Grace Period?

This school year has barely begun and already I'm worrying about where my ten year old daughter, S,  will be attending middle school. She is my baby, and in my mind, she just isn’t ready for the typical middle school experience, complete with mean girls and acne and periods and bullying, not to mention six different teachers and changing classes and lockers. My older daughter is in seventh grade at the closest middle school, and she comes home almost daily with a story of fist fights or make out sessions in the janitor’s closet or the weird girl getting doused with pig’s blood at the school dance. She has adjusted surprisingly well; she found her niche and is maintaining excellent grades. My younger daughter, however, doesn’t seem to handle change as easily. She still hasn’t made that many friends since she left her private school two years ago, and the one close friend she has made isn’t allowed to come over and play, either because we're white or because we aren’t Christian.

The alternatives to regular public middle school are limited in my town. There’s an excellent Catholic school, but she refuses to learn catechism at the same time she learns Hebrew, so that’s out. There’re also a few magnet schools, but honestly, we bought the house in which we live because the middle and high schools are allegedly so good. And then there’s the charter school.

The charter school is small, focused heavily on leadership, community, and academics, with small single gender classes. They insist on uniforms and eschew lockers. They don’t have arts or music or sports teams or electives or a fucking cafeteria, but they do have excellent test scores and creative teachers. Do I think it’s the perfect school for my daughter? No, but perfect doesn’t exist. It is, however, nice to have options.

I attempted to get my older daughter enrolled in the same charter school two years in a row, but no luck. It’s all based on a “lottery” because the state law provides for equal opportunity for admission to charter schools. That being said, the school still has other requirements for entry, including an application, attendance at a mandatory informational meeting, and after the lottery, a screening with the student, parents, and educators, all designed to make sure the school is a good fit for your child. I appreciate that, really. Why go through all the trouble to get your kid in some special school only to change your mind because you didn’t know about the uniforms and the 1:30 dismissal on Friday?

For E, my older daughter, I attended the meeting twice, sitting through the chairperson’s historical information about the school, the stern explanation of curriculum by the teachers, and the registrar’s specific instructions, an hour wasted on what could be easily read on their website from the comfort of my couch. I jumped through all the hoops, completed the application process, and waited for the lottery. The first year, she was 152 on a waiting list for sixty openings. The second year, she rose to 15 on the waiting list. I don’t even know if they had openings. Needless to say, she adjusted well to our zoned middle school and is doing swimmingly.

A friend of mine who has a daughter the same age as S reminded me it was time to attend the meeting for the charter school. I honestly didn’t give it any thought, since the idea of having to take my kids to two different public middle schools seems a bit on the indulgent side. But I would hate to be accused of not treating my daughters fairly, so I agreed to go with her to my third informational meeting in as many years. Why? Because parents are required to attend  the meeting any time they apply for a child, even if another child already attends that school or if they've attended in the past. Again, it has something to do with thinking about what is best for your child and not taking the cookie cutter approach to education, or some such bullshit.

My friend and I met at the W Road Christian Church, where the meeting was held. Nothing screams public school like meeting about it in a church, let alone one that refuses to specify a denomination. We walked into the sanctuary, clutching our completed applications, and found two seats together. The room was just five degrees shy of Hell, an attempt to make church goers reflect on what direction their lives of sin will take them. For us school meeting parents, well, we just drifted into that red-faced, near comatose place, the one where you move beyond “this room is hot” and head straight for bobbing and swaying in your chair.

The meeting was the same meeting I sat through two other times. I learned nothing new, not that I expected to. After daydreaming about the choir section, which was really cool in a clam shell kind of way, I studied the other parents and their children, judging them and also my chances of getting my daughter in the school. Mostly, I was just waiting for my little slip of paper to prove that I had attended.

After the meeting adjourned, my friend and I had one of those brief conversations about whether or not to ask them to accept our applications. At no point in the past hour did they mention taking applications at the meeting, which I pointed out to my friend. She was convinced if she explained to them she had the application all ready to go, they would make an exception for her and happily take it.

We walked up to a couple of teachers who were standing behind a display of textbooks. I stood slightly behind my friend as she mustered up the nerve to ask them if they would accept her paperwork. The younger of the two teachers launched into a polite, indirect spiel about why they don’t take applications at the mandatory meeting, going on and on about how every child is different and to process the information you heard to make the best possible decision for your child’s education. And then he said, “It’s kind of like a waiting period.”

That’s when I opened my mouth.

“Oh, a waiting period? You mean, like if we wanted to have an abortion?”

That’s what came out.

The two teachers stared at me, slack jawed. My friend knit her eyebrows together and grabbed my forearm, leading me out of the building.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” she said. “You can kiss your daughter’s chance of getting in that school goodbye.”

“Nah-uh,” I replied, “because they don’t know who I am. They don’t have this, remember?” I waved my application in her face.

“Well, if there’s a way to kick you out before you even get in, I’m sure they’ll find it. Jesus, and in a church, no less. We’re lucky the whole building didn’t burst in flames.”

“At least I didn’t say anything about a waiting period for buying a gun,” I said.

“You think that’s worse?” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

Next time, if there is next time, my husband is going to that damn meeting. Better yet, my daughter can go to the same school as her sister. Those teachers hear stuff like that every day. Hell, they probably have kids giving each other abortions in the locker room.  

Maybe that’s why they aren’t allowed to take coat hangers to school.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something...Red?

[THIS DISCLAIMER IS FOR MY SISTER. THERE IS PUKE IN THIS STORY, BUT NO PICTURES. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK]

 

My precious MJ is no more. She is now MJS; well, she is actually a Mrs. Yes, MJ got married. MJS freely admits she did it a little differently than some folks. She met a man. They fell in love. They made a love child. They decided to live together, and then she had their love child. He got a new job and moved out of state. She waited until her older daughter finished school, then they moved up there with him. They bought a house. And then, after all that other stuff, they got married.

MJS and her new husband, PS, aren’t naive. They have each been married before, and they decided that the best wedding for them, which isn’t necessarily the kind everyone else would plan, would be to have a small simple ceremony, just the two of them on the beach. They found a woman online who performed coastal weddings. Her name was something like Moonbeam Flowerpot or Petunia Shooting Star. I haven’t seen a picture of her, but I imagine she looks like something from a renaissance faire, with an odd colored full length dress and flowing white hair.

 MJS and her man left the kids with her parents and drove down to the beach. MJS wore white, so what? They stood in the sand, and Milky Way Snapdragon pulled an older couple off the beach to witness their union. The couple was having their photo taken on the occasion of their thirty fifth wedding anniversary, so what more can you ask for in a couple of witnesses, really. MJS and PS were happy, and they married and celebrated by eating too much dinner and then having an intimate moment or two. You know how newlyweds are. A few days later, they had a small wedding reception in the clubhouse of their neighborhood, and my family along with some of their close friends and family members joined them to celebrate their big day.

“What do you want for a gift?” I asked her before her actual big day.

“Don’t get me anything. You don’t get people anything when they are already living together and have a baby.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

She had not registered for gifts, and Emily Post didn’t have any great suggestions on what to get a couple that’s already done all the stuff people do after they get married. Hallmark doesn’t even make a card that says “You finally got married? Jesus, I mean Mazel tov!” She’s got dishes and sheets and baking pans and glasses and furniture. And a baby. But what could I do?

“You know what, I would love if you would bake the cake for my reception,” she said.

I love to bake, and I’m pretty good at it, but I am a home baker. My stuff looks like it came from your grandmother, not the Cake Boss.

“I’m happy to bake for you, but I can’t make it pretty.”

“I don’t care about that,” MJS said. “I just want your red velvet.”

"I can't make you a six layered cake. I only have one sized pan."

She decided I should make two separate cakes. We would put out the first, and when that one was finished, we would set out the next one, and hopefully have enough for all the guests.

The day before we went to the reception, I baked six layers of red velvet cake. As they cooled on the counter, I doubled a batch of cream cheese frosting in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I frosted and chilled and smoothed and frosted and chilled and smoothed until I had two separate three layer cakes. I evened out the icing and the cakes looked like they usually did, like someone baked them at home. They were a tad lopsided, with an edge of red poking out of the fluffy white. They were less like newlyweds and more like a tired old couple, the kind that gave up on sex and settled for companionship. I attempted dressing up the sides with white chocolate shavings, which had about the same effect as if I emptied my vacuum bag on top of them.

I loaded the cakes into a couple of coolers and  we drove up to North Carolina for the reception. That night, it didn’t matter what the cakes looked like. After a drink or two and a contented belly full of appetizers and lasagna, everyone just wanted something sweet. I sliced the first cake and served it and everyone was happy, especially the bride.

Red velvet cake is rich, and with thin slices, that first cake was enough to serve the small crowd. MJS packed up the second one along with the rest of the evening’s leftovers and took them home to enjoy for the next few days after all the company was gone. She had that cake, along with an apple cake her mother made, sitting against the back splash on the counter, ready for anyone to come along and help themselves to a slice when the mood struck.

Unfortunately, the mood struck PS’s yellow lab, Boone, before anyone else could get a hankering. While no one was looking, he stood next to the counter on his hind legs and used his front paws to scoot the cakes closer to the edge. Then he ate them. Over half a red velvet cake, and about the same amount of apple cake, choked down by one pig of a dog.

MJS was so upset. Gone was her cake for breakfast. Gone was a slice for afternoon snack for her daughter. Gone was the after dinner treat PS had so anticipated.

Over two cakes: that’s a lot for one dog to handle. Around bedtime that night, he got sick as, well, a dog. He threw up bright red dog puke all over the bedroom. He upchucked more red in the yard. He dry heaved in the bathroom for a few hours. Then he collapsed on his side, exhausted from all the throwing up, and slept the sleep of the innocent. MJS, being the caregiver in her home, was up all night, tending to the dog and the messes he made.

“The fucking dog ate all the cake,” she told me the next day.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I said to her. Yes, we really do say 'fuck' that often.

“Fucking dog. I guess he’s mine now.”

“No, he’s a step dog. But I guess you have to love him like he was your own.”

“Fucker,” she said.

“At least he didn’t ruin your new  white rug,” I said helpfully.

“No, but he did puke in the yard, and every single one of us stepped in it.”

“Is that what’s meant by ‘for better or for worse’?”

“There is nothing about dog puke in wedding vows,” she said, “but maybe there should be.”

Congratulations, MJS and PS! And control your dog. I don’t make dog cakes, you know.

Just a Few Words

I need to be writing a speech right now. Speech writing is a first for me, as will be the speech giving that follows it. The subject is one I know well: my daughter. The occasion? Her bat mitzvah, a mere month away. My daughter, E, also has to give a speech, one which she is already finished writing, by the way, as if she has lots of free time to be writing speeches, in between her Hebrew tutoring and seventh grade homework and guitar and piano lessons and ridiculous amounts of texting. Then again, she had the guidance of the rabbi, a man who gives speeches weekly. Me, I got nothing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. What I have is twelve and a half years’ of memories of my daughter, and one strict admonition: don’t say anything that will embarrass me, Mom.  Don’t say anything inappropriate, Mom. You have to say this in front of the rabbi and my friends and my grandfather, Mom. Don’t scar me for life, Mom. It’s not that I want to say the wrong thing, it’s that I can’t help myself. It’s my super power.

When I sit down to begin my speech, I think about all the wonderful things about my kid. Then I think of the stories to illustrate it. Then I just think of stories. All the hysterical things she has said or done over the years, a small lifetime of inappropriate anecdotes. I can’t tell any of those on her big day, in front of everyone she knows, all those people who have come to show their love and support as she becomes an adult, responsible for her own actions, her deeds and her words. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me; I never had a bat mitzvah, and look at how I turned out.

Once, a long time ago, during the start of the whole Catholic Church pedophile scandals, I was at an art show for a good friend of my husband’s. I didn’t really know many people at the show, but fortified with a glass of wine, I began making small talk with some other people who were friends with my husband’s friend. We went from subject to subject, you know how you do at a party, where one person tells a story which reminds you of a story, and then your story reminds them of another funnier story, and it becomes this Jenga game of top that stories that eventually has to crash.

Tthere I was, talking to these people, and they told a slightly risqué but funny story that involved sex and religion. It reminded me of a similar but more horrible one that I read in the paper, so I told them about it. A priest had molested an altar boy by convincing him that fellatio was a form of the Holy Communion. When I got to that part, which I consider the punch line, the entire room went quiet.  It was like something out of a movie, where time stands still. My words hung in the air for all to see, to remember, to imprint on their minds, until they evaporated into the ether. The couple with whom I was speaking looked at me like I took a dump in front of them, not just any dump, but a dump on the baby Jesus. Turns out they are Catholic. Go figure.

E doesn’t know that story, but she’s been around me enough to know that she should be a little concerned about what might come out of my mouth. Plus, I’ve got the goods on her. With that kind of power comes great responsibility. How am I supposed to write anything about my child and not tell a single story involving a body function or a bad mood? Am I capable of relating a story that doesn’t somehow contain sexual innuendo? She’s an adult now, according to Jewish tradition, so none of it is lost on her, and if you don’t believe me, just say balls or nuts in front of her, for any reason at all, and you tell me if she doesn’t laugh. She hasn’t ever seen any, yet instinctively, she knows to laugh at them.

So I’m stuck. I have lots I can say about this marvelous child of mine, but keeping it clean? I just don’t know. I’m much better at keeping it real. And by real, I mean really wrong.

Can I Get an Amen?

Are religious services supposed to be somber, serious affairs or fun for the whole family? People should enjoy themselves when they go to church or temple, but more like a good time at an interesting lecture and less like at a drunken frat party. It’s tough for my family to find an appropriate balance.  One thing I know for sure, though, is that you should not distract the rabbi from doing his job.

My twelve year old daughter, E,  is rapidly approaching thirteen, and the date of her bat mitzvah looms over my head like one of those cartoon rainclouds. She has been learning Hebrew since she was eight, but now it’s crunch time, and with one month to go, she is eating, drinking, sleeping, and generally obsessing over her big day. One of the things I do to help her prepare is to take her to Friday night services on a pretty regular basis so she can be very familiar and comfortable with everything.

It’s not easy to go every Friday night; I like to do things on Friday nights, and going to sit for an hour and half to pray in a language I don’t speak isn’t usually high on the list. I have told our rabbi before that if we could switch services to Sunday morning, more people would want to go, but he just laughs like he is pretending that’s funny. Since we have been going regularly, however, my daughter and I have made it fun. It’s nice to spend some time alone with each other, no phones, no television, no iPads. We sit calmly and sing along for about the first five minutes, but after that, we lose interest and get slap happy.

It usually starts with us finding bad words in the Hebrew-to-English transliterations. There’s a “tush” in there and a “shit” or two, although they are pronounced like “sheet.” And since our cat’s name is Moshe, a good Hebrew name, we enjoy the many references to him. Whenever the rabbi strums his guitar, one of us will lean over to the other one and whisper, “I feel a song coming on” or “I didn’t realize this was a musical.” Then we get the giggles. It doesn’t matter if whatever we laugh at is even funny. It could be the way someone’s pants are tucked in their crack or a seriously unusual singing voice booming behind us. Whatever it is, funny or not, we start that silent laughter that involves lots of body shaking and tear streaming.

Recently, we attended Friday night services together on a night that a local college group came to observe, like they were on a field trip to the zoo. We generally try to be very welcoming and, there’s that word again, appropriate, so they can study us Jews in our religious habitat. The rabbi took a little extra time to explain parts of the service, but overall, it was the typical Friday night worship scenario.

Friday night services follow a general pattern. We start with a call to worship, then some we are so happy to be here together praying and singing, followed by the Thank God It’s Friday blessings. We take some time to honor the past, pray for peace, and remember the sick. After that, the rabbi reminds us to take a moment for silent prayer.

While the congregation meditates, the rabbi usually drinks from a water bottle he has tucked away in the podium, because all that singing and praying can really parch one’s throat. But that night E and I were there along with the college group, the rabbi choked on his water during the silent prayer. This wasn’t one of those little coughs; it was full blown violent gagging and choking with no breathing.  E and I immediately started cracking up, not because the rabbi was dying in front of us but rather because of the irony of loud choking during the silent prayer. I covered my face with my Gates of Prayer book so he couldn’t see me laughing, although if he looked at my daughter, he would have known. I have no doubt the whole pew shook from our laughter.

We knew he saw us laughing because he began laughing too, laughing and choking. I raised my hands up in the air, since I am of the belief that raising your hands while choking is the best way to make it stop. The rabbi was then choking and laughing with his hands in the air.

“Touchdown!” I whispered to E. At least I hope it was a whisper.

“Raise the roof!” she said back to me. I laughed.

When he regained his composure, he continued services as though nothing happened, making his way through the Torah portion and the sermon with relative ease, punctuated by a small cough or two.

Usually at the end of services before we have refreshments in the social hall, the rabbi offers a priestly blessing over the congregation. He raises his hands overhead and forms the Hebrew letter “shin” with his fingers while reciting a prayer. You know what that looks like if you’ve ever watched Star Trek. Remember Spock and his Vulcan salute, with his four fingers held in a V, two fingers and two fingers? Well, that’s a Jew thing. The rabbi does the Vulcan salute/priestly blessing every week, and whenever we are there, my daughter and I too raise our hands in salute, mostly because it hurts a little between the middle and ring finger, and because it’s funny.

When the rabbi’s hands went up, so did ours. And for the second time that night, the rabbi could not continue because he couldn’t stop giggling. Yes, giggling. He would start again and then have to stop, a little Hebrew, a little laughing, while we were sitting in the pew, laughing along at this inside joke while the other people in the temple tried to figure out what had gotten into their spiritual leader. There was a lot of turning around in seats to see what was so funny, and it was us.

We did offer our apologies after services, and the rabbi seemed cool with it, like he usually does. He knows us, so it’s not like our cutting up is a surprise. The only surprising part was that he didn’t tune us out. “It’s his job to be the rabbi, for Christ’s sake,” I told E. “We have to make more of an effort to control ourselves. We can’t be making the rabbi laugh while he’s up there doing his thang.”Our rabbi has assured me that he is glad we have a good time at services. He’s probably just glad to have some live bodies paying attention, even if we are paying attention to the wrong things.

Taco Night

Remember when people had names you could recognize? Now they have names you can’t even pronounce. How many of these unusual names are a result of poor spelling instead of individualism and creativity? There might not be much creativity when it comes to naming your Catholic child, but at least you are familiar with William and John and Mary and Catherine.

While at the grocery store today, I noticed my cashier’s name tag as he scanned my groceries. “Hello, my name is Cornious,” it said. Cornious? What? Cornelius is an unusual name enough, but Cornious? Do you pronounce it the way you think you would? Is his nickname Corny? Instead of expressing my curiosity, I just concentrated on swiping my credit card and bagging my own groceries.

I got in my car and texted my friend MJ. “My cashier’s name at the grocery store is Cornious.”

She replied with what I was thinking, “Corn holeyooo!!” That’s why we’re friends.

Then she called me and said she had a horrible story from the other day. MJ is in the process of having a fence installed in the backyard of her new house. Like most things that involve home maintenance, this fence has been a pain in her ass. Her neighbors wouldn’t respond to their request to adjoin the new fence to their existing fence on one side of their property. The covenants and by-laws of their community are very rigid when it comes to things like fences, involving pages of paperwork and committee approval and the same bullshit that goes into anything that should be simple like a fucking fence. But they need one. Between the toddler and the two dogs, MJ’s life needs something with clearly defined parameters. She jumped through all the hoops and dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s and the stars had aligned just so, and it was fence go time.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, on this other day, the men came to install her new fence. The main guy was a small gentleman of Latino descent, of Hispanic heritage, possibly Mexican. He spoke English with a heavy Spanish accent, and his uniform had the name “Tacho” embroidered above the shirt pocket. When MJ asked him if he had all the approved paperwork for the fence, he either didn’t know what she was talking about or didn’t understand her. After a rudimentary exchange, which I am sure involved pantomime and speaking too loudly (as if talking louder makes English easier to understand), the man got started on the fence.

A short while later, there was a knock on MJ’s door. “Ma’am,” The man said when she opened the door, “do not panic.”

No good news ever began with that sentence.

“Do you have sprinkler?” he asked her.

“No, no sprinkler, we don’t have a sprinkler system,” she answered. Behind her the dogs barked and the baby cried.

“Sprinkler? Next door?” he tried again.

“No, none of us. No sprinkler system,” she replied.

“Lots of water,” he trailed off.

MJ rushed outside and indeed there was a lot of water, gushing out of a pipe that did not belong to a sprinkler system, but rather was the water to the neighbor’s house. The dogs ran after her.

“The big dog, I am not scared of, “the man said. “It is the little dog what I fear.”

MJ got the dogs back inside, along with the screaming baby, and tried again to survey the damage.

In his defense, how was the man to know that the water line to the neighboring house would be on MJ’s property? MJ was just as surprised as he was. In a panic, she called another neighbor over to ask what to do.

“I’m freaking out,” MJ said to her neighbor. “Taco just punched a hole through the neighbor’s water line and now my yard’s flooded.”

“MJ,” her neighbor said. “His name is pronounced Ta Cho.  Cha, like chugging or change.”

“Oh my God, I just called that man taco. I thought it was pronounced taco. I fucking thought his name was Taco?” MJ was mortified.

She was even more mortified that he was standing behind her when she said it.

He finished the job without any further incidents, despite being called a taco. And eventually the neighbors had their water line repaired, which really should not have been on MJ’s property to begin with. Hopefully everything will work out okay and MJ won’t have to have Tacho come back for any fence touch ups.

 Good fences might make for good neighbors, but it’s never a good idea to piss off your laborers.

Lassoing Babies at the Food Truck Rodeo

If you think it’s easy to feed a baby dinner in a parking lot, think again. Babies don’t understand how parking lots work. They don’t get the inherent danger in running free amongst two- to three-ton instruments of death. They don’t care much about table manners in general, so the idea of enforcing manners when there isn’t even a table is, well, you get the idea.

My friend MJ came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, and like a good mother should, she brought along her baby, KS, for the ride. KS is technically a toddler now. He is about thirty pounds of pure wide open boy, and neither MJ nor I have any idea how to control such a creature. She has another child, a twelve year old daughter, whose innate peace and femininity did nothing to prepare MJ for mothering the little cyclone she has swirling around her. No child proof door knobs can deter him. No baby gate can contain him. No stroller can subdue him. He has to explore everything he can see, reach, smell, or find, and he will find a way, no matter what obstacles the world puts in his way, damn it. He approaches life on tippy toes and upstretched arms.

We spent  the first part of our day shopping with an angry baby strapped in a stroller, trying to limit his access to fragile items on low shelves and high end garments on flimsy hangers. The second part we spent hoping he would nap while visiting a friend. KS was able to occupy himself by throwing fistfuls of dog food at our friend’s pooch, who was confused by the unusual method of feeding, but since he was not one to question such an opportunity,he went along with it. By the time dinner rolled around, we were too tired to think clearly. Babies take a lot of energy. I know young moms can handle it, but MJ and I are hardly that. I am now wondering how grandparents do it.

We were too tired to cook. We were too tired to go out. We didn’t feel like picking up. Then we remembered that neither of us had tried the new food truck in town, and immediately got excited. We looked online to find out where it was parked and to scan the menu. I quickly made a turkey and cheese sandwich for KS, grabbed him something to drink, and threw it all in a bag while MJ wrestled him into his shorts and shoes. Babies don’t like shoes and shorts. They like the barefoot bottomless look, which allows for freestyle bathroom habits and easy hose downs. We were trying for civilized, though, so KS lost the battle and howled his frustration from his POW car seat behind us as we drove in search of the food truck.

We found it parked conveniently in the lot of one of those local tap rooms, the kind where you bring your growler jugs back for refills, not exactly what you would call young child friendly.  MJ and I were excited to try the deep fried Brussels sprouts, the schnitzel sandwich, the banh mi, whatever had yet to sell out, so we left common sense in the car and got in line with KS, who immediately demanded to be put down so he could take off running across the parking lot. MJ ran after him and I ordered and paid for our food.

The modern day food truck craze is all about culinary creativity with low overhead; the food is great if you can overlook the ambiance of oil leak stains on parking spaces and car exhaust. Food trucks have been around forever (remember the Good Humor man?) but only recently have they come into their own as a source of really unique food.  If you are looking for a kid’s menu and some free packs of crackers to entertain your young progeny, however, you are probably better off at a national chain. We got our food and moseyed over to a patch of sidewalk, where we proceeded to dine out of our environmentally friendly takeout containers while keeping KS entertained with food so he wouldn’t run away again.

He had no interest in the sprouts. I guess he wasn’t a fan of the cider vinegar gastrique. He didn't care about the sandwiches. He did enjoy his sandwich and milk, and then he enjoyed open mouthing my water bottle and allowing his precious particles of food to float inside.

While MJ and I fought over the last Brussels sprout, KS took off to introduce himself to the puppy on the other side of the parking lot. And much to our surprise, a car came barreling out of nowhere to fly across the lot, right in the direction of the baby. Okay, that’s probably not how it went down, but it sure felt that way. Time stood still, but MJ demonstrated supermother reflexes and snatched him up before any harm could come to him, either from the canine or the car. She earned that last sprout.

The food was great. The baby wrangling was a bit of a downer. Next time, if there is indeed a next time, we will have to strongly consider eating in the car, like all the other hipster parents who had created a den atmosphere in the backs of their SUVs, movies playing on the built in DVD’s, organic cotton blankets on the floors. It was almost like a modern day drive in, only everyone was watching their own movie, and no one was dry humping.

Dinner in the parking lot was exhausting. Both MJ and her baby were out cold about a minute after we got home. Who can blame her, really? You try shoving food in your pie hole and corralling a toddler in a parking space at the same time.

Those Brussels sprouts were totally worth it.

 

The Land of Milk and Honey Boo Boo

I have a confession to make. I have become a regular viewer of TLC’s newest abomination, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” which unfortunately airs on Wednesday evenings following “Toddlers and Tiaras,” another show I am ashamed to admit I watch regularly. “Toddlers and Tiaras” is a reality show about the world of children’s pageants, and oh, what a world it is. Most of us first learned of that world following the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey in 1996, and rightly so, most of us were shocked that such a world existed. At the same time we were apathetically expressing our outrage, another smaller group of people thought, aww, look at them cute little girls all tarted up to look like women, let’s see if our little Jennifer/Tammy/Britney can do that too. 

One of those pageant girls is Alana, or “Honey Boo Boo Child,” as she is known to her family and now to the rest of us as well. She was on “Toddlers and Tiaras” a few times, and while she didn’t win a title, she did win America’s heart.  And TLC, which used to be The Learning Channel but somehow lost its way, has given her and her family their own show. They also have shows about primordial dwarfs and conjoined twins, so if you are a little off in some way, TLC might be contacting you soon.  Watching it is like visiting a carnival side show, only without the corn dog smell and crack smoking barkers.

Anyway, back to Honey Boo Boo. She lives in a small house with her family near the train tracks in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. She has three sisters, none of which have the same father, a morbidly obese mother who is also an extreme couponing fanatic, and a father who is never without a ball cap and a wad of chewing tobacco. One of her sisters is pregnant. The other two also have weight problems. Her parents are not married. Her mother has an old toe injury that the whole family calls her “forklift foot.” How can I not get hooked on this?

The first time I watched the show, I felt really sad. The whole show was sad. They live in a tiny house, half of which is filled with discount toilet paper. They buy their groceries at a food salvage auction. The sheriff calls them when there is road kill so they can have the meat.  Their idea of fun is hopping on their four wheelers to rummage through the dumpsters at the town landfill, to which they refer as the department store. The show uses subtitles when they speak, and they are speaking English. Every bit of the show exploits this family’s poverty and ignorance, and by watching it, am I not engaging in a bit too much schadenfreude?

But then I thought, what would Honey Boo Boo do? Does she care that her mother farts all the time? Hell no! Is she embarrassed that her 17 year old sister is going to have a baby and the whole family discusses it coming out of her “biscuit” on national television? Of course not!  Does she want to hide her head in public because her parents’ idea of date night is eating at the local country buffet? I doubt it! Is she ashamed that it takes five of them to put together one pack n play, or that the pack n play isn’t for a human baby but rather a pig baby? Probably not!

Her family is getting paid for showing us how the other half lives, and while not they are certainly not making as much as they should, they are definitely making more than they would without all that attention. I read that they earn roughly $4,000 an episode, or per week, if you think about it that way. They sure as shit couldn’t get that working for P. T. Barnum. That’s a whole lotta pork rinds. Good for them. So what if they toilet paper their own house? They can afford two ply, can’t they?

As I have watched the show, I realize one very important thing about Honey Boo Boo and her family. They love each other, unconditionally. That mother might need to be referred to child protective services time and again, but at the end of the day, she isn’t trying to hurt her children. She loves them. She wants them happy. She provides them with food and shelter. She gives them experiences, maybe not the same kind you give your children, but she does the best with what she has, which isn’t a lot, folks. She accepts them for who they are. She encourages them. In her own bizarre way, she is a good mother. And her daughters, well, they love her too, or they appear to, based on the editing. The dad, Sugar Bear, doesn’t seem all that capable of expression, but he does tear up as often as John Boehner, so he feels something for his family as well. It’s gosh darned touching.

So while I would never mix a tub of butter substitute and a bottle of ketchup together, heat it, and use it as a sauce for my spaghetti noodles, I shouldn’t judge Honey Boo Boo for enjoying it along with her family. Her mother made that meal with love. We can’t all be eating organic kale chips and quinoa, can we?