Category Archives: News

Do Something

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I am so angry and heartbroken about the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and I feel like anything I write on this silly blog risks minimizing the tragedy somehow.  And I don’t want to do that.  But I just have to say a couple things.

First, I was equal parts relieved and disturbed when I saw a police car stationed outside my kindergartner’s school at pick-up today.  It has really come to this.  My mom taught K-12 for decades, in lovely, quiet communities, probably like Newtown, and has said that schools should have metal detectors with loud alarms at the doors.  Before I had kids I thought that was a little extreme – today, it seems perfectly reasonable.  Second, I hugged my kindergartner and my almost-kindergartner so, so, so tight today, and none of the other things I wanted to do this afternoon mattered at all.  And third, as I am typing this, there is some effing ridiculous show on TLC about a bunch of women in Vegas having a “gun shooting party” at a shooting range.  And they are in stilettos and have cleavage up to their chins and clearly think they look really hot shooting guns.  YOU DON’T.

You’ve heard it all before, but I’ll say it again:  we have a sick obsession with guns and violence in this country and our politicians don’t have the balls to address it.  Immediately after I heard about the shooting, I heard lots of public figures saying, “This is not the time to talk politics.”  This language about “politicizing tragedy” has now become the routine, acceptable way of ignoring our deadly gun problem, and preventing any sort of impassioned rhetoric about it, and sweeping the initial hard feelings under the rug.  But I think Lisa Belkin at HuffPo said it beautifully — talking about gun control right now, in the wake of this unthinkable tragedy, while parents in Newtown are still waiting for good news that will never come about their little, soft-skinned, bright-eyed children, is our obligation as parents.  It’s a matter of keeping our kids safe.  If I was in Newtown and knew these families and this school, I would physically be out there helping in every way I could.  But I’m not.  So I am going to try to do what I hope some other mom would do if, god forbid, this happened in my neighborhood.  I want to take some “meaningful action,” to use Obama’s words.  And while I’m glad to hear Obama talk about “meaningful action,” I don’t trust any politician – even one I happen to be a big fan of – to follow through.  They’ve buried their heads in the sand for too long.

But I do trust other moms and dads, who physically ache right now from the devastation they are hearing about, to do something.  So, just as a first step, I found the We Are Better Than This campaign, started by the Brady Campaign just days after the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado.  They’ve set up the website now so you can send condolences to the families in Newtown.  And the Brady Campaign’s website has lots of information about current and proposed gun legislation, as well as a way to find your local chapter and take some action.  Getting educated is the first step I’m going to take, just because I don’t know what else to do, but I know I have to do something.  And if you want to get good and fired up, I’d suggest this New Yorker article and this New Yorker article and this Slate article.  This quote from Amy Davidson at The New Yorker devastates me, and makes me want to do something:  “How do we find ourselves asking kindergarteners to be more courageous in the face of a gunman than politicians are in the face of the gun lobby?”

While some of the immediate responses to today’s shooting felt horribly familiar and scripted, at the same time this feels a little different – like the outrage is more raw, more angry, more proactive.  Like people want to fix this.  I hope I’m right.

Monkeys, Minaj, and More

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So I started thinking that I had nothing to write about today and then I see this:  Image

It is like the universe is telling me to write and is sending forlorn pocket-sized monkeys as its messengers.  If you happened to lose your adorable, tiny, shearling-coat wearing monkey today, he is apparently wandering around an Ikea in Toronto.  And he’s wearing a diaper.  And according to at least one woman in the store who posted a video of the little guy on YouTube, the whole experience was “terrifying.”  OH my god, now I just read that this monkey was locked in its crate in a car, and it managed to get out of said crate, OPEN THE CAR DOOR, and make it across the presumably huge Ikea parking lot to do a little shopping.  That IS terrifying.  The owner wasn’t supposed to have the monkey in the first place, so now the Toronto authorities aren’t giving him back.  What will become of this poor monkey?  Well, at least he’s dressed appropriately for winter in Toronto.  Do you think he’s going to go to a zoo or animal shelter now and be like, “Why the hell are all of these monkeys naked?”  And all the other monkeys are going to be all, “OH, look at fancy clothed monkey in his warm shearling coat and poop-catching diaper, he thinks he’s better than us, let’s eat him.”  Poor, poor monkey.

In other news, sometimes my daughter says something so thoughtful, so sweet, so insightful, that I am in total awe of her.  And then other times, she asks me to call her Nicki Minaj when I pick her up from school.  

I just had to write that down because I don’t want to ever forget it.  

Anyways, by this point in my stay-at-home mom adventure, I expected to have some insightful perspective on the whole thing.  I thought I’d have some clarity about what was better for my family, for my kids, for me.  But instead, I have never felt so old in my life because my body is going batshit crazy.  

First, I tore the meniscus in my knee because I had the nerve to actually work out for the first time in, oh, a year.  To quote my orthopedist:  “Who do you think you are, doing lunges at your age.”  Why I never.  Luckily it wasn’t a bad tear and I only had to wear a gigantic brace and hobble around for about ten days.  But, as my mother always told me, walking like a peg-legged pirate for ten days has its price.  For me, it aggravated a back problem I hadn’t even thought about for like four years and caused me to HERNIATE A DISC.  That is in all caps because it is TOTALLY MERITED.

And of course, my disc has the balls to herniate itself right after my husband leaves for a business trip and I am solely responsible for the kids.  Shit always hits the fan as soon as my husband is en route to his fancy hotel and his expense-account nights out with co-workers.  If not for my amazing neighbor swooping in and taking care of my kids while I whimpered on my heating pad, I have no idea what I would have done.  Well, I would have taken painkillers and drooled on myself – I guess I should say I’m not sure what the kids would have done.

So the worst part of the back pain is behind me, but it has slowed me down for going on four weeks now.  Which means for four weeks I have been feeling useless and not doing the looooong list of things I wanted to do after I quit my job, and my husband has been doing everything.  All while listening to me tell him he’s doing it all wrong (well, he is).  

So that’s why I just don’t have any perspective yet.  It’s disappointing, but maybe also a lesson – that when you have more unscheduled time in your day, there’s more room for stuff to go totally off track.  Or to stop trying to plan stuff and just take care of yourself.  Or that even when you are lying on the kitchen floor in excruciating pain, it will take a good 30 minutes of eating dinner before one of your kids says, “Hey, what are you doing?”  Or maybe I am just getting old.  

I’m going with the first two.

In the Bag

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Busy moms always appreciate some shopping tips, right? Well, I have discovered your new bag. You are welcome. Imagine the looks on the other mom’s faces as you roll up on the soccer field with THIS over your shoulder. Or when you explain that, no, you can’t do carpool today because you are using one of your mini-van seats for your purse. And it probably only costs several thousand dollars. Again, you’re welcome!

One From the Vault

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Several months ago, I marked my calendar that on October 2 Disney was releasing Cinderella from “The Vault.” Well, that day is here. When I ordered it from Amazon on Tuesday I actually felt giddy with excitement that I had the opportunity to buy this movie – like I was in on a secret that all the cool moms knew about. Setting aside the question of what is wrong with me, I would like to know, what is wrong with Disney. Seriously. Do they expect us to believe that there is really a vault? And that their movies are in such demand that people will jump at the rare opportunity to pay too much for them? Well, they are right on both counts. I imagine that the vault is multi-colored and has huge mouse ears.

This is the first full-on princess movie I’ve gotten for my daughter. I’ve been a little paranoid about media in general since both of my kids were little, and recent articles like this don’t really help. I’ve also been conscious of the Disney-princess-machine since I had my daughter, and have shied away from princess things. But then I see an ad for Cinderella and I remind myself of two things: one, I loved princesses and Barbie when I was little and I turned out to be a reasonably productive citizen who just happens to be completely dependent on her husband for the time being (oh my god), and two, it’s JUST A MOVIE.

Anyways, I actually think there are some fine lessons for girls in Cinderella. For example, as a girl, it is awesome to get dressed up and go out — Cinderella needed a break, got herself all fancied up, went to a happening place, and danced with a cute boy. Good for her. Also, it sucks to lose a nice shoe. And being mean to your siblings just never turns out well. Beyond that, if my daughter is so influenced by a movie that she thinks a guy is going to solve all of her problems, then I’ve really screwed up, and not just by buying too much princess junk.

But like all things with my kids, I’m probably over-thinking it. As I type this, my daughter is playing dress-up. She dug past all the fluffy pink tutus and dresses and is wearing a knight’s outfit, holding a shield, and chasing her brother with a foam sword.

Maybe a princess movie would do her some good.

Nuts

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Oh I love this story. And not just because the way the parents handle the potentially awkward situation is so thoughtful (it really is), but because of the image at the end — with the kids’ beloved obsessions laying discarded on the floor while they move on to the next thing. It makes me think of parents (myself included) who are all, “My kid is CRAZY about pirates!!!” Like the kid went to the store and paid for the pirate comforter and pirate Legos and t-shirt and shoes and eyepatch all by himself. Arghh, matey, who’s really the pirate crazy one? So many times when my kids are going through a phase I don’t really understand, I obsess about it, and then when I get it figured out, they’re on to the next thing. The next thing that I don’t understand. So I try to tell myself that it’s not worth investing too much. But how do I know that for sure? How do I know what’s going to be a discarded Buzz Lightyear toy and what’s going to have an actual impact on their lives? And I guess you just don’t. You don’t really know if your baby banging on a plastic keyboard means they have musical talent, or if your toddler’s knack for a fart joke means they have a gift for comedy.

Which is kind of terrifying, and liberating.

A few years ago, after I’d had my son, I went to lunch with a senior partner at my (old!) firm. He had three grown kids and was a devoted dad. And his sage parenting advice to me? I quote, “Raising kids is a total crapshoot and all you can do is keep them safe and hope you get lucky.” Um. Here was a guy who’d made a career out of manipulating juries and controlling legal battles, telling me that raising kids was out of my hands and mainly about getting lucky.

At the time it sounded totally fatalistic to me, but now I think it’s kind of a beautiful (and liberating) idea: that it’s not up to you to determine who your kids are, what they like, how they feel about something. That you just keep them safe and cross your fingers.

Which reminds me of the best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten. Not from my mom or my best friend or a neighbor, but from a total stranger (who may have been wearing a lime green sweatshirt with a large gray scotty dog made out of fuzzy yarn jumping across her boobs). She sat down next to me at Costco and stared at my son while I was giving him some pizza, and right before I was about to get up and move because she was skeeving me out, she said with this faraway look in her eye, “I wish I’d sat with my kids more and just watched them, instead of trying to get them to do what I wanted to so much.”

I think about that lime green fuzzy dog sweatshirt woman all the time, and not just because I have nightmares about her shirt. Or because she was buying a whole flatbed cart of cashews in bulk. (Seriously. What do you DO with that many cashews? Where does she store them? Does she have a cashew closet in her house? Does she make cashew butter? Does she work at a zoo?) Some of my favorite memories of my kids are from watching them when they don’t know I’m there – like hearing my son console his sister when she can’t find her favorite doll, or hearing my daughter tell her big brother that she loves him “so so so much” after he tells her a ridiculous joke (about poop, of course). If I’d been shuffling them out the door to their next activity, or up in their grills trying to entertain them, I might have missed that altogether.

And that poop joke was too good to miss.