I rock the chubs

"I rock the chubs!"

The cleanse mentioned in a previous blog has created another way for me to fail.  Now I avoid weighing myself because I know the scale will show me a number far above the elusive 136 I hit at the end of the cleanse. I do like it that Tim is now starting his days with weird, green smoothies. As I type, I'm admiring the stalks of the broccoli he put in the blender for tomorrow morning. It's hard to push the stalks on the kids, and I wouldn't ever throw them away. Now they get whipped up into a frothy, chia seed , coconut water surprise. Another benefit, for the cheap New Englander in me, to the healthy living  is that I've kicked my 1/2 and 1/2 addiction. That's one less thing on the grocery list, AND I get to make use of the remaining milk left in the kids' sippy cups in the morning. It sounds gross, but I dump in so much milk to make it creamy; the coffee goes tepid.  I have to microwave it anyway; I might as well use every drop of that organic milk I hate paying for.

Perhaps I'm good at maintaining my swimming routine because going to the YMCA makes me feel tiny. I was swimming today during a water aerobics class. It was well-attended this morning by 15 women whose aggregate weight is well over a ton. They hold foam "weights" and jump around. Under water I watch the quietly undulating flab on their legs.  It's oddly beautiful and calming reminding me of the way fish and plants on a coral reef move back and forth rhythmically with the waves. Above the water is another story. I was listening to NPR yesterday. The last remaining knuckleball pitcher was interviewed on Fresh Air. Apparently a good knuckleball pitch is like a "butterfly in a typhoon." I feel like a butterfly in a typhoon in that pool.

It is hard to believe that the American weight problem, especially among African American women in Philly, is entirely about poor diet, education and food deserts. I was wondering, as I swam, whether maintaining such an enormous size empowers people who are traditionally disempowered. Initially all of the lap lanes were full, so I was trying to swim close to the perimeter of the 3rd lane in the "free swim" area of the pool. The ladies were doing the walkabout section of their class where they maraud around the pool with their "weights." I thought I could stick close to the lap line, and I wouldn't bother anyone. I might have been imagining it, but I felt as if they were intentionally blocking my path. They were wielding their heft with such purpose.

My friend, Sweet, always jokes about Toby's delicious chubbiness. He mimics her voice as she reaches for another pretzel saying, "You think I roll out of bed looking like this? It's about hard work and maintenance!" The Pellis family dedicated a song to Toby when she was about a year old. We sing it to this day. It's called, I rock the chubs. Those pool ladies are definitely rocking the chubs. Perhaps Michelle Obama has more to contend with in her "get healthy" initiatives than educating people about good food choices.

Speaking of rocks, now my house is filled with rocks and sticks. There are rocks in every pocket of Jack Peter's jackets and in the side pockets of his book bag and his lunch pack. There are rocks and sticks in his bed. It's frustrating. The conversations go like this:

"Jack Peter what is this?"

"It's a GPFFJ gadget."
"What's GPFFJ?"
"It's the secret agent website we work for."

"Oh."

This is what was under Jack Peter's blanket this morning.  Under the books were more rocks.  The glowing orange thing is silly puddy adhered permanently to the fitted sheet.   Yes, that is a broken brick in the middle of the pile.


Jack Peter had to draw himself enjoying a rainy day and to write about it as part of his homework last week.  He wrote, "On a rainy day I like jumping in puddles."  To me he went into detail about the fact that his umbrella was a secret agent gadget that turns into a propeller, and takes him flying away.  I told him to write about that.  He looked right and left and said furtively, "NO! it's a secret agent umbrella!  I can't write about it!"  Clearly he has more integrity at 5 than I do.  Secret Agent Jack Stalwart books are the root of the obsession. I should be happy he reads so well, but instead I'm bitching about the rock dust in his bed. His cousin, Owen, has been reading since he was three. My sister in law, Jana, was probably cursing his literacy too when he and his sister were in the shower asking for shampoo. Jana said, "We're out of kid shampoo; just use mine." Owen examined the bottle and shrieked in horror, "Mom! This is for dry and damaged hair!!!!" What do you say to that? especially when the kid has the most gorgeous curly blond hair.

Jack Peter's fellow secret agent, Caspar, came over for one of the days of spring break. Caspar is great because he's nice to the girls. Let me rephrase that: he doesn't fight back as hard as other boys do. I took the 4 kids to the Please Touch Museum. I can handle my 3 kids because the big kids are slightly OCD and controlling: they stick to a game in a single spot for an hour so they can rule; I only have to worry about the wandering of Toby. More importantly, I can bribe and threaten my own kids. 4 kids at the Please Touch was a disaster. They scattered before I'd negotiated the annoying issue with our membership at the front desk. The mock grocery store is always the worst. The kids fight other toddlers for the limited grocery carts.  They fill up the carts and then fight over the cash registers at check-out after which I spend 25 minutes trying to cajole them into returning everything to the proper shelf while another weeping child is following, desperate for the soon-to-be-empty cart. I abandoned four full grocery carts. There will probably be a poster of me in the entranceway when I go next, but I had no choice.

Heather and her mom had come with Heather's 2 girls to meet us, and we hadn't crossed paths until I spotted them on their way to lunch. My adult/child ratio improved drastically as they helped me corral the 4 kids, so I left the carts. My 4 were the only kids in the lunch area who climbed from the lunch table, onto a radiator to eat on a 6-foot-high window ledge.  I had succumbed to the dietary needs of Caspar and made only pbj, watermelon slices, and juice boxes, so they didn't have to climb to get away from the broccoli and asparagus I normally put in the lunch box.  Perhaps they were putting on a show, so Heather's mom could witness my lack of control.

Ever the optimist, I was hoping after the 4th permutation of groups going to the bathroom that the worst part of my day was over.  Heather and her mom left, so I told Caspar to pick the last place we would visit before going home. He picked the Alice in Wonderland section. I didn't give it a lot of thought until we got there...a maze and a labyrinth complete with faux doors and lots of mirrors. I can't imagine that Abu Ghraib was worse than trying to keep track of all of them and dealing with the security guard who kept telling me they aren't supposed to climb on the maze.

I did make it home and got the girls down for a nap. Caspar and Jack Peter played quietly, and I thought I'd recuperated. We went to the park when everyone woke up.  They were all climbing in a cherry tree.  Steel started screaming at the top of her lungs from the tree.  I ignored it.  Finally she came down sobbing and holding up her hand.  Caspar's shoe tread was embedded into her index finger.  "He was stepping on my finger for a LONG TIME, and HE WOULDN'T GET OFF!!!!"  "Well, Steelie, do you know why he wouldn't get off?"  "Why?" she sniffed.  "Because you scream at the top of your lungs and cry so often that he didn't know anything was truly wrong!"

Toby, like her sister, is fond of drama.  Her favorite part of the Please Touch Museum is the toddler-sized stretcher in the little ambulance...

Aside from the cherry tree incident, everything was fine for over an hour until Caspar started complaining to me, "IT WASN'T FAIR! YOU DIDN'T GET ME CHOCOLATE MILK AT THE PLEASE TOUCH!!!" Caspar is a head taller than Jack Peter and outweighs him by 20 lb. He eats nothing but peanut butter and jelly, Fruitables (juice boxes,) candy, and chocolate milk. I bellowed at him, "You want to know what isn't fair, Caspar????? It's not fair that I spend half of my life shoving healthy food down Jack Peter's throat-making lamb chops for his lunch box and shelling edamame, while you eat nothing good for you, and YOU'RE HUGE!!! That's not fair, OK?!"

Maybe I was still a little pissed about the Alice in Wonderland thing...

Sanity Assessments

GODDAMNIT!  I got passed over again this year for the "People Magazine 100 Most Beautiful Women" list.  Can you believe that???  This is a glamour shot of me in my studio from a couple of weeks ago.  I'd just spent the weekend with Karen and her family.  She told me a harrowing story about a mom friend who wacked her head on the hatchback door when she was unloading the groceries.  The friend hasn't been the same since, to the point that she can't drive.  I got into my studio Monday evening to fire my kiln all night.  Something was caught in one of the burners, so I bent over to dislodge it.  My head hit the side of the kiln.  I immediately got the egg, and it was bleeding.  Because of Karen's story, I completely freaked out.  I texted this image to Tim and told him to call me before he went to sleep to make sure I was lucid.  As if he'd be able to go to sleep after that...  The problem is that my mom doesn't have a smart phone.  Had I sent this image to her, she'd have responded, "It's not fatal! You'll be fine!  Just keep putting ice on it!"

My sister-in-law, Jana,  aspires to what she calls, Susie's "laissez faire parenting methods."  Jana was proud that she waited 2 days for the cheaper non-weekend x-ray window to take my niece in with her most recent arm injury.  Like my mom, I don't think I'd go to the doctor unless a child lost the arm.  Smart phone healthcare is my method.  I text our pediatrician images of the kids' goopy pinkeyes or write descriptions of their ailments, and he invariably writes back "bring them in at the end of the week if they have a prolonged fever..."

The really crappy thing is that my mom's partner, Dick, IS dying.  After 6 months of her saying, "It's not fatal; it's allergies!" or "You just need to get back into shape!" They got a horrid diagnosis of ALS.  My mom's and Dick's ability to switch gears and accept that has been an inspiration.  I didn't inherit the "coping with things that suck but are out of my control" gene.  I think about it while I'm throwing pots and start crying.  I had a ridiculous moment of solace the other day.  Terry Gross was interviewing Hugh Laurie, the man who plays Doctor House.  Dick absolutely adores House.  They were discussing the fact that the series is about to end, and all I could think was, "Thank God!  Dick won't miss any House episodes."

I know I regularly put my craziness on display in this blog and in my everyday conversation.  I think I'm doing it with a detached irony that lets people know that I really am sane, but it's not working.  I got a call from a gallery the other day.  The first message was cryptic, "Liz, I need to talk to you about the special order from last week."    The second message was, "Liz, we really need to talk about what you sent to the store."  I'd taken a special order for a serving bowl, but I'd sent a vase for a previous order.  I laughed when I got ahold of him.  "Steve!  I didn't confuse the special order!  I haven't made it yet.  That vase was from an order you made in March."  He responded, "OH!  Wow, I had a speech all prepared about how you might be taking too much on."  I told him to save the speech.  He might need it later on.  I did spend the rest of the afternoon wondering exactly how crazy he thinks I am.

I had another recent brush with someone else's assessment of my sanity.  I had a disastrous night out with Lisa and Heather.  I was going to take them out for their birthdays.  Lisa who is a wedding planner at Loew's Hotel said, "Just come here; I can comp dinner."  Stingy as I am, I accepted.  Unfortunately, Heather had been out for a spa day with her friend Fiona.  Heather's mother in law had given Fiona a credit card and told her and Heather to make a day of it.  A lot of wine was involved, so they arrived at Loew's, 2 barely-standing puddles.  Lisa and I tried to shove carbs into them during dinner, but that didn't stop Fiona from hitting on the waiters (Lisa's co-workers) and throwing a drink over her shoulder onto the floor.  The birthday night turned into a group therapy session for Fiona whose marriage is not so great and who is, apparently, harrowed by apparitions of dead people.

One would think that Lisa and I would see the bad effects of alcohol on the girls and drink accordingly.  Our coping mechanism, instead, was to join them.  After tipping the waiters magnanimously to ensure that they not discuss Lisa's disastrous dinner guests with the Loew's higher ups, we headed off to another bar.  Finally, at Fiona's insistence on a "boogie,"  we ended up at Woody's, a gay dance club.  Lisa and I have been friends since she was born and I was 3 months old.  We are not, normally, ones to go to a club for a boogie, but dancing with Lisa and a bunch of gay guys (Tanner Kok included) was a BLAST.  We shook the visions of dead people and bad engineer husbands right off until we were retrieved by a door man to deal with an apoplectic Fiona.  Heather had fallen off of a chair and been kicked out of the club.  Unable to find Fiona, she had left with all of Fiona's belongings.

Fiona was so livid about her bag that she almost sobered up as she screamed about Heather's lack of loyalty.  I took control and told Lisa to get Fiona to our neighborhood on the train.  I'd ride my bike to Heather's house to get the bag and meet them at the station.  Fiona's husband had been expecting her home at about 3 that afternoon.  He had been in conversation all night with Heather's husband, Rene, who had held similar expectations for Heather's arrival home.  The last time I had a girls' night with Heather, she woke in the middle of the night, fell, and hit her head on a coffee table.  According to Rene, when I breathlessly arrived at his door for Fiona's bag, that was my fault as was Heather's getting kicked out of Woody's.  I was incredulous.  I screamed something about all I had done that night for his drunken wife and her drunken friend.  As I ran out with the bag to go to the train station, I sent him a succinct text for emphasis, "YOU SUCK"

When I was in boarding school and ran into some discipline problems, my mom blamed them on Jennie Engstrom.  That was as ridiculous as Rene's blaming Heather's behavior on me.  My favorite Jennie story is that she moved to Vail after college.  For years she was a ski bum.  She dated a guy from Mississippi named Gil Fancher.  Gil, too, was a ski bum.  Every time I'd go visit, they'd take care of me and all my friends.  Ski equipment and ski passes would magically appear.  Gil Fancher was the mayor of the mountain.  After they married, Gil got a little more serious about getting a real career and went into real estate.  (Their wedding was fabulous.  Jennie's super-preppy sister had all of us bridesmaids in wacky Lilly Pullitzer ensembles.  Jennie's blue blood parents, William and Mary partied down with Gil's parents, Butch and Cookie at a ranch.)  Gil Fancher was not cut out for a desk job.  One afternoon, he couldn't take it anymore.  He left his empty real estate office to go ski. On the chair lift he introduced himself to a man who was there to buy a ranch.  I believe the man ended up buying not one, but 2 multi-million dollar ranches using Gil as his realtor.  I envy Gil his immunity to the Puritan work ethic that plagues me and Tim.  His role is the Mayor of the mountain, and his job is to schmooz.

These roles are set at birth.  Steel is the craftsperson (Although she didn't get into the "week after Easter dying eggs because all of the Easter stuff at SuperFresh was on sale" project.  Tim came home to me, by myself, in the yard tie-dying Easter eggs a week after Easter Sunday.  The kids had all left me for the neighbors house because they get to play with an iPad over there.)  Toby's role has always been the Homecoming Queen waving from her float.  Last week, she came to our bed in the middle of the night and slept with us.  I woke up pissed because she lay horizontally in between Tim and me.  I thought I'd gotten the short end of that stick because she kicked me in the face all night long.  She'd been slamming her skull into Tim's head, so I actually made out well.   I lay there with Toby as she awakened.  She was waving her little outstretched fat hand muttering, "HI!  Good morning!"   I asked her who she was waving to, and she said, "The birds!"  Of course all of the birds in the back yard were there to see her!

My role has never been the bad influence friend.  I'm the hard working one parents assumed would keep things above board.  Rene has apologized twice for his accusations, but the idea that his brain chose ME as the problem is so shocking.  I joked to him when I walked in the door about his never letting his wife go out with me, and he took that ball and ran with it.  Clearly I'm no longer in a position to joke about such things.

unions and the cleanse

Why haven't I blogged? I did 2 more shows. One was a faboulous 3-day wholesale show. The other was a not-so-fabulous 9-day retail show. During all of this, Tim and I did a 21-day cleanse. Also, our kids are insane and exhausting, and we're addicted to The West Wing box set my brother and his wife lent us.

Why not blog during the cleanse? Instead of staying up to blog, we'd just go to sleep after putting the kids down. There was nothing to live for without alcohol and empty carbs. I'm also not very funny or interesting without alcohol, coffee, sugar, wheat, dairy, meat. We were "eating" things that looked like the above broccoli/beet/celery juice. Tim has actually kept off the 14 lb he lost during the cleanse. I, however, have been jamming empty carbs into my mouth since the day the cleanse ended. That "3" I saw in the middle of the 3 numbers of my weight is a distant memory. I've come up with a new drink, though. There's a line of alcohol products called Skinny Girl. The Skinny Girl Margarita is made with agave instead of sugar. My new drink is the "anorexic girl margarita." It's tequila, lime and soda water. I highly recommend it especially when you're going to accompany it with an entire bag of stale pretzels.

Jack Peter at school in his pajamas on Dr. Seuss' birthday. The fervor with which Ms. O'Brien celebrates Dr. Seuss is hilarious. She dresses as the cat in the hat for the entire day and makes them all fabricate and wear cat-in-the-hat hats.

The anxiety over educating our kids in the city has abated somewhat. We got him into a science-based charter school that is rumored to be great. It's going to be a bad commute, but worth it. I made the questionable decision to tell Jack Peter, and he crumpled into a pile of tears wailing that he never wants to leave Kearny. The only way I could justify the school change to him was to tell him that it's a fall-back option "in case you get the teacher you don't want" (One teacher at the school is rumored to be focussed exclusively upon breaking the little spirits of her first graders.) Jack Peter was quiet for a minute, and said, "Mom, I've seen that class, and there are only brown kids in it." So much for my color blind child. He felt better when he made a graph to tally up the opinions of everyone in his life. The majority voted for Green Woods Charter School, so it's all OK, now. Writing things down helps him cope. This was one of the 5 signs he made last night...

The above-mentioned not-so-great show was The Philadelphia International Flower Show at the Convention Center. Had my adorable friend, Stephen, not flown over from Northern Ireland and abused the American love of an Irish accent to foist pottery on unsuspecting matrons, the show would have been a complete disaster. The set up for the show involved 5 union goons surrounding us as we hastily used a drill and a ladder to put the booth together. Neither of those things is allowed. If you need to use a step ladder, then you need to pay a union carpenter to do the job. We knew this going in; Tim relishes confrontations with the unions. For him to stop drilling and laddering, the show organizer had to come and tell me she was going to kick me out and I'd be out my $4000. He finished up the booth install with a manual screw driver standing on wobbly boxes of pottery saying, "I hope I fall off these boxes, so I can sue them..."

The union guys were waiting for us when we came to take the booth down at 11:30 pm on the last day of the show. I told them I never plan to do the show again, so they couldn't tattle on me to the show organizer. Instead, they tried to box in our truck with 2 fork lifts. Our neighbors moved their truck, so getting out was easy, but I was flustered. I left the 2 boxes that had all of my large pieces in it. The union guys got the last laugh as they all have their wedding gift shopping sorted out for this summer.

Jack Peter is going to be a Broadway singer or a minister because Tim and I abhor religion and show tunes. Steel is going to be a union leader. I recently took the kids to the Please Touch Museum. Steel and Ciela, the daughter of another builder friend, took over the construction site. They were precisely stacking the foam bricks in the back of a pretend dump truck. Ciela was the mason, and Steel was standing over the pile of bricks preventing any non-union child from messing with the site.

On top of the 2 boxes of pottery I forgot to bring home, I had quite a bit of breakage. My neighbor, despite the note I'd left her to PLEASE be careful while she sets up, broke 7 pieces. Another woman stood up an bashed one of my shelves with her head. It caused an avalanche of pottery. Whenever I introduced myself to other vendors for the rest of the week, I would say, "My booth was the crash." They'd look at me with horror and pity. It's almost comforting when I lose a lot of pottery. It reminds me of how much I love to make it. If I could work out a cost-effective method for making pottery and giving it away or making it and smashing it, I'd be the happiest potter on earth.

In addition to singing great Irish songs to the kids at bedtime, (Dick Darby who drowns his humpy, lumpy wife being the favorite) Irish Stephen had a "wee holiday romance" with an adorable guy named (drumroll...) Tanner Kok. All of us fell in love with Tanner, and the Kok jokes were endless. If Steel marries him, she can be Steel Kok!! and so on. The girls are still talking about Tanner, "Where is the big boy?" Toby asks at breakfast or "When is the heart boy coming?" (She heard me say that he has a heart-shaped face.) It's nice to know I'm starting them early on the fag hag path that has served me so well.

I get to make pottery for the next 3 months for all of my wholesale accounts. I will then take the summer "off" and be a full-time mom. Tim is going to be slammed with work, so I'm hoping to spend the weeks away wherever people will have us-preferably in beachy or rural places. We'll come home for urban family weekends. I've never taken more than 8 days off in a row-even to have a baby, so this will be new for me. My daughters have been especially challenging these days, so I might lose my mind.

Wholesaling

Steel refused to participate in the Dansko photoshoot. I'm taking this opportunity to post a movie of her hula-hooping. She's been hula-hooping since way before she turned 4. It's her now-not-so-hidden talent.

I wonder about the average time a Netflix envelope spends in the bottom of a bag. For me it's about 2 days, but I had one in my bag the entire time I was in New York City. If Tim had to put Netflix envelopes into the mail, and there was no such thing as streaming video, we might have gotten some sleep in the past few years because he'd NEVER remember.

I'm good at mailing things in Philly because I have my favorite mail boxes. Out in the real world I get lost. I tried to cross Central Park one night to meet a friend on the east side. I was in the park for about 1/2 hour. When I came out the other side, I asked a cop which way to get to 82nd and Lexington, north or south? He replied, "Ummm....lady, you'll have to cross the park." It would be so great to see an aerial view of my not traversing the park while walking for thirty minutes.

Sadly, Steel got my lack-of-orientation bug on top of my crafting bug. She was recently lost on the beach in Florida for 30 minutes. I'd walked her up to the edge of the beach and pointed to where Tim, Jack Peter, and Toby were sitting in the beach-side Marriott restaurant 20 feet away. In my mind she could see her dad and would be with him in a matter of 5 seconds, and he had seen us coming. I went back to hanging out with our friends.

Imagine my surprise when I saw her holding a lifeguard's hand a half hour later coming from a completely different direction. I have 2 things to be thankful for in that situation:
1. I'd finished the rum punch I was drinking at 1 in the afternoon and had put the glass down.
The life guard was pissed that I'd not gone looking for her in a half hour. Adding a rum punch to that picture might have landed me in jail.
2. I didn't know she was lost. If I'd noticed she wasn't with her dad after, say, 15 of the 30 minutes I might have killed myself.

In addition to leaving my 12 block comfort zone, every time I do a retail event it reminds me why I wholesale my work. Exposure to the general public has me sending out mental thank yous to the galleries who sell my work for me. These gallery owners allow me to be in my studio listening to Laxshmi Singh and the rest of the NPR crew all day. I make pottery; I ship it, and I make more. At night, I hang out with my kids and then cuddle with my husband on the couch watching Netflix. I'm happy.

One woman came into my booth and gushed about my work. I asked her what brought her to Chelsea Market. She said, "Every month I have a colonic around the corner; then I come here, to all of the amazing food and fill back up again!" I know I'm the queen of "too much information," but that was challenging at 10 am even for me. If I were any good I'd have sold her a set of dishes to make her "filling up" experiences better. There is an amazing shop called The Filling Station at Chelsea Market. It has nice oil, vinegar and beer. You bring your own bottles to fill up. If Tim follows his bliss and becomes a farmer, oil, vinegar and beer is all I'll need.

Another guy came in and commented on my new vase form. I chirped, "It's flower arranging for morons! You just cut them short and shove them in. The vase does the rest!" He responded with a completely straight face, "If I give one of them to my wife, am I telling her she's a moron?" Apparently my response, "No, you'd be telling her she's fabulous and that she deserves flowers all the time!" worked. He bought two, but it was not fun for me.

There was another problem with my being in New York. I look like a hag most of the time because I'm a potter working alone in an industrial building in a crack-filled neighborhood, and when I'm not doing that, a kid is dumping milk on me. The incentives to put myself together are few. Initially, I'm both cowed and impressed by the fashion and beauty in New York, but then it starts to upset me for 2 reasons:
1. It turns into a uniform, and I worry people aren't allowing themselves to be creative or expressive.
2. I worry about the waste that is inherent in the fashion industry. In 2009 I went to New York, and every woman I saw was wearing a pair of knee-high rubber Hunter boots. I saw none this December in late 2010. I keep picturing a massive landfill overflowing with different colored pairs of Hunter boots.

I discovered last Thursday that all of the Hunter boots are in the closets of fancy Philly moms anxiously awaiting a rainy, not-too-cold day. Thursday is Dance Academy day; Jack Peter takes theater dance. All of the ballet dancer moms were wearing Hunter boots; the black nannies and I were the only ones not wearing them. I was astonished.

We had our own footwear expedition over the weekend. The Dansko outlet was having a sale. I only wear Danskos. They are those ugly clogs that nurses and cooks wear. I have a studio pair, an everyday-not-covered-in-clay pair, and a fancy pair for going out. It was time for me to restock, so we all went out. The Stieler family came too. Jack Peter saw a bright red pair, put them on immediately, and the rest of the kids followed. 4 kids in bright red, patent leather Dansko's was just too cute. When I discovered that kids clogs weren't on sale, it was too late. It was money well spent for the girls. Jack Peter has vowed not to wear his EVER again as he got teased at school for them. Hmmm...he's tiny, way-too-smart, taking theater dance and wearing bright red patent leather clogs. I can't imagine anyone giving him a hard time. Strangely, he probably will wear them again. He talks about being teased with a somewhat-believable air of nonchalance.

We got back late from the Dansko outing. Jen's husband and Tim had taken Tim's new Mini Cooper home. Jen and I had the kids in the mom-mobile. I muttered on the way home to Jen, "Wouldn't it be funny if our husbands took the one remaining parking space behind the house and left us to find another spot with 4 tired kids and a bunch of crap in the car?" As we drove past the full parking spaces behind the house, Jack Peter whined, "AWWWW! When are we going to get our parking space back?!" Jen replied, "As soon as your fathers grow vaginas!"

nacho intifada

The 4th brother took one look at this image and asked what the hell he was doing with a dead greyhound...

The 3 Philly McDonald brothers and their significant others just treated their mom to a cooking event/dinner revolving around the previously unheralded goat. We ate goat ceviche, goat milk biscuits with goat butter, goat chops, goat curry, goat kielbasa, goat cheese and goat ice cream. While we ate 3 goats that had been killed the day before at a local farm, the head chef told us how to butcher a goat using the fourth of the unfortunate goat posse.

I couldn't help picturing the goats drawing straws:
Goat 1: No Brainer! I'll take ice cream, butter, and cheese!
Goat 2: Alright then, ceviche it is
Goat 3: I guess I'll take Kielbasa. At least I'll finally get with that hot Polish pig.
Goat 4: SHIT! I'm going to be the evisceration demo?????

There was something decadent about the whole night that made me feel slightly uneasy. Maybe it was the way the chef placed his cooked goat chops on top of the meat he had just sliced off of the 4th goat carcass. He was planning to eat the chops as soon as he finished the butchering demo.

None of this stopped me from drinking at least 2 glasses of incredible wine that was offered with each course. (of course) After the ceviche, biscuits, and soup, I asked for a to-go container and deftly deposited the remaining 3 goat courses into it. On Sunday I was glad I had. We had 3 sausage eaters: Steel, Toby, Willa. Jack Peter is not fond of sausage, so he triumphantly gnawed on the goat chops.

There are 5 people in our family, and we often have guests, so it doesn't surprise me that with every meal comes one grump. Tim doesn't like my willingness to make a separate meal for the dissatisfied customer, but Tim is gone for the next 10 days, so I'm going to do as I see fit. Tonight was a New England mom triumph. The end of the pot pie went to JP and Steel. I ate all the leftover beans and broccoli for lunch and finished the super-old red sauce and pasta for dinner. Toby had the leftover peas and an omelette. This all went down with some cukes and tomatoes and, more importantly, without drama. They had the rest of the ice cream for dessert with the rest of the stale marshmallows on top. OK, no one ate the marshmallows, but I put them in the microwave, and it was fun to watch them grow, so I still got rid of them.

I have a refrigeratorial clean slate. I am fantasizing that I will make EXACTLY the right amount of food for every meal, so that I will not have to deal with left overs for 10 days. My poor husband is in Ireland reading this and saying to himself/me, "Babe! I thought you loved leftovers! I always make extra because you're so good at taking what's in the fridge and making it into something AMAZING!" Yes, honey, I was particularly proud of my "nachos" this weekend that had shredded chicken parmesean on them as well as black beans and cheese. I was expecting a nacho intifada, but they were gobbled up without complaints. I know I'm amazing at leftovers, but I really do prefer fresh food. Just because an emergency medical technician is amazing at resuscitating heart attack victims doesn't mean he/she wants more people to have heart attacks.
xo

The Craft Bug

I call this piece my "don't quit your day job" wreath. The girls and I went out to get a 44" high Christmas tree. That is the limit to what our living room can handle. To accommodate us, the Christmas tree guy had to cut a foot off of our tree. Waste not, want not! I had to make something from the off-cut boughs. The kids went into model-magic-ornament production, so we had a few to spare for my wreath. They produced about 100 ornaments on the first day. They woke up early and all three of them were hard at work at 6:30 am on day 2. Steel seems especially afflicted by the craft bug.

I've been on my own in New York City for a week attempting to sell pottery at a pop-up store in uber-hip Chelsea Market. It's right by the Highline; it's got great food. There's a fancy kitchen store and an Anthropologie. Google and some other trendy places have office space upstairs. It all seemed like a good idea, and it would have been, had I only brought large bowls and vases.

Years ago, a New York gallery came to my booth at my wholesale show. He said in his loud New York voice, "I LOVE your pottery, but you CAN'T sell pottery in New York!" and turned on his heel and left. I finally understand how pottery doesn't fit into the lives of New Yorkers. Most of them have tiny kitchens filled with cocktail glassware. They eat out or order in. Colin, my fabulous host got take-out the first night. He bundled the substantial mound of left-overs up in a bag and had a guest throw them in the trash on his way out. The horrified New Englander in me gasped, "You don't eat leftovers?!" "Yes, I do!" he replied, "That is why they are going in the trash!" Colin spends more money on skin care than I do on child care, incidentally.

Meanwhile, Toby chose last night to get the flu. On top of his usual insane schedule made more insane by his winning an RFP for a 126-unit project, Tim has been dealing with school lunches, school parties, figuring out what is and isn't nanny time, playdates and cavity bugs. Now he gets to do all of that on 3 hours of sleep while doing a couple loads of vomit-covered laundry. Meanwhile I'm walking the Highline, going out for Ramen and cocktails, and sleeping late.

Trying to have conversations with people and not talk about my children has been agony. People say they like hearing stories about kids, but they don't. I see eyes and minds wandering as I regale them with the story of Toby raiding the baby Jesus from Nanny's nativity scene and walking around all weekend holding baby Jesus to her ear and saying, "SHHHHH! Nanny! I'm talking to BABY JESUS!" Maybe this is why I like blogging. I don't have to see your minds wandering. My favorite story, thus far, from the "Daddy-cation" happened the first morning. I was still in bed, and I got a text from Tim: "Is it true that Steel doesn't have school today?" Tim, she's 4. You're 47, and she's already able to con you?????? What the hell is going to happen when she's a teenager?

I have another theory about why my New York trip hasn't been as successful as I'd hoped. I always think that good things happen to good people, and I revealed my inner crappiness recently. Right before I left, I did a craft show at a bar in Philly on a rainy Wednesday night. I drove the tiny little electric zap car. Visibility isn't great; it has a leak, so the inside of the windshield steams up, and the one windshield wiper on the outside works poorly. It's harrowing, careening down the road, revving the tiny electric engine, and peering out of a clear space in the windshield as big as my palm. I had parked a block away from the craft show, so to load my stuff after the show, I backed the truck across the street (as only a Massachusetts driver would) and into the spot in front of the bar. I was wearing cowboy boots, and I had gladly accepted both free drinks that were offered me that night. Somehow my big boot did not manage to make the transition from the accelerator to the brake, so I slammed into the front bumper of the car behind me.

Like a terrified teenager, I pulled away from the damaged car and fled into the bar from the rain. It took 3 trips to load my stuff. By trip #2, the damaged car had disappeared. I hadn't left a note or told the bar manager. I drove home and immediately confessed my sins to Tim. I couldn't sleep all night agonizing over the new knowledge that an irresponsible teenager is still alive and well in this 42-year-old shell.

The next afternoon, I answered the phone in my studio. The entire incident was ON TAPE! Of course it was; that's how I roll! I was strangely relieved and elated as I gave my insurance information to the poor guy who owns the car I hit. I didn't think it could get any more humiliating until he said, "Onion Flats???? (the car is insured by the company) Isn't that the McDonald brothers???? I'm friends with Johnny, and my wife is Tim McDonald's biggest fan!!!!"

I can hear them now at a cocktail party, "That Tim McDonald is SO TALENTED; too bad he married such a morally bankrupt potter!" My friend Karen tried to comfort me. She said, "You've got GREAT karma!!! You're generous with EVERYONE; this time you just took out a tiny withdrawal from your karma bank!" Is it my bad karma that is causing New Yorkers to be blind to the genius of my cups? Perhaps the $4 cup sale at Anthropologie has something to do with it.

I attribute Steel's long face to her knowledge that she has the 'craft bug' and will for the rest of her life, compulsively make things with her hands that people may or may not want. Aunt Lisa gave each of my children an entire tub of frosting and un-refereed access to bowls of candy. They behaved surprisingly well. I can only assume that they thought they were on tape and would have to account for their behavior later...

Smoking Gun

You know it's that time of year when you plug in the diaper wipe warmer. I got a gleeful giggle from little Toby when I used the first warmed wipe. It's nice to be appreciated.

It's also the time of year when I'm trying to get a lot of pottery made, glazed and shipped in time for Christmas. My excema is going wild. I normally have it on my hands, but for a while now, I've had it on my face. I keep wanting to scratch my eyebrows off. At a Halloween party I was complaining about my skin and all of the rest of my annoying health issues. My friend suggested that I might have a thyroid problem. Apparently, thyroid problems can be responsible for: skin issues, eyebrows fading, hair falling out, soreness, weight gain, exhaustion, depression, and fertility issues, but they are super-easy to cure. I walked into my doctor's office praying for a thyroid problem.

Sadly I'm healthy as a horse, so all of that stuff is just because I'm getting old. My kids have been telling me that my butt is jiggling which is great to hear first thing in the morning. Every time I see a Groupon for some sort of cosmetic procedure I stop and think for a few minutes whether that might be the answer, and then the phrase, "Why paint a wreck?" comes back to my head.

I guess I've slacked off a bit on my health/beauty regimen. My New Year's resolution of 2011 was to be more proactive about maintaining my dye job, but right now my roots make Brittney Spear's look good. I go to this amazing colorist. He's really precise about it, and he takes pride in his work-a virgo. That sounds glamorous, but the reality is that I bought 9 boxes of my difficult-to-find haircolor on ebay, and Tim is the colorist. After the drama of his daily life, it pains me to ask him to don the too-small gloves made of saran wrap to do my hair. What does he get in return besides a wife with a passable head of hair? I flush out the wax build-up in his ears.

It started when we were in Costa Rica in 2005. Tim’s ears were so plugged with a yearlong construction project’s residue of wax and funk. The water from snorkeling and surfing on top of it rendered him deaf. Rumors about the stuff that comes out of people’s ears had always intrigued me-a pea size ball of wax? I have a sick interest in that sort of thing. We traipsed off to the doctor’s office to sort him out. The doctor was a 34-year-old Costa Rican comedian in a surfer town. The bulk of his clientele come in to get their ears cleaned, so he’s pretty good at it.

He let me be his nurse/Vanna White. I got to look through the ear light thing; I got to take Tim’s blood pressure, and I got to hold the bermuda green u-shaped tray under Tim's ear as the doctor squirted the syringe of water in. The gunk all came out in one chunk after one shot, and it was the size, shape and color of a cigarette butt. I screamed in terror/glee as the doctor blew on the top of his syringe as if it were the tip of a smoking gun.

Speaking of a smoking gun, we had another epic journey in the RV last weekend. Tim needed to go to Syracuse to receive his "Leed Platinum" certificate for the house he designed for a low budget house competition. (He won the competition. :) We figured we could stop in Syracuse on our way to help out my mom in Massachusetts. It didn't dawn on us until we were arriving late to the ceremony that we'd gone woefully out of our way. We screeched up to the tent in Sunflower (the male RV is named Sunflower Rose McDonald which always makes me think of the surly tomcat next door named Muffin) Tim jumped out to make a little speech and receive his plaque. One of the other speakers did refer to Tim as the only architect he knew that drives a vehicle bigger than the houses he designs, but it went well. The owner of the house let us go through it. The kids ate a bunch of sweets, and then we got into the RV at 5 pm to head northeast for 7 hours. On our way out, Ted, an architect who works with Tim, suggested we put some air in the back left tire. It was not looking good.

We got onto 90 with a couple gallons of gas and a flat tire only to be told by the toll taker that the nearest gas was 15 miles the wrong direction or 33 the right direction. We limped along for 15 miles and opted to get off 90 to fill up. It took 2 gas stations for us to figure out that no gas station was going to have an air pump strong enough to pump up the massive RV tire. We pulled off in Utica to go to a Walmart tire center. It didn't service RV's. We went to BJ's, in the same massive stucco shopping jungle, and the tire center had closed an hour before, early for Veteran's day. Tim went in and convinced the kid who normally works the tire place to open for us-YAY! The tire was, in fact, completely flat, but the kid had no way to get it off.

Good thing we have RV coverage on AAA! Nope...the state of New York AAA doesn't have RV coverage, and there was a sleet storm, so everything was backed up. They said they would try to find an RV person and send them, so Tim sat waiting in Sunflower, and I took the 3 kids into BJ's to look at the toy aisle and the sleepy suit aisle. An hour with 3 kids in BJ's telling them they can't have anything after 5 hours of minding them in an RV had rendered my patience level low.

There was more AAA drama, so we resigned ourselves to eating dinner at Applebees where there was a wait to be seated. That was depressing on so many levels. My phone was about to die, and AAA only had my number. There were no outlets to be found on the floor at Applebees, and Steel needed to poop. Tim took Steel to poop, and I suggested he take my phone because there's always an outlet in the bathroom. There was some sort of wiping mishap at the exact moment AAA called to say that they will send someone, but it will cost $300. That left Tim covered in shit, screaming into the phone in the Applebees bathroom while I was trying to figure out how to order a vegetable off of the menu. Toby wass screaming because the guy behind us was eating dessert, and Jack Peter was drawing. Drawing sounds benign, but when Steel returned he'd commandeered all of the drawing paraphernalia, so a massive battle ensued.

The phone rang again, and Tim said, "OK! I'll be there!" He hung up and said to me, "They've got someone who can do it under the AAA policy, and they'll be there in 20! I'll go meet them at the RV." I insisted that I go meet the RV guy. My almost dead phone and I trudged the 1/4 mile across the 3 parking lots to get to Sunflower. The guy came, but he didn't have what he needed to get the tire off. He said he'd check the tractor supply store and come back. He returned and said he needed to give someone a tow, and then he'd go back to his garage to get what he needed, and he'd be back. It was becoming clear that our home for the night was going to be the BJ's parking lot, and we hadn't packed any bedding, and it was sleeting. I went to BJ's and spent $156 on bedding, made up the beds and went to help Tim bring the kids back. I grabbed a shopping cart and caught them 200 yd. away from Applebees. Tim looked awful, but I was rejuvenated by my shopping spree and cuddly bed making. I said, "You go to WALMART, relax, buy some beer. I've got the kids." I threw them and their balloons all into the cart and careened through the sleet to Sunflower.

The cart ride, the new cuddly blankets, and milk sorted all of them out as did the excitement of putting on clothes and sleepy suits at the same time. (I was terrified they'd freeze to death in the night) They went to sleep, and Tim and I drank beers and ate pretzels and naughty cheese until the AAA guy came back which he, incredibly, did. Tim went out to help. The next thing I knew the engine was up, and we were driving.

What the????

I was drunkenly gabbing on the phone to Sweet, so I chose not to worry about it until I'd told the whole story to Sweet.
said, "You're going WHERE?????"
"To the AAA guy's garage, so he can use a compressor to get the f-ing tire off!" I replied. "WHAT??? Turn around! He's going to kill you all! You can't trust an AAA guy in Utica, New York!"

No smoking gun-we're all still here, and we had a lovely night sleeping outside the guy's garage in our cozy Sunflower. It probably worked out better for my mom to have the chaos for 1 night, anyway.