They were doing nothing and so they were doing everything—wrong. And  I know they were hungry, and tired. I know Dash didn’t get enough time at recess. I know Conrad was home sick and on an Advil high.

But the more I  tired to redirect them by saying things like ” It looks like you need a job, go walk the dog,” or “Help me set the table,” the more rolling around on the floor there was, the more snickering and giggling and secret jokes there were between them. I refused to “get mad” to raise my voice as in the olden days of when they were 5 and 3. Instead I removed myself I told them I wasn’t going to have a dinner where people weren’t listening, or respecting me. I told them I was going to Hawaii…and  I gave myself a time out. I went down to the basement and folded laundry. A lot. And while down there I heard laughing and running around and a lot of hijinks and I was, probably stupidly, shocked that they could still be up there giggling instead of being worried or scared that there mother was gone. Removing myself, meant nothing.

After one particularly loud cackle and tumble I couldn’t fold anymore socks, so I came upstairs and saw them laughing and I said, “Okay I see you are done with you dinner, time for bed.” Now they were shocked. “But we are stille eating,” they said.

“It didn’t sound like you were still eating so it’s time to be done.”  Both boys went upstairs without looking at me to brush their teeth.  Dashiell was on the verge of hysterics and Conrad was angry, resentful, bitter and pale. He glanced at my clock. “It’s 5:56,” he said.

I knew I crossed a threshold, but I didn’t know how to go back. While Dash brushed his teeth he looked at me in the mirror and said, “I never want to be with you again.”

Fair enough. But right there, I felt like I was teaching them right there that women are crazy. Be nice to us or we will be crazy. It’s not what I ever thought I’d tell my sons and there it was–with Dashiell lying in his bed inching his body way under the blankets and Conrad brushing his teeth with his eyelids almost shut looking like he had already retreated inside himself, as if he had already resigned himself to never wanting to figure it out. He’s 9. I’m 43. I had been dismissed.

So to get help them both understand I said, “As the mom, my feelings are hurt. I asked you more than three times to wash you hands, get your drink, put your homework away and all I got was the the two of you chasing, laughing and getting up from the table, not helping me set it, not helping me come together. So goodnight.” I could have said more but they got  into their beds, silent, and disappeared under their covers as if the whack-a-mole game I was playing ran out of time.

And I know my mom,  my therapist and my wonderful neighbor who I texted on the verge of tears said I was doing the right thing. She’d asked me if I had any onions and when I gave it to her the driveway she said, “It’s actually good, how else will they learn you mean what you say.” But inside I wished I had bulima, and was used to feeling sick, because I was ready to throw up on the ashphalt.

I went back inside wondering why I couldn’t climb out of this. And worse, I thought of having to explain to David. He’d nod, but inside wonder what the hell is wrong with me. When David is home with the boys they play games. When I’m home we renact scenes from Mommy Dearest.

It’s been an uncomfortable Christmas. My freelance checks haven’t arrived. I keep expecting that tomorrow we can buy gifts but then the mail comes and the checks don’t. David put lights on the tree but two 150 strands broke and so we don’t have as many as we normally do. I suggested running out to get more, but he really thought it looked magical just lit from within. It did at the time and I didn’t want to argue. Only now it looks dim, like were are only operating at 60% glow.

I also I had a fight with my mom because I wanted to come to her house the night before Thanksgiving but she said no because my brother and step brother were already there and she didn’t think she could fit us in her house, even though she has a pull out couch in the music room/den. I decided to be hurt by this and that was a big mistake. We didn’t talk over Thanksgiving, I didn’t get to see my brother visiting from Wyoming, and I only see him once a year. It ended with me finally calling her in the parking lot of Toys R Us before walking into a “Doorbuster” NERF sale two weeks later. Standing next to a line of shopping carts, one with an empty juicebox inside it, she told me that she will never apologize to me, not ever, about anything she does. So a few days later I apologized just to be done with all of it, but now I just get tired when I think about her coming at Christmas.

I went back outside to let the dog out and when I came in Conrad had cleared the dining room table and left a note that said “Your welcome. And I’m doing my homework.”

I went upstairs. Dashiell was asleep. it was only 6:45 but he was exhausted and while I wished none of this had happened he probably need to go to bed this early. Conrad was doing his homework. I told him I appreciated his help and I was sorry, that I was upset I wasn’t being listened to.

Conrad turned around from his spelling assignment of breaking words into syllabels: head-ache, mis-take, heart-break… I’m not making it up those were on his list.

He turned to me and said, “You think we feel good too mom? We were laughing at dinner but did you think we really felt good?”

It was right on time, a week ago I had expected my mother to understand me and just know that I needed, but she didn’t get it. And  here was I a week later just as far away from my own son.

Every night before we go to bed we listen to the Writer’s Almanac. It’s like our bedtime story. The other night there was a poem by Sharon Olds that I can’t stop thinking about. It reads:

The Talk

In the sunless wooden room at noon
the mother had a talk with her daughter.
The rudeness could not go on, the meanness
to her little brother, the selfishness.
The eight-year-old sat on the bed
in the corner of the room, her irises distilled as
the last drops of something, her firm
face melting, reddening,
silver flashes in her eyes like distant
bodies of water glimpsed through woods.
She took it and took it and broke, crying out
I hate being a person! diving
into the mother
as if
into
a deep pond—and she cannot swim,
the child cannot swim.

I probably get my tendency to think long-term from my mother. She is always thinking ahead—I mean way ahead, like to her funeral. I know all her burial plans: She doesn’t want a wake, just a party; she doesn’t want a grave, just a big hydrangea bush instead. At 72, she can outsmoke Mad Men’s Roger Sterling, but despite her habit, she’s in very good health. Death, however, still lurks in every conversation. When I called her last week, our conversation started about a leak in her bathroom and ended with her saying she should sell the house because if my dad were to drop dead, she didn’t want to be in an old house worrying about a leaking bathroom. Her concerns are valid, but they also depress me, and I end up calling her less.

This week I let the calls slide by five days but it wasn’t just because I didn’t want to hear her stories I had my own Debbie Downer tales. Our vet thinks Chewie has liver cancer or Cushings disease both not cureable illnesses in a dog that’s 15. David and I have been annoying each other, so much so that when our voices pick up Conrad or Dashiell or both will say, “Okay guys, not everything has to be a fight.” Then the kids didn’t have school so I missed a day of work. Then I went on the fourth grade field trip to Sandy Hook and that night I served a bunch of homeless folks dinner at my church and then we had soccer and went to the maker faire where I got officially reprapped out… and then it was Monday I was driving home with Dashiell after his first drumming lesson and 24 balloons in my car for Stacie’s birthday and I decided to call her.

Immediately I could hear in her voice that she was annoyed. When my mom is angry but trying to be cool about it she stretches out her hello to sound like hellllllnooo.  The emphasis is on the hell part as in I‘ve put her through hell by not calling and she drops her voice down a notch for the noooo part as in no you are not going to be able to make it up to me. I immediately apologized and also told her Dashiell was in the car so she knew she was on speaker. We talked a bit but with a kid listening in we found we couldn’t really talk about why I hadn’t called or what we were planning for Christmas (a constant topic of ours) so I told her I’d call her later.

Later came at 9:30 while walking the dogs. We had a kooky night because I lingered over a drink with stacie and her balloons so dinner was late and when I got home we found out that Conrad had a math test and Dash had also had homework which he did in his bed at 8:00 in tears because he didn’t have time to play and Chewie had peed on the floor and thrown up and….I was the one calling with a story sequence of sad, sadder and saddest.

I was launching into all the reasons I hadn’t called: the field trip,  having to heat each meal individually in the microwave Friday night because the stove didn’t work and one of the men got so upset he was hitting himself on the head which was upsetting the other guests and now the vet thinks it’s Cushings which is actually better than cancer because there’s a drug but it may be super expensive and then I hear a clacking and banging and clacking and thumping.

My mom dropped the phone.

It takes at least three more clacks, and whirrs (the cord perhaps) and a little ding of the phone until she is back on.

“I dropped the phone,” she says.

“I know,” I say.

I’m about to launch right back into a rant about Conrad’s new nasty science teacher when I hear clang, ding, bang fumble fumble fumble again.

It takes a minute, but she’s back.

“I dropped it again,” she say.

“I know.” I start talking but I something’s not right she sounds really far away.

“You sound really far away mom. Is the phone okay?”

“Yes. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, its fine I’m here,” she says but it sounds like the phone is still on the floor and she’s talking into it while lying on the bed.

“I really can’t hear you…”

“Wait wait I know why, you can’t hear me. I’m holding the phone upside down.”

And there it is a contagious crazy moment between us. Me under a tree on the corner and her in her room with cigarette smoke and TMC in the background laughing so hard, I almost have to pee and I know really need to call my mother more often.

Buy Windows 7 Ultimate
Order Windows 7 Ultimate
Buy Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Ultimate
Order Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection
Cheap Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection
Discount Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection
Cheap Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus
Order Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus

I wrote up a post on a few silly ways to spook your kids out— it’s all in good fun. By the 10th prank you start to think I’m a little crazy, but I’m not suggesting you do them all. There are some for really little kids and some for big kids. My faves are the skull eggs and bacon (above) and tying a plastic skeleton to a dining room chair to freak them out when you call them to the dinner table.

Try one and let me know how it goes or share some of your best Halloween pranks. We are very pro-prank household so we’re open to anything.

The best prank every played on me was in 1981 when I was in the 7th grade. My dad had picked me and my friend Adrienne Johnson up from a Halloween party at Nancy Hargrave’s house in Lloyd Harbor. From a 7th grade perspective the party was “amazing” the boys brought Lacrosse sticks and eggs and chased all the girls through open fields in a nature reserve lobbing eggs in our direction. We retaliated with hiding in bushes and staging surprise attacks with silly string and shaving cream. Teenage dream, right?

But it was after the party that was the most memorable. As I said my dad picked me and Adrienne up and on the way home he made an unexpected detour and suggested we check out a graveyard high up on a hill. We drove down some winding roads, got out and parked and wandered through the graveyard, finding people who died on our birthdays and getting genuinely creeped out.  At one point we realized that my dad was no longer with us. We walked through the graveyard calling his name, but he didn’t respond. We kept calling but there was nothing. Nothing for a long time and our laughing turned to pleading. We were deep into the graveyard at this point and  I’m pretty sure Adrienne was on the verge of tears when my dad suddenly jumped out behind an gravestone shouting Booooooooooooo!!

We screamed and cried and laughed and I don’t think I’ve loved anyone as much as I loved my dad that night.

If you’re looking for a new fall coat, you’ve got lots of cute options. Check out my round up of the newest trends and mini slide show on USA Today Weekend.

Team Monclair at 6:30 in the morning. If I look tense and cold it’s because I was. There was a D.J. playing Queen so that was reassuring.

My transition spot. I tried to make it intimidating for all the tough mudders and seasoned triathletes. I was wise enough to take my basket off my bike before the big day.

Post race bliss. My time was 1.35 15 sec. I was able to run each of the three miles in 9.59 seconds. My swim was something like 13 minutes and my bike 45 min and then there’s all the transitions. Must work on getting my socks on faster! But we were happy and glowing and glad  and after the triathlon we started a marathon of drinking.

For weeks now, my husband, David, has been asking me, “Are you okay?” before we kiss each other good-bye at the train station. Then when we come home in the evening, he’ll look at me, rub my back and gently inquire, “Was your day okay?” And later, while we’re brushing our teeth, he’ll look at me in the mirror and say something like, “You know I love you, right?”

It was driving me nuts. Was I being especially snarky? Bitchy? Throwing myself on the bed and sighing? No, I was not. Really I wasn’t.

I couldn’t figure out what I was doing to make David think I was upset until I caught a glimpse of my reflection while Windexing the bathroom mirror. I realized that when I am focused on doing something, I look really pissed off. Almost a scored Earth kind of state and suddenly it hit me: He thinks I’m unhappy because my Botox has worn off.

Apparently, I’m not the only one whose furrowed brow sets off alarm bells among family members. In a recent interview, Kelly Ripa revealed that she knows it’s time to see her dermatologist when her brood looks nervous around her. “If my kids start asking me if I’m mad at them, I’ll say, ‘Why do you think I’m mad at you?’ They’ll say it’s because I’m frowning. I go, ‘Oh, no! I am? And I get Botox injected right here, right into my forehead as quickly as possible!”

Any dermatologist will tell you Botox is the most efficient way to smooth wrinkles in order to look younger, but while many women get injections take five years off their face, Botox delivers another, more important unexpected benefit. A few units can do more than make wrinkles disappear; it can make you look content with your life. Like many women, I don’t look “wrinkly” as I age. My furrowed brown just makes me look annoyed—regardless of how I really feel.

I realized I can start to see Botox less of an anti-aging treatment and more of an anti-anxiety treatment, for myself and for my family. Because when the wife and/or mom looks unhappy, the whole family is unhappy. I know it sounds like I’m being hyperbolic, but I’m not. I mean it: The secret to a happy family life may not be scheduling in more quality time, therapy or Xanax—just the occasional injection to reassure loved ones that everything is alright.

1. Made dinner at 8:30 am so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it later. 2. Put on a load of laundry. 3. Drove to Middle Island, Long Island from Montclair (and back) to buy a drum set for Dashiell from a couple who are clearly drum set hoarders. 4. Knew better than to ask if I could use their bathroom before the two-hour drive home and tried not too look or touch anything at the Sunoco station when I finally found a place to go. 5.Went to Party City to buy most of Dashiell’s birthday supplies. 6.Came home and did another load of laundry and folded and put away the first load.7. Cleaned out all the stuff for the Salvation Army so there would be a good space for the drum set. 8. Carried the drum set down to the basement and hid it under a sheet. I’m so tricky! 9. Took out all the recycling. 10. Loaded the car with all the stuff for the Salvation Army. 11. Wrote up two story pitches and a quick, quick blog. 12. Emailed David’s mom and sister. 13. Dealt with dinner: Fed the kids. Unloaded dishwasher. Cleaned up dinner. Made sure their was food for David. 14. Ordered the boys new lunch boxes after they told me how little time they had a lunch, Conrad actually almost started to cry, so maybe if they don’t have to wait in line they’ll have more time. 15. Played Dominos with them after dinner. 16. Walked the dogs. 17.Went to CVS. 18. Listened to Terry Gross interview with Andrew Rannells and realized it was the second time today I felt envious of a 30-year-old male actor who is gay. 19. Did another load of laundry. Folded and put away the second one. 20. Created a draft of Dashiell’s Evite for his class birthday.  21. Cursed Evite when I forgot to save and had to redo it again, along with the 27 class email addresses. 21. Walked the dogs. 22. Folded and put away the last load of laundry. 23. Read 27 pages  in my book. 24. Wrote this.

These tasks roll off like an itemized receipt from Target and even though it all needed to be done, I feel guilty, just like I do after $200 Target run. I only needed to do one thing, in this case that would have to muster up the energy to apologize, but in the same way I lose my focus in the aisles of “Greatland” I got distracted and ended up doing all other things instead.