The boy of my dreams

My little Pterodactyl is an enigmatic soul. At night, snuggled in his bed, he pulls my face to his and locks lips with me. “I love you, Mom,” he says.
That happens often, I should say. Other times, he screeches, “GET ME A BOPPY!” and kicks me in the ribs while I’m trying to say good night.
He loves to stroke his big sister’s hair and tell her how beautiful she looks. He also likes to throw his little sister’s beloved Teddy against the wall. The other day while in Time Out, he leaned over and repeatedly deposited globs of saliva on the floor until there was a puddle. Then he rubbed his fuzzy blanket on his upper lip and fell asleep in the fetal position.
He once, in the middle of the night, flushed his nightlight down the toilet where it lodged so perfectly that I had to replace the whole flipping toilet. Then he proudly woke me up so he could show me what he’d done.
This boy, he is kicking my ass. There are times when I think I might die of love for him, when tears sting my eyes just thinking about his toothy grin and sticky-uppy hair and the way he loves to have his ears cleaned. I also often would feel perfectly justified hanging him on a hook by his shirt collar, if I had a hook strong enough to hold him there.
I’d give anything to rid him of his middle-child syndrome (short of having another child, that is), to restore in him the confidence of his baby years, when he knew our world revolved around him. “I wish (the Tyrant) wasn’t in our family!” he tells me all the time. “I told you we shouldn’t have buyed another baby!”
The Tyrant was already 13 months old when she came home, old enough to act adorable and steal toys and generally steal the spotlight from her 2-year-old brother. He tortured her mercilessly until she grew up enough to fight back. Now she’s almost 3 and he’s 4, and they are like two little magnets spiked with explosives. They can’t stay away from each other, but nearly every contact ends badly.
He tries so hard to love her, he really does. When she wakes up, he’ll gently approach her and touch her hair and say, “Good morning!” in his sweetest voice. But the Tyrant, wary after two years of abuse, usually responds with a quick right hook and a growl, and so hurts my poor little boy’s feelings that he dissolves into big fat tears.
So last night, after the Tyrant had called him WEENER BUTT! WEENER BUTT! WEENER BUTT! for no reason, I pulled him into my lap and whispered, “Let’s go for a bike ride. I want to take you someplace special, just you and me.” Normally he argues about alone time with parents because he’s afraid it means he’s being left out of something. But last night, beleaguered, he agreed.
He rode in the bike carrier behind me and I pedaled through the neighborhood. Within 10 minutes, I pulled over in front of a lake surrounded by tree canopy. Hanging in front of us was an old-fashioned swing, fastened by ropes to a high oak branch.
We had to descend the bank slightly to get on the swing. I pulled him into my lap. I walked backwards as far as I could, then let go, and in a magical swoosh, we soared through the air and peaked over the water. I believed in that moment I felt my boy’s heart flying upward with mine, like together we were lifting ourselves above a world filled with pesky little sisters and cranky mothers and weener butts, and at least for a moment, we became part of the very air beneath us.
We kept swinging. We watched little turtle heads pop up in the lake and waterbugs making circles, and listened to the crickets chirp. I nuzzled his neck with kisses and nibbled his ear, which is one of his most favorite things in the world besides airplanes.
“Mom. It’s peace out here,” he said.
We swung and swung. I got vertigo and felt nauseated. I threw up a little in my mouth, and felt a headache looming. But I could not break this fairy spell, this rare moment when my boy felt, more than learned, the meaning of peace.
“Could you take a picture of us so we can remember this?” he asked.
I didn’t have my camera. Of course I would remember it, I told him. But I knew what he meant. Memories morph into blurry versions of reality, particularly for little children who struggle so hard to understand the complexities of a grown-up world. He’s the one who needed the photo, or some other tangible proof of my love that he could turn to the next time he found himself on the wrong side of trouble.
Finally, the sun started setting and tiny no-see-ums buzzed into our noses and mouths, and he said he was ready to go.
We rode home without talking, but I could feel his contentment. When we walked back into the house, the usual chaos reigned. The Diva had taken a shower with the Tyrant, who was screaming that she had soap in her eyes. The bathroom floor was flooded. It was nearing 9 p.m. and no one seemed interested in going to bed. Husband sat on the couch watching preseason football as though armed robbers had told him he’d be killed if he moved.
The Pterodactyl joined the fray, and within minutes, the three were involved in a fracas worthy of being televised.
But later that night, after the household had settled for the evening and I lay in bed mentally steeling myself for the next day, I thought about the secret swing, my beautiful boy, and the way he looked at me when he crawled into my lap to swing. And I thought about his favorite moment of the excursion, when, as he soared over the grassy slope over the calm clear water, I heard a little noise followed by inexorable giggles and his delighted announcement: “I gassed-ed!”

Me and school supplies and finally, the end of summer

Well, I managed to get the kids back to school. Even the Tyrant is enrolled this year, although it’s only three days a week. Still, for 12 hours each week, I am kid-free, at least until I begin to use the extended day program at the pre-school, which could be as early as next week.
The Back-To-School preparations did not go well, probably because I didn’t begin them until two days before school started. I think I totaled five supply trips, and I’m still missing a red folder and a blue folder with pockets AND hole punch thingies, sheet protectors and a container of sanitizing wipes. I could have bought a small used car for what I’ve spent.
Husband worked the day before, naturally, and sauntered into the school on the first day like Mr. Hands-On New Age Father of the Year. I trailed behind him schlepping the backpacks, unable to stop obsessing about whether I had put a juice box in everyone’s lunch box and if I had accidentally included a peanut-product that would send my daughter’s classmate into anaphelactic shock.
Fortunately everyone was happy to be at school, there were no tears, and as we left the final classroom, Husband and I gave each other high fives and issued joint little whoops of joy. A Father of the Year in front of us turned around and gave us a pointed look. “My wife hates this day,” he said. “She loves spending time with our kids.”
Now, I try not to let these sorts of incidents bother me - you know, these brief moments when other people make you feel like your children should be compensated for merely standing next to you. Coincidentally, something similar had happened the day before when I took my kids to Panera for dinner. As I ordered three chicken noodle soups, feeling actually quite proud that my little children adore eating chicken noodle soup, the Tyrant grabbed a bottle of water and threw it on the floor and the Pterodactyl pulled off my loose-waisted gauchos which I had worn because I felt bloated and the Diva was yelling, “I’ll get all the drinks, Mom!” So I was standing like a middle-aged washed-up hip hop artist with my underwear showing, trying to stash my credit card with one hand while using the other to keep the Tyrant from scratching my eyes out and barking at my kids to stay where I could see them, and the cashier gave me a superior saccharine smile and said, “Have a great evening!” She might as well have screamed at the top of her lungs, “I’M SO FUCKING GLAD I’M NOT YOU!” and started tossing muffin crumbs to my kids.
She was younger and shorter than me, so I threw back my shoulders, looked at her in feigned disbelief, and said, “Seriously?” Then I shook my head, laughed and walked away. And didn’t feel the least bit guilty when my three kids had a combined seven potty emergencies during the 35 minutes we were there.
One of the potty emergencies occurred en masse, as my children have developed some kind of weird simultaneous pooping osmosis. It shouldn’t be an issue at home since we have three toilets, but one of the toilets has a disconnected seat which has led to some awkward instability during business meetings. Consequently, some drama has occurred.
Anyway. Of course I love my kids, and I love spending time with them, particularly when they’re not calling each other “poopy pee-pee weiners” in public but, man, it’s nice to catch my breath every once in a while. And when the father at pre-school made that comment about his wife hating to send her kids back to school, the spirit of Miss Manners hovered over my shoulder and told me to smile and ignore him. But I had a lot of hot air that day, so I blew Miss Manners away, and I said to that man, “I guess she’s just a better mom than me.”

Should she go to Princeton? Or just get her G.E.D....

Husband and I don’t argue much in front of the kids, mainly because it seems silly to add to whatever neurotic tendencies they’ll develop simply by living with me, but also because I’m nearly always right and I don’t want to constantly correct him in front of his children.
But the other night I was so right about something that I had to give him the dagger eyes while speaking to the Diva in a soothing tone through a clenched jaw. It wasn’t pretty.
It started because the Diva was counting up how many years she has until high school. She figured it out - she has 7 years until high school - then added, “and then after high school, I’ll go to college.”
And Husband said, “Right! If you want to go to college.”
At this point I might have blacked out for a minute, but I’m pretty sure my eyes bulged and my hand flew up to my chin to keep my jaw from falling to the kitchen floor.
I used my sweetest, most enthusiastic voice and said, “Of course she’ll go to college!” I turned to the Diva. “Daddy’s just teasing. Right, Daddy?”
Husband looked at me not at all sheepishly. “If she wants to,” he said.
Then the conversation devolved into a ridiculous “uh-huh” vs. “nuh-uh” type back and forth with the children watching intently like it was Pinky Dinky Doo and SpongeBob Squarepants involved in an angry game of badminton.
Husband got specific. What if she wanted to go into the military, he asked. Again, I had the whole eye-bulging, jaw-catching thing, but I controlled myself. “ROTC,” I responded. Suppose she wants to be a rock star, he countered. Conservatory of music, I replied.
Finally the Tyrant started screaming about something and the debate morphed into whether I should open a bottle of Cabernet or just have a beer.
Now, the truth is that I’m not terribly concerned about the Diva going to college. In my humble maternal opinion, she is the most beautiful child on the face of the planet and will obviously be a supermodel by age 17 and, it’s true, a rock star soon thereafter. But doesn’t it seem premature to already be giving her permission to ditch college? It seems a little like confirming that ketchup is indeed a vegetable before she’s old enough to appreciate tomatoes. Also, I don’t want her to get a big head.
I do find that I’m less worked up than I thought I’d be about my children’s futures, perhaps because I find other parents far too worked up about it. I don’t need my kids to make a ton of money to take care of me in my old age. I’m hoping my parents don’t expect that of me, though I’d be happy to check with our homeowners association about getting a trailer out back.
I’m much more focused on the happiness and well-being of my children, and on manners. I’ve always said that my kids might end up in juvenile court but, dammit, they’re going to say “yes, sir” and “no, ma’am” to the judge when the time comes to speak. Really, I think manners can take you far in this world.
Plus there’s the whole college fund issue, which we haven’t really addressed because we’re finding pre-school costs way too taxing. We keep hoping that, by the college years, our kids will be good at something so they’ll have a chance at scholarships. Maybe the Pterodactyl’s creative trash-talking indicates a propensity for basketball, or the Tyrant’s ability to accurately throw things at her brother’s head shows a talent for softball.
I’m afraid the Diva might be really good at dating, which presents a complicated set of problems and is another reason I’d like to set her sights on college ASAP.
A friend who has two little girls recently confided in me that he didn’t understand why people got so worked up over teenage pregnancy. He just wants his girls to be happy, he said, and if they have babies younger than expected, then he’s just fine with that.
I had to disagree, mainly because teenagers having babies, to me, means mothers of teenagers having to deal with babies ... again. And by that time I can promise I’ll be too tired to do it all again.
All of this means that I think it would be very nice if my kids went to college, and if they don’t, it better be because they found something better to do, which will be fine with me as long as they can be self-sufficient, at least for a while.
Because by then, I’ll just need a little time to myself. That, in my opinion, is what sending your kids to college is all about.

Should I get one? I'm taking a poll.

Should I get a tattoo?
Husband and I have an ongoing debate about this, and I have promised him that I won’t do it. I’m not sure why he is so offended by the idea, but he doesn’t make many demands of me other than insisting I stay on my happy pills, so I feel like I should comply. Also, he’s worried a tattoo will get droopy when my skin gets old.
Even BFF has weighed in on the issue, sending me articles about how tattoos are “so ‘90s.” Of course, she already has a tattoo, so it’s possible she’s trying to thwart my efforts to be as trendy and hip as her.
But you know, the option just sits there, like the last Oreo left in the pantry. And I want it.
Normally this idea resides benignly in the back of my consciousness, but every so often something happens to propel it forward. Today, the propellor is Michelle Obama’s legs.
If you have better things to do than read about stuff that really doesn’t matter, let me clue you in. The media is in an uproar because Michelle Obama wore shorts when traveling on Air Force One on her way to the family’s Wyoming vacation. They weren’t short shorts, but nor were they long shorts. I’d call them medium. The hem hit her legs about mid-thigh. She appeared to be wearing a twinset with them, which I found a little strange, but whatever.
Now Michelle Obama does have some nice legs, though I don’t think they are as nice as, say, mine, for example, and she looked just fine in her shorts, as though she might be going to a neighbor’s backyard barbecue. Her bottom half was dressed for burgers and Bud Lite, and her top half was dressed for salmon and Chardonnay.
But some media types did not like the fact that she was traveling on Air Force One in casual shorts. They find it “inappropriate.” And I think the implication is that it was inappropriate for her age, which is 28 days younger than me. I am 45.
All summer long I have been tempted to buy myself some of those trendy short shorts to wear, but have been worried that it’s “inappropriate” for my age. But now I’m a little miffed that anybody thinks I can’t wear anything because of my age, so I’m going to go find some today that will hopefully be on sale since I will probably wear them once then give them away.
Same thing with tank tops, which I have been hesitant to wear for years because I was worried I’m too old to have my bra straps showing. But you know what? I now understand that the public at large knows that I wear a bra regardless of whether the evidence can be seen. I’ve talked myself into believing that it’s nearly sexist for me not to be able to show my bra straps. I have boobs! I have to wear a bra so I don’t get sweat marks on my shirt from my breasts bouncing on my stomach! So deal with it, people! And now I wear tank tops and dresses with skinny little straps and I don’t care who sees my bra, as long as the bra is clean.
I don’t think Michelle Obama’s shorts were particularly flattering on her, and they were a little wrinkled in the crotch area from sitting on the plane. I probably would have worn something else. But we’ll never know, as I could never be First Lady or probably even work as an air conditioning repairperson in the Oval Office due to that awkward little incident from my senior year in college.
The point is this: why does anybody care what she wore on the plane to Wyoming? And, by the way, maybe she had been wearing a skirt but little Malia got airsick and threw up all over her and all she had in her carryon was a pair of shorts?
And why can’t I get a small, tasteful tattoo?

Vacation Odyssey: The Final Installment

MONDAY

It is the final day of the Vacation Odyssey. I will be sleeping in my own bed tonight after 16 days on the road.
The worst has occurred. At the moment I hate the words Mama, potty, hungry, thirsty, and the phrase “The DVD Player Broke Again.”
I’m currently drinking gas station coffee and feeding my pain with chocolate chip cookies and peanut brittle, which is not good for my cavity.
For the past two nights the Tyrant has slept with Husband and me, which is a bit like trying to sleep with a greased piglet. Every part of my body hurts, even the top of my foot, inexplicably.
We’re listening to Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face” for the 148th time this trip, since the Tyrant requests it every 30 minutes. It’s disconcerting to hear a 2-year-old sing, “Baby, when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun.”
“Do you think you’re the only one suffering?” Husband just asked me.
“Woe. Is. Me,” I said. In other words, yes.
We left the Cape Saturday morning.
Here I must insert the caveat that I love my in-laws dearly, and that I treasured my time with them. My kids spent quality time with their cousins, and I’m grateful they’ll have these memories of summer bonding with extended family.
However. I have never been so glad to say goodbye to a purported vacation mecca. So long, weathered gray shingles. Sayonara, federally protected conservation land. Good riddance, fried clam bellies. No more renting wet suits so my kids can swim in August just down the beach from seals. Seals! The water was cold enough for SEALS!
Get me back to Florida, where the gas stations sell beer and wine and the beaches are free and nobody wears shirts when being interviewed on television about hurricane preparation.
After leaving, we spent the first night with friends in New Jersey. We arrived to discover they were having a big party, a social custom which Husband and I vaguely recalled from our youth. Our friends are fabulous hosts, and the food ranged from seared tuna and roasted veggie sandwiches to hot dogs and wings. We tried to be polite guests, although the Tyrant pooped on the party deck 10 minutes before guests were scheduled to arrive and the Pterodactyl threw such a tantrum later in the evening that Husband took him into a closet to mute the sound.
The hostess had worked her ass off preparing for her fabulous party, and get this: when it was over, she went upstairs to bed. Her husband stayed up until 3 a.m. restoring the house to its pre-party state of organized perfection. Then he got up at 7:30 a.m. to make us homemade chocolate chip waffles for breakfast, and the hostess sent us off with a huge box of homemade chocolate chip cookies for the kids. I’ve eaten 11 of them so far.
Perhaps the best thing they did was convince us to take the Cape May ferry connecting New Jersey to Delaware and drive down the east coast of Delaware and through Ocean City, Md. It was a great day for a ferry ride, and the kids ate a hearty ferry lunch of nachos and Lucky Charms marshmallows.
Husband was excited to drive along the beach in Delaware because as a boy he spent several summers there with his grandparents. And we got to spend a lot of time there because the children staggered their potty needs so that we had to stop four times in 45 minutes. I am not making this up. But luckily one of the stops was at a McDonald’s next to a street sign marked Evergreen Road, and Husband by chance looked up and recognized it and so found the little beach shack his grandparents called The Monsoon. That little bout of nostalgia nearly mitigated the toxic conditions we endured in the above mentioned McDonald’s so that the Diva could eliminate four drops of pee from her bladder.
We stopped last night in Emporia, Va., a town which, if judged by its I-95 interchange, should be evacuated and burned to the ground. We stayed at a very pleasant highway hotel franchise. I suspect it was so pleasant because it was about five minutes old. Certainly the paper walls will fall down soon and the building will implode sometime next spring.
But the rest of it? Shit. Even the water tasted funny.
According to our current schedule, we should be home HOME HoMe HOME by dinnertime. First we have to stop at the kennel to pick up the dog. She has been there for 16 days. I’ll have to sign off soon to work on securing a second mortgage to pay for her stay. It will be hands down the costliest single expenditure of the so-called vacation.

TUESDAY

I am writing this from my very own living room. I have survived. I need the proverbial vacation to recover from my vacation. But that’s okay. Not only do I have renewed appreciation for my neurotic little life, I also have renewed appreciation for my chaotic little family. If I ever again have to be locked up in a motorized landfill for 55 hours with salt water taffy, Lady Gaga and four people, there are no four people I’d rather be with for the journey.
Truthfully, though, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Pneumonia and roaches and other vacation hazards

The house we’re renting on Cape Cod is a cute little cottage except for the roaches, although the pest control guy claims they’re beetles but he agrees that they should not be inside.
Here’s what I don’t understand, however, about this Summer on the Cape phenomenon. Why is everyone so anxious to pay such a premium for so much inconvenience? Okay, it’s pretty here. But what am supposed to do? Besides go to the beach, which is a quarter mile walk along a busy narrow road with no sidewalk, and I can’t drive because you have to be a resident to park there and even if I had a resident sticker I’d have to wait for an hour for a spot.
But back to the house....it is a cute little house. Let’s put little in italics, for emphasis, particularly for nine people. Four big people and five rugrats. The real problem, however, is that when we arrived, it had not been cleaned after the previous renters departed. It was passable, because rental agreements stipulate that you have to leave the house “broom-swept,” whatever that means (Who are these people? Do you think I want to go on vacation to clean somebody else’s house?), but the bathrooms hadn’t been cleaned, the trash had not been emptied, there was even coffee left in the pot. There was a pair of dirty underwear under the bed. Two pairs, in fact. I mean, ick.
After several calls to the rental agency, the homeowner began calling. He called three times. No, he did not want to apologize for charging us $2,700 for the privilege of staying in his dirty house. He wanted to tell us that the rental agency had been feuding with the cleaning company and somehow our house didn’t get cleaned. But it wasn’t his fault.
He came over the next morning to tell us again that he understood this mess wasn’t our fault. Duh. But that it wasn’t his fault either. And that the cleaners would be there soon.
The cleaners came and cleaned the house and that was done. We went to the beach and swam in the frigid waters and dug in the sand, and felt temporarily very Cape Coddy.
Back at the house, the Diva told me her throat hurt. I gave her some ice water. That night at dinner, she told me she was cold. I gave her a jacket. She said she wasn’t hungry. I told her she needed to broaden her culinary horizons. Then I took her temperature. She had a fever of 102, and white pustules on her tonsils.
Husband reluctantly took her to the emergency room the next morning because I couldn’t get a
pediatrician’s office to answer the phone. There is one walk-in clinic that’s open evenings from 5-6:30 p.m., which I don’t find very helpful.
Anyway, the doctor took 45 seconds to diagnose the Diva with strep throat.
At the drug store, after I paid for the penicillin, I asked the pharmacist if he could recommend something to help with the pain in my increasingly throbbing cavity tooth. He said no, nothing other than ibuprofen, and he asked when we were headed home. “Saturday,” I said. “But we’re driving. To Florida.” He whistled.
“Who’s the penicillin for?” he asked. I told him my daughter had strep throat. He pointed at the Tyrant, who was with me. “No,” I said. “She has pneumonia.”
He shook his head, then said he’d be happy to recommend a good scotch.

The same night the Diva fell ill with strep, we arrived home from dinner just after dark. When my sister-in-law turned on the light in the basement bedroom where her two boys were sleeping, dozens of gross brown bugs scurried everywhere. My sister-in-law was, understandably, completely skeeved out by this, and she made her husband sleep in the basement with the bugs while the two boys slept with her in a queen-sized bed. She’s cranky now.
We called the rental company. They spoke to the owner who promised to send over the pest control company to spray enough chemicals to eradicate every known species of bug in the Northeast. We said no, thanks, but we’d rather our children not return to their homes as altered species.
Our 4-bedroom cottage is now a 3-bedroom cottage. Actually, last night it was a 2-bedroom cottage, since the upstairs bedrooms have air conditioning and the downstairs bedroom does not. All those rumors about the Cape having a cold windy summer? Put them to rest. The heat has arrived. Right now, I am writing at 5:30 a.m. while Husband, Pterodactyl, the Diva and the Tyrant pretend to indulge in restful sleep, all in the same bed.
The owner visited the morning after the bug discovery to announce again that this was not his fault because he pays a pest control company to handle this stuff. He did some vaguely threatening chainsaw work for about an hour then cut some of his hydrangeas and gave them to me as some sort of compensation. Then he showed up again last night at 9:30 p.m. to collect bug samples. At this point I think he is stalking us, and I’m going to take my boxing gloves out of the car and leave them in a prominent place.
Just to further complicate matters, the Pterodactyl is having a very rough time because most of his cousins are older and tend to exclude him from playing. He tussled with one younger cousin who bit his finger so hard I thought it might be broken.
I’m getting a little cranky myself. Husband said I barked at the children so loudly at the ice cream store last night that people actually stared. I have no memory of this. Also, I forgot to get my happy pills refilled before I left, so I am parceling them out sparingly.
And get this -- it’s only Day 3. We’re not even halfway through.

Note

Vacation Odyssey #3 was posted a day late. Sorry. Hilton wanted $10 for wireless connection