Some Pig

Letter From A Broad, It's All A Blur Edition

Dear kid,

As I just mentioned, this marks my fifteenth year as an educational professional.  So far, you've learned my name, my class rules, my contact information, my behavioral expectations, where I keep the tissue box, and when you get to leave my room to go to lunch continue your educational efforts. 

So far, I have learned -- nothing about you yet. 

Let me explain:  It's not that I don't WANT to know who you are, including your strengths and weaknesses and hopes and dreams and seat assignments, it's just that there are so gosh-darn many of you and you all come in at once.  Sheesh, I just nailed down the names of the LAST group of scholars who came through here; now I have to go and learn a whole NOTHER round of names and faces?!  It's just... whew.  Look at it this way:  At a (very conservative) estimate, I've learned the names of 100 new students every year for the past 14 years.  That's 1400 names in the name bank already and now I have 115 or more to add for this year.  Add to that the frenzy of the first week of school, the disruptions for picture taking and assemblies and the first fire drill and all that foofaraw, on top of the usual background hum of chronic mother-of-young-children sleep deprivation and panic over whether or not there's anything in the house for dinner, and the ole memory bank, it ain't the steel trap it used to be.  It might still be steel in some form, but "sieve" is the object that comes to mind most frequently.  So please, don't take it personally if I say your name and look at someone else, or have to gesticulate wildly to get your attention, or wind up calling you, "Hey, you, you with the face."  I swear, your name will make its way into the memory bank sooner rather than later, I promise.  Just don't ask me to swear that on your full name yet, mmmkay?

Signed,

Your Mentally Exhausted Teacher

Dear Parents-to-Be,

Lemme give you a little advice that is going to make a LOT of people's lives easier five and six years down the road.  Let's say you're mulling over what to name the little being busily engaged in the Miracle of Gestation.  You've come up with what you think is a really cool name, which you've decided to spell in an offbeat way so it stands out.  Then you go on a tour of your future day care or get together with your mothers-to-be group or tell all your Wastebook friends your choice, and, guess what!  Uhmahgahd, you wouldn't believe it, but YOUR little Jaxon is going to be in playgroup with Jacksyn, Jacson, Jackson, Jaxxson, Jakson, AND Gackson!  Isn't that AMAZING?!?!

My advice at this point?  Run, don't walk, to the nearest bookstore purveying whatever variation of "100,000 Best Baby Names EVER" you prefer, and pick out a different freaking name, please AND thank you.  Why?  Because no matter how cleverly you spell it, that name dooms your kid to being one of the gaggle of Kids With The Trendy Moniker who are going to move through the school system together like a pig in a python.  Rome had the Year of Four Emperors; I had the Year of Five Nic(h)ol(l)es.  (On a related note, don't think that means you should go making up a name out of the blue, or turning another word into a name.  When I was preggers with the first rugrat, I got in an internet spat with a moron fellow mom-to-be who asked the general public whether or not they liked the name Cadence.  When I pointed out, correctly, that cadence refers to the tempo of a piece of music and not a human being, she got all Snippy McSnipperson on my @ss and told me that she LIKED the name and thought it was BEAUTIFUL and EVERYONE thought it was the PERFECT name for her dear son-to-be.  Are you ready for the punch line?  She posted this screed on Baby's Named A Bad, Bad Thing.  Yeah, this woman was too dumb to realize she was supplying the website with fodder.)

So what should you name your as-yet-unborn progeny, you ask, if trendy names are verboten and you can't just make that sh!t up?  Find out what your great-grandparents were named.  Look up names that reflect your ethnic heritage, and no, 'redneck' is not an ethnicity.  Nor can you name your kid after your favorite NASCAR driver, rapper, brand of alcohol, make of car, or color.  And if all else fails, I can tell you that I haven't had a whole lot of Johns in my career, and almost no Marys.  Seeing those names on my roster would be a novelty, and whaddya know - I can pronounce them AND spell them both, right off the bat.  Give your kid a name like that, and his or her teachers will be eternally grateful. 

Keepin' it simple, stupid,

Some Pig.

In Which I Read Three Books Without Pictures

Somehow, despite being constantly overwhelmed and continually behind the 8-ball for the past three months, I managed to sneak in a little bit of recreational reading.  Since I am nothing if not efficient, I figured I would share my responses with you and get a twofer out of 'em - or, in some cases, a threefer, as I read some of them for a book group as well as for my own edification.

Book #1:  Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua.  Yeah, I know everyone else has already read it, and has already said all the intelligent things there are to say about it, but that is not going to stop me from putting in my $.02.  In case you've been living on a homestead without any connection to the outside world (more on which later), Amy Chua is a Chinese-American mother who firmly believes that children should be pushed to be superachievers, and the best way to make that happen is to stand over them every. single. moment. always.  She posits a philosophy of parenting that believes if you love your children, you have to place this kind of constant, unremitting demand on your kids so they will achieve at the highest possible level, because really, if you TRULY love your children, you will not be happy until they do the best they possibly can do.  As with any true believer, she so thoroughly believes it herself that you find yourself nodding and agreeing with her until you realize, hey, wait a minute - she left annotated rehearsal notes for her daughters to follow?  During their THREE HOURS OF INSTRUMENTAL PRACTICE every day??  AND she held down a job, AND she ran a household?  Personally, I think she must be from the Borg.  Now, look, I agree with Chua that a lot of nice, middle class American parents have a secret (or not-so-secret) sense of entitlement about their children - as in, being a nice kid from a "good" middle-class home should mean that you never have to face any obstacles or hindrances in life, ever, and if you do, well, then, Mommy is going to call the coach/principal/teacher/director/whomever and raise hell until said hindrance is removed.  In case I haven't made that clear yet, that attitude drives me furkin' NUTS and makes me want to break things with my teeth.  BUT, by the same token, she takes the idea that parents should push their children to achieve to ridiculous levels.  After I read the book, I admit, I succumbed to a momentary sense of panic that my children weren't on track to be fluent in three languages, leader of the mathletes and concertmasters in the local youth orchestra, until I came to my senses and realized that I don't CARE if they're any of those things.  Would it be great if Celeste attained the first violin chair by age 11?  If she were some kind of prodigy and that's how she wanted to spend her time, sure; but then, so what?  Being a wunderkind is great, but being a sane, balanced adult is even greater.  Given the fact that the women in my family tend to live to exceedingly ripe old ages, my girls have at least eighty years left on this planet to make their marks; if they peak by age twelve it is going to be a long, loooong rest of their lives.  Besides, India wants to be a paleoanthropologist and Celeste wants to be a unicorn trainer, and those are both professions that don't have much room for the underaged in them.

Moving on to Book #2, I read This Life is In Your Hands by Melissa Coleman.  Subtitled "One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone," it purports to be a memoir of a girlhood spent growing up in a homesteading family, but it winds up being much more about the parents' marriage, including the years before the author was even born, than anything else.  I was naturally interested in this book because the author was born and raised her in The State Formerly Known As Home in the '70s, and I grew up in the same state during that same decade.  Let me tell you, in the years before cars with good suspension and the interwebs, Maine was a pretty darned isolated place to begin with, never mind sequestering yourself off a dirt road with no mod cons in a state that sees fourteen months of winter a year. My parents moved up to a small town in Maine in 1971, and their friends thought they had completely taken leave of their senses even with central heating and running water.

I liked the author's writing style and voice, but she spent way too much time talking about her father's dedication to his organic farming practices and his belief in the superiority of traditional methods, and not enough time examining her own life.  Maybe Coleman was just reflecting how a child believes that everything parents do is the right way to do things, but her reflexive acceptance of her father's approach to farming and life in general made me cranky.  Yes, I believe that agribusiness is poor ecological stewardship, and no, I do not want to feed my family mass-produced, earth-depleting foods that are ruinous to their health, but you can be a good farmer and a good steward without having to do everything by hand.  After reading the umpty-umpth description about how the family was living on the brink of destitution while their survival hung on the father's ability to work the land completely by hand, I wanted to reach into the book, grab that man by the neck and yell, FOR THE LOVE OF JOHN DEERE, BUY A FRICKIN' TRACTOR ALREADY!  Look, respecting the wisdom and knowledge of our ancestors is necessary and has its place, but there is a reason why we don't still live like it's 1899 - mostly because everyday life for most people back then consisted of endless, difficult, repetitious toil, and in fact, many of our ancestors exerted a great deal of thought and ingenuity in coming up with ways to make life LESS difficult rather than more!  I bet if you took the average 1800's farmer living the lifestyle so idolized by Eliot Coleman and his ilk, and offered him an internal combustion engine and basic refrigeration, that farmer would run you over with an ox to get to it.  Then try telling his wife, who had buried a couple of kids herself before dying of pueriperal fever at age 42, that you were turning up your nose at giving your kid a couple of DTaP immunizations because you didn't "believe" in inoculations, and I bet she'd get that ox and run you back over from the other direction.  I know full well that I am being Judy Judgmental here, but people who turn up their noses at immunizations make me mental.  Why on earth would ANY parent think that putting their child's life at risk from catching a communicable disease THAT WE KNOW CAN BE DEADLY is preferable to giving them immunizations that SOME fringe medical practitioners and scientists think MIGHT be risky??   But I digress.  Anyway, one bit of praise I will give this book is that the author wrote well enough to suck me in, even though her life was a compendium of Things That Make Me Crazy, including home birth (with placenta eating!), radical vegetarianism, and the aforementioned anti-immunization stance.  The only thing missing was homeschooling, which I'm SURE those parents would have done if the book were set twenty years later.

Onto Book #3, Cinderella Ate My Daughter:  Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, by Peggy Orenstein.  I am declaring this one a must-read for any of you raising younger girls.  Orenstein gives form and words to a lot of what I've been noticing since I've had my own girls but could not express - things like, When the heck did 13-year-olds start getting fake nails and manicures?  Why is every single thing offered to girls done up in pink, lavender, and butterflies?  What is up with princesses, products for seven year olds that say 'spoiled' and 'gone shopping', and kiddie spa parties?  When did THAT happen???  Orenstein traces the explosion of girlie-girl culture to a collision between  female empowerment and rising consumerism fueled by ever-more-sophisticated marketing.  A lot of the contents were excerpted in the New York Times magazine in the course of her writing the book (which is probably how she got the time to write the book), so it's a little bit disappointing if you've read the real boffo stuff beforehand, but much of that work is worth a second look and it makes even more sense when Orenstein puts in greater context.  

Bonus Book: No, I have not read Go the F&*k to Sleep, but I don't need to - one, because I lived that damn book with Celeste, thank you very much; and, two, because now that I have Samuel L. Jackson's voice in my head reading this, I have had the ultimate GTFTS experience. 

At Least I'm Not Alone In This

While I was tending my flock at Sunday school [shut up] and waiting for them to get the flock out, my friend Barbara stuck her head round the door.  "I saw your post about household rules," she said, "and I'll send you mine on Monday."  This filled me with glee, as Barbara is one of my favorite peoples.  She's the material culture curator at the local historical society; I've learned more from her offhand asides than I've learned from many a Ph.D. I paid for the honor, and she's got a wit drier than a James Bond martini.  Basically, I just want to follow her around and curl up at her feet like a little puppy dog while she tells me amusing historical anecdotes, except that that sounds ... weird.  Anyway, I asked her if I could use her household rules as a "guest post" (read:  post I don't have to write) and she gave her royal consent.  If you're fuzzy on your ancient history, you might want to peruse this first so you're in on the joke.  Enjoy!

Code of Hammurabarbara

2003 C.E.

When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Exeter by his illustrious name (well, maybe not), made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabarbara, the exalted one, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of all.

So, I wrote these rules. It would be a good idea to follow them, as some of the penalties are pretty fierce.

THE LAW

Ye who doth leave his/her mode of transport out in the evening rains shall be awakend  from thy slumbers to traverse into the exterior darkness to return it to shelter.

Ye who doth leaveth toweling unattended  in repose on the floor of resting rooms shall be awakened from thy slumbers to attend to its drying needs.

Ye who doth leaveth oral cleansing  containers uncovered after use shall be awakened from thy slumbers or recalled from thy more favorable activities to tend to its preferred  mode of repose.

 Ye who doth dispense for himself a cooling drink shall be responsible for the vessel and shall return it after use to the chef’s lair.

 Ye who doth dispense for herself a drinking straw for use with a cooling drink shall dispose of both straw and wrapper after use in the proper place.

Ye who eats rice unattended in the familial gathering place shall suffer the consequences of subsequent broom attack upon the carpeting  by the exalted one.

 There shalt  be no free-range pudding within the kingdom.

 Ye who have taken it upon oneself the role of chef shall be responsible for the cleansing of the chef’s lair.

 All those who have not yet attained the age of 10 years shall be in nightclothes by 9:00 pm each evening.

 All those who have not yet attained the age of 10 years shall have completed oral cleansing by 9:00 pm each evening.

 All those who have not yet attained the age of 15 years shall vacate the lower realms by 10:00 pm each evening, and shall begin the night’s slumbers at that time.

The griot box shall be controlled after 10:00 pm by those who have attained the age of 40 for the purpose of viewing  various and sundry murder, medical, and violent epics.

 Wednesday, and Wednesday alone, shalt be ice cream days unto the first weekend in September.

 The griot box shalt not be turned on during the hours from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.  Likewise, it shalt not be on during  meals or gatherings.

 Those who have attained the age of 12 years may traverse the kingdom at the will and consent of the exalted one. 

 The exalted one shalt not be treated as a common housemaid.  The mate of the exalted one likewise shalt not be treated as a common servant, except by the exalted one and then only when she feels like it and he really really wants to mow the grass anyway.

 Those within the kingdom shall keep a kindly demeanor and shall avoid harboring discontent, inciting war-like behavior from other subjects or voicing trivial discontent.  Especially at mealtimes.

Food shall not be airborne at anytime in the kingdom..

Ye who brings food, crockery, or utensils into the familial gathering place shall remove said objects when no longer in use or shall be awakened from slumbers or removed from a more favorable activity until said objects are correctly dispensed with.

Failure to comply with the code of the exalted one, or to  requests for service by the exalted one will lead to revocation of more favorable activities.

Clothing and footgear shall not be abandoned in undesirable places.

Votive statuettes [Barbies and Polly Pockets] and the clothing of votive statuettes shall be returned to locations of storage before worshippers retire to places of slumber.

Votive statuettes and the clothing of votive statuettes shall be returned to locations of storage by the worshippers at the request of the exalted one at any given time.

The following cannot be spoken by subjects to the exalted one or the exalted one’s mate without suggestions of remedy:

• pertaining to lack of preferred foods
• pertaining to lack of favored activities
• pertaining to regrets concerning absent acquaintances
• pertaining to inability to perform favored activities due to other familial members' lack of ability
• pertaining to unfavorable schedule of exalted one or exalted one’s mate
• pertaining to lack of funding
• pertaining to unfavorable weather

These shall be replied to with little enthusiasm and flat affect by the exalted one and the exalted one’s mate.  Raising  of one’s vocal level shall not change this response.  Continuation of such conversation shall result in subject being banished to the upper realms.

I Totally Get The Whole Catholic Thing Now

For the past few weeks, I've been teaching Sunday School.  Yes, the agnostic-trending-toward-atheist has been teaching lessons like "A Time for Wondering About God," and yes, I managed to restrain myself from renaming it "A Time for Wondering If There Is A God."  But that's not the point.  The point is, I'm teaching Sunday School, and, if the truth be told, I really do not enjoy it.  At all.  In fact, I'd say I hate it, but in our household we don't "hate" anything or anyone;  we might not like it very much but we accept it for what it is and understand that there's a reason for it.  Which is parent-speak for, I hate it.  There's a simple reason for that:  I don't want to do on Sunday what I do all week for a living.  When I see India running amok and acting like a Hottentot playing with her friends after the service, I want to think, "oh, isn't that nice," not, "that's the kid who never shuts up... and the one who always interrupts ... and the girl who always spills her juice... and the boy whose parents only come once in awhile and then expect he's going to be included in everything..." et cetera.  In short, I want to see them as kids, and not as responsibilities.  Then I immediately feel guilty, because in our church, it's expected that all the parents will take a turn teaching one session a year, and if I shirk that duty, what right do I have to expect that other parents will step in and do it?  If we're going to be part of a community, don't I have to step up and do my share?   And, since I actually know what I'm doing, for the most part, shouldn't I shoulder a LARGER share of that particular burden, rather than sluffing it off? 

After the service, I was chatting to a friend of mine and I fessed up.  "I really hate teaching Sunday School," I said, "I just don't want to come here on Sunday and do what I do all week."  Her reaction was immediate:  "So don't do it next year."  I had a moment of shock, and then I remembered:  She's head of the Sunday School committee!  And she's a teacher herself!  So she understands!  I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders, and then I got it - THIS must be what it feels like to confess your sins and gain absolution!  The skies parted, the sun came out, rainbows and daffodils sprouted out of thin air and cartoon birdies draped garlands of flowers around the room.  Okay, no, they didn't, but in my mind they did, and that was good enough.  So all you out there who are practicing the one true faith:  I get that whole confession routine now, and it's a pretty good schtick you got going on.  I'd stick with it if I were you. 

Ain't No Cure For the Summertime Blues

Ah, summertime - a magical season full of sunshine, ice cream cones, and outings to the ole swimming hole (Yeah, the parallelism in that last phrase sucked.  I think we'll all live.).  Thanks to the lack of a strict regular schedule, coupled with the aforementioned sun going down late in the evening, it's also the season of bedtimes going to rack and ruin.  As in, right now, even as I type, it's 8:30 in the p. of m. and Celeste is standing next to me, clad only in her underpants and shorts, offering a running soliloquy on the pretend adventures of someone named Sasha who offered to wash her clothes whilst chatting into an old remote control that apparently moonlights as a cell phone (It's not quite the same thing as talking into a shoe a la "Get Smart," but one does what one can with the tools at hand.).  And this child shows no signs of slowing down.  None.  Not a one.  If past practice is any guide, this will end either when I take her to bed with me because I'm woozy from exhaustion, or when she falls asleep on the floor in mid-chatter, after which I will put her in her bed for all of an hour before she wends her way to my bed anyway. Then she, and eventually her sister as well, will start the turning-tossing-elbowing-snoring fest that passes for a sleep cycle in my bed.

If and when this blog makes me rich and famous, I'm hiring that Ferber guy to come stay at my house, and *I'm* going to a motel.

[A digression:  When I was a new mom, and therefore easily swayed, I let myself be conned into feeling guilty about how I was raising my kids by that awful Dr. Sears.  Because a lot of what he says is good advice, the wackadoodle stuff doesn't sound so nutty when it comes wrapped in his soothing tones.  And this is the end result: Kids who won't stay the hell out of my bed.  Yes, Dr. Sears, children in primitive cultures are never separated from their parents and they always sleep together, all night, every night - but might I point out that they sleep in a hut or a wigwam or a yurt or a what-have-you where, to grab a little extra space, all you have to do is slide your animal hides over a bit and you have plenty of elbow room.  There are also some other things those primitive cultures don't have to deal with, such as JOBS, jobs outside the home where you have to be conscious and functional for eight straight hours, give or take a lunch hour, and where you can't just lie down somewhere and take a NAP when the need strikes.  Maybe HIS kids wound up being more stable and well-adjusted because they slept in the family bed, but he's not here in MY HOUSE, that's for damn sure! So if any of you are planning to have babies, or have friends with babies, please make sure that you treat his advice on sleeping as the hooey it is.  End of digression.]

Back to our story:  The pattern was set that I'd have several days in a row of dealing with cranky, short-tempered kids who were late to bed and early to rise. Then they'd inadvertently take a nap or sleep in or fall asleep early, and we'd start the whole pattern all over again.  I finally decided one night that I had had it with my offsprings' lack of acquiescence to the sandman and that they were going to bed, dammit.  All the signs seemed auspicious.  India had complained of being tired several times.  Cici hadn't napped and was rubbing her eyes by five o'clock.  Warren was out late that night, so no one was going to get the brilliant idea to go for bike rides at seven p.m. and get everyone all ginned up again.  We had a leisurely dinner early in the evening, then the girls played quiet board games while I cleaned the kitchen. Before they knew what was going on they'd been bathed, put in jammies and given dessert, before huddling together for a nice, calm talk on the couch.

That part of the plan went off without a hitch.  The rest of the evening, however, went horribly and inexorably wrong, starting with the bedtime story arrangements.  Since I was flying solo, I figured I'd read to the older kid, who's more of an early bird, first.  Then she could look at her book quietly while I started reading to the night owl.  Then the night owl could look at her book while I tucked the early bird into bed and kissed her goodnight.  Then, if everything went according to plan, I'd have two kids asleep by nine p.m. and a few minutes of quiet time to myself. 

Ha.  Ha, ha, ha.  Clearly I was delusional, or at least thinking about how to get other people's children to go to sleep, because that is NOT the way things transpired.  I forgot to take into account just how jealous the girls are of one another, especially when it comes to reading stories and spending time with Mommy.  No sooner did I get the early bird ensconced in bed with her story book when she popped up, demanding to know, "What are you reading to Cici?  Can I come listen?  How come you're reading that to Cici??  That's not fair!!!*  Then, when I tried to leave Cici's room to spend time with India, Cici immediately would throw off her covers and follow me down the hall.  That, in turn, pissed India off, since she did not WANT Cici sharing her time with Mommy, a-thank you very much, and besides, she wasn't tired anyway and she shouldn't have to go to bed, it isn't even dark out yet, et cetera and so forth.  Soon my calm, slumbrous night degenerated into an epic game of Whack-A-Mole, with me ping-ponging from one room to another as the girls worked themselves into a greater and greater frenzy.  

Fortunately for all of us, Warren chose not to wait any longer to get home, arriving to find two girls in hysterics and one wife ready to head for the halls of Montezuma, the shores of Tripoli, you name it.  "Which one first?" he asked, setting down the grocery bags.  "That one," I said, stabbing my finger at the younger offspring, now sobbing piteously on the floor.  "The other one can wait."  I sat down at the computer, completely defeated, and thought of my friend's girls.  HER girls go to bed at bedtime.  HER girls let her brush their hair and arrange it in attractive ponytails with coordinating hair clips, instead of running screaming from the room at the sight of a hairbrush.  Then there's my other friend who also has two girls.  HER girls do as they're told.  HER girls play together nicely, sometimes for hours, without requiring a WWE referee or a restraining order.  HER girls even take naps sometimes!  Then I opened my Facebook account and banged out the following status update:

It's ten of nine and all my friends' kids are asleep. Mine are fighting it tooth and nail. Seriously, someone's getting drugged tomorrow night and I'm not sure who it's going to be. It almost doesn't matter.

Almost immediately, responses came pouring in through the miracle of telecommunications.  Most of them were variations on "nope, not here, either".  I also got a, "baaaa-hahahahaha, I know what you mean," and one, "it's 9:20 and I'm melting craft beads".  And that?  Right there?  Prevented me from going batsh!t crazy and my family from becoming an unfortunate statistic.  It's all the rage in sociological circles to brood over how the internet is making us more, rather than less, isolated, and how we are increasingly choosing to relate to machines instead of humans.  But I can attest that it can also be the lifeline that helps you escape the crazy going on in your own head so you can live to fight another day, too.

* "not fair," India readily admits, translates to, "not what I want, when I want it"

The Best Of Both Worlds! Okay, Maybe Not.

Today a friend of mine (also coincidentally named Elaine) relayed a recent play on words:

Daughter:  Mommy, you rock!  You're a rock star!

Friend:  I know!  I'm Hannah Momtana!

[Supply your own rim shot here...]

Are Your Allergies Hurting You? Because They're Killing Me.

The back story:  I enjoyed two allergen-avoidance-free weeks at Celeste's new preschool this year before it was announced that one of her little compatriots is deathly allergic to peanuts and sesame seeds.  Well, he's definitely allergic to sesame seeds, and maybe peanuts, they're not sure about the peanuts because the kid's never actually had a reaction to peanuts or peanut products, but he had an allergen sensitivity test and he tested positive for peanut allergies, so they're treating him like he's allergic even though they don't know. So earlier in the week I mistakenly made a real peanut butter sandwich for India (who's not in the same classroom) and I didn't have enough bread to make her a new sandwich, so I sent it in anyway after a panicked email to the exceptionally kind and extremely talented preschool teacher, who said that would be fine. 

Email sent from the Pig household:

Dear Saintly Preschool Head Teacher Who Should Be Canonized: 

It is 10:18 p.m. and I just got out the bread my lovely husband bought for sandwiches and it is COVERED IN SESAME SEEDS OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO KILL HIM.  And we have not one single other thing that I can give the girls for lunch SO I have cut the crusts off the bread BUT you might want to have Celeste eat her lunch outside her classroom.  Maybe you can sell it as she gets to visit her sister for a special treat during lunch???  Anyway, I am SO SORRY to inconvenience you because between that and the real-peanut-butter peanut-butter-sandwich episode of ’09 just the other day I am sure I am rapidly becoming “THAT MOTHER” since we both know that every classroom of kids has at least one and probably more.   

I am eagerly awaiting Thanksgiving break.  

Thank you for your understanding and patience.  You probably need more patience with the parents than you do with the kids sometimes.  

Love,

Caroline

And now it is 10:45 (10:45! On a school night!).  I'm going to go to bed, and dream of a day when every individual in this house is personally responsible for his or her own damn lunch.

All The World's a Stage (And For $2500, You Can Be On It, Too)

I ran into a teacher friend in the halls, a very accomplished singer and musician who is also one of the most levelheaded, fair-minded people I know.  "How's the musical going?" I inquired of "Kay"*.  I got a roll of the eye and a heave of a sigh for response.  "I got an email from a parent about our casting," she said. 

One of the many things that makes Kay such a gem is the fact that she is willing, nay, eager, to help stage the middle school musical.  Every. Year.  Do you have any idea what it's like to get twenty middle schoolers organized and focused for forty minutes every day?  Try to imagine it.  Now try to imagine FOUR TIMES THAT NUMBER of students for TWO HOURS AT A STRETCH, and you have musical practice.  Furthermore, the musical has a very low threshold of exclusivity.  Do you want to be in the musical?  Okay, you're in the musical!  Do you want to sing, despite a near-total dearth of musicality?  That's fine, you can be in the chorus!  Are you too shy to show your face on stage, but you're longing for the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd?  Come be a stage hand!  If the musical doesn't have enough parts for everyone, they'll make up a part for you, right down to the third lady's maid's sister's understudy. 

However, this being Upper Socioeconomic Middle School, located in the land of competitive parenting, there is always going to be an element that COMPLETELY LOSES ALL PERSPECTIVE around events like this.  Because while anyone can be in the musical, there are parts to be won (or lost) and bragging (or complaining) rights at stake.  so while parts for the third lady's maid's sister's understudy abound, there are always only a few true lead roles to go around, and that's where the heartache begins.

Kay told me that one particular student did not get a lead role this year.  This student considers herself to be quite the budding thespian (a perspective that has been actively encouraged, if not originally instilled, by her mother). She had won a lead role last year and thought herself a shoo-in for the lead.  When she did not get the lead, she approached Kay and asked why she didn't get it.  Kay repeated to her what she told all the kids, that she tries to fit the best student to the best part.  Then "Sarah" asked her if there were any lead roles left over.  The only role left was that of a larger, unattractive older woman, which Kay told Sarah was still open if she wanted to consider it.

Well, after that all hell broke loose, transmitted via e-communication.  Sarah's mother sent Kay a screed telling her (Kay) how TRAUMATIZED Sarah was by this and asking how DARE Kay tell her that she wasn't as good as some of the other students who tried out and how could she be so CRUEL and HEARTLESS as to suggest her daughter was UNATTRACTIVE by offering her that role and blah blah blah self esteem yada yada yada you shouldn't be around children blah. The mother then haughtily informed Kay that her little Sarah happened to be working with a talent agency that happened to think that this was a very talented young lady who would go on to have a brilliant career as an actress.  So there.

Here's what she failed to leave out:  This "talent agency" that is praising Sarah's acting to the skies?  Is a private "acting and modeling academy" to which this family has paid THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS over the past two years for "lessons".  And what has this institution managed to accomplish on Sarah's behalf?  Well, she's been an extra in a movie or two.  Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, being an extra entails getting paid a pittance to stand around for hours basically being yourself and reacting to what's going around you, or not reacting, whatever the director decides.  So after months and months of academy fees, and weekly travel back and forth to the nearest larger metropolitan area, and paying for head shots and whatever, the kid's skills were honed to the point where she was eminently qualified to... stand around???

This is where I lose my sh!t.

Dear readers, you know I love my India and my Ceecee past the point of rationality.  They are as the stars in the sky and the earth under my feet.  I think they are clever and talented and beautiful and fascinating.  TO ME.  But if I ever, ever start blogging about how they are America's Next Top (fill-in-the-blank here) and I know this because the expensive private instructor I hired told me so, will you please please please reach through your computer screen and smack some sense into me???  Really, are there that many suckers born every minute that these parents don't GET IT?  OF COURSE the acting academy thinks Sarah is the next Dakota Fanning, because that's how they get the money out of you!  But don't think for a moment that it's limited to music and acting, oh no no no.  My friend the baseball coach has to deal with it too, when parents sidle up to him in tryouts and oh-so-casually mention that "Brandon's AAU coach says he's going to be their top pitcher this year."  Yeah?  So?  The only way AAU makes its money is by finding parents who are willing to pony up bucks for their kid to play on a team!  Sure, your kid may be the best pitcher on his AAU team, but that's no guarantee of anything!  That's why I changed dance schools for my kids, because the school we were attending pushes the competition team crap hard.  They make a big deal about "tryouts" to make it sound exclusive and elite, but in reality, they're just divided among a couple teams: Girls who can dance, girls who can sorta dance, and girls who suck but whose moms are willing to pay for the mandatory four different dance classes per session!   Really, is it that hard to figure out??

Let me offer you some perspective on this:  Everyone is better at some things than others.  Lots of kids have talent.  Some kids have a lot of talent.  But only one in a zillion has a truly remarkable talent.  What's more, that talent is usually accompanied by a big work ethic and extraordinary focus at a very young age (sometimes that work ethic and focus is the parents' and not the kid's, but that's another post).  If you're spending thousands of dollars on soccer camp and hotels and travel and all that crap and your kid gets cut from the freshman team, that should be a clear signal to put away the Division I season pass order forms and tell your kid to start hitting the books.  And don't bring up the old "Michael Jordan got cut from his freshman basketball team" story to me, because that's an outlier - as proven by the fact that it's the only counterargument you have.  Now, if your kid loves doing x, and you want to pay for it, great!  It's good for kids to have a positive activity to focus on.  But don't think that just because you spend a small fortune you can't afford on your kid that it automatically makes him or her more talented than anyone else out there.

I'll tell you another thing that drives me batsh!t crazy about this whole phenomenon:  It creates a very uneven playing field for the kids who might want to try something, but whose families can't afford to pay for the private leagues or who don't have their act together enough to get their kids into it.  The research is clear:  Lower-class kids spend their free time playing outside with each other in unstructured activities, and middle-class kids take lessons and join leagues.  By the time school sports start up in middle school, when it's more likely to be free, the less-advantaged kids are already four or five years behind the kids who have been in rec league for all of elementary school.  Add in AAU and town travel teams and Elite USA and all that other crap, and getting your kid into an activity becomes an arms race based on who has more money and time to spend trucking kids around.

Don't get me wrong, if India and Celeste happen to express an interest or a talent in something, I will do whatever I need to do (within reason and cost) to foster it. My approach right now is to try a range of things.  They take dance lessons once a week.  India sings in her youth voices choir at church.  They've taken swimming lessons and gymnastics lessons and soccer lessons in the past, but those are usually limited to a session or two.  Even though I think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, I can see that they're no more than typically capable at any of those things.  Will that change?  I don't know.  I hope they find a passion in something - music, art, philately, model UN, studying the films of Ingmar Bergman - that enriches their lives beyond the daily round of school and home and chores and homework.  But I also hope I never mistake shelling out the green stuff on my part for actual talent on my kids' part.

* Names and identities changed to protect - well, everyone involved. The student portrayed is a composite and all conversations are summaries and not quotes, so don't get all James Frey on me, a'ight???

Adventures of A Stay-At-Home Mom

I realize blog posts have, ironically, gotten a little thin on the ground now that I have this free time since vacation started.  Apparently I need my outside job to stimulate my brain - if I blogged about my thinking these days, my blog posts would consist of me whining about how much of stay-at-home momery consists of tedium and repetition.  Not that I don't love being part of my girls'  lives, of course!  I love it!  Every minute of it!  Because no one has a more significant influence on a child than a mother, and every fiber of my being wants to ensure that my girls are the most well-adjusted, lovingly nurtured, - oh, forget it.  Basically, my day consists of being the doorman for a petulant cat and the sounding board for two of the most talkative creatures who ever breathed air on this planet.  The soundtrack of my days sounds something like this:

Mommy!  Mommy!  Is this a joke?  What did the bunny say to the tree?  Come here because I'm going to

The wheels on the bus go wound and wound!  Wound and wound!  Mommy, will you sing wiff me?

eat you!  Is that a funny joke, Mommy?  Why isn't it a funny joke?  Can you tell me a joke?  You know

Mommy, can I have a wamwich for lunch, Mommy?  I want a wamwich.  I want a wamwich WIGHT NOW.

what, Mommy?  Know what?  The fairies told me a secret and they said I can't tell Ceecee. Wanna hear it?

I dropped my 'lip-'lop, Mommy.  Mommy, I dropped my 'lip-'lop.  Can you get my 'lip-'lop, Mommy?

Lather, rinse, repeat from wake-up until way, waaaay too late at night, because of course bedtimes have gone all to hell now that it's summer vacay and the sky is still light at late-thirty o'clock.  Meantime, here are a few thoughts that have been kicking around the ole cranium of late.  Enjoy!

Great Minds Think Alike

We are at a local amusement park/kiddie zoo with my friend and her two girls, who are of an age with mine.  The eldest girl has anointed herself Queen and India as Princess as befits their age and status as big sisters.  We are in line for the Ferris wheel, which is moving only slightly more rapidly than the post office stamp line at tax time, and the two older girls are lording it over the little sister like Mean Girls Junior.

Oldest Girl:  Hey!  You can't get ahead of us!  We're royalty.

Me (to myself): You're royal all right.

Friend (laughing):  Hey, that's just what I was thinking!

Me:  A royal pain in the neck, that is.

Man in front of us (clearly a veteran of the parent wars):  The lower neck.

News of the Weird, Political Edition

So Sarah Palin upped and quit her job as a way of proving that she's, um, not a quitter. Now aren't you glad you listened to me and didn't elect this lady as Veep?  She's nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake and battier than a New England barn.  Even Open-Mouth-Insert-Foot himself, Mr. Say-It-Ain't-So Joe Biden would have to get up pretty darn early in the gosh-dang patriotic mornin' to be nearly as wackadoodle as Her Gov'ship.  What I particularly love about Palin's resignation is how she's put on this wounded-yet-brave act about how the evil, evil media has treated her and her family.  In response to that, I present Exhibit A:

Now I ask you, does this look like a woman who's been victimized, misrepresented, and hounded out of office?  No, this looks like a woman who's competing for the local Mrs. Patriotic America title, replete with American flag and military offspring banner.  Clearly Palin never saw a camera she didn't love, especially when she knows the story's going to be complimentary.  The circa-1983 pep-squad pose she's striking is a wee bit cringeworthy in a woman in her 40's, I have to say.  C'mon, the last time I vamped like that was in 1985, for the basketball cheerleaders' yearbook photo (if memory serves correctly, I had enough AquaNet on my head to crack the ozone layer my very own self and so much mascara on I could barely see, but that is another story).  This picture is from a photo shoot La Palin did for Runner's World, and Sarah being Sarah, she waxes enthusiastic about how much she just loooves runnin' because she can just be her gosh darn ol' genu-wine 100% ordinary Amurrican self, while all the pictures show someone who is far too well-groomed and absurdly cheerful to have just finished doing anything as painful and boring as running.  Well, you can take the woman out of the pageant...

News of the Weird, Celebrity Edition

So I managed to avoid 99% of the Michael Jackson memorial, until I was trapped in front of the TV at the gym and had to watch (and watch and watch) the clip of Paris Jackson extemporaneously eulogizing her dad.  I found it by turns both gut-wrenching and stomach-turning: Gut-wrenching because that poor girl was so clearly completely overwhelmed by grief, and what reasonable human being can't sympathise to some extent with the profound loss all three of those children have suffered?  And stomach-turning because that clip has been played over and over and over again to satiate our voyeuristic desire to feel included in a now-dead celebrity's life.  Really, do we have absolutely no sense of decency left as a social unit?  The ceremony was intended for broadcast, and the adults there knew that whatever happened there would be fair game for the media, but Paris is a child. Does her private sorrow really need to be fodder for the public's appetite for news?

I was also intrigued by the very Rev. Sharpton's epigrammatic statement to Jacko's kids.  Here I'm referring to the oft-quoted comment that, "Your daddy wasn't strange.  What happened to your daddy was strange."  The man sure has a way of looking reality right in the eye and denying it, doesn't he?  Okay, Michael Jackson's life was not conventional by any means, and the circumstances of growing up in enormous fame certainly are rare - but let's face it, the guy was a wee bit eccentric around the edges. I don't think it detracts from the man's reputation or the gravity of events for us to acknowledge that he was unusual.  HE LIVED IN AN AMUSEMENT PARK WITH A CHIMP NAMED BUBBLES, PEOPLE.  Now if your new neighbor up the street set up a Tilt-A-Whirl and a menagerie in the back yard, would you be thinking, "Oh, ho-hum, another day in the neighborhood," or would you be just the least little bit curious about how things worked upstairs?  Yeah, I thought so.

Can I Be An Unreal Housewife, Too?

A friend begged me to write a post about the Real Housewives of New Jersey recently, but what can I say that wouldn't be simply stating the obvious?  The whole show is so over the top, it speaks for itself.  I will gild fine gold just long enough to point out that the premise of the show is predicated upon a complete falsehood.  My SAHM life sure ain't no reality show fodder, and I think my experience is far more of a piece with the typical SAH experience than those ladies'.  The show is about "real" housewives as opposed to "fictional," but not "real" as in "typical."  I have never seen any of these women lose their sh*t because their kids can't find shoes and they're late for a doctor's appointment, for instance - that's reality.  Sometimes I amuse myself by making up fake TV guide listings for episodes of Real Housewives of Some Pig:

"Caroline and India have a screaming fight about whether or not India needs to get dressed right now, young lady; Caroline's head explodes."

"Celeste pees like a racehorse all over the floor ten minutes after Caroline just told her to use the potty; Caroline utters curse words within hearing of tender ears."

"Caroline attempts to read a book at the beach while Celeste and India plot to prevent her from having a moment to herself."

"India threatens to run away because her mother is the meanest mother in the world.  Caroline volunteers to drive her to the inner city and drop her off on the nearest street corner.  Hilarity ensues."

As a by-the-by, I seem to spend much of my SAHM tenure feeling like my head is going to explode.  Here is a typical parent-child exchange chez Pig:

Me:  India, do you want some toast?

India:  I don't know.

Me: It's a yes-or-no question, India, do you want some toast?

India:  I guess so (heavy sigh of weariness and despair).

Me:  India, if I make you this toast, are you going to eat it?

India:  YES, MOTHER!

I make toast.  Toast sits for fifteen minutes, untouched. 

Me: India, if you're not going to eat this toast, I'm going to throw it out.

India:  I don't want it!

Toast is summarily discarded.  Twenty minutes pass.

India:  Mommy, I'm hungry.  I want toast.

Me:  * head explodes *

Why does nothing like THAT ever happen on RHONJ?

Segue to Relevant and Meaningful Conclusion Coming in 3... 2... 1:

I got nothin'.  Gimme some love in the comments, folks, it's going to be a loooooong summer.

E-Mails I Will Never Send

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Absentee,

I am writing because I noticed your daughter Aimee was not in my class yet again today.  I looked up her cumulative absences, and do you realize she has been absent from my class twenty-three times so far this year?  To my knowledge, Aimee doesn't have any chronic health conditions that would keep her out, and hasn't contracted swine flu, diphtheria, mononucleosis, or any other illness that would necessitate being out of school for A MONTH.  While Aimee is extremely bright and catches up quickly, she does miss a critical part of the learning experience when she's out at least one day a week on average.  Does that strike you as being just a bit excessive, perhaps?  Plus I have to question the validity of some of the choices you've made.  When your kid has already racked up absences in the double digits, do you really think it's justifiable to take her out of school early for vacation - and then come back to school late?   Then there was the time you kept her home because her sibling was coming home from college that day and you wanted Aimee there to greet him - because obviously having to wait until the end of the school day to see someone she just saw a couple of months ago would count as durance vile and is considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Bill of Rights - a fact I am telling you because Aimee was OUT for that lecture.  By the way, you may be interested in knowing that Aimee's peers are aware of her lack of presence in school.  No one wants to work with her on group assignments because they know she's not going to be around for most of it.  And is it just coincidence, or does your daughter tend to disappear right in the middle of assignments so that she can finish it up on her own and not have to interact with anyone?  Either way, from now on I am not accepting illness excuse notes from you unless they involve dengue fever and are countersigned by the CDC.

Mrs. S. Pig

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Draggypants,

I just want to alert you to the fact that your son clearly has worn out all his own clothes and is now wearing his little brother's.  That's the only explanation I can find for the fact that his jeans are simultaneously skin-tight AND sagging below his @ss.  Seriously, the crotch of his jeans today was at knee level.  It's a wonder the kid doesn't take two steps forward and fall flat on his face, bound tightly 'round the ankles by his own denim trousers.  What's even more amazing is that, when he lifted his shirt to hoist the waistband of his pants infinitesimally closer to his arse, I noticed that HE HAS A BELT ON.  Why??  The better to trip himself up when the aforementioned gravity-induced depantsing occurs?  It's not as if he's taking that belt and using it to CINCH HIS PANTS TIGHT so they STOP falling down.  Either your son is terminally confused about what a belt is and how it is meant to function, or  he does know but his pants are so ill-fitting that efforts to make them suitable for public viewing are futile.  Either way, please make him wear something that doesn't leave everything hanging in the breeze, so to speak.

Gratefully,

S. Pig

Dear Ms. Stinky,

My dad tells this story from his Navy days about how, when he was serving on a destroyer, sailors with poor personal hygiene who failed to take repeated hints to improve matters would be summarily grabbed, stripped naked, thrown in the shower and scrubbed down with the wire scrub brushes usually used to scour the deck of the ship. 

I tell you this by way of being a cautionary tale.  If your son is ever tempted to join the Navy, tell him to choose a branch of the armed services where members are not kept in quite such close quarters, or he is going to find himself bereft of a couple layers of dermis at the least.  Why?  Because your kid stinks like a barnyard.  Really.  We mean it.  Today I went to help him with a problem and he had SERIOUS grime ingrained in the skin around his fingernails.  If I didn't know better, I'd assume he was planting potatoes in his spare time from the skunk-wrestling league.  I like your kid, but I can't get close enough to his desk to help him with his work because the stench knocks me out from 20 paces.  We've given the group talk about Mr. Shower and his friends Soap, Deodorant, and Shampoo several times and nothing has changed.  So please, for the love of my olfactory nerve, tell the kid to bathe!

Ms. Pig

Dear Mrs. Moonphase,

I need to share a concern I have with you about Menstra.  At last count, she has had her period seventy-seven times this year.  This clearly falls outside the bounds of normal female maturation and is now cause for medical intervention.  Might I suggest a suitable OB/GYN for your daughter to obtain a complete workup?

Signed,

Menstra's social studies teacher

Dear Ms. Slacker and Mr. Stepdad,

You need to know that Little Slacker approached me today and asked me to add two points to his grade so he would have a C when you check his grades.  When I gently reminded him that we haven't done any graded assignments this week that would raise his average, he informed me that he wanted me just to add the points to his grade regardless so that he could have the magic C average.  In fact, the D he has is a fair and accurate reflection of his work ethic, level of achievement, and contribution to the classroom environment.  It will be a cold day in hell before I "give" him OR anyone else points on his grade just because he doesn't want to be grounded.  He is more than welcome to see me about completing any one of the myriad unfinished or unsatisfactorily completed assignments given to him this quarter.  After all, he will have nothing but time on his hands when he is grounded.

Sincerely,

Mrs. P.