I took down my “spoiled in suburbia” post until I figure out what the hell I’m trying to say.

Up next: clarity!

David, my darling husband is a long-standing member of the Husband Hall of Fame but yesterday he went all out for Mother’s Day and deserves a special honorable mention. Honey, you are the real thing!

The morning started with adorable gifts from the boys: a floral collage from Dash and a Jonathan Adler inspired pinch pot from Conrad.

Then David gave me an Internet radio because I’m home alone during the day and I rely on music and talk radio for company. For some reason we don’t get good reception at the house, but now my new Logitech SqueezeBox is like having a bunch of musical and intellectual co-workers with me all day. I love it. I really do. David kept saying an appliance isn’t romantic, but a big black music-making appliance that makes me feel wistful listening to Taylor Swift is swoon-worthy.

Yet I think he might be feeling the need to make up for something or maybe I’m just acting so miserable he’s at a loss as to how to make me happy, because he gave me a series of gifts to make me realize that everything is going to be alright.

He gave me a gift card to go shopping for new spring clothes so I can feel like I’m pretty and pulled together even though I’m just working up in my attic and not an office. And maybe also so I’ll stop asking him to tell me if my butt looks okay in everything I wear. Tickets to the Shins next Sunday so we can feel a little less old. And hold on…a cleaning woman to come every week for a year! We actually had a fairly intense discussion Saturday morning about whether one should really be grossed out if cereal bowls with milk are still on the kitchen table when we practically stumble into the house at 10:30 at night. That Friday, I rushed out for the day to take Conrad to the doctor, got the okay that he could go to school, met with the nurse about how to administer his nebulizer, then caught up with friends to go to the Glenfield House Tour Fundraiser (where you check out some of the larger, extravagantly decorated homes in town, snickering is optional), picked up the kids, went to playdate, then bought beer and drove around trying to find a bakery open at 5pm for a dinner party at a friend’s house. Gave up and then went over to my friend’s with the kids had a lovely night and headed home way past everyone’s bedtime to stare down the cereal bowls, unmade beds and general house mess.

I think the cleaning woman jackpot is way of saying he’s sorry that he after a long day he made me feel like keeping the house tidy is something that’s more in my domain than his. David doesn’t think that. I think he rolled his eyes simply because he was surprised to see that I actually felt comfortable leaving a mess; but he benefits too, by giving me the housekeeper he’s also very generously putting the kibosh on my feeling entitled to complain about housework. I appreciate his strategic mind.

I met my parents and our amazing cousin, Ronny for brunch. Ronny is so inspiring, she wrote her doctorate in resilience in older women and is so great to be around. Then when I came home, we flew kites in Edgemont park that David made with leftover cellophane from Easter egg baskets and went out to Egans with friends. It was really just perfect. Then in the middle of dinner Dashiell started acting really bratty. He came and sat on my lap to calm down. It worked for a while until he projectile vomited all over the dinner table. I hustled him out of the restaurant back door and just as I was leaving and well-dressed child-free couple were walking in, they kindly held the door for me and right then Dash vomited all over my face, neck, hair and chest. Vomit was dripping from eyebrows. But it was fine, really. He got home without getting sick again and we both felt better after we bathed and I thought maybe I will take David up on the cleaning woman.

Screw crafts. There I said it. But it doesn’t like a relief, more just like I’m admitting another thing I don’t do, like running.

When I was working in the city, I’d be rushing out the door to catch the bus thinking, if I wasn’t at the office today I stay home and teach the boys how to make pretzels.  I had a whole fantasy of shrinkydink cookie decorating parties that would fill the hours between pick up and dinner. Now that I am home, I realized my kids have their own agenda. They want to come home and play Lego or Star Wars. But when we play Lego the only thing I can make is miniature presents that you can’t open (Conrad showed me how, the translucent bricks look like ribbon).

My other issue is that I’m not into imaginative play. You know where we reenact scenes from Star Wars and I’m Asajj Ventress chasing Mace Windoo and I die and come back to life with new powers. Frankly, I don’t think I should be involved in those games. Creative play is their time to flex their imaginations and they need to master make believe on their own. It’s an independent skill that’s as important as wiping their own butts. Since I’m still on butt duty, they can run along with the responsibility of their pretend play on their own shoulders. Of course, I encourage them; I just don’t want to be on the floor saying, “No, now you grow wings and fly away with me in your mouth.”

I suspect they really don’t want me either. When I do get down on the floor to make a cameo I’m kind of like a highly anticipated guest on SNL where the excitement turns to disappointment by the second commercial break. The boys want to love my suggestions, but my approach to playing proves how tone deaf I am to the dark side (what if Mace Windoo and Ventress joined forces to make a really cool hotel! Or no even better, a restaurant!) This is when they patiently explain why that could never happen and then  play at half their usual busy pace to make sure I understand what’s going on, which is quite generous on their part. It’s works for a while and we do have a fairly good time but soon enough they ask when Daddy will be home. Probably the oddest development is that I’m the one who encourages violence. I’ll get bored and suddenly I’m smashing and crashing my jet into theirs causing epic imaginary explosions and then someone gets hit too hard and the crying starts and I’m back to being Mommy.

So our afternoons had a routine where I’d play for a bit, kiss the booboo I caused and then surf the web and do laundry feeling guilty that this is how I spend my time at home in spite of what I expected for us. It was one on one of those aimless afternoon that I stumbled upon  familyfun.com, Disney’s parenting magazine that’s as seductive as Martha Stewart but with none of the ambition and need for a RISD masters to pull off the stuff. In fact, it was familyfun.com that talked me down after I tried to plan Conrad’s class holiday activity inspired by gum drop snowmen featured in Martha Stewart. My snowmen ended up looking  like Olivia Newton John so instead we made these instead.

Well actually David made them but I bought the stuff.

It was a huge success and I thought this is it. I’ll do crafts with them! When Valentine’s Day rolled around  I thought I could improvise and decorate sugar cookies for the boys to give as Valentines to the kids in their classes. I bought a huge bag of M&Ms. Dash helped me make the dough but since it needed to be chilled they lost interest when it was time for the fun part, adding the M&Ms into the cookies. I ended up doing it with David very late at night and the cookies ended up looking like boobs. Tits really. We were going to give each kid two cookies but I was too scandalized by how they turned so everyone got only one.

I mean really what do they look like to you?

Then, last Friday, since Conrad had a playdate and Dash has been watching way too much Super Friends, I tried to make DIY candy necklaces with him, but he just wanted to eat the sour Lifesaver gummies out the bag and play with his action figures. He had very little interest in stringing Honey Nut cheerios on the ribbon so I made him the necklace and he ate it while playing on his own in the play room until the ribbon frayed on a peach gummy and he asked if he could throw it out.

Tuesday was a snow day—the perfect opportunity to make the familyfun.com featured craft of the month: Banana People. But the boys were deep in Lego. So I stood there in the kitchen, itching to cut up a banana and make a person out of it and I realized this is all my issue. This is what I wanted my mom to do with me, but her idea of playing was taking me to Bloomingdales. (And yes, I wish she’d play with me now).  Shopping aside, I realized I want to make these things so I can be the kind of mom that sees this stuff in a magazine and says, yeah I’ve made that. Or I have time to make that. Or that I easily connect with my kids so often that I made that. Or so I can admit to myself that I have snow day fear: when I’m bored and afraid of being stuck in my house for hours with my kids that I think a Banana Person is the one-way ticket to arriving at a-frustration-free-day.Like them, I have to take responsibility for my own make believe notions of motherhood—and the first thing I need to realize is my kids don’t need Banana people—they need me to figure out how to play with them. I made the banana guys anyway. Dash thought his was funny and cautiously nibbled around it not entirely sure that it was, indeed, food. Conrad took one look and told me he didn’t like his. His rejection summed everything up: it was as if he was saying, “No mom, this is not what you need to do.” He brought it back into the kitchen, put it on the table and then asked me if I’d play Lego with him. So I did and I made a pretty cool jewel encrusted Jeep too.

Okay here’s the gossip: I had to fire my sitter last Wednesday because an ex-boyfriend of her’s turned into a stalker overnight and she thought he had a gun.

Now I’m shopping for a my own super nanny by posting an ad on Craig’s List and vetting and interviewing a slew of contestants. Hiring a new babysitter allows you to reinvent your needs. My previous babysitter was very good. But since I get to switch things up a bit, this time around I’m looking for someone who I don’t really have to make evening chit chat with when I’m done with work. (Admittedly, that’s more my problem than theirs. I have to stop asking them how they are, how was their day, and ask them how the boys were and how was the boys day).  I’m also looking for someone who will leave the house as clean as it was when they arrived. And who can do flash cards with Conrad while also entertaining Dashiell without turning on the TV (something I’ve yet to figure out myself). I still want them to help me put together Ikea furniture occasionally and walk the dog, fold laundry, unload the dishwasher and tell me if I have too much make up on before I go out. And I guess, from now on I want to know if they’ve ever had to get a restraining order against anyone. But after the flashcards, that doesn’t seem like the kind of stuff I should put in my ad.

Or maybe I could, because the wide range of responses I received are a pretty good indicator of how cold it is out there. I’ve heard from candidates 19 to 70 years old, students, moms, and professional nannies, and grandmothers who really need work. Some don’t know how to hide the panic in their voice. They are usually laid off because the husband in the family they used to work for lost his job and they are not sure what else they are qualified to do. It’s the older, baby nannies, the professional cuddlers who seem most adrift. The three that I’ve spoken all say the same thing: there are no more families who need extra help. They are seeing their industry (just like all of us) change and fall away entirely. Their desperation is unsettling I gently let them down explaining that since I only need someone six to nine hours I understand why they wouldn’t want the job. When they tell me they do, I have to then be more straightforward and explain that I can’t risk my kids getting attached to them if I know they’d need to leave for a job that offered more time.

I spoke to a very sweet woman during the Oscars who was a nursing student in Newark. She seemed fine until she said she didn’t have her own car.  My sitter needs to have her own transportation. I got off the phone and right then a Hyundai commercial came on that said Hyundai would help with three months of car payments if you need a car to help you get a job. I hoped she was watching the Oscars too.
But the downturn has an upside, at least a selfish one for us. My ad has attracted a bunch of polished, bright twenty-somethings women who specialize in early education and are well on their way to earning their second masters and still can’t find work related to their field.

Here’s a sampling of my candidates thus far from cold to hot!
(more…)

“When I walked in and saw all that water my first thought was, this is going to suck in so many different ways.”

-David,  after a crap day at work, when he came home and (unbeknownst to me) saw that I had accidentally flooded our basement by leaving a hose running in the wash sink for 45 minutes. The water pressure from the hose had made it so the hose was shooting upwards spraying the walls and ceiling and pouring back down onto the floor while I played Go Fish with the boys upstairs.

I was just about to delcare four pair of goldfish when I heard David shout, “Water! Water! Water!” Hearing running water in your house in any room but the bath or kitchen is so defeating. You’re rushing into action while knowing that you’re literally sunk. Fire. Burglars. That’s just one scary message to GET OUT. Water is your mess and you have to get soaked and salvage. I ran down the basement to see our rug was was a raft, the kids drawings were floating and pools of green and blue ink, mixed with a brownish sludge from I don’t know where.

“You left the hose on,” was all he said. I was so embarrassed I blushed but my tone was not coy, “Get me towels and broom!” I screamed. The kids wanted to see the flood but David shooed them away. This was my mess and I had to clean it.  How did I do this? I had come downstairs to wash Dashiell’s winter coat and I rinsed out the laundry detergent cup and I must have left the hose on. The kids must have called me. I was becoming a mutli-tastking Mr. Magoo.

Or simply my own mother. My mom had recently flicked an ash into a waste paper basket and set my dad’s office on fire. She was on the phone and told her friend she had to go because the dogs were barking and she smelled smoke. Luckily the fire tried to climb a brick wall unsuccessfully and to her credit she grabbed the fire extinguisher but her arthritis prevented her from using it so she threw pillows at the flames and dialed 911. She and the dogs and the house survived, save for a $14,000 insurance claim.

My mom is 70, and she made a mistake. I’m 39, and I made a mistake. But the subtext here is clear: my family’s absent-minded streak is starting to gel in me—big time. Me, my mom and my dad (but not really my brother) have a history of going along with our business in a do-ta-do kind of way and then meeting calamity in a slam-bam-holy-shit-surprise climatic moment. My mother pulls out of the driveway and rams into the postman’s truck. Once when my dad was admiring the beach view with my baby cousin, he leaned back on a lose railing he had been meaning to fix and fell six feet down off the deck with the baby landing on his chest. I’ve learned the hard way that that when making pesto/smoothie/margaritas to put the lid on the blender BEFORE you press blend. I’ve also quite accidentally thrown my granola breakfast onto the back of unsuspecting freelancer at the Conde Nast cafeteria while engrossed in conversation with a glamorous freind.

These incidents and the basement make me laugh now. But at the time of the flood I was a lunatic. I screamed for a broom David could never find. (Brooms are the only way to swish and swash water effectively down a French Drain.) I slipped while holding the sopping rug and fell in a watery pile of mouse poop and spiders and started to cry and then started to laugh. Conrad felt so bad he made me a bookmark. And when he wanted to come downstairs and give it to me, I heard David say, “No don’t do it now, that’s just going to make her crazy.” A statement that revealed his true feelings: I had become the crazy mommy. It was three sane men on the stairwell and one wet, crazy mother in the basement. The unspoken dynamic/dysfunction had been uttered. I coudln’t believe my ears, it wasn’t until I was 16 that my dad copped to the fact that my mother might be crazy. David was laying it bare for Conrad and Dashiell before they’d even hit thier double digits.

Thankfully the boys decided to risk seeing me at my worst and carefully stepped over the obstacle course of watery soaked boxes on the basement stairs to give me the bookmark. My mother would have been smoking and told me to go upstairs to get the pillbox from her purse. But this was my moment to prove to David that yes I am becoming more absent-minded and can get crazy mad, but I’m cultivating own kind of crazy. Friendly crazy. Crazy with room to laugh if you let me scream first. Crazy without having to take a Paxil. When Conrad handed me the bookmark. I took off my soaking kitchen glove and carefully put it in a dry place and thanked him for being so thoughtful and for being so good for Daddy while I cleaned up the mess.

After my two hours of mopping and using Clorox Clean Up to wipe up the mouse poop and spiders, I was freshly showered and thought I’d call my mother-in-law because it had been a few days. When I told her what I did, all she asked was, “Did anything of David’s get ruined.” No, nothing of his got ruined, I told her. I could be annoyed, but I guess, in some ways its nice to know he’s got someone on his side.

The first family is so gorgeous, I can’t get enough of them. Here are some of my style thoughts on the whole big teary-eyed day:

Michelle Obama is a more exciting fashion icon than Carla Bruni. Hands down. Her unpredictability is what makes her more fun. I loved her Isabel Toledo dress. I love the rhinestones for day. I didn’t love the Jason Wu dress as much as I would have liked to love it, but again, she keeps me thinking and takes such risks! My only request is that she stand up straight (channeling my mother there).
Dr. Jill Biden is chic, but next to Michelle glowing in that golden coat, Dr. Biden looked like she was going to the mall, not the national mall (don’t they talk about this stuff?). Her red ballgown, however, was pitch perfect.

Sasha’s pink and orange combo is my favorite color combo for little girls (and big girls) and it made me want to have a daughter all over again.
I think a beauty director should send small customized goody bags to all the ex-presidents, vice presidents and senators. For instance:

Biden’s teeth should be “naturalized” a bit, they are too white. He needs a product to take them down a notch.
Bill Clinton needs to manage his Rosacea (and maybe his drinking?). I recommend Yonka Creme 11.

Al Gore could use Boscia blotting sheets for his forehead, boy was he shiny!

Conrad’s sixth birthday was December 30th. We are having a party eventually, but I’ll admit I’m stalling so there’s some time between the Christmas/grandparent gift bonanza and the party he’ll have with his friends. (And yes, I tried the no present request once but people always bring a gift then the friends that don’t feel bad and its confusing for everyone.) So his birthday has a long planning period, which isn’t a good thing. A six-year-old is a lot like a restless bride. Both know they only get to do this once and they want to make it perfect. And trust me, telling a just-turned-six-year-old he can do whatever super, amazing, awesome idea he wants to do a year from now is like telling a restless bride to wait to have sweetpea roses at her second wedding.

They just don’t believe you.
So we’re thinking a lot about Conrad’s cake lately. Here’s the cake he told me, thankfully, that I don’t have the mad skills to make, but a mom in Alaska named Jenn does.

“Mom, this is cake is kind of a big deal so maybe you shouldn’t try that one.”

This is the cake he’ll settle for, that was made by a dad named Matt in Mill Valley.

“Ok, I’ll take this one.” My plan is to take this picture to a professional cake baker. But David just told me, he’ll help which is great, I just think with this kind of cake, I should do a practice one or something.
Truth be told the cake I really want to make is this:

But then, I was a restless bride.

I signed up to be the class “activities mother” which meant planning the parties. What could be easier? But planning kindergarten class parties aren’t like planning adult parties (I usually chose a fun cocktail and then base everything else around it). No, kindergarten parties are about making crafts. And the problem is I’m not a crafty mom at all, I’m a store-bought-y mom, entirely. And it’s okay because I buy from good stores (and stores that look crafty). So it’s the holidays and I’m in charge of the holiday party/craft. This is my second chance. Halloween was my first. I spent a fortune on Oriental Trading Co. reflective cat and ghost necklaces and it was a mess of glue sticks and googly-eyes. The pieces were too small or the kids hands were too big. I don’t want to elaborate, but lets just say I felt judged. So now I’m determined to keep it simple. In this month’s Martha Stewart Living (I know simple right!) there are these wonderful gum drop snowmen. What could be easier? Well for starters I thought I bought large white gum drops but I bought only mini red and green ones. I stuck some on a toothpick and made a very skinny figurine. Then I trimmed the gum drop head thinking I could make a little hat with a Smartie, but since the Smartie and the head were the same radius when I put the other half of the gum drop on top it didn’t look like a snowman or Santa, it looked like Olivia Newton John in with a headband and sparkly spandex. Seriously, if I had been able to take a photo before Dash ate Xanadu, you would have said it was her. I’ve resolved to be less ambitious. We’re making marshmellow snowmen, one stick, three marshmellows and a gum drop hat. Done. I don’t know what the next party is, but I’m hoping another mom will express an interest and take it on. Or maybe I should change the holiday theme to Xanadu and make gummy Olivia Newton Johns as a cry for help.

I only do pick up once a week so I look forward to it and yet it can be awkward sometimes. An observer would think it’s all very casual and it usually is, except on Wednesday when I’m trolling for a playdate. The suburbs require planning, planning a working mother, like me doesn’t always have time for. So when I stand alone, away from a group of mom already deep in conversation its the same feeling I have when I’m standing alone at a cocktail party and start to admire family photographs because I have nothing better to do.

It’s not embarrassing until Conrad rushes out of the building and asks: who do I have a playdate with today? I say Mommy! And Conrad’s face falls and he bursts into tears, “I wanted a playdate with a friend!”

“I know bug,” I say, “but not today” and then he runs off and plays with someone for a bit. This whole scenario makes me miss the park life of Brooklyn where he could show up with our babysitter and have a playdate with ten kids.
Living in the city allows you to live more spontaneously. Out here you trade a yard for having to think ahead. By Wednesday we’ve run out of food and in Conrad’s mind, friends.

August 11th
Incident at Ikea
On Monday, a month to the day of our big move I thought I’d celebrate with the boys by playing at home and cuddling under blankets during a day of thundering rainstorm. But then the sun came out and I started to get restless…Ikea returns were calling. So we headed out to Paramus with a little protest on the boys part. While shopping, I noticed that I recognized many of the sales people who had helped me on previous visits, I saw the guy who helped with the mattress for the guest room. The woman who helped me find shoe storage. The girl who helped me in bedding and said she heard the Brooklyn store was in bad area and would be afraid to work there. I even saw the really nice lady in lighting who helped me find the bathroom when Dash had an accident and let me keep my cart with her. I used to think of going to Ikea the same way I’d think of Christmas: it happened once a year, I shopped with abandon and always ended up fighting with someone in my family.
Now that I can recognize the staff, I think it’s time for me to find other ways to spend my time. But I probably won’t stop until they start to recognize me.

So maybe it was because I was feeling like a member of the Ikea family, that what happened next seemed so upsetting. We were in the parking lot and Conrad was fiddling around in the front seat got his finger stuck in the latch of the compartment between the driver seat and the passenger seat. I was hauling stuff in the trunk and I heard him cry out. The screams became so intense that by the time I got to the passenger seat I expected to see blood. His finger was so wildly wedged into the latch of drink holder. I couldn’t pull it out without surely pulling off his entire nail. I ducked out of the car and screamed, Help! Help! I need Help with my son! He’s a little boy. I need help.
No one came.
There were people loading their car only 100 feet away and they didn’t hear me. He kept screaming so I went back tried to twist it out and then ducked out to scream for more help and still no one came. When I ducked back into the seat Conrad had pulled it out himself, a brave act that made me proud and heartbroken for him at the same time.

His finger was purple and the nail was already turning black. I had him dunk it in water, rather than rush back to the store for ice, the walk seemed too long to do any good. We’d be home in 14 minutes anyway. A man finally did come by but only to ask me for my palette cart, but I didn’t realize it and I said oh thanks we’re fine now and he just rolled the cart away.