transitions and torture

Toby and the trampstamp...

They tell you, "Transitions are hard" when your kids are little. You're supposed to warn kids. "We'll be leaving in 5 minutes..." 2 minutes later, "You need to start cleaning up..." I never remember to warn them, and I feel like a bad mom when I have to throw them into their car seats screaming in front of all the composed moms and children. Who are we trying to kid? Anyone worth their salt hates transitions. I text my husband 5 minutes before we have to leave our work and go pick up the kids. He's 6 feet away on the other side of a door, but I don't want to see him do the adult version of a melt down, so I resort to the phone.

To be good at pottery you have to manage, if not embrace, transitions. You can't rush anything or else it cracks, warps, bubbles or looks shitty. If you're compulsive, the only way to avoid rushing something is to start something else. So you throw 20 cups, wedge the pieces for the handles, wax the bottoms of a bunch of bowls, glaze their insides, load a kiln, feed your baby and THEN you make and put the handles on the 20 cups. Of course I want to weep when I can't finish glazing those bowls...

Last May my mother in law told us that if we were planning to use the shore house, we should be prepared to clean it. Tim hates the shore. He thinks the beach is barbaric because it's hot, sandy and because IT LACKS BOUNDARIES...I love the beach because I don't have to scream "NO!" to my kids as often as normal. I was pregnant with #3, and I volunteered to go clean, leaving Tim home with #1 and #2. When Carol says clean, she means it. We were dusting the insides of bureau drawers, bathing venetian blinds in the tub, and hoovering mattresses and box springs. It's embarrassing, but I was in heaven; it was so satisfying to start and complete a task in one go. Am I saying I'd rather be using Tilex on some grout than parent? Maybe...

The transition issue is why parenting is torture. You have to do something for a kid or keep him/her from dying before you can finish anything. I've never understood putting dishes in the sink. Why not just put them in the dishwasher? Now I get it. I don't have the time or attention span to get them all in the dishwasher, so I spend a 1/2 hour majoring in parenting with a minor in getting dirty dishes close to the dishwasher. The next 1/2 hour will be parenting with an emphasis on getting dirty laundry near the washing machine. Nap time arrives and I get an orgasmic 2 hours of task completion.

Speaking of torture...Why do people torture each other? One of my employees used to leave sandwich baggies filled with cookies around the studio when I was pregnant and worried about gaining weight. He'd wait until I ate them and tell me he was making side money betting his friends how many minutes it would take for me to locate and consume 3 Oreos in a 1200 sq. ft. clay studio. My children spend most of their concentration power anticipating the next toy move of a sibling. They then grab the desired toy and sprint away from the grab-ee, screaming.

I'm not sure my brother and I tortured each other so intently, but we were living with parents who routinely tortured each other. Peter's favorite was to see Susie in a short mood, sashay up to the Steinway and daintily start playing Chopin's "Minute Waltz." He'd crescendo to an appalling B instead of a B flat in the 9th stanza. It drove her mad: a. because she can't deal with anything off key and b. because she was probably trying to get stuff done, and it annoyed her that he was at liberty to waltz up to the piano instead of Windexing the storm windows or putting the coffee grounds into the compost...

We spent the weekend at the Shore with another vengeful Peter and his entourage. Peter is a second cousin of my husband-as if there aren't enough first cousins to deal with; Tim's dad was one of 14. Peter is the 6-years-later-mistake after a family of 4 Irish twins. (Tim's family has one of those...Johnny.) Peter's siblings have all bred, and he's footloose and 37. Rather than give his nieces and nephews a bunch of crap for gifts, he takes them on annual trips. This time his sister, Jackie had to chaperon the "Historical Pennsylvania" trip with 3 tweener nieces. (Jackie won my heart when she read a group text she received on Sunday morning, Ladies, I don't mean to brag, but I just fit into earrings I wore in high school.)

Apparently Jackie's conservative husband, Bob, was the main balker at Peter's discretion. In response, Peter tortured her and anyone who would listen with references to intercourse with his nieces (Intercourse, PA was one of their stops....where the Amish live) Jackie created a mutiny in which she and all 3 nieces demanded to go to the Jersey shore with us instead of seeing the Liberty Bell, putting the kibosh on another day of PA history. Peter lives in Miami; the crappy beaches of the Jersey Shore were not his pick, and being 2nd in command was definitely not on his agenda. Peter's revenge: going to the boardwalk and convincing each girl to get a semi-permanent henna tattoo (semi permanent meaning 5 weeks...all summer) that read some version of, "Uncle Peter ROCKS!"

Bob and Jackie's daughter got hers as a tramp stamp on her lower back....Peter's only request as they parted ways, "Please film Bob's face during the unveiling."

hostess with the mostess...

Who doesn't love a hello kitty pirate in capped sleeves?

I swam 40 laps and then threw 40 pots today with 2 band aids encasing the tip of my left index finger. The band aids weren't that troublesome, but they did serve to remind me that I nearly hacked the tip of that finger off on Monday evening and been grossly inept socially. I was making a noodle dish with ginger peanut sauce, basil, cucumbers, carrots, peas and pork. I glazed pottery all day, came home early from the studio with the baby, propped her on the counter, and fed her applesauce and yogurt intermittently while I chopped. I'd given myself a 1/2 hour to prepare dinner for 10...from leftovers. I think I was airing out the house, making sun tea and switching laundry too...

I knew it was a pretty bad cut. It took me 5 minutes to take the dish towel off of my hand to inspect what had happened. During those 5 minutes I was putting together the peanut sauce and mentally weighing my options if I had, in fact cut the tip off of my finger. At one point I figured I'd just go to school with the dish towel on my hand and the baby on my hip and some peroxide and band aids. I'd ask one of the teachers there to clean and dress it. I rejected that because it seemed too dramatic and needy. I've been self-conscious about being 5-10 minutes late to pick the kids up, so the clock was ticking, and I was damned if I was going to let a flesh wound make me late.

I dressed it myself. I'd cut the top half of the nail off, but the pad on the other side of the finger was still intact, so I figured I'd be OK. Of course by the time I got there the band aids were saturated, and I was trying to hold the baby on the other side and hold that finger up so the blood would stop. The "We're at the cement park" sign was up, (It's descriptive but it does give me a little twinge about bringing up my kids in the city) so I walked to the little park just as the posse was leaving. Jack Peter had skinned his knees. He saw me and refused to walk. He started wailing and continued on and off for 2 hours. He kept saying that he couldn't sleep ALL NIGHT LONG; apparently he had to monitor the band aids. He wouldn't straighten his legs at all, so I carried him to the house and dumped him in the green chair. The girls suspected that he was getting special treatment; they started howling, Steel ranting about imaginary aches and pains. I continued making dinner with my left hand in the air.

Tim came in and smoothed everything out. He put a movie on for Jack Peter and kept saying to me, "Stop cooking and sit down!" I finally did and had my first glass of wine.

I polished off close to 2 bottles by the end of the night. It's not a pretty coping mechanism. Our guests came in 2 shifts. The pregnant couple with a 2 year old stayed till kiddie bed time. The late comers were my friend Eu and his 2 sisters. They are 3 from a family of 8. I'm fascinated by people from big families. I was grilling them about their lives. Eu is conspicuously single, so I wanted a little relationship gossip from his sisters..no joy. They are both single too. The younger, Faustina, had said a surreptitious grace before she ate. Couldn't that have reigned me in?

Nope...I had to ask, point blank, how their in-their-30's bodies cope with celibacy. Celibacy has never worked for me. I've always equated it with being unhealthy. The only time I struggled with my weight was during my teen years in boarding school. I hypothesize that puberty is such a nightmare because your body is telling you to reproduce and society is trying to scare you out of having sex. You eat doughnuts and chips all the time and on weekends get drunk enough to ignore what society is telling you not to do. During the week you're panicked, so you eat more doughnuts and chips. Delightful hostess that I am I suggested that they were replacing their body's sexual needs with food. After all, 3 out of the 10 dinner eaters were children, 1 was too drunk to eat, and we went through 2 boxes of pasta and a huge piece of meat...

You'd think that would be a conversation stopper, but they stayed for a while. Maybe I was like a horrible car wreck, and they couldn't turn away. Our nanny came in the next morning. An avid reader of my blog, she said, "Was Tim angry with you for referencing his drunkenness in your blog?" I said, "No but I'm sure he wasn't thrilled last night when I told 3 of our dinner guests that they're fat..." If I'd hacked my finger off after having drunken too much, would I lay off the booze? I AM going to be really careful next time I'm cutting up barbecued pork.

Looking Crappy

My Christening: godparents, Maryanne in lime, "Uncle Sam the kitty's pal;" Susie & Peter with little me

Looking crappy all the time has been a way of life for me. I typically have clay in my hair, snaggle-tooth fingernails, stains all over, and clay dust clouds poofing around me every time I sit down. I leave clay treads all over the floors of bars and restaurants. I don't spend money on things like haircuts, make-up and manicures because it all seems so futile, so the situation snowballs. An associate of Tim's has been using the office because he's visiting from Holland. He said to me when he arrived for dinner, "Who was the woman taking care of your child at the office?" "Ummm....me...with my hair up?"

I've always been like this. I used to ride my bike everywhere in San Francisco, so that created fashion limits. When I worked at a law firm 3 days a week, I left a black dress hanging on the door of my office and some black shoes under my desk. I wore that uniform every day for about 6 months. I don't think anyone noticed because I'd created low expectations. On top of it, I don't use a blow dryer. I'd shower before work, so I'd have bedraggled hair in the morning. I'd run and shower at lunch creating the same drowned rat in the afternoon. I'm comfortable with all of it until I see someone who's really put together. It makes me self-conscious; I wonder when I'm going to grow up.

My mom never left the house without lipstick on. Revlon's naked pink was her color. Her perfume was Chanel #5. She typically would match her shoes and eye-shadow. She sewed all of her clothes: straight mini skirts with matching fitted vests. The vests had buttons down the front, and she would make fabric-covered buttons, so it all matched. She'd make her own Bermuda bags with the same fabric. (Bags are another category of shame for me. I never have a chic bag with everything all organized.)

This weekend I was proud that I'd bathed and changed for our post-nap expedition to a music festival. (Our weekend days are split in two: pre-naps and post-naps.) I had on a flowing white skirt and a nice blue tank top that matched my flip flops. I felt relatively put together. In the yard while putting all 3 kids into the double stroller, Toby puked on me. It was bright orange sweet potato/carrot puke. It'd taken so much to get us out the door; I just rolled my eyes and said, "It'll be dark soon; no one will notice."

Before darkness happened I bought a chicken kabob for all of us. It had that bright red bbq sauce on it. Of course one kid didn't like it and handed me a half-chewed piece while I wasn't paying attention. It tumbled down the front of my skirt. I was sitting on the grass and another kid spilled a beer onto my ass. It mixed with the dirt and soaked my backside. Toby's puke had dried to a light yellow/orange stain. It occurred to me in the beer line that I looked like I'd pissed, shit and gotten my period. Inadvertently I said it out loud under my breath. A woman laughed and said, "It's OK; just get one of those t-shirts that says 'mom' across the chest, and everyone will understand." When did 'mom' devolve from a put-together hottie in a mini-skirt to a 40-year-old hag who's lost all bowel control?

Fabreze

The McDonald family on the famous couch. Tim's the one standing on the right.

Normally Toby is in the studio with me in the morning when she pukes. I don't clean it up. Clay studios can take a little vomit here and there. (It was really put to the test by my first frat boy employee) Friday, however, is mommy day, so Toby's hideous sour-milk puke was all over our bed this morning. I changed the sheets, but I was just going to flip the mattress pad around. Mid-flip I remembered that I'd already turned it last week when one of us forgot a diaper on Steel at nap time. I've reached that level of parenthood when I turn instead of launder. I opted for the pee side near my head rather than the puke. I then looked guiltily out the window....and Fabrezed it. Fabreze isn't a guilty pleasure; that's Clorox wipes. It's a desperate last resort.

I discovered Fabreze when we got our couch reupholstered by a tiny woman named Tiffany. She'd had the thing twice as long as we'd expected, and a leg fell off when we loaded it into the truck. The glue she'd used to stick it on a half hour before we'd gotten there didn't take. We turned a blind eye and chucked the leg into the front seat even though one of her main selling points had been using a carpenter to fix any woodwork issues. Her work place turned out to be her tiny row home, and the root of her tininess that she's a chain-smoker. I'm not a militant anti-smoker. In fact, I've been known to have a cigarette after a drink or 2, but that couch was so saturated I couldn't let Jack Peter sit on my lap after he'd been sitting on it because the smell in his hair made my spit hot-the way it gets before I'm about to puke. Granted I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with Toby. We Fabrezed in a last ditch effort to avoid pitching a McDonald family heirloom into the dumpster. The whole house reeked of a breath of fresh air. We opened the windows, went to bed and awoke to an odorless couch. I was musing over this miracle to my hopefully-soon-to-be sister in law. (also Tiffany) She replied, in her matter-of-fact Midwestern accent, "Oh yeah...we used to spray it on our hair if we didn't have time to shower after a frat party before class." Why bother with baths and laundry anymore? "Honey, I packed the lunches; have you brushed their teeth and Fabrezed them yet?"

Opting for the pee side of the mattress pad near my head rather than the puke was a result of my brother's declaration that "urine is virtually sterile." I include that quote in my short list of great tips for parents. The others are: "crying is an infant's only exercise."* and "a portion of protein need only be the size of their palm."* I recite these three things multiple times throughout the day like some sort of yogic mantra.

*Lisa Randolph Strickland-best friend from home
*Karen Hull Pellis-dear friend who introduced me to my husband-also a potter married to an architect

Files

Since we moved into our home at Tim's project, Thin Flats, he's been in charge of the utilities. I was in charge of them when we lived in my building, so it's only fair. Since then the gas has almost been turned off, we spend more than I would ever imagine on cable, and more recently we just got a $517 water bill. All of these bills pile up at various places around the house, so I try and bring them to work, so they can pile up on his desk where I imagine he's more likely to be in the mood for paperwork. He just brings them home again because he doesn't like a cluttered workspace, and they aren't work-related.

We always get our serious discussions out in the car. We were discussing the Memorial Day weekend on our way to the Shore. Of course he'd forgotten that Monday is a national holiday, so he referred to "when I'm in the office" on Monday. I accepted that I might need to take the kids on my own that day. After all, he gave me from 1-7 on Friday....normally "Mommy Day." I got to go to the studio alone to pack and ship without having to quiet my tape gun for a sleeping baby. I was like a bubble wrap hurricane.

I was muttering out loud about whether or not Ikea would be open on the holiday. He asked why, and I said that I wanted to get him a bunch of those cute little files. I'd set them up on the table next to his side of the bed. It's the table that is his clothes limbo. I guess it's the clothes that aren't dirty enough to be banished to the hamper or the dry cleaning bin, but I know he's put some there that have been thoroughly puked on by Toby, so I don't know. It's also where paperwork goes to die if it doesn't make the trip through the wash in one of his pockets. He said, "Wow, files? that might be great....Actually it might freak me out; I've never kept track of that stuff. Why should I start?" I said, "We'll take off your pants and file the contents of your pockets; it'll be like foreplay!"

Turned on by "paper and media organizers," that's me.

the BUTT

Everyone has a story of their kid saying something rude about someone to their faces. Mine happened at the YMCA. We were in the bathroom of the women's locker room waiting for Jack Peter to finish pooping. It's embarrassing enough that everyone had to listen to the pooping narrative, but an enormous woman was doing something at the sinks during the process. I was standing at the door of the stall poised with toilet paper in my hand which left Steel to wander. She didn't go too far. She was like a little satellite or moon orbiting the woman at the sink. The woman had one of those gravity-defying rear ends. It was the size of a college dorm room fridge on it's side resting precariously on two traffic cones. The woman was wearing a massive bra and an even huger pair of underwear. Steel murmured, "She has a big butt." I chose to say nothing. The woman let out a low throaty, "uh huh." It was all easy enough for me to ignore until Steel cried, "MOM! I SAID SHE HAS A BIG BUTT!" The woman said, "I like that!" and I sort of laughed nervously and hurried us out.

It's a funny enough story, but it got funnier when the delirious feverish Steel was in my arms 2 weeks later. I had just finished telling her that she was too sick to go to the YMCA to swim. She accepted that news in silence. A few minutes later she said, "Mom? Do you remember the butt at the Y?"

falling short...

I make a show of being a good parent: I made a cake shaped like a whale because my son wanted whale at his end-of-school party, and I couldn't find any whale meat to grill. (I could kill the guy who actually made an octopus pasta salad for his kid who wanted octopus at the party) However in the chaos of the party, I abandoned my hungry 20 lb baby girl into the somewhat-willing arms of a very pregnant mom with 2 kids of her own for almost 1/2 hour so I could shove octopus in Jack Peter's mouth and cuddle Steel. Steel wasn't into the festivities; as soon as her dad arrived they went upstairs to the little nap area to sleep. He and I ate lunch and left the party to try and squeeze some work in. Steel was discovered by a worried teacher an hour later all alone on the floor burning up with a fever. Far be it from me to think, "hmmmm......her brother just got over being sick; she's eaten 1 strawberry and a sip of a banana smoothie all day; she's passed out; maybe she's not well."

I make a show of being a functioning pottery business. Today's task was to finally pack and ship an order for a place in Santa Barbara. It's been in a corner, 2 pots shy of complete for 3 months, with a big note on it: "Ship end of May." No one is going to die if a shipment of pottery arrives June 10 instead of May 31, but why the hell do I leave it to last minute and be foiled by a feverish kid?

I try to convince myself that I'm a good wife, too. Of course upon hearing I'd have to turn around and go pick up my kids 4 hours before I'd planned to, I stomped into my husband's office to have him help me get the 3 car seats back in the car. It was 90 degrees out, so that was a truly unpleasant task, but I probably could have done it myself if I weren't wanting to make a point of the fact that I was going to pick up the sick kid.

Tim was in a major meeting with bankers, and the car seats had been removed because he spent yesterday catering to the needs of his Japanese mentor (70 something) and girlfriend (32) and those of every other person who wanted to hang out with the mentor. Tim chose to BBQ even though it was 90 degrees, and our garden is in direct sunlight all afternoon. The professor's English isn't great, and architects are generally abysmal at small talk, so it was a socially lurchy kind of day. Social lurching usually results in way too much alcohol consumption. However, alcohol makes Tim that much more likely to want to really communicate. The night ended with his trying to convince said (jet lagged, exhausted, drunk) professor at midnight that he had taken a huge part in creating the Philly community in which we live because he was such an inspiration to so many budding architects here. Either Yoshida wasn't understanding, or he was culturally offended by Tim's obsessive praise or he was just plain drunk and tired, but Tim wasn't getting the response he'd expected which caused him to rephrase numerous times only to hit the same mute wall. Meanwhile I'm whipping up the whale cake at midnight spraying blue buttercream all over the kitchen walls because I haven't gotten the hang of revving up my Kitchenaid to clean off the beaters the way my mom used to...

I also make a show of being a good daughter. The weekend before my dad was visiting. He lives alone and is 6'1" 160lb. I have a bet with myself when I'm pregnant that I never want to outweigh a McDonald brother, but I outweigh my own dad 5 months into it. He's fun to cook for because he gorges himself and rhapsodizes about it the whole time in his thick Rhode Island accent. We went to a farmers' market, and I picked up some rhubarb to make him a pie. I only bought 3 stalks. I prepared them and gave Toby the ends to gnaw on. There were some leafy bits that I didn't think she'd be able to tear through, but she almost choked; I extricated the leaf from the back of her tongue and gave her something else to gum. I realized I didn't have enough rhubarb for a strictly rhubarb pie, so I went online for a strawberry rhubarb recipe. It started, "Prepare the rhubarb and throw away the leaves; they are poisonous..."

So here I am happily blogging because the kids are home and I can't work. (I think of myself as a pretty dedicated blogger, but I dumped a rye and ginger on my computer. The result is a complete loss of battery power which is making everything a pain. Now I'm even falling short at this...) Sick kids have excused me from another dreaded kid birthday party and going out tonight to not talk with abysmal-at-small-talk architects and non-English speakers at a KOREAN BBQ. ("Hmmmm it's really hot; lets go sit around a fire and cook meat again, but this time we'll do it INSIDE!" Architects are morons...) Normally I'm chasing kids around with broccoli screaming about rescinding their coveted single movie night if they don't do whatever I'm wanting them to, but when they're sick I'm a parenting slacker: I don't need to fight any battles. They get to drink juice, eat chips and watch movies. So 2 out of 3 of my kids are deathly ill, my husband is exhausted, and I feel like I won the lottery.

What kind of mom allows her son to wear the tweety bird one-piece in public? It's out of my control, and it was great to see the Japanese guests' faces when confronted with this....