not just sometimes. I might have a thought, or see something on television or in public, or my kids, well, they still say the darndest things. It could be any of those, but those short anecdotes tend to lack the rising action and the denouement. Not that I am complaining about only having the climax, but seriously, we all need something to work for, don’t you think?

I might sit on one of those ideas, hoping to gather more information or find a way to stretch it out or embellish it for the sheer joy of writing and retelling and hopefully, for you, reading. More often than not, I just forget it, which is a damn shame, especially when I find an hour to myself to sit at my laptop and think, hmmm, what to say? Then what to say turns into yet another email or Facebook check, and the next thing you know, I’ve wasted that hour, and have nothing to show for it but a status update that only I find clever.

Can you relate to that? Sure, you can. I bet you waste all kinds of time. This is not a skill unique to me.

This is one of those stories. It’s not fully developed. It made me laugh and want to tell it to other people so that they too could laugh. Doesn’t everyone want to laugh?

Maybe not. My husband told me recently that everything I write is offensive, which might have something to do with the fact I have been doing less of it lately. This underdeveloped story might offend you. If you are offended by this or whatever else I write, do us both a favor and stop reading it. This ain’t no chicken soup for your fucking soul.

Here we go. An unfinished story.

My older daughter, E, is a freshman in high school. She is currently taking her only required year of physical education, unlike the semester required each year in middle school. She is in the middle of the sexual education unit of her class. In high school, this unit lasts for three weeks, which means they teach more than just abstinence. They also teach anatomy, so that you know what parts shouldn’t touch until G-d sanctifies that ring on your finger and you are free to procreate, according to the curriculum the conservative legislators agreed was appropriate and not necessarily based on science.

The boys are divided from the girls, so that they don’t get any funny ideas, like having sex with each other in the back stairwell. E literally stumbled across this one day while leaving class early. She actually tripped over a couple in flagrante delicto on the dirty stairs at noon in a high school. Oh, to be young again.

I asked E all the usual questions the first week of the unit (and is anyone else keeping track of how many times I say unit). My usual questions are things like “Do you have to dress out or just undress?” and “Do they divide you into partners or do you get to choose your own?” and “are they any group projects?” and of course, “Will there be an oral exam at the end?” I have asked these questions whenever the sex ed unit rolls around since the sixth grade, and like jokes about Uranus, they never get old.

This week, E came home and said to me, “I have a good story for you.” I love a good story. I settled back in my chair and waited. My thirteen year old daughter, S, sat across from me, pretending to do her homework.

“This boy in PE today asked the best question. You know it’s sex ed, right? Well, he asked the teacher if the clitoris is the same thing as the vagina!” E was delighted with herself. And does my child know me or what?

I honestly didn’t know that my fifteen year old knew what a clitoris was. This is the same kid who thought she put her tampon in the wrong hole the first time she used one a couple of years ago. I had to ask her if she had a tampon in her butthole because that is the only other hole down there that can accommodate one. She is still mad about that.

I was not surprised, however, that the thirteen year old doesn’t know what a clitoris is. She has yet to venture into the world of tampons, having a huge wrong hole fear. I keep telling her to grab a hand mirror and take a gander, but the idea of looking at her crotch is even worse than trying to plug it up by feel alone. Since we are stuck at this hole road block, we haven’t quite gotten around to discussing the happy bits. Obviously it isn’t a conversation my husband will have with her, but hell, I don’t want to talk about it with her either. Can’t she discover it on her own in the shower or near a pool jet like the rest of us?

After E told us what the boy said, S had a follow-up question, based on what she thought she heard.

“What is a glitter? Glitter? Did you say glitter? What does glitter have to do with a vagina?” she wanted to know.

“Is that a bunny in the back yard?” I quickly diverted her attention before I had to have that conversation that neither of us was ready for, certainly not over her Holocaust homework at the kitchen table.  E snorted and refused to answer her. Lucky for both of us, S didn’t remember she asked a question, as she was busy looking for the rabbit.

Later, I asked E if they actually taught about the clitoris, since they certainly didn’t bring that up in the sixth through eighth grades. She said the teachers didn’t say what it was for, just that it’s there, which means she is getting her sex education like everyone else, from the internet and her friends. She did say the class had to watch a rather awkward video about doing breast self-exams while the boys had to watch one about testicular self-exams. I have no doubt the majority of the class will demonstrate not on themselves but on each other over the weekend.

Except my daughter, whom I expect will remain abstinent until I no longer ask what happened in school that day, like when she is away at college or something.

Let’s pause here for an even shorter unfinished story. I know a woman whose husband is a lady parts doctor. He told me once about a patient who came into the ER with some sort of vaginal emergency. Again, this is a story lacking in details, except for one significant one. She had some sort of glittery hair gel with which she had styled her pubic locks. Glitter puss. I wonder if that was in the medical records.

Sometimes, maybe there is glitter near the vagina. And just perhaps the clitoris is such a fabulous little organ that we should start calling it a glitteris.  

Are you offended yet? I hope so, because I would hate for my husband to be wrong.

The Winter of Our Discontent

All the snow has almost melted. You can tell I don’t live in the Boston area because their snow is never going to melt. But here in South Carolina, it’s almost all gone. Staring out the window, I watch the small patch in the yard grow ever smaller as I listen to the trickle of the melted snow gurgle down the gutters. And you know, I don’t really care. We were supposed to get a school closing four to seven inches. We ended up with a measly inch and a half of wet slushy snow and temperatures well above freezing. I bet your kids are disappointed, aren't they?

Snow days aren’t like they were when my kids were little. I remember us getting all excited and having a serious plan about how to tackle a snow day. We made sure we had hot cocoa and movies and popcorn and board games or puzzles. We would be up and out the door by eight at the latest to tromp around in the yard, making pathetic lumpy snowmen or dragging the kids around in a laundry basket with a jump rope looped through the handle. We would stay outside until our fingers and toes burned from the cold wetness, then come inside and unbundle, hanging all the wet things on a drying rack my husband would set up by the door. If we were lucky, there would be a nap, but if not, there was always that movie to provide some down time before a second round of outdoor play would begin.

We don’t get significant amounts of snow where we live so we never invested in a good sled. We did break down and get a plastic snow disc, which was perfect for the gentle slope of the driveway and even the less than gentle hill near our neighbor’s house. We broke it last year, and none of us remembered that we needed to replace it.

Why is that? Well, now that our kids are officially teenagers, they don’t really care so much about rushing outside to play in the snow. One of my daughters spent the night at a friend’s house, while the other one slept in so long that the snow was all slush by the time she even opened her bedroom door. She decided that starting her homework was more important than going outside to look at puddles of melted snow. She also decided that staying in the same sweatpants she slept in sounded better than bundling up and getting wet. She did have a cup of hot cocoa, but truthfully, she didn’t earn it. I didn’t even offer to make her snow cream. And as quickly as the snow melted, so did the mild excitement, as the reality of another school day loomed on the horizon. Mostly, she felt cheated out of an extra-long weekend.

I made turkey chili in the crock pot. I did some laundry. I read a little of my book. It wasn’t even noon yet and I finished all the things I had planned to do.

My husband debated about opening his office while he played on his laptop, iPad, and phone simultaneously. In the background, the television blared the jarring sounds of CNBC. We all silently thanked the power for staying on, praised the internet for functioning, blessed our neighbors for not hogging the bandwidth.

Here is a conversation that we just had:

Me, walking into the family room: Whoa, did you fart?

My husband: No, I didn’t fart.

Me: It smells horrible in here. Are you sure you didn’t fart?

My husband: I would know if I farted, and I didn't. Maybe you farted.

Me: How could I have farted? I was upstairs folding laundry.

My husband: Well, I didn’t fart.

Me, silent judgment.

My husband: It’s probably the chili.

I only mention this conversation because my daughter, who was upstairs in her room doing her homework, yelled at us for arguing about who farted.


This is what happens when a family sits inside all day and doesn’t venture out to play in the snow.

Only one of us made it outside to stick a foot in the melting snow, and it was the indoor cat. We have a tradition of tossing her in the yard. It is for her own enrichment and does not warrant a call to Animal Control. I like to think of her as Puxatawney Phil. If she runs back in the house, we will have six more weeks of winter. And if she just doesn’t care for the snow, then spring is just around the corner. As usual, she hated it and us for continuing this senseless tradition.

 

If you still have young kids who like to play in the snow, be sure to join them. Have fun. I can’t very well go outside alone and play in the snow because that would be weird. My kids would make a vine of me and post it on their Instagram page, and my neighbors would drive by and wonder, yet again I’m sure, about the status of my mental health. It just isn't fun by myself.

I hate to be one of those moms who tells other moms to enjoy that time with their young kids because it is so fleeting. It’s true, but I refuse to say it. My teens would rather go back to bed or go out to Target than go in the yard. No one wants to snuggle up and watch a movie. They rather hide in their rooms and play on their phones. And in a few years, they will be at college playing drinking games or some other such inappropriate activity, and I will be lonely and worried about slipping and breaking a bone.

And seriously, we are all just ready for spring.

Gimme a Break

We are only a couple of days away from winter break, and I don’t know who is happier about it, me or my daughters.

Even five years ago, I wouldn’t have felt that way. Having my two girls home from school added the responsibility of activity director to my already ridiculous list of jobs. Not only did I cook and clean for them, but I had to entertain them too, or at least help them entertain themselves. It was fucking exhausting, all the arranging of playdates and planning of outings and baking of sugar cookies, which to this day I won’t eat if decorated by a child. Are their hands ever really clean?

Now that my babies are teenagers, they don’t require that level of interaction, but when they do, it’s more on their own terms and generally in small doses. Plus, they like to sleep, a lot, and I can go to the gym and be fairly comfortable they won’t set the house on fire or beat each other to death with Barbies. They can make their own hot chocolate and grilled cheese sandwiches. They know how to turn on the Blu-Ray player, and they are tall enough to reach it. In short, I don’t mind having them around.

They really need this break from school, and I really need the break from them bitching about school. I am not one to bash teachers. Teachers do a thankless job with no supplies for no money, and a lot of people discount what they do as not being real work. I value them, I appreciate them, and I support them. Well, most of them. The few bad ones, and it seems there is always at least one a year, those are the ones from which we all need a break. They are making my kids crazy, and my kids are making me crazy, and for two weeks, we get to stop the insanity.

My older daughter’s arch nemesis is her biology teacher. This is a woman who thinks she is cool because she wears palazzo pants and kicky little heels and slutty librarian glasses. She likes to use technology, Edmodo and homework assignments by text, because she thinks it makes her innovative. What she doesn’t like to do is be fair or grade work. She thinks if she tells one of her classes a detail about an assignment that the other three classes will somehow magically know the information as well, and if they don’t, well, that’s their problem. She likes to say that a lot: that’s your problem. She’s right, too. When she assigns projects the night before but doesn’t give them a rubric, when she decides to cancel the science fair work after the kids have already written a preliminary experiment, when she gives them an entire chapter on genetics to outline the night before she quizzes them on it, having never once covered the material herself, having never taught fucking genetics to a whole honors class of teenagers who actually want to be taught, it is their problem. So yes, we would all like a winter break from that bullshit.

My other daughter was blessed this year with not one but two of “those” teachers. She would like a break from the science teacher who prefers to cover DNA sequencing with a SpongeBob handout and teaches the parts of a microscope with a worksheet instead of a, you know, an actual microscope. She would also like a break from the social studies teacher who makes all the girls put their purses in a bin at the front of the room, who stands at the door with her hand out for assignments before the students are allowed to enter, who won’t let a student stand near her desk if she smells perfume or the kid accidentally coughed. This social studies teacher, who has already had them write a paragraph long definition of over three hundred vocabulary works, who makes them outline in great detail the entire textbook, then takes away points when the kids mess up their roman numerals since none of them ever learned how to actually do a technically accurate outline, this one we could stand a break from. I’m happy that my kid learning how to outline; what I mind is that she was somehow supposed to know it without ever being taught. Don’t you think if you want middle school students to format the homework in a certain way, you might give them a little clue on how to do it?

Every night, my children engage in a bitch fest that rivals the most disgruntled workers, bitching about how unreasonable some of their teachers are. They have a minimum of two to three hours of homework every night, and weekly group projects that they always somehow get stuck doing on their own. They are overwhelmed, and I don’t blame them. The homework they have assigned ranges from busywork to independent learning, which might benefit them in some ways, but on the other hand, aren’t they supposed to be teaching?

I realize that learning to deal with difficult people is a life skill that every student, nay, every person, must try to master. We all have had a horrible boss at some point, and we had to find a way to do what they wanted without going postal. Kids seem to have it worse because they have the potential to have up to six bad bosses at a time, each with their own unreasonable demands and narcissistic tendencies that young adults really don’t know how to navigate.  

For two weeks, I won’t have to listen to anyone bitch about the horrible Ms. Crotch Rot Douchebag and the crazy ass ho Mrs. Fuckface. If we are truly #blessed, we might even make it through the vacation without a project or paper, no ancient Greek epic poems to buy (hello, this is public school; why am I buying books??) and memorize, no cells to diagram or current events to debate. Just hot cocoa, sleeping in, presents, and fighting with each other, something we just haven’t had enough time to do.

It’s going to be a fabulous fortnight.

Ages and Stages

I spent the weekend alone with my fifteen year old daughter, and I have to say, I am exhausted. You know how when your kid is two or three and they have meltdowns and you don’t know why? Well, a teenager is just a larger two year old with a better vocabulary and the ability to use a toilet independently. The rest is pretty damn near the same. Let me illustrate for you.

Music. Your two year old wants to hear the same song over and over. I don’t know what the song is right now, but back when my teenager was two, it was pretty much anything by the Wiggles. I tried to throw in some Raffi or Disney soundtracks to stop my mind from melting, which backfired on me (“Boom Boom Ain’t It Great to Be Crazy?” No, it isn’t) but for the most part, it was a whole lot of “Fruit Salad (Yummy Yummy)” over and over again. The words still haunt me.

For our weekend together, we listened to Lana Del Ray and Alt-J, the Arctic Monkeys and Glass Animals. Then, for variety, we listened to more Lana Del Ray. My daughter described it as Ke$ha with more depressing music, which I do not consider to be a good sales pitch. I realize all rock and pop music has been about sex and drugs forever, but seriously, does every song have to be about sex and drugs? It’s not even sex or drugs. It’s sex and drugs, together. I had a long conversation with her about sex and drugs. Lana Del Ray played in the background.

Food. Do you fight with your two year old over eating breakfast? At least your two year old wakes up at breakfast time. My teen and I were at the beach for two nights, which meant we really only had one full day. She slept until 10:30, and that was with me waking her up every half hour, starting at 8:00, because she didn’t want to sleep away the day. But she also didn’t want to eat breakfast because she had big goals for the other meals.

Lunch was to be at her favorite sushi restaurant, which is the only place in the whole state where she will eat sushi, the place that is a mere four and a half hours from home.   We didn’t eat until two in the afternoon, and that was after a long walk on the beach and hitting her favorite surf shop. I still can’t believe I didn’t black out while driving the car.

And dinner? Well, here’s a fun one. She couldn’t decide where she wanted to eat dinner because she was too hungry. I drove for twenty minutes and named over fifty restaurants, all of which she vetoed. When she finally made a decision, a seafood restaurant we love, she ordered a bowl of French onion soup and a salad that comes with pecans and blue cheese crumbles and strawberries. She refused to eat the soup because she couldn’t figure out the melted cheese on top, and then she picked around the salad to just eat the nuts and berries and blue cheese crumbles out of the salad.  Where was the seafood, I ask you?

After eating less than a squirrel in the back yard, she declared herself full and wanted to know why it took so long to get our bill. Then, on the way back to our room, we had to stop at the grocery store so she could get a box of Drumsticks, those artificial tasting “chocolate” covered “ice cream” cones. She ate three of them before we even sat down to watch television.

Television. Yes, even television is a battle with a teenager, much as it is with a two year old. If you turn off the television, both will pitch a fit. And if you leave it on, well, forget all hopes of watching anything you want. While you parents of two year olds are watching Jake the Pirate and Mickey Mouse House or Club or wherever Mickey hangs out, the teen prefers a darker mix of programming. After the dinner and the ice cream, we hunkered down on the couch for a Netflix marathon of American Horror Story intermixed with episodes of Bob’s Burgers, just for a break from the sex and suspense. It doesn’t seem like the healthiest combination, but honestly, she saw all the seasons of American Horror Story on the iPad in her bedroom last summer before I figured out what she was doing up there. I wrongly assumed she was just touching herself inappropriately, but instead she was desensitizing herself to sex and violence by binge watching serial killers and weird sex. Oh well; chalk that one up to a big fat parenting fail.

Clothing. You know how you fight with your two year old over clothing?  Put on your shoes. Wear a jacket. No, you can’t wear your pajamas in public. Yeah, well, that is the same fight I had every time we left the condo. The teen thinks if she wears what she slept in while out in public, it’s almost the same as staying in bed. Granted, she does sleep in a sports bra and sweats, but still, at some point, those articles of clothing could stand to be washed. And when it’s freezing on the beach, a hat isn’t a bad idea. Or a jacket. Or sunglasses and sunscreen. Has she learned nothing at all about the weather and dressing appropriately in the past fifteen years? If she has, she certainly doesn’t want me to know it.

Bedtime. I know you are tired of fighting over bedtime with your two year old. Sometimes your little one is sleepy and admits it, but the rest of the time, your child will do anything to stay up late, even if you can’t handle a minute more. My daughter is the same way, except we aren’t having the fight at eight o clock; we are having it at eleven. I could tell her to go to bed five times between ten and eleven, but I will still be the first one asleep. While the two year old needs one more story or another stuffed animal or a drink of water, the teen needs to put on acne medicine or pluck one more stray eyebrow hair or just five more minutes of television, until the next commercial. I fell asleep before any of that was over. I have no idea what time she actually conked out, but it does make a little more sense why I can’t get her up in the morning.

 Yes, I don’t have to change diapers. I don’t have tantrums over taking away a toy or offering something other than macaroni and cheese for dinner. I don’t have to fret about biting or hitting at school. But I do have to buy overnight pads and argue over getting enough protein, dairy, and vegetables and obsess about cyberbullying and sexting, so I suppose it’s a wash.

I remember when my teen was a two year old. People would tell me that parenting doesn’t get easier, it just gets different. I don’t know; it seems pretty similar to me. It is definitely less physically demanding, but the emotional toll is greater. And the concerns are on a different level. I don’t worry if she will ever sleep through the night, and if she does, with a dry pull up. What I agonize about is things like peer pressure and drug use and inexperienced drivers and sexual assault and where is she going to go to college and how am I going to afford that.

Which makes me wonder…will I ever sleep through the night?

Trick or Treat

I don’t care how old my kids get, I still love Halloween. It’s the only holiday that is just for fun, and the expectations are always met. No gifts to buy, no giant meal to make and then overeat. You don’t have to get together with your extended family and justify the choices you made in life.  If you drink too much, that’s on you and not your overbearing mother and emotionally distant father. Just costumes and candy. What’s not to like?

My daughters are in middle and high school now. They don’t wear costumes to school. They don’t have class parties with healthy nut-free treats. One of them isn’t even going trick or treating this year, much to my disappointment. Even though I don’t think fourteen is too old, she does. I decided I would put them in a holiday mood by making them a special Halloween breakfast. Maybe if they started the day with some Halloween fun, it would last throughout the day.

For the majority of their lives, my daughters ate frozen waffles or cold cereal for breakfast. They were never the eggs and bacon types, and who has time for French toast and pancakes on a school day? It turns out that, lately, I do. Now that they can get themselves ready and dressed and put on their own make up and shoes, I find myself with a little free time in the mornings. So between the time I make sure they are awake, which is never, to the time we rush out the door to drive to school, I cook a hot breakfast based on each of their personal preferences. Lately, they have been enjoying a Waffle House experience right here at home. Eggs cooked to order, turkey bacon or sausage, an assortment of fresh berries or other organic fruit to garnish the plate. Seriously, it’s getting all kinds of nuts around here.

I decided to go with pancakes this morning. I saw a sweet little idea on Pinterest for pancake spider webs, and thought, hell, that looks easy. It’s not like I am making pancake portraiture like that stay at home dad/engineer who is making all the talk show rounds. Just a little pancake batter X and some lines to make web spokes. No big deal.

No big deal if you have a squirt bottle. If you don’t, like me, well, there is no way you are making an X or spokes or anything other than blobs. I tried a small ladle, but no matter how thin I poured the batter, those pancakes looked like a mess of fat sticks. Instead of spider webs, my children had 2D rats’ nest pancakes. They cooked unevenly, and even the addition of pumpkin pie spice for flavor was not able to overcompensate for the poor visual presentation.

My daughters went with politeness this morning, begging off any extra pancakes because they were sooo full. Which meant I had a half a batch of batter and no takers. I decided to switch designs and continued cooking. This time, I went with a sort of free form ghost shape, like a lopsided ghost from Pac Man.

Again, my design did not meet my expectations. The heads of the ghosts ended up wider than the bodies, except for the base of the ghost, which was sort of broad and almost bumpy.  In short, the ghosts looked like penises.  Pretty scary, I’d say, but not in the way I intended.

The teen noticed right away, and refused to eat any. The tween, who is as wholesome as Laura Ingalls, had no idea they might be anything other than the ghosts I claimed, but was too full of failed cobwebs to have one.

My husband drifted into the kitchen around this point.

“Hey honey, wants some pancakes?” I said sweetly. The teen choked on her disgusting green machine juice she has every morning. I don't know how she drinks that cup of algae. What is wrong with a good old American glass of OJ?

“Nah,” he said. “I’ll just have oatmeal, like I do every day.” I am sure he didn't mean for that to sound like a hardship, but then again, he did not yet have a cup of coffee.

“Come on, they're fresh, and I hate for them to go to waste.”

He agreed to vary his morning routine. I set a plate full of pancake cocks in front of him and asked one of the girls to pass him the syrup. I almost said something, but from somewhere, a filter surfaced and kept my mouth shut. My teen gave me the look, the look that a mother is supposed to give, no the other way around. My husband, oblivious to the unspoken conversation that took place in front of him, ate up happily.

After I cleaned up, I went upstairs to find my phone and texted the teen. “I just served your father a plate of dicks.” She replied, “OMG.” She also refused to take any pictures for me.

I certainly hope the mummy hot dogs turn out better tonight.

Just Say No

Do you remember that after school special starring HelenHunt, the one where she takes angel dust and jumps through a plate glass window at the high school? Well, I accidentally did the same thing to my cat.

Yoko is my nine year old kitty, a sort of almost long haired black cat with one stubborn white spot under her chin, which makes her seem less evil. She is smart in a creepy sort of way.  She is the one who taught herself to pee in the toilet by watching the humans in the house. She knows how to open several different door knobs. I’m convinced if she had thumbs, she would have already figured out how to murder us all and drive my car to Mexico.

One thing about Yoko that really worries me, other than the part where I shouldn’t trust her motives, is that she is underweight. She began losing weight about four years ago, but over the past year she has leveled out to a delicate almost eight pounds. For a few years, we, meaning the vet and I, were concerned that something was wrong with her. Not so concerned that we put her through expensive and ultimately unnecessary tests, but concerned enough that she had to go to regular weigh-in appointments like a newborn baby.  Now her weight is stable, if just below normal, and we are opting to continue with a wait and see approach. No one relishes the idea of doing bloodwork on a cat that makes doing bloodwork on humans her life’s calling.

It isn’t that she doesn’t eat. It’s that she doesn’t eat much. She is always first at the food bowl, but just nibbles daintily on a few little morsels, leaving the rest for my other cat, the one with the appetite of a starving goat, to swoop in and shove the rest in face like it’s the last meal he will ever eat. By the time she decides she is hungry again, she is left with a bowl of little bits of premasticated food that dropped out of the other cat’s mouth. It’s the cat equivalent of back wash, and I don’t blame her for not wanting to partake in that for snack.

I started buying her a variety of wet foods, hoping that would stimulate her appetite. I know it’s not as healthy as the dry kind, but seriously, Yoko is a bit of a bitch. I don’t know if I can handle her having a prolonged old age, it’s it a tradeoff I am willing to make. I decided to feed her the wet food when the pig cat was sleeping so she would be able to finish a meal undisturbed. Unfortunately, she has proven herself to be as finicky about wet food as she is about people.  Even the one brand she has agreed to sample will remain untouched depending on her mood, sitting on its paper towel, waiting for the constantly hungry cat to wake up and discover its aroma.

Yoko spends a good portion of every day standing in the kitchen near the paper towel holder, waiting for someone to come along and rip off a sheet. That is her cue to start caterwauling, as she believes that with every paper towel comes the promise of that precious wet food. I now have to sneak paper towels because of the constant screaming of food she won’t even eat.

I came up with what I thought was a great idea. One thing Yoko does like to eat is catnip. When I sprinkle dried catnip on the rug, she does exactly what she is supposed to do; she rolls around in it and licks it and her eyes get all dilated and she seems pretty relaxed, although maybe not exactly chill. I thought, hmm, what better way to stimulate her appetite than to sprinkle some of her catnip directly in the food bowl? She would smell is heady scent and then gorge herself before slinking away to somewhere secluded to sleep it off.

I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong. Yes, she loved the food. She buried her face in that bowl like she was going downtown. I don’t know if she ate more because I didn’t stick around to see how she responded. Instead, I went to my bathroom to get ready for the day. I was in there putting on my makeup when my older daughter, E, started screaming.

“Mom! Mooommmm!”

I generally ignore the first few bellows of Mom. If I rush right in, how will they ever learn to solve their own problems? I continued to apply my mascara.

“Moommm! Help! Mom! Yoko!”

Ok, now I had a clue. Yoko was probably threatening E in a menacing manner. Or more likely, E was annoying the shit out of Yoko, and Yoko was ready to retaliate. I dug around in my makeup bin for my lip gloss.

“Mom! Oh my god, Mom!” and there was a blood curdling scream, followed by a horrible thud.

I assumed E had fallen down the stairs and ran from my bathroom to find out what happened.  I found E at the top of the stairs, sobbing hysterically, her back sliding down the wall, until she sort of crumpled into a pile on the floor.

“What is going on? Are you ok?” I was genuinely concerned. I looked at her face and arms for bloody claw marks but didn’t see any.

“It’s Yoko. She fell, oh God, she fell from the bannister. Is she dead?” I could barely understand what she said, since it was all in gasping sobs.

I walked over to the top of the stairs and looked down. No cat.

“I think she is ok,” I said. “Why don’t you try to calm down and I’ll go see if I can find her.”

I ran down the stairs and looked around. No Yoko. She wasn’t in the front room. Not the hall way. Not the kitchen. I finally found her loafing under the dining room table, looking pissed off, like normal. I picked her up and moved all her limbs. As usual, she hated being touched.

I trotted back up the stairs to where E was still sitting on the hallway floor.

“She’s fine. Seriously.  What happened anyway?”

E tried to catch her breath. “It was horrible. I came up the stairs and she jumped right in front of me, on the banister. I thought she was going to attack me. She looked so wild. And I called for you but you didn’t come. And I called you again and that’s when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“She fell. She kind of jumped backwards, and she thought she could hold on. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She clawed at the railing on her way down. It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. She just fell, right in front of me.  I stared into her eyes as she fell. It’s the worst thing I ever saw, that fear. I thought she died.” E isn’t dramatic at all.

It wasn’t the first time Yoko had jumped atop the bannister, but it was the first time she ever freaked out and fell to the first floor. And I knew why.

“E,” I said. “I think it’s my fault. I kind of put catnip all over her food.”

“Wait, what? You got the cat high? Why would you do that?” She stopped crying.

“I thought it would make her eat more,” I said.

“So you thought if you put catnip all over her bowl, she would have the munchies? Good one, Mom.”

“I didn’t think she would try to fly. I just thought she would eat a little more. I guess I won’t do that again.”

“I guess not, Mom. I guess not.”

The Love Canal Disaster

You know how you hear a story that is so wonderfully funny you want to share it, even if it would cause someone else terrible embarrassment? If it happened to you, you probably would only tell a few privileged individuals, really close friends, maybe, people who share your sense of humor and don’t judge.   This is one of those stories. It involves things you might not want to read about, like periods and tampons. Also, you have no idea who this story involves. Don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know who it is about, so just shut up.  Names and details have been altered to protect the innocent and the mortified.  Stop it, because you don’t know who it is. Ok, kids, here we go…

Tampons are pretty routine for the long time user, but for a young girl who is new to them, they can be rather tricky. Some girls act like they are no big deal, but a great many  teenage girls balk at the mere idea of a tampon, the idea of sticking something inside their you-know-what, in order to absorb the worst thing that ever happened to them, that happens every month for like ever, well, it just can’t get any worse. The mere mention of a tampon sends fear to their very core, or possibly their vaginas, and that creates a big problem. Why? Because in order to use a vagina properly, it must be relaxed. A tense vagina is just not very forgiving.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

What happens when a vagina is too tense to accept the reality of a tampon? If it’s the initial stage, then that tampon just isn’t going to go in. Then you must resort to plan B, a pad, and everyone moves on with their lives until the next trip to the bathroom or, if not soon enough, the inevitable ruined pair of shorts and ensuing humiliation.

But here’s another scenario. What if you got the tampon in, but later, it doesn’t want to come back out? What if it’s in there like Punxsutawney Phil, scared of its own shadow or the light of day? How do you get it out?

It’s not unheard of. When I was in college, a girl in my dorm forgot she had a tampon in and inserted a new one. The two of them somehow knitted themselves together, and she had to go to the health center to get them extracted. Naturally, we all talked about her because that’s what girls do. I never understood how she didn’t know she already had one locked and loaded, but she could have been drunk or stupid or something.

Sometimes you just plain can’t get it out.  It isn’t that unusual, especially at the end of one’s cycle, to have a bit of dryness in the old cooch. If your flow isn’t heavy enough to saturate the tampon, it gets, well, stuck, too dry to be budged. After yanking on the string of a dryish tampon for a while, the vagina starts to have a panic attack, and bingo, the perfect storm, or drought, since we are talking about dryness here.

I heard this story about a teenage girl who couldn’t get her tampon out. She struggled with it for a good thirty minutes, but it wouldn’t move. She panicked, and that vagina went on lockdown. The girl did what she had to do. She texted her mother.

Her mother came to her aid. On the other side of the bathroom door, to ask how she could be of assistance. The girl explained that her tampon was stuck and that she didn’t know what to do. The mother offered a few suggestions. Relax, she said. Take a few deep breaths. The girl replied that she was beyond that and she needed real help, not new age meditative bullshit propaganda. The mother suggested that she open her legs wide in an effort to maybe help the vagina stretch and yawn and maybe spit the tampon out. The girl began to cry, convinced that she was not just going to remove the tampon, but that the uterus would come out as well. The mother asked to enter the bathroom, but the girl screamed for her to go away.

The mother, who was not fond of being yelled at, went into her room, and soon after, was joined by the girl. She had tears in her eyes, desperate for help. The mother thought and thought. She suggested the girl try a lubricant of some sort, perhaps the well-known brand KY Jelly. The girl stated she didn’t have such a product. The mother thought she had given the teen some when she began using the dreaded tampons, but she was, according to her daughter, mistaken. The mother told the girl she had some personal lubricant the girl could borrow.

This is where the story gets interesting. The mother realized that if she went to retrieve the personal lubricant, the girl would discover where she kept the product. This was a detail the mother did not want the daughter to know. She asked that the girl return to her bathroom and wait for the mother to return with the lubricant.

The daughter left the room, and the mother went to the father’s nightstand, where the personal lubricant was kept. Alas, when the mother removed the bottle, she discovered that the container was almost completely empty. She knew she couldn’t hand the empty lubricant bottle to her child. The day had been traumatizing enough as it was.

The mother devised a plan and joined her daughter in the bathroom. She instructed her child to close her eyes and hold out her hand, so that the mother could dispatch some of the lubricant into the girl’s outstretched palm. The child closed her eyes and opened her hand. The mother began to vigorously shake the lubricant bottle up and down, squeezing it over her child’s open palm. Nothing happened. The mother repeated the steps, up and down, squeeze.

Are you thinking of an empty ketchup bottle right now, one with just one glob of ketchup left at the very bottom? Good, you should.

Finally, with a loud wet noise, the bottle released the last dollop of personal lubricant into the teen’s open palm. The child was visibly disturbed by both the texture and the sound of the lubricant, and asked the mother what she was supposed to do with it. The mother instructed her to slather it around the opening of the vagina and perhaps a little inside if possible, and then to relax and open her legs wide and if everything went according to plan, the vagina would release its hold and allow the tampon to pass.

The daughter instructed the mother to leave the restroom at once, and to close the door behind her. The mother waited for about twenty minutes, but the daughter never left the bathroom. The mother texted the daughter to ask if it had worked, but alas, it did not. After more time had passed, the daughter had decided to take a shower, and the heat and the water were able to accomplish what the mother’s lubricant could not. They both decided to never discuss it again.

You should do what that mother and child resolved to do. Never discuss it again. Just be glad it wasn’t you.