off-gassing

Of course I lost my mind this Christmas. I got a $76 parking ticket while running into "Lush" to get bath bombs for my kids. I bought paints and forgot yellow. I spent 5.5 hours putting together a play kitchen I'd bought for $25 from a woman in my Northern Liberties mommy group.

I didn't know the woman, but I'd remembered a post she'd made looking for a nanny. She had specified that she'd prefer a Jewish nanny. This was on my mind when I went to pick up the play kitchen. Also on my mind was the Ikea play kitchen I'd bought for $99 before I'd thought to see if anyone had an old one they didn't want anymore. The Ikea one was wood. I was buying a plastic one. The woman and her husband had bought it a year ago. Upon discovering that it had 227 plastic parts that had to be extricated from their webbing and joined to each other, they had wisely deposited the box in their basement. They don't have 5.5 hours to put a toy together because they actually play with their children rather than build toys that enable them to neglect their children. When I saw the box wide open, I exclaimed, "Oh, Thank God it's been off-gassing in YOUR house for the past year..." I then thought to myself, Liz, you just told an extremely Jewish person that you were glad THEY were being gassed...

Speaking of gassed. I went to a yoga class last week. It was a level II class. I'm more of a level I person because I'm not at all flexible. I am also in the early stages of pregnancy, so I don't want to over-do. My yoga teacher is aware of this and kept saying things like, "Liz, YOU don't do this; do this instead" There were only 3 of us in the class, so I felt a little outed and exposed. In every Iyengar class someone gets strapped up and hangs from the wall or the ceiling. I'd never tried it, but it's always looked relaxing. She suggested I try it. I got up, and she told me to open my knees and put my feet together. This created what I can only refer to as vaginal bellows. I quickly got down because it was not relaxing. I had to spend the rest of the class expelling the garbage bag full of air that had rushed into my womanly parts. So now I'm that pregnant new girl who can't do anything with the really bad gas. "Oh no, those aren't FARTS, they're VARTS!" Apparently QUEEF is a 'during sex' vart. If I were English, I could say "fanny fart" and feel sort of cute, but I'm not.

So I'm that person who does and says things regularly that make herself and others uncomfortable. Am I a married-with-children Bridgette Jones? I know I'm a terrible gossip. I was recently punished for gossiping. Heather and I were swimming laps at the YMCA. Both of us were doing side stroke, so we could talk about my brother-in-law's bachelor party. Her husband had punched out my other brother-in-law. We swam and talked for at least 20 minutes about the incident. I showered, got dressed and went to the store to find someone had relieved my wallet of all of its cash during my shameless gossip session.

I got a text this morning from a friend asking me if my silverware drawer is still a jumble. I responded with the above image. This friend was last in my home 4 years ago, so for him to ask me about it a week after I broke down and ordered 12 matching teaspoons and 12 matching forks is strange. I'm still waiting for the flatware. It's on back order. I was sick of hunting for the one teaspoon I had stolen from the Loew's hotel when we went to the AIA dinner. I ordered 12 of them. Maybe if I go back and return the spoon to the hotel, all will be right in the world, and I'll stop varting, getting parking tickets and saying stupid things. Then again, Loew's chose not to hire my friend as their senior catering manager after stringing her along for a month. Perhaps all will be right in the world when my silverware drawer is a little more organized.

Cause of Death: head in volcano

It was late afternoon last week when I took the kids on an errand in the stroller. If you must know, we were going to the beer distributor. They look so great on the way home, each of them precariously perched on a case of beer. The moon was out early, so we were chanting that Mother Goose poem together, I see the moon and the moon sees me. God Bless the moon and God bless me! I said, "You guys, who is God?" Steel said, "I am."

I'm so glad to know that God wears stripey tights.

Steel said to our niece in the middle of a fairy tale, (Someone had died.)

"How did he die; did someone shoot him?"

Britt said, "No"

Steel said, "Oh, then someone must've put his head in a volcano...."

I think of Jack Peter as past the fabulous one-liner phase, but a few weeks ago, he was walking with me and he said,

"Mom, when you were a little girl, how old were you?"

"I was 4; just like you!" I replied.

Why bother ruining a nice walk trying to explain time to someone who repeatedly asks,

"Is it tomorrow yet?" It made me think fondly about my mom starting numerous stories with the line, "When I was a boy..."

That must be Virgo humor. My Virgo husband loves to get the kids all riled up by slipping in an untruth. I came home late one night to all of them howling in the living room.

Mama, you have to hear the Steely song!

Tim started strumming and singing in his most heartfelt voice,

I love my Steely

I love her big blue eyes

I love my Steely

even when she cries

I love my Steely

I love her boy-cut hair

I love my Steely

I love her skin so fair

but what I really love about Steely...

IS

HER

BUTT!

I actually can't call that an untruth. No matter how much horrible stuff comes out of them, we do love their butts.

hoagie smell

There are some fringe benefits to being a potter. I was wrangling the 3 kids from the childwatch at the YMCA, and Miss Kim, the afternoon baby sitter said, "Is that all from swimming once a week?" I looked at her strangely, and she said, "Your arms look like Michelle Obamas!" How great is it that when someone tells you your arms look like the first lady's, it's a compliment? Miss Kim nodded when I said, "I'm a potter," but I could see from her expression that my response wasn't sufficient. Telling people I'm a potter is like telling them I'm an hermaphrodite. People have heard of hermaphrodites, but they still aren't sure they actually exist.

My husband's office is in the same building as my clay studio. His office is a hive of activity. Bankers, architects, developers, realtors are always coming in for meetings. Tim and his brother, Johnny, love to parade the visitors through my studio. I'm usually there in my Proctor & Gamble coveralls looking dirty. The visitors look at me like a zoo animal and at Johnny or Tim with surprise that they've gone to such lengths to recreate and maintain my natural habitat.

At times, the Philadelphia Museum of Art craft show had a similar feel. I know it's common for high society people to have fundraisers at the zoo or the aquarium. They walk around in black tie, eating canapes paying $1500/ticket to do so in the presence of rhinos. Apparently Chicago calls their event "Zoodio 54" which is brilliant. So someone on the board of the PMA suggested to revolve a fundraising event around real, live craftspeople. The opening night of the show is a posh event. The ticket prices are tiered by the hour, so to get in and see fresh craftspeople at 4 pm you pay $1500, or you can see rumpled craftspeople at 7 for $400.

I was annoyed that I hadn't read my literature, so I didn't know there was going to be great food at the event. I made the mistake of having a late lunch hoagie with everything on it. By chance I smelled my hands on my way back to my 10'x10' booth and realized they were pungent enough to fill the entire space with old luncheon meat, onion, pickle, oregano smell. Maybe a stench would have added to my authenticity as an exhibit, but I opted to run through the perfume floor of Macy's and let a gleeful homosexual with a British accent and pointy cowboy boots douse me thoroughly in a Guess perfume, Seductive.

My booth wasn't particularly seductive that evening. My pots are all displayed on cardboard boxes mounted to the wall. On the front of each box is an image of the aerial view of the pot that is on the box. If you're on your 3rd martini and you've not yet indulged in the mash potato bar it might look a little precarious and/or confusing. People would wobble outside of the booth and stare. One woman ventured in and grabbed a cup. "I love this one," she said, "but I don't like this one at all!" pointing to a sweet little ice cream bowl. "What a coincidence!" I said cheerfully. "I love your shoes, but I really hate your dress!" In the end, the show went surprisingly well, and it reminded me that I prefer to have other people sell my pottery for me.

'to do' lists

My nanny sent me this image last week with the following text: "I have to remind myself to wear knickers too."

I often leave 'to do' lists around. Julie, because she's an angel-not a prying person, reads them to see if there's anything she can do for me. In this case I was on my own. I don't remember what the "Toby" line was about. "Don't leave Toby in stroller to be pushed down stairs and into the wall...." would be an appropriate line for me these days. I go shopping with all 3 of them in a double stroller. I belt Toby in; the others pile on. My fear is that I'm going to let the big two hop out and I'll just "put it away." Putting it away is pushing it down 3 stairs so it will rest tilted against the wall-somewhat out of the rain.

Tim proposed to me on a 'to do' list. It was one of those 5-year-plan lists. He had "marry liz" "have first kid" "have second kid" on there. I found it lying around. It was very romantic. Our actual wedding was inspired by a lack of inspiration. We couldn't figure out what to wear to Pat's big Halloween party, so we decided to get married and go as a married couple. Jack Peter was our best man. We scurried around getting our dress and suit together. I up-ended everything to find our social security cards. During that search, I found the diamond engagement ring he'd given to a girl before me. It seemed a shame to keep it in a box for the rest of its life, so we had a bit of it cut out, so it would fit on my pinky next to my engagement ring, and it became part of my wedding ring.

We ran around town with our photographer friend, Andrew, and had a day-long photo shoot that culminated in our getting married on the roof of my building in the hood. The pictures are so great, and everyone saw us at the party, (until I passed out breast feeding the best man) so they all feel like they were at our wedding.

My family doesn't do weddings. Both sets of grand parents eloped as did my parents and my brother and I. When I was a kid I remember wondering where that fancy picture of my mom in a big white dress was. The McDonald family does weddings. The youngest McDonald, Johnny, married my new sister in law, Tiffany this weekend. (Tiffany and I have been dating on and off, so I'm thrilled) I NEVER do anything on the weekends; I have three kids. They chose the one weekend that I had a major craft fair. I missed everything but the actual wedding, and I had to show up at that after a day of sitting in a booth at the convention center convincing people they really do need a coffee cup as big as their heads.

It was beautiful. We cried, ate, drank, danced...Their kids are going to look at the pictures of their mom in the beautiful white dress with the sparkly belt and think that she was a princess and that their dad was a handsome prince.

April?

No, October is the cruelest month. We have 2 birthdays, actually a third, the daycare takes Ghandi's off; and there's Halloween. It's also the last month for a potter to get her shit together for Christmas. It's been bad; I've been running around flushing all of the toilets in the house and then checking off the clean house box on my to do list.

One of the sources of strife in my and Tim's relationship is time management. It's my issue; I complain that Tim can't do things half-assed like the rest of us. If he's planting a garden we'll have pesto for 50...every week. I won't even go into the tomatoes. If Tim is doing 3 out-of-town lectures in a month, he has to prepare a different one for each venue. Who the hell is going to go to Providence, Chattanooga and DC to rat him out? Our neighbor is filing numerous frivolous lawsuits against him, his brothers and their partners. It's not enough for Tim to fight the suits as they come. He starts methodically building a case to get the guy, an attorney, disbarred. (I'm not complaining; he's succeeding, but it's taken a LOT of time.)

This Halloween I took a thrift shop purple bathrobe, a pair of cords, a bath matt, and a 4 year old and created an octopus in a mere 11 hours. He would have gladly traded it for a store-bought Buzz Lightyear. I also spent 2 hours trying to carve a pumpkin to look like Marilyn Monroe. I've lost a lot of ground in the you're wasting time you could be spending with me and the kids argument. Tim shaved his head and beard, donned his wire-rimmed glasses and a sheet and became Ghandi. Toby should have been a mini-Ghandi with a sheet too, but she had her heart set on being a ballerina Terry Gross.

Steel is Andy, the little boy from Toy Story, every day. A red cowboy hat ordered online brought her Andy ensemble to an adequate Halloween level although she had a last-minute princess panic, so I'm glad I didn't spend 11 hours on Andy. Steel was the inspiration for my costume. She asked me one morning last week, "Mama, why don't you wear your Tweety bird nightshirt ALL the time?" I blacked out some teeth, had bad hair and make-up, leggings, fur-lined Eagles crocs, and the nightshirt, and I was a Fishtown mom. As I was putting on my bad make-up I started having second thoughts. I didn't want to expose my kids to snooty elitism. "I'm a white trash mommy, honey!" It was too late for me to change, but I needn't have worried. I walked out and Jack Peter shouted, "Mama! You're a 5 year old!" Turning 5 and having their teeth fall out is IT for my kids. I'm glad they're setting attainable goals for themselves.

Speaking of teeth falling out...I just found out that my friend (extreme mom) Heather is letting her kids have their Halloween candy whenever they want. She said that they self-regulate and that they usually ask her if they want a piece. I just can't figure out why she'd give up that many opportunities for extortion.

Honk if you love Jesus

Steel and her brother were bickering over watching Toy Story or Finding Nemo on movie night. It got heated, so I said, "Sunshine is coming over; we'll let her pick." I was expecting flack, but Steel looked at me with a confident smile and said, "Yes, we'll let Sunshine pick, and she will pick Toy Story." Sunshine came to the door. Steel greeted her with a Woody doll in her arms and said, "Sunshine! Do you want to watch Toy Story????" Even Jack Peter got swept up in the enthusiasm.

After she's done a good marketing campaign for my pottery business, I need to hire Steel's PR firm to spin the YMCA. The first problem is that I feel guilty about it. On Mondays I pick them up from one daycare only to dump them in another so I can swim. The drop-off is always chaos. Toby now cries as soon as we walk into the room, so I have to cuddle her while filling out the sign-in sheet and explaining to a rightfully skeptical Miss Kim, that cheese-its are fine for my infant. As I leave, I extricate all of the big-kid bribes from my swim bag and wrestle the last remaining car key from Toby's mouth. (We've lost all but 1) I sneak out as she screams indignantly. I noticed last time mid-cuddle that Toby's leg was inside my pants. It's not easy to concentrate on paperwork when your brain is saying to your child, "Girl, What is your foot doing in my Va jay jay?" so on top of my usual graceless exit I had to choreograph pulling up the fly on my huge, clay-covered man pants.

I'm wondering when we're going to have to confront the Christianity issue. I don't see too many Bible thumpers at the Y, but mocking Christians has been a family tradition, and it might not go over well. My dad used to shout across the woods, "PRAY FOR ME, EVAN!" every Sunday morning as the neighbors piled into the station wagon on their way to church.

Last weekend my mom revived a Kinder family favorite. I have always had fall allergies. I heard my husband admitting to a friend that my nose blowing would be a deal breaker if he didn't love me as much as he does. Regardless, I blew my nose in the kitchen while the kids were eating cereal, and my mom bellowed, as she and my dad did throughout my childhood, "HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS!!" Jack Peter has embraced it. He has also started to shriek, "DAMN!" and "JESUS!" periodically, usually with an impish grin on his face.

I'm trying to convince him to say, "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!" instead. I wish I'd screamed that instead of what came out last Wednesday night. Steel had gone for a bed wetting hat-trick that day. She'd soaked all but the guest room mattress, and Toby had taken the most shocking poop in the tub. At dinner the 3 had mounted their first successful coup d'etat. Tim was teaching at Penn, and I had lost all control. They were refusing to eat and swinging from their chairs. I'd finally gotten them into their beds and was about to start singing, "The cowboy song" (Sweet baby James) when the neat freak in me lunged out of the rocker to pick up one last toy. Our now former friend Shawn had left his pit bull, Maud here while he'd gone to help Tim with his class. Poor Maud had taken a dump on the rug in the kids' bedroom, and I slid through the shit on my way to pick up snoopy. Tim had just returned. His response to my panic was,

"BABE, from now on, I DEAL WITH POOP! My dad was a plumber; I can handle it. You FREAK OUT!"

Maybe Jesus did take the wheel.

discipline

Some people are into extreme sports. My friend, Heather, is into extreme parenting. She, too, has 3 kids, but somehow her house is immaculate, and she's put together-for real. Jack Peter once picked up an "US" magazine and said, "Look, Mama, it's Aunt Heather!" He was pointing to a picture of Angelina Jolie. The resemblance was uncanny. I'm proud of myself if I maintain some sort of hair removal routine which means I shave every 2 weeks; I do my eyebrows every month or two, and I might Nair my bikini area during the summer, so I don't scare the kids on the beach. Because we have no privacy, my kids have witnessed all of these rituals which makes me feel like a groovy open-minded mom. Heather took all three of her kids with her to the salon to get her bikini wax. She probably brought them all to the dentist afterward on her way to T-ball and ballet lessons.

Her oldest just started Kindergarten at Catholic school. The tyranny of looking into and applying to schools is starting for us, and we're trying to embrace only public school options. I'm partial to the military-style charter school in our neighborhood that consistently tests all of the kids at a 10 out of 10. It goes for an extra hour every day, there is no recess, they take French and Spanish every year including Kindergarten, and there is absolute silence in the halls when the kids are lining up to go to class. Jack Peter would be the only white kid there. Very few people in our social group consider the school as an option. I hear the phrase, "teaching to the test," delivered with an air of disdain. A failure to incorporate "learning modalities" was brought up as another drawback. There's always someone who tells me that kids need to "learn through play." I nod and try to look interested, but there's a nagging feeling that those are the people who are going to be spending a lot of money on expensive tutors down the road, and I have the echo of my father's voice bellowing, "F-that! Those kids need to sit there, listen, learn, and BUCKLE DOWN!"

Tim's dad, Jack, had those 5 kids buckling down. They worked every weekend. They chopped wood, dug holes, built houses, learned plumbing. Discipline was the only option in the McDonald house from what I gather. Susie, my mom, had us on a tight leash, and we went to the "best schools." In comparison, our home life is pretty loosy-goosy. My big issue is diet; not eating properly is not an option. Tim is strict around bedtime/naptime structure, and we don't allow any T.V, but there's a lot of cereal dumping, yard demolishing, head smashing, toy snatching, wall-stickering, water spraying, whining and general mayhem that slides by unpunished or worse, with mirth.

Tim and I have profited so much from our ability to be disciplined. Both of us work for ourselves doing what we love. An anaesthesiologist for the Navy periodically comes to my studio to buy work. After wandering around molesting pottery and chatting, he mused, "I've never done any drugs, but your work makes me feel like I'm on something...the COLORS!" It was a nice complement coming from someone so straight-laced. It must seem to him that I flounce around with a paintbrush like some sort of psychedelic pottery fairy-which I do. However, a pottery business is difficult both physically and mentally. I'm thankful I have the stamina to do it because it gives me so much pleasure, and, let's be honest, I'm not qualified to do anything else for money.

If I send my kids to the school where there is silence in the halls, will their creativity, curiosity and fire be squelched? Will they no longer say things like, "Mama, Alligators don't have chins."
Speaking of alligators, I STILL haven't taken any of my kids to the dentist.