Lithukrania

I still find it a little weird that I have a house cleaner.  The narrative I've created about Zana is that she was a doctor in the old country, Ukraine, and she's going to school again so she can practice in the states.  She's funding this endeavor by saving me from stepping on legos and cleaning my bathrooms.    Besides my newfound knowledge that it's not THE Ukraine,  my only connection to the Putin craziness is Zana's hypothetical family back there.  I texted her.
Liz:  I keep worrying about you and the Ukraine/Crimea.  It's such a wretched situation.  I'm so sorry if you have family in crisis.
Zana:  Liz, thanks for your worrying, but I am from Lithuania - is located much north.  But I am also appraised.  Thanks
Liz:  Oh phew!  Erin said you were Ukrainian!  (or maybe she said Lithuanian and I turned it into Ukranian because I'm a terrible listener.)
Zana:  Don't worry.  Lithuania and Ukraine sound similar.
Liz: Lithukrania???
Zana: Almost.
I find that conversation almost as humiliating as paying a doctor who is older than I am to clean my house.

The lipstick Zana will be scouring off of our bathroom vanity

It gets worse.  My now friend, Sharon, who saved Jack Peter and Sage on the street when Tim left them there thinking that the bus had picked them up when they'd actually missed it, is taking time off.  She asked me if she could help me out in any way.  She did some packing at the studio for me, but once again, I feel weird asking someone who is older than I am who is an accountant to do manual labor.  I didn't, however, feel odd asking her to get new windshield wipers for the Mini Cooper.  I bought new ones in January because the thing was a deathtrap every time it rained because the wipers were so ineffective.  I had the new ones installed at the garage when I was getting the car inspected.  The new ones were the top of the line from Pep Boys.  They turned out to be CRAP!  They were falling apart straight away, and they didn't wipe for shit.  Tim and I had both pulled over multiple times to push the bit that was flying off of the wiper back on in hopes that they would wipe better.

Sharon went into Pep Boys armed with the receipt from January.  It's now April.  She asked if it was possible that they were defective and could she exchange them.  The Pep Boy guy said, No!  It's been such a bad winter.  With that kind of weather you need to replace them more often.  Appeased, she bought a new pair, and they sent her around to the service department to get them installed.  She pulled up and handed them to the guy.  He said, Why are you getting new wipers?  The ones you have are brand new!  She said, They don't work!  He said, You didn't take the plastic off!  I'm so glad I sent her.  I would have been more pushy about demanding a new pair for free.  That would have unfolded badly.

Windshield-wiper-destroying winter...

I find myself singing the oscar-winning Frozen song a lot.   LET IT GO!  LET IT GO! It's so irritating, but it's replaced Taylor Swift as our family soundtrack.  If geography and basic mechanics are eluding me, I really don't think I need to be letting anything more go.

Speaking of letting go, Charlie Tepper, a kid at Toby's daycare exploded right in front of me at story time.  He looked up, and I somehow knew he was about to vomit.  I watched in horror as gallons of orange liquid flowed from his little 2-year-old mouth.  I was reeling for a couple of days.  Steel got the tummy bug, but she was such an olympic puker.  The first puke was in the shower; the second and third were in the car, but she managed to contain all of it in a single blanket.  The final puke was in my studio, and she made it to the toilet even though vomit on the floor there would have been easy to clean up.  I have no recollection of Jack Peter ever puking, and Toby only did it when she was a baby and there was too much booze in her breastmilk or when she had a concussion.  I couldn't figure out how we'd escaped the kind of Charlie Tepper combustion I'd witnessed.  It finally dawned on me.  I'VE BEEN STARVING MY CHILDREN!  Charlie Tepper puked more in that one sitting than my kids have eaten in a week-aggregate.  It's too late now.  They are used to eating 1200 calories in a week.  I'm just finally understanding why pretty-big Tim, and massive me have kids that are little.  Like the malfunctioning windshield wipers, it's good to know the answer, but it's still kind of a bummer.

The best pukers in Philly.

Another news story I've been following is the legalization of pot.  I've been all for it.  The whole issue of kids smoking pot never seemed like a big deal to me, but all of the research points to the fact that until the age 25, your brain is still developing, and pot messes up that process.  I've been trying to blame my idiocy on pre menopause and hormones.  It's a heartening point of view because the subtext is that I'll get my Herculean mental powers back as soon as I stop menstruating for good.  Now I have to embrace it as a permanent condition.  At least I'll have the knowledge to know when my kids are stoned, so maybe I can step in for them.  My mom did not see my standing in front of the open fridge with girlfriends scooping handfuls of home-made strawberry kiwi trifle into our mouths as an indication of anything odd.

I wonder if pot is legal in Lithukrania.

We aren't going to Lithukrania, but we are going to Brussels and Aachen Germany.  This would have been my passport photo had I been smart enough to figure out how to print it.

The Dad tattoo is the only visual I have of Tim.  I should take more pictures of him.

Watch out, kid.  I had Certificates of Excellence back in the day.

Honor thy parents, but don't become one.

On Sunday, Jack Peter and Tim went to a "celebration of Dave Friedman's death" as Jack Peter called it.  The Rabbi told a parable about how important it is to honor your parents after which Jack Peter gave his dad a hug and sat on his lap for the rest of the service.  People were getting up and telling funny stories.  Before Tim knew it, Jack Peter popped off of his knee and sauntered to the front of the room.  He said, "I have a joke to tell.  Dave Friedman didn't tell me the joke; my mom puts jokes in my lunch box every day, but I think Dave would have liked it:  What trembles at the bottom of the ocean?  A NERVOUS WRECK!!!!"  Tim was appalled and thrilled at Jack Peter's ease and comfort with getting up in front of a group of adults.

 

In the vein of honoring parents, I have to post images of my mom's latest knitting projects.  She's moved on from the time-consuming skirts for me and my big-hipped friends.  Susie's pricing is on a square-inch scale, so I don't know why she's complaining about XL skirt commissions, but she's doing entire ensembles for American Girl dolls instead.  "Sunny" pictured here is not, in fact, an American Girl doll.  Why would Susie spend $120 on the real thing when she can get a knock-off at A.C. Moore for $20? ($17.50 with her coupons)

The knitting and colors are thrilling, but what's crazier is her photography.  I'm starting to imagine an all-white gallery in SOHO with 20 of these images blown up to 4'x6' mounted on the walls and art critics fawning over my mom.  Whenever I show these pictures to people, their jaws drop as they scroll through them with looks of sheer amazement.  Susie sent an outfit to Jen's daughter, Willa.  Jen helps me sell pottery every year at my craft show, so she and her daughter are high on Susie's list for gratuitous knitting.  Jen had to respond to Susie's images with the following picture.  (When I asked the name of the doll for my blog, Jen texted me Rebecca Rubin.  She's the Jew from Brooklyn.  I got her text long after I'd asked.  Out of context, a text reading: Rebecca Rubin, the Jew from Brooklyn, was baffling.)

Susie's critique, "I wish Willa would pull up the tam a bit.  It looks very geeky pulled down tight like that.  Otherwise, the outfit is very cute even with the purple cast."

Is Susie worried that Rebecca is going to be picked on at school for how she's wearing her hat?  or is she worried that the beret-like treatment of the tam isn't flattering to her craftsmanship?  I'm stunned that the American Girl doll company has tapped into every girl's desire for a broken limb.  Casts were so damned cool in grade school.  You can also pay $10 to get a pair of glasses for your intellectual American Girl doll, or if you're Liz Kinder, you get them for $6 on ebay and then pay some absurd amount for shipping.  I got them because Steel has been desperate for glasses for herself for 3 years now.  Demanding glasses is like demanding cellulite, grey hair, and age spots in my world.  Although I do remember being disappointed that I, too, did not need glasses and braces like my brother.  Merry Shuwall, my childhood friend's elusive older sister, had to wear head gear in addition to her braces, AND she had boobs, so head gear was so hot in my little brain.

The girls and I did not get to go to the service for David Friedman.  We were at Lorena's birthday party.  I'm always flummoxed when it comes to birthday presents for kids.  I don't want to buy them crap.  I also don't want to spend a ton of money buying them something they probably won't want.  I decided on "Trader Joe's organic fruit leathers" because as I packed Toby's lunch the other morning and threw one in, she asked, "Can you put one in for Lorena, too?  She loves them."  I responded, "No, I'm sure Lorena's mom would rather Lorena eat what's in HER lunch."  I was masking my stinginess.  Those damned things are dear to me.  They are $.50 each, and they are the only thing passing for a "healthy snack" that all 3 of my children will eat.  When I was 3 I got a book of Life Savers candy for my birthday.  It was one of the highlights of my existence, so I figured Lorena would be happy.

The contents of lunch boxes are also a delineation of cool in school and pre-school.  Back when I was in grammar school, we were allowed to trade.  There is no trading of food at Green Woods Charter School; I suppose imminent death from allergies is a good reason, but it still seems uptight to me.  I remember being so excited when I got home-made chocolate chip merengue cookies.  My mom's meringues were like her knitting and her pancakes…perfect.  They were chewy on the inside, hard on the outside and completely regular in shape and size with a perfect peak on top.  (Virgos are amazing.)  I could trade those peaked piles of fluff for ANYTHING.  I'd invariably go for some processed Hostess item that I wasn't allowed.   

Lorena's mom is Brazilian.  Members of her Brazilian family had flown in to Philly for the party.  It was a blowout. I was a little concerned that the Brazilian mom might think I was trying to say something about her lunches.  I opted to make light of it at the party.  I needn't have worried.  She said, "Oh great!  I was just sending in the same granola bar day after day with her lunch.  Jane (the school director) had to pull me aside and tell me that Lorena doesn't like granola bars."  That woman has no idea what it is to be a neurotic freak about what her kids eat.  I'm almost as jealous of that as I was of Merry Shuwall's headgear and boobs.  Brazilian mom almost spent all of the Liz Kinder capital she'd earned by serving mimosas at the party when she put horns and Pop Rocks in the gift bags.  I had taken the girls to the party in the stroller despite the fact that it was an hour away.  Tim tried to get rid of the stroller last week in a purging attempt to make our place presentable for a potential partner.  I fought hard for the stroller, so I'll be walking it to Zimbabwe  for spring break to prove its productivity.  The girls were honking the horns at pedestrians during the entire walk home.  They could manipulate them to sound like drowning camels or angry cats.  It was pretty fun, but had we driven, Lorena would be off the birthday party list.

Steel had the genius to use the stapler to get the fruit leathers onto the picture; thank God someone in this family is practical.

Our life has been a tyranny of birthday parties lately: 2-3 every weekend.  Obviously my kids are attracted to Pisces.  I wrapped up a pyramid-shaped touch light for Saturday night's party for boy Sage.  (How can there be two children of different sexes named Sage in Jack Peter's class?  There are also 2 Maeves and 3 Nicholas's)  Jack Peter liked the lamp, so I thought Sage would be cool with it.  OK, it was the free gift from ULine after spending $500 on bubble wrap, and it did say ULine on it, but I DID put in the three AA batteries in to make it work.  Maybe I should have gone for the steak knives.  That party was at a climbing gym.  It was utter chaos.  They ran out of food, and there wasn't anything for either kids or adults to drink.  I know boy Sage's mom, she's a big wig in the nursing school at Jefferson Hospital, so I've grilled her about nursing on behalf of my niece.  I went ahead and ordered a couple pizzas.  I figured she wouldn't be offended.  We had the following text exchange after the party:

Sage's mom, "Embarrassed to ask but gifts got combined..lamp or Pokemon from the Kinder McDonald collaborative?"

Me: Super fun party, thank you.  People who a. Keep track of who gave what and then b. have the GAUL to send thank-you notes are just trying to make the rest of us feel shitty.

Sage's mom: Fine.  I will not make my boy send you a thank you, but perhaps we shall send something else…LIKE PIZZA REIMBURSEMENT

Me: Please Stop!

Sage's mom: OH Liz Kinder, you will get yours

What does that mean?  She's probably going to get Jack Peter a set of 1000 dominoes with Jefferson Hospital written on them.  Gifts with multiple pieces are THE WORST unless they are edible.

Tim is gone for the night.  I can usually handle it, but apparently my kids did not get the "honor thy parents" memo.  I was late to get Toby because I'd forgotten to change the clock at the studio for daylight savings.  Toby was mad that I arrived during story time, so I let her sulk at me from across the room and listen to the story while Lorena snuggled with me instead.  I couldn't help but ask her if she liked her birthday party.  She responded and got chewed out for snuggling with the wrong mom and talking during story time.  I felt wretched.  I then let the girls convince me to go to the park with another mom while I got Jack Peter and the stuff.  He told me about his science project on the way to get the girls.  They are creating hybrid animals.  His is the "Batasaurus Cock"  (part bat, part T Rex, part peacock)  We've just had a run-in with the science teacher, Ms. Skladitis, because last week he'd been unable to resist the temptation to talk about poop throughout her class-specifically about a Chinese man pooping and then walking through the poop.   Before I'd gotten home to the Skladitis e-mail, Jack Peter had responded to my query, "How was your day?" with "My day was a tiny bit not good." I cannot express my relief in discovering that the Batasaurus Cock was the result of a group project and not Jack Peter's personal brain child.  

We got home and I tried to manage dinner and homework.  Somehow Steel ended up slamming Jack Peter's neck into the counter because he was gloating about all the sweets he got to eat at the funeral (while she and Toby were eating Pop Rocks and cake)  She got her dessert rescinded and threw it at me while kicking me in the back.  I finally put up my clogged foot to avoid another attack and got her right in the gut where she'd impaled herself during a fall off her bike on Saturday.  She hysterically howled, Toby vociferously defended her while Jack Peter was complaining about his dessert...just as Tim called to say good-night.  

They are in bed now, and I am drinking vodka and writing a blog.  Steel finally pulled herself together to ask me, "If a person is dumb and can't speak, do they make a sound when they burp?"  Somehow that redeemed her.  People always talk about how sleep-deprived parents are.   I'd always thought it was because kids are waking them up all night.  That's not it.  Parents are so excited to not have kids around that they stay up past midnight every night to enjoy time without their kids.  A lot of people who slog through my blog are, surprisingly, not parents.  I'm convinced you read it to confirm the genius of your decision not to procreate.  Here's a little gem for all of you:  when we finally lurch down the stairs to bed, we peek in on the kids.  That is when we love them the most WHEN THEY ARE ASLEEP.

Last week 2 people who read my blog who do not have children told me that my son is gay.  They were responding to the following photo in particular:

Jack Peter asked to wear a tuxedo for picture day.  We don't have a size 7 tuxedo, but I told him he could try and work something out with the suit he wore to Uncle Johnny's and Aunt Tiff's wedding 4 years ago.  He rocked it.  I guess a kid who wants to wear a tuxedo for picture day could be gay.  He has also been spending a fair bit of time perfecting his bow for the piano recital this month, but the jury is still out for me.  

A final tidbit for those of you who don't have children: a weekend ploy to keep them amused and away from us is putting them in the tub after breakfast.  They'll spend 2 hours in there.  Every towel in the house was drenched, but I got to spend quality time realizing that I didn't have my wallet.  I ran to the car in my pajamas and orange suede boots.  The wallet wasn't in the console, so I peeled off to the studio.  It was the first nice day we've had since October, so I rolled down the window.  I ran into the studio looking frantically for the wallet.  I concluded that I must have left it at the chiropractor.  I grabbed stuff I needed to work on at home, clamored back to the car awkwardly attempting to open the car door.  I didn't open it wide enough, so it came back on me.  I put out my free hand out to stop the door from hitting me in the face, but the window was rolled down, so the hand went through the window and the door did hit me in the face.  So now I'm clutching my face in pain, in my pajamas and orange suede boots looking down at my wallet in the door of the car.  Did Schloka, the car, clock me in the face on purpose to let me know my wallet was there, so my weekend would not be ruined?  Is a weekend with three kids ever not ruined?

FEARS

I can't quite pinpoint my fears regarding this photo.
Who knew chapped lips were something to fear?

Clearly my fear here is that my middle child shares my fashion sense….

Tim's hair loss is not one of my fears, but I do fear my inability to resist buying this wig for him.  I had the option of buying Jack Peter's Harry Potter costume and paying shipping or adding the wig to the order and getting free shipping because I'd exceeded $50.

I have a ton of petty and not-so-petty fears.  I am afraid that the kids will inadvertently dump the 5lb bag of Starbucks French Roast coffee beans all over the floor on their climb up to the candy bowl.  I'm afraid that the screw holding the 60 cubic foot bag of packing peanuts in my studio will give, and the entire place will be submerged in styrofoam.  I'm afraid one of the vessel sinks I've made will come loose when a kid is using it to leverage the climb onto the vanity to spit into the sink; the child's head will hit the ceramic floor followed by the sink for the fatal blow.  I'm afraid that my kiln will set my building ablaze, and the slumbering potheads upstairs won't wake up in time to get out.  I'm afraid that my home-made turmeric face cleanser will be liberated from its bowl and used to permanently decorate the white vanity.  I'm afraid that one of my kids will be fooling around poking the meat at Trader Joe's only to grab a free sample with filthy trichinosis hands.  I'm terrified that Jack Peter will get molested in the shower in the men's bathroom at the YMCA because he has to go in on his own as he's not allowed to come into the women's anymore.  I'm afraid that my steel craft show booth will somehow fall and kill someone or trash an entire booth of hand-blown glass.    I'm afraid that a kid will drink steaming hot tea out of my thermos…again.

my formidable steel booth….

lice….we've yet to get it, but I know it's coming...

I, a bowl maker, spent good money on these 2 favorite bowls.  I did not know to fear their demise...

I didn't know to be afraid that I'd buy the wrong size mattress last weekend.  "Babe, let's go to Ikea this weekend and sort out the kids' mattresses."  Recently, friends were visiting.  Jen got the almost-vomit/fever plague from my family, and Erik, her husband was banished to sleep in Steel's bed.  Steel's mattress is 400 years old and has been peed on by multiple generations.  Before Steel suffers permanent spinal damage, a replacement might be a good idea, and a viable bed for a shunned visiting husband is a bonus.  Like all good New Englanders, I consulted Consumer Reports on mattresses to find that the cheaper Ikea mattresses rate no worse than fancy ones.  (That being said, both Tim and I would kill anyone who threatened our fantastic $2000 Simmons Beauty Rest mattress.  It's the best place on earth.)

All the kids and the one playmate qualify for Small land at Ikea, (forgive my missing umlaut) so Tim and I got to argue and make bad decisions while someone else watched the kids.  He finally acquiesced to buying the most expensive mattress for Steel and a pillow top for JP to mask the springs popping out of his 412-year-old twin mattress.  We ate Ikea lunch bargaining the entire time with Caspar, Jack Peter's BFF, who only eats "buck buck," PBJ and fruit.  Apparently Ikea chicken tenders are inferior to buck buck.  I'm assuming "buck buck" is chicken nuggets because chickens say buck buck buck??         

Tim and I caved, ignoring Caspar's refusal to eat, and let him wolf down Steel's rejected chocolate layer cake dessert.  We tied the mattress on the top of the minivan.  The doors wouldn't close over the string, so we bundled up the kids as best we could and drove home wondering which was more annoying, the constant dinging of the "door is open" alarm, the girls' whining about being cold, or Jack Peter's and Caspar's screaming, "Look!  there's a police man!  Oh!  I see someone calling 911 about the dangerous, wide-open minivan with 4 miserable kids in it!!!!"

Getting the new mattress off of the car, up the stairs and down the stairs wasn't fun.  We managed it only to find that Steel's mattress was a full, and we got a queen.  We pulled the bed out, so Jack Peter has a massive gap between his top bunk and the wall, but we were able to wedge Steel's new mattress in there.  Fearful of the occasional pee accident, I hacked up Steel's no-longer-fitting-rubber-lined fitted sheet. My unsuccessful plan was to lie it on the already-bunchy surface of her new bed and tighten things up with a fitted sheet.  In the end, I just put her old mattress on the squished new mattress.  She feels like a princess because it's so high.  I feel like we are probably ruining a $900 mattress, Jack Peter is feeling nervous about the gap, but he loves his pillow top.  Toby is wondering why she got nothing, again.  Toby's bed is a toddler bed with a crib mattress on it.  We fill the foot-long gap at the end with a massive, dirty, pink, stuffed dog.  Maybe we'll prop Toby's bed on top of the new piano we just got and don't have room for.  She'll stop wailing about wanting a tall mattress.

Toby's solution to "bed envy" is waiting for Steel to fall asleep at night, grabbing her blanket, and crawling into bed with her.  It's so damned cute.

Back when I started this blog I didn't know to fear paying $350 to move an untunable piano to our house.  Nor did I know to fear paying someone another $60 to tell me that.  Nor did I know to fear that my brother in law who owns the untunable Steinway would want it moved, yet again, to his loft.  I also did not know to fear that the new pillow top on Jack Peter's bed would be poisonous.  We've upgraded $50 to trade the off-gasser for the non-toxic version.  In Ikea-speak that's trading the  "Kinder-lungstopper" for the "Mightlivetill twelven schleeper" Unable to bear returning it, we kept the queen mattress and put it on top of our already-too-high guest bed.  Steel has a less lumpy situation, Jack Peter describes his new bed as paradise, and Toby is still mad.

The only good thing about the ridiculous height of our guest bed is that my friend, Cori is coming this weekend.  I'm really hoping she has a good-size bruise somewhere on her person.  I'll tell the kids that I put a pea under the 2 mattresses and Cori got a bruise.  She'll be a princess to my family from now on.

I also didn't know to fear breast cancer when I was called in for another mammogram.  It was scheduled for the snow day last Monday.  They asked me to come in early because the staff was hoping to leave early because of the snow.  I assumed they gleaned from our phone conversation that I'd arrive with 3 kids.  They didn't.  They told me I'd have to reschedule.  I wasn't having that.  If I have to take a day off from the studio for a snow day, I'll be DAMNED if I'm not going to get something done...I insisted on their figuring out my getting a 20-second X-ray with my 3 kids in the vicinity.  My "20-second x-ray" turned into a harrowing 2-hour ordeal during which I was listening to the nurses talk to my children while contemplating their being raised by other people after my shocking, untimely death.  It was awful.  I was so cavalier going in.  I don't have any cancer in my family.  I have tiny breasts, so I think I'd know if something was there.  And besides, what cancer could survive the amount of kale Tim puts in our morning smoothies followed by the bottle of wine I use to wash down my wild caught salmon, organic asparagus and f-ing quinoa????  My kids were doing me proud.  Why do adults talk so loud when they are talking to children?  I know I do it.  My parents did it, and the nurses were doing it.  I could hear the exclamations of "you're so smart!!!" and "Wow!  how old are you?????"

Sadly, after my cancer scare, I built this snowman on my own.  Everyone helped in the beginning, but it got too cold.  The girls came out to accessorize and for the photo op….

I'm fine.  The mattresses are fine.  My kids and husband are fine, and I'm pretty sure I could deal with cleaning up 5 lb. of coffee beans.  I just wish I'd known to fear bad skin rather than getting fat when I was thinking of things that would go bad as I grew older.  I'd probably have stayed out of the sun.

Look at all of those spots!!!!  Don't let the lipstick and sequins distract you.

I am no longer afraid of being the mother of the chunky ballerina.  I'm sad for the skinny ballerina moms.

I am slightly afraid that our family game of hiding our upper lips might become offensive to upper-lipless people.

 One of the strengths of my marriage is our mutual hatred of musicals.  Clearly one of our children is stage-bound...

Jack Peter's first acting gig...

Morning Missile

 

Halloween costumes this year did not put me over the edge.  OK Harry Potter's hair is an odd shade of indigo.  My mom never allowed me to be an unoriginal witch, so I had some pangs about that.  The green pumpkin was a little challenging, and it was annoying that it was thrown over for a toddler bee outfit from the dress-up bin, but I have no complaints.

My day started with another mom inadvertently sending me a visual text of her massive, naked tits.  There's no better way to start a day or a blog entry.

I sound like a frat boy.  I've started listening to the Preston and Steve morning show on Philly's Rock-n-Roll radio.  I get in touch with my inner meathead and feel slightly connected to the blue collar side of Philly.  It started when I got pulled over right after depositing Toby at daycare, by a bald, white cop with good posture .  I'm no longer eligible to play the "I'm attractive; don't give me a ticket" card.  I admitted to rolling by the stop sign as I handed him my license and insurance, and he sauntered back to his car.  He returned to my window after a short time, and I said, "Honestly, I was listening to Preston and Steve.  They were talking about women who prostitute their way through college, and it was so depressing!"  The cop said, I WAS LISTENING TO THAT TOO!!  HORRIBLE!!! Now, your registration is expired, and you really need to pay attention to stop signs, but I'm going to let you go...   


The radio was tuned to MMR in the first place because I try to be a "cool mom" for Toby's 5 minute commute and play music for her.  I suffered through NPR and AM radio Red Sox broadcasts for all of my commuting young life.  As soul-crushing as the adult radio was, I would never have dreamed of asking Susie for some pop music.  To this day I get slightly nauseous when I hear baseball because it brings back cigarette smoke/no-air-conditioning induced car sickness.  Tim and I got pulled over a few weeks later.   We were on our way to set up my Rittenhouse Square craft show in the rain.  We were probably listening to BBC's James Kumarasamy talk about Syria.  Without Preston and Steve on our side, the truck was impounded, Tim spent hours and a lot of money getting it back.  I walked to my soggy booth in the rain.  I'm sure Dave, the kid in Tim's office in charge of renewing registrations, wished his day had started with an inadvertent boob text rather than the rampage he received from Tim.


First day of school!

It's been 3 months since my last confession/blog.  My excuse?  Tim started a new full-time job at Temple which he loves except that it sometimes conflicts with his other full-time architect/developer gig.  We became pet owners at the end of the summer-3 hermit crabs.  It doesn't sound like much, but there's been some drama.  I've had numerous craft shows, both girls had massive birthday parties, and Halloween happened.  I've also had a recurring zit inside my nose.  I'm obviously doing penance for a major wrong in a past life.  It's agony, and it's bad for my marriage.  If Tim grazes my ever-growing nose on his way in for an affectionate peck, I want to punch him in the face.  We've also had to adjust to driving an hour + roundtrip every day to get Steel to/from school as Kindergarteners aren't bussed in Philly.  We get to share it with the Duffy family otherwise it'd be 2.5 hours.  Sadly Duffy #3 is younger than Toby.  We'll have to do it on our own when she hits Kindergarten.

The 5 Duffys live in 800 sq. feet.  Their main mode of transportation is bike carts.  Marni has a business sewing cloth diapers; Tray works at the bike shop.   Having met them, the idea that we are remotely "green" is absurd.  They did that hippy potty-training thing where you start them at 3 months.  She makes whole wheat pop tarts and quinoa, and their kids eat them.  They aren't horrible and self-righteous, though.  She admits to realizing that she's an introvert only after having had 3 children.  Her hilarious complaints about the needs of her children is refreshing.  Touching, for instance, after the morning snuggle and before the nighttime cuddle drives her nuts.  She keeps her hair at about 1/4" long and looks fabulous.  She can even joke about the devastating death of her young mom.  Despite numerous pre-trip swine flu jokes, Marni's mom died of the swine flu after her trip to China.  The only major difference between our outlooks is that they go to church and their mortgage is probably less than we spend on alcohol for a week.

Marni cycling the girls to school in her "bakfiets.nl"

After a week of propriety, the Duffy/McDonald kids now torture each other like siblings.  It's all fine if we are singing along to racy pop music.  However, Sage and Steel have the same taste in men, so that's lead to some heated conversations.  Sage tattles on Jack Peter for whatever wrongs occurred in school.  Jack Peter retaliates by writing her into comic strips.  The "Sage-O-Tron" was his most recent, easily-vanquished foe.  The middle Duffy, Fern, is a flawless human being.  She prides herself on reminding me to yield at a particular point in the ride where I'd almost killed them, me, and another carful of somebodies early in my Green Woods Charter commuting days.

The Sage-o-tron rocking a Grandma Susie skirt

There's a lot of penis and vagina talk.  Steel announced that when she presses on her "coo coo" it feels like people are tickling her.  Sage revealed that in "her world in her head" there are only girls except for one boy who is naked.  I was convinced she was channelling Hugh Hefner when she started making Hawaiian Luau references.  I've seen hitting, tears, spitting, and juice-box-dumping-down-shirts in my rear-view mirror.  I just continue to drive and bellow out math problems.

Kindergarten has been a disappointment for Big Deal McSteel.  She has a lot of undisciplined 5-year-old boys in her class.  She's at the maturity level of a teenager, so it's been trying.  "KINDERGARTEN TAKES SO LONG!!!" was her complaint the first week.  Her teacher was on maternity leave for the first 6 weeks, and the assistant teacher was barely in charge.  On back-to-school night, the assistant said to me, wide-eyed, "Thank God for Steel.  She's my teaching assistant!"  The real teacher is back, but I'm pretty sure she'd rather be with her 3-month-old son than constantly disciplining a bunch of kids who can't sit still.  I read to the class on Steel's birthday and had three little boys crawling up my skirt while the teacher was fuming, "MICHAEL!  KEATON!"  One of them has actually been suspended from Kindergarten.  One day Steel came home triumphant, I asked why she was so happy.  Her reply, "No one got in trouble in gym class today.  It was so fun!"

I guess gym class is where it all comes to a head.  Mr. Hunsberger had to call me about Jack Peter's conduct referral in gym.  Apparently Jack Peter wasn't supposed to twist a girl's arm and jump on it because she told him his Harry Potter hair was not black, it was blue.  I agreed with Mr. Hunsberger that Jack Peter needs to exercise some impulse control but I was pissed that he was putting emphasis on the fact that the victim was a girl.  I see what goes on in the back of my Mini Van; Jack Peter has some integrity issues, but the physical aggressors in our world are almost always female.  We had to have a family sit-down.  The girls are really good (outside the house) about following rules.  I had to explain that if Jack Peter hits someone again at Green Woods, he'll be suspended, and it'll be ALL of their faults because they've gotten so used to clocking each other over who gets the dark blue cereal bowl.


Report cards were uneventful except for Toby's.  At AKWD, Jane has a whole list of things that can be "age appropriate" "exceeds age expectation"  "needs development"  With all of our kids she draws a gratuitous pencil line through the "age appropriate" row, but she'll check one thing in the "exceeds age expectation" column.  Toby is our first to get a check in the "needs development" column.  She is, apparently, off the charts in her ability to lead, but she lacks in the "ability to follow" area.  It's been a little rough for her.  She was feeling abandoned because Steel left her for JP's school.  The big kids have homework and are exhausted, so they get all of our attention either screaming at them or doing homework with them.  Toby lines up her dolls and teaches them.  The classes go on for hours.  She'll only take a break if either Tim or I is coming down on Steel or Jack Peter.  She'll run up and scream at us with her arms out to protect her sibling.  In hindsight, it's darling, but in the moment, we want to kill all of them.

It was a game called "play dough pirate."  Toby's students are a rough bunch.

According to my chiropractor, I did have a previous life; my hip problems are from a past-life injury.  I'm cooky, but the idea that previous me was hit by shrapnel in WWII, and now I get gimpy if I'm on my feet on concrete 12 hours a day for 3 weeks straight isn't compelling.  My skepticism stops, however when he tells me that my lungs and liver are fine.  I am constantly worried about silicosis and cirrhosis of the liver.  We all hear what we want to hear.  My chiropractor, himself, has his own selectivity going on.  Over the summer, we were at our local music festival.  It's one of those, "buy and empty cup for $20 and drink all day" events.  By 5, no one was feeling any pain except for Jen's husband, Erik.  His back had gone out, and he was prone on the picnic quilt stretching and groaning.  Jen, on the other hand, was walking around with her usual perfect posture and "tits on a stick" physique.  A slightly lit Dr. George approached her to tell her she needed a chiropractic adjustment.  This was out of the blue.  I was nowhere near, so he didn't approach her because she was my friend.  Erik could have been getting gang-banged by a group of rabid squirrels.

My husband doesn't hear what he wants to hear.  He doesn't hear at all.  We are perfectly matched in almost every way (especially our mutual hatred of musical theater)  Our major marital hurdle revolves around his deafness and my mumbling.  I mumble things that aren't worth saying at all.  Narrating the minutia of my life out loud is one of my fears.  I've seen it in relatives.  So, I mumble something boring.  Tim says "what?"  I mumble it again because I'm embarrassed to have said it at all, and he again asks, "WHAT?"  I then scream, at the top of my lungs, "THE SMOOTHIE ISN'T SO BAD WITH CABBAGE THIS MORNING!!!!"  Tim's feelings are hurt, and I feel like an asshole for being short with him and for saying something so stupid in the first place.  

I was at my dear friends' 50th wedding anniversary party.  After a few drinks I had to make a toast:
Everyone is saying such nice things about marriage.  I grew up across the woods from this couple.  The "tapestry of obscenities" that wafted through the woods on a regular basis during one of their marital battles was rich.  Marriage is really HARD.  The other night I asked Tim why he always opens a new tube of toothpaste but leaves the old one for me to finish up?  Is his time worth more than mine?  Why doesn't he just throw it away?  His response, "I don't really think about it, but I do worry that you'd be pissed if you saw a not-entirely-empty toothpaste tube in the trash."  I responded with, "Next time just throw it away, and baby, you deserve a new tube of toothpaste when you want one. 
I finished the toast with something about being on the same team.  Everyone laughed.  The part that made me laugh was Mia's confession, "Mike (her husband) would NEVER finish a tube of toothpaste!  Then it would be his responsibility to put toothpaste on the grocery list!"  So poor absent-minded Mike and cheap me are wrestling the dregs of the toothpaste tubes to eternity.

It's mornings that are the hardest.  Steel and Jack Peter need to practice piano.  Everyone needs to get dressed, eat, pack their school bags, and brush their teeth.  I have to make 3 breakfasts, 3 lunches, and 2 "healthy snacks."  Tim needs to make coffee, 2 salads, and 2 smoothies.  All of this has to happen before Marni arrives at 730 to exchange Sage for Steel.  Sage and JP wait outside for the often-tardy bus, and I get Toby ready to go to school.  This is all happening while kids are randomly pulling out crafts, legos and unauthorized reading and Tim and I are screaming, "LOOK AT THE CLOCK!!!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"  It's a logistical fuster-cluck.

We've had a couple major morning almost-catastrophes.  Two weeks into the school year before Marni was dropping Sage off to wait with Jack Peter for the bus, I put Jack Peter on the bus and went in to get Toby ready.  It was still warm out, so the windows were open.  I heard his real bus stop.  I looked and saw, to my horror, Clarence, his real bus driver waiting.  My level-headed response was to run into the house and start screaming.  This made Toby scream as well.  Tim had to decipher  what we were screaming about, get his boots on, and catch both busses.  I was convinced that Jack Peter had been taken away from me by a cleverly disguised pedophile.  Meanwhile, Jack Peter was intrepid on the Frankford Friends School bus.  Zoe, our 11-year-old, Frankford-Friends-student neighbor had walked by Jack Peter and taken her seat.  Tim was able to make the switch at the stop sign.  The upshot was that Amy, Zoe's mom, had to give Zoe an assertiveness lecture, (if you see something you know isn't right, like Jack Peter on your bus, you need to SAY SOMETHING)  I needed to reassess my emergency coping mechanisms, and Jack Peter had to learn to avoid buses without Clarence at the helm.

On a Monday, I asked Tim if he could drop Toby off for me, so I could start my week with a swim.  Tim picks up the kids at Green Woods twice a week.  I do it 3 times.  I always take Toby to school, so I felt entitled to a morning by myself.  Everything went smoothly until I got to the studio at 10 feeling refreshed and ready to work.  I checked my phone and saw 2 messages.  One was from Tim telling me to ignore the previous message.  The previous message was from a woman named Sharon Wonder telling me she had my son and Sage.  Sharon had been walking to work when she'd been approached by a weeping Jack Peter.  Can you HELP us?  Jack Peter could only remember my number in his hysteria.  He and Sage had been waiting out in the cold for an hour.  Apparently the bus had already come, and they had missed it.  Tim left with Toby assuming the big kids were gone.  After I didn't answer the phone, Jack Peter told Sharon Wonder that he and Sage go to Green Woods Charter School.  Sharon googled and called the school, the school called Tim.  He was there in 10 minutes, and they got to school in time for science.  Sharon Wonder is now a great friend, so all's well that ends well.  

Were Marni and Tray mad that we'd abandoned their daughter on the street?  Nope.  They compared the incident to the time I had to run back into their house asking where their 3rd child was.  Leaving, I was verbally assaulted by a roofer from across the street, "HEY LADY!!!!  THERE'S A BABY ON THE ROOF!  GO GET YOUR BABY!!!!"  Ryder, Marni and Tray's youngest was not on the roof.  He was sitting in the 3rd floor windowsill with only a poorly-fitting screen keeping him from being an Eric Clapton song.  It did occur to me that a roofer in California would have been stoned and waving at Ryder and playing peekaboo.  A roofer in Philly is not going to let a kid in a window fly-especially if he gets to simultaneously scare the shit out of a dumb blonde getting into her minivan.

Speaking of blondes, I was asked to write a Haiku about my life: 
3, 5, and 7
Taylor Swift is our soundtrack
Oh trouble trouble

That sums it up.  I'm putting in more pictures this time because I've been told to...

 yes, we've already had a snow day.

 Toby in the "birthday chair" at school

 Yes, Steel is essentially a teenager.

 JP decided to get dressed up for Thanksgiving.

Yes, I still bathe them together and let them eat xmas cookies for breakfast in the tub.  Although I should stop soon.  Jack Peter exclaimed to the girls, "MORNING MISSILE" as he got his sleepy suit off and hopped in.

Jack Peter for Mayor

We've had another hiccup here at 145B West Laurel Street.  Yesterday Jack Peter got suspended from camp for a day and a half.  I clearly need to blog more because it was only 2 blogs ago that Jack Peter got kicked off of the bus for 3 days.  If there were a few more blog entries in there, he'd seem less diabolical.

He took an old iPhone to camp.  He and his friend Caspar took pictures of their asses and in Jack Peter's case, penis.  Jack Peter managed to convert the money shot of his penis into the screen saver.  (Any of you out there who believe that my not letting my kids have computer/screen-time is holding them back is crazy.  I'd have to work hard to convert an image into my screen saver; Jack Peter can figure that stuff out in milliseconds.)  He then let everyone at camp take a peek at his new screen saver.

My first reaction was the typical, "What did I do to cause this?"  I questioned my having-the-kids-change-into-their-bathing-suits-in-public policy.  My hippy attitude towards nudity and the family showers popped into my head as did the careless placement of David Macaulay's HOW WE WORK in the living room.  A month ago Jack Peter told me triumphantly and furtively at a restaurant that he knows how babies are made.  "Dada puts his penis in your vagina!"  I imagined excusing myself and going straight home to send an e-mail to the rest of the soon-to-be-2nd-Grade parents at Green Woods Charter School:  Dear parents.  It's time for "the talk" otherwise it's going to come from Jack Peter, and I'm not sure that's what you want.  Love, Liz and Tim.  Instead, I said, "You're right!  Who told you that?"  He responded, "I read it!"  "Where did you read it?"  "In a book in the living room!"  "Which book?"  "HOW WE WORK!"  Some well-meaning person gave How Things Work and How We Work to Jack Peter when he was 3.  How was I to know he'd read them cover to cover and commit them both to memory? I do still wonder why he whispered it, AND if he knew to whisper it, why did he not know that showing everyone at camp a picture of his penis was a bad idea?

Another recent development crossed my mind.  Over dinner the other night we discovered that Jack Peter had put glue in his hair a month ago to make it stand up straight.  I had been wondering why the texture seemed to have changed.  There's only so much one can attribute to beach trips and our annual summer shampoo fast.  Armed with our chocolate Oreo cookie dessert, we all went to shower together because we'd gone to the public pool.  As I was vigorously scrubbing his head with Pantene, Steel was asking him if he'd used glitter glue.  "NO!  I don't want glitter in my hair!  I just wanted it to stand straight up!"  Steel agreed.  They always agree with one another if the opinion has been shouted loudly in a tiled room.  After the conditioner stage, Jack Peter said, "You know where I would want glitter?"  Both girls were rapt.  "On my penis!"  They nodded in agreement.  I had to get a little more, "Why would you want glitter on your penis?"  His response, "I HAVE NO IDEA!"  It took the world a long time to come up with vagazzling, and at 7, Jack Peter intuitively arrives at glitter penis?

apparently a student at Moore College of Art went to more extreme lengths to show everyone at camp his glitter penis....

The responses to this latest suspension have varied.  My mom is convinced that he's on a path towards mild perversion at best or more likely, total deviance.  Her assumption is that he's showing off his stuff.  As a 45-lb-white boy, I suppose he's doing OK in the tallywacker department, but I suspect that given the race and size of most of the other campers his package is not all that boast-worthy.  His previous daycare teacher said while looking at an imaginary watch, "2nd grade? Yep, that seems right on schedule..."  Sweet said, "God I love Jack Peter!"  My friend Jen said, "A boy in Willa's camp exposed himself twice the other day.  They sat him in a corner for 20 minutes."  By far the best response was Jen's follow-up text the next morning "Perhaps Jack Peter should run for Mayor of New York?!"

So we have the choice of moving to New York City where such things are expected from a mayoral candidate or we move to the rural south where the sentencing is milder.  Jen did query whether he'd ever get a birthday party again.  His penance (beyond the obvious castration I've scheduled for next week) is doing Xtramath once a day.  (a really annoying math facts website) He gets no dessert for a week, and we are not going out to get the birthday present he's been wanting to buy himself with the money Uncle Johnny and Aunt Tiff gave him.  Clearly the iPhone is well out of reach, and I've engaged in subtle warfare.  His voice won't carry any weight this week.  We had pancakes this morning.  He doesn't like them; the girls do.  The girls got to choose the movie for movie night. (Pocahontas)  Halfway through the movie, I called him out to do his math, and I handed them each some candy.

None of it is working.  He's still gayly talking about getting Mindcraft on his next iPhone.  I've explained to him that he won't have an i anything until he's a teenager, but it falls on deaf, utterly optimistic ears.  My brother and his wife stopped here the other night on their way back to Florida from Mass.  During the trip down, their kids had asked them the meaning of immune.  The only definition that really clicked for them was, "Jack Peter is immune to punishment."  I'm considering contacting Frances Weiner.  Perhaps she and I could start some sort of support group for mothers of blithely optimistic exhibitionists-MOBOE.

By the way, please don't think that I'm vagazzled.  I have an odd feeling about my own nudity.  I always imagine that I could walk down the street completely naked, and no one would notice.  I think it's because I don't really have any frills.  My body is the Jetta diesel of bodies.  It gets great mileage, but no one is going to worry too much about the paint job.  I think I've felt that way because my mom had the body equivalent of a Town and Country Mini Van with leather seats, a sun roof and a DVD player in the back.

Bird in the house

I'm at my mom's, and I'm supposed to go back to Philly tomorrow.  I dragged my neglected portion of the 2012 holiday cards up here thinking that I would complete them.  A lot of them go to my business clients.  On July 12, what am I supposed to write to business clients on a card picturing my children wearing photo-shopped santa hats?  I wonder what I did say considering that I had to be drunk to do it.  I'm, once again, wowing the world with my ability to juggle it all!  The annoying part was that the entire time I was trying to focus on the cards, Martha Stewart was out there in a fog of mosquitos banging on the door with a huge "domestic time-management" trophy in her arms.

I've been procrastinating.  How?  Well, I maintain an extremely holier-than-thou claim that my children have no TV or electronics, and that they only get 1 movie-night a week.  However, I should hire one of those guys who talk really fast on ads to follow me around with a disclaimer:

Unless my children are up before ten at either my mother's or my mother in law's house OR if I'm at a friends house, and I'd rather be drunk than paying attention to them OR if  they are hanging out with someone closely, distantly or not related to them who has an electronic device OR if they are nauseous, concussed, cranky, pre-menstrual, depressed or strung out on crack OR if it's a long weekend, short weekend, holiday, weekday OR if it has snowed, rained, hailed or tsunami-d anywhere within 3000 miles within the past 10 years...

So I've been procrastinating by neglecting my children in front of the TV or their cousin's iPad while reading Bossypants or hanging out with friends and drinking.  I've also been creating a website/blog for my mom's skirts.  I've spoken about the yarn bombing before, so I'll just put a link and a picture here:
grandmasusiesskirts.blogspot.com

My other forms of procrastination that do not involve neglect are: dying any child within reach's hair permanently iridescent purple or dying green lightening bolts into their hair and having them come out so non-lightening-bolt-esque that they get deemed deliberately-created Puma insignias.  (God, I love my see-the-cup-half-full son)

except when he throws sand at the beach seven times after I've told him to stop OR talks back to my mom OR gets kicked off the bus OR whines about the ipad OR drops and shatters a massive bowl of Rice Crispies with too much sugar on them in the middle of my mom's kitchen OR cheats at Battleship OR grabs my breast and says "cupcake" suggestively OR does mouth farts on my arm far too many times to be funny OR spits his toothpaste past the sink into the nebulous back-sink area OR asks me to help him do Oragami

see...this disclaimer gig is full-time!

How else have I been procrastinating?  I've been sending pictures of my family eating lobster to my brother in law's girlfriend who just started a 21-day cleanse during which she can eat nothing and cc-ing bitter homosexuals in New York City who love lobster.  It's amazing how much time selecting the perfect buttery lobster photo can take.


I have also been not bathing.  How can "not bathing" take time?  Well, I have hideous eczema.  I have to bathe eventually, so "not bathing" is just another tier on my ladder of procrastination.  My bathing options at my mom's are: her shower, Dick's shower, and the yellow hall shower.

Normally I choose her shower.  There, I get to use all of the expensive bath products that I've bought her for the past 5 years.  I get to ruminate over which mildew-infused loofah to weather, and I get to pour on that fabulous Aveda "for blondes" that is supposed to make the hair on my head that is not hot pink or iridescent purple not look orange.  The Aveda neighbors are copious dollar store and Marshall's shower gels or unused Jessica McClintock products that Dick gave my mom that she probably is too sad about his death to use.  Susie's shower has climbed on the difficulty scale.  The door no longer closes, so she has a bungee cord to loop around the tub faucet to keep the spray from re-opening the spackled hole in the ceiling that would regularly tsunami water into the living room during holidays of my youth.  A few days ago I wrapped the cord around the tub faucet and, for some reason, panicked and let it go because it turned the cold water onto my feet.  The cord snapped into my left eye and blinded me.  I'm still bitter about that, so the bungee cord shower is out.

Dick's shower is downstairs.  It has a cool stone floor, but the products are sparse, and both my mom and I have shattered a beer bottle near it trying to extricate a dead pig or tired plate of deviled eggs from the primarily beer fridge in the same room.  I don't want to complicate the blindness with a poorly swept up beer bottle amputation.  The yellow shower has been re-done recently.  Remember my mom gushing as she compared her faux-finishing sponge-painting to Monet's water lilies?  (Sorry Claude, Susie really nailed it with a sponge and some acrylics)  I like that shower, but the yellow bathroom is home to about 50 carpenter ants who are each as long as my big toe.  The larger problem is that Misty and Snowy, the cats, brought a baby skunk up there, taunted it, and killed it in the tub leaving it unrecognizable except for the smell.  Susie must have had a head cold for 4 months, so she didn't discover the carnage until the diabolical funk had settled into the pores of the tile and the water lilies.

Misty and Snowy are praise-worthy hunters.  There have been daily sacrifices offered to us through the cat door.  It adds to the 5-kid chaos in a Darwinian way.  We worry about the animal until it bores us by going under a large piece of furniture to either die or be retrieved and killed by Snowy, the more humane of the two cats.

It all makes me remember long, romantic phone conversations with one of my college long-distance boyfriends.  I'd regale him with stories of 1 Spy Rock Hill, and he would take it all with a grain of salt.  His skepticism about the extent of the chaos always bugged me.  One day as I was administering phone fellatio to him, my dad was  fabricating his daily anti pasta salad.

recipe: the best leaves on a head of lettuce,

leaving the worst for my mom to which he responded,"Why don't you just throw them away and have the best for yourself as well?" to which any self-respecting lettuce martyr would snort haughtily

tomatoes, feta cheese, genoa salami, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and oil

Mom was in the garden.  All of a sudden Peter screams, "BIRD IN THE HOUSE!!!!!  SUSIE!!!! EMERGENCY!!!! BIRD IN THE HOUSE!!!!"  Susie is screaming from the garden, "THEN GET IT OUT OF THE HOUSE!"  Peter is screaming more desperately, "SUSIE!!!!  BIRD IN THE HOUSE"  Susie relents and comes running to his aid, but in the lapse time, Penny our neighbor starts screaming from across the woods, "SUSIE!!!!! PETER SAYS THERE'S A BIRD IN THE HOUSE!!!!"  and then to her husband who is in their house, "EVAN!!!!  THERE IS A BIRD IN PETER AND SUSIE'S HOUSE!!!!!"  All I had to do to make my point about the 1 Spy Rock Hill insanity was to hold up the phone for 5 minutes.  The poor boyfriend was in tears screaming at me, "I THOUGHT YOU WERE KIDDING!!!!  IS THIS SERIOUSLY HAPPENING???"

Yes it is...