How To Be A Bad Parent.

1.  Vaccinate.    I know.  Seems like a no-brainer, right?  The pediatrician, whom you trusted to care for your newborn and who did squicky things like see how the umbilical cord thing was coming and who also answered your panicky calls at 2am when you were half-hysterical screaming “He’s just breathing weird”?  That guy? 

That guy is shit, and so is his medical degree.

You are not allowed to trust him anymore.  From this point forward, you are solely responsible for the medical well-being of your baby.  Never mind the fact that you got a C in biology.  YOU ARE THE STEWARD OF THIS SHIP, not the pediatrician, who clearly knows nothing.  Because you know what?

YOU HAVE GOOGLE.

Yes.  You are now expected to spend at least fifty hours a week extensively fighting your way through websites with titles like PoisoningYourChildren.com and VaccinesKill.org in order to ascertain, through no medical insight or previous knowledge whatsoever, whether or not what your doctor is telling you is okay is REALLY NOT OKAY.

It’s a conspiracy, and your kindly pediatrician can suck it.   If you ever vaccinate and blithely and naively tell your friends, “Well, the pediatrician recommended it,” expect judgy silences and side-eyes.  You are expected to come to this table with links and references and a bibliography.

2.  Feed The Children Hamburger Helper, Happy Meals, Veggies From Cans, Macaroni and Cheese, or Anything Else Not Hand-Crafted or Tilled By Vegetarian Hippies Living in Yurts.

           

This one is simple.  If you’re not spending at least 50% of your gross income shopping at Whole Foods and local co-ops for massive crates of organic kale and raw milk, you are killing your kid.  And people will tell you so, in sly ways.  And you will adopt this apologetic air when you admit to anyone that the kid ate a hamburger for dinner.  And you will never, ever mention to anyone that he spilled his French fries in the backseat and may have also ingested a couple of old ones from last week when picking them up.

3.  Put Your Child in Daycare.  This one is awesome, because people will be very open about judging you for it.  The conversation will go something like this:

ORGANIC MOM:  So you work?  What does Little Johnny do during the day?

YOU:  Oh, he’s at Little Tots Daycare.  My husband drops him off and I pick him up in the evening.

ORGANIC MOM:  Ohhh.

YOU:  Do you work?

ORGANIC MOM:  Well, I was going to go back to work.  But then I just couldn’t bear the thought of total strangers essentially raising my child.

Zing!

4.  Let Your Kid Face Forward In His Carseat Before the Age of Twelve.

If you put your kid face-forward in the carseat at the recommended age (which varies, but is generally somewhere around two years), you are for all intents and purposes wishing upon him a violent, fiery death.   It is not enough to follow the manufacturer’s directions or the state requirements for safety.  It is JUST NOT SAFE ENOUGH. 

(Note:  The person who tells you this will then generally get into her car and start driving away with her rear-facing five-year-old while talking on the phone, drinking a Diet Coke, changing the radio station, and texting other Organic Moms for a Starbucks meet-up.)

 

5.  The Grandaddy of All Judgments – Formula Feeding.

This one floored me.  Total strangers, coworkers, and family alike will have absolutely no compunction about asking you flat-out after you have a baby whether or not the kid is getting the boob.  And then they will talk authoritatively about colostrum and immune systems and antibodies, even if they’ve never had children.

We didn’t breastfeed.  My OB didn’t think it was a big deal, but then, he was also seventy years old and near death and probably would have let me do a twilight-sleep birth if I asked for one.  Our pediatrician didn’t think it was any big whoop either. 

Armed with that information, I read some literature.  And the only thing my pregnancy-addled, hormone-driven mind managed to retain was the one little snippet about formula-fed babies sleeping longer than breastfed babies.  And the part about the husband being able to have the same bonding experience I did with the baby (read:  Can get up at night sometimes while you sleep blissfully). 

So we formula-fed.  And surprisingly the child did not wither on the vine and die from the lack of our love.  Breastfeeding is a good thing, but not breastfeeding does not mean you’re inviting doom and despair.

But you would not believe the raised eyebrows.  I didn’t expect them, mainly because nobody had asked about my breasts in polite conversation before, unless they were frat boys and we were drunk.  I once had a woman ask me in the grocery store if I was breastfeeding, and when I admitted I wasn’t, she said, meaningfully, “It’s so much healthier.  Not to mention more sanitary than having to use all those bottles.  Yuck.”  And then I noticed that her precious baby was sucking on the car keys she had just dropped on the floor.

The Point:

I have one.

Kids are a lot more hardy than you think they are.  And they’re shockingly adaptable to your flaws and missteps.  If you think you fucked up by not breastfeeding, eh.  Too late now, right?  But presumably the child will not grow up to have a boob fixation unless you also do a shitload of other things entirely and deliberately wrong.

Kids will forgive you.  Organic Moms may not.  But in the end, even the kids of the Organic Moms will have screaming tantrums and bouts of horrendous, fire-hose-like vomiting and yell I HATE YOU and basically, at one point or another, re-enact all the worst parts of “The Exorcist.”

Fuck the Organic Moms.  Give yourself a break already. 

And have you guys tasted Hamburger Helper lately?  It is fucking delicious.

A Few Notes About Running.

When I was in high school, I ran cross-country and track for a while.  Mostly because it seemed like a good thing to have on my transcript.  It was a sport, but it didn't require much in the way of coordination (something I lack to the point of medical deficiency), and even better, it didn't require me to interact with other people or really be part of a team and rah-rah and all that bullsh!t, at which I'm terrible.  

So when the Better Half started running, I thought it was a good idea.  Part of my impetus to start running myself was, I admit, the paralyzing fear that Matt was going to get all buff and lean and strong, and I would end up middle-aged and dumpy in comparison.  Nobody wants to be Jack Sprat's wife, y'all.  

The other incentive?  Is that when you do these long runs, you can eat like a truck driver and say you need it for "fuel" and nobody bats an eye.  SIGN ME UP, motherf*cker.

The first few runs?  Sucked.  Sucked so badly that I wondered how anyone, anywhere, ever, did this and thought it was at all fun.  It looks so easy.  Just jog!  Right?  Right.  Except that by the time I'd get winded and want to walk, thinking I'd run quite a ways, I'd look down and realize I'd only gone a quarter of a mile.  That's about twenty-five calories.  THAT'S NOT EVEN A PAT OF BUTTER AT THE CRACKER BARREL.  This will never do. 

Then, miraculously, I broke through some kind of wall.  I credit watching horror movies on the treadmill.  I brought my iPod, plugged it in, and slogged my way through half of Paranormal Activity 3.  Adrenaline helps a lot, I find.  Except for the parts where there was some kind of jumpy scare in the movie, at which point I nearly ate it and then did that look-around-to-see-if-anyone-saw-that thing.  And today I managed to run 7.1 miles with a running group, and it was awesome and I didn't feel like I was going to die or anything, which was amazing. 

So.  A few universal truths about running: 

1.  NOBODY looks good running.  Nearly everyone comes back sniffing, red-faced, with frozen snot and unkempt hair and basically looking seriously beat up.  There are one or two exceptions to this rule, but I find those people are almost universally reviled in the running world.  I don't care if you run an 8:00 pace through a marathon -- unless you look like shit afterwards, people will hate you. 

2.  Running gear is meant to be functional, and as such, is generally not cute.  Very few people look good in hats, storing water-bottles turns you into a grandpa with a fannypack, and the tech shirts made from slippery material will find and garishly highlight whatever random roll of back fat you possess.  The backlash to this is that people tend to wear the most outlandish stuff imaginable.  One woman in our group today wore a knit pig as a hat.

3.  The only exception to the running-gear ugliness?  Compression capris.  Holy shit.  If I could get away with wearing these forever, I would.  I want to wear them to work.  To the grocery store.   To church.  Because compression pants squish everything in, lift everything up, elongate every line.  I have never, ever had much of an ass to work with, but I get into these things and all of a sudden I feel like Beyonce. 

4.  If you are a woman, the most strenuous part of your workout by far will be attempting to fight your way out of your running bra afterwards.
 

5.  Your favorite music will be total crap to run to.  Whatever workout mix you start with will eventually, over the course of several months, end up consisting almost exclusively of Britney Spears.  Don't fight it.  It's just how it is.  But maybe consider putting a lock on your iPod screen so that if you die unexpectedly, nobody will be able to find your workout mix and put in your obituary that your favorite song was "S&M" by Rihanna.

6.  Endorphins are no joke.  Shortly after finishing a long run, you will find yourself talking animatedly and dopily to people you have never met.  The urge to talk and discuss the run at length is overwhelming and should be curbed.  It's like the point of the night after your third drink when you stop in mid-conversation, realizing you've just told a total stranger in detail about losing your virginity. 

7.  The best part of any run, ever, is approximately one hour after it's over.  Your muscles tick softly, you're showered and clean, and you feel as if you've accomplished something.  

8.  Until the point where your cat eyes you from her perch on the couch, in a sunbeam, and is clearly wondering just why the hell anyone bothers.   The answer is that people run for the same reason people climb mountains -- because they can.  

I'm no athlete; I really don't hold much water with the whole healthy-lifestyle thing.  I eat pretty well, but that's because I like some healthy foods, not because I'm at all concerned about it.  I don't like team sports, I think too much muscle definition in women looks unattractive, and my basic goal in life is to do juuuust enough to get me to the finish line at the end, preferably at around 90 years old.

But there is something, something, something about it, and it's seductive.  There's something satisfying and pleasurable in using your body to do the things it was meant to do.  There's a childlike weariness about the end of it, breathing in frosty air, half-listening for your mother to call you in.

And then you get to go home and eat a thousand calories.  

Parenting Fail.

Today Thomas got his report card.  Which was a good card; he's a bright kid.  But he was unreasonably upset because he was marked as behind in recognizing relationships b/t days and months.  Whatever. 

But he worked himself up into this frenzy by the time we got to the school parking lot, tears and self-recrimination and I was freaking out, thinking, Jesus, this kid's gonna end up in a clock tower, and it was late and cold and I was tired. 

And so I start joking.  Badly.  lol.   "Oh, my GOD, Thomas, are you going to be this emo when you're a teenager?  Am I gonna have to hide all the sharp things and stop you from cutting yourself and try to prevent you from painting your ROOM black while you shlump around the house and mutter 'Everybody sucks'?"

And he stops.   And laughs.  And then we spend the entire ride home discussing what would be better for cutting -- razor blades or a pirate sword?

I am seriously screwing up this kid.  But at least the process is sort of entertaining. 

All Your CVS Are Belong to Me

Yesterday I was just minding my own business at work, trying to accomplish as little as possible because it was a court holiday and I was irritated that I had to drag myself out of bed on a 27-degree morning, when the school called.

“This is Tonya, the school nurse.”

Those dreaded words. 

Tonya said Thomas had a fever of 103, which rocketed me out of my chair and had me lunging for my purse.  That kid doesn’t get fevers very often; certainly not 103-degree fevers. 

And then I paused, briefly, considering waiting for about twenty minutes before leaving work, because Thomas tends to get pukey when he gets high fevers and I wondered if mayyyyybe he could do me a solid and puke at the nurse’s office instead of in my car.

And then I called myself a bad mom and left.

So I picked him up and hauled him to the CVS Minute Clinic, because our regular doctor is like 45 minutes away and I’m not dealing with that.  The nurse at the Minute Clinic was awesome, and Thomas loved her – UNTIL she came at him with the long Q-tip to swab his throat for strep.

Then he FREAKED OUT.  Scared, crying, screaming.  NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO I’M SCARED IT’S GONNA HURT NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

Finally the nurse, weary, looked at me and said, “You’re probably just going to have to take him to his regular doctor; I can’t get a specimen.”

F******CK.

Out to the car we go, where I call up the regular doctor.  Whose receptionist listens to my tale of woe and informs me, “We don’t usually see patients on Friday afternoons.”

Uh.

“Well, can she call in a broad-spectrum antibiotic of some kind?” I ask desperately. 

“Well, no.  We really need to see him before she’ll prescribe anything.”

At this point, I’m frantic, and pissed.  “WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST I DO THEN?”

Silence.

And she sighs at me.  “Let me call you back once the doctor gets back from lunch.”

I fucking hate people.

So there we are, sitting in the car at the CVS.  Thomas, feverish, miserable, probably about to yack all over my backseat, terrified.  And me, phone in hand, disbelieving, wondering if the liquor store is open this early.

Moment of choice.

It must be done.

So I turn around in my seat. 

“If you go back into the CVS and agree to take the strep test – “

And here he starts whimpering again, but I cut him off.

“ – YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING IN THE ENTIRE CVS YOU WANT.”

This literally stuns him.  Like, he is speechless.  Probably delirious with fever, but also, imagining the possibilities.

I take advantage of the silence to turn into the worst parent ever.

“You want candy?  YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE CANDY.  You can have toys!  You can have books and puzzles and Christmas ornaments and crappy candles that smell like burnt pumpkins.  YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT.”

More silence.  And then –

“Okay!”

So we go back into the CVS, back to the poor nurse, who looks at us like Thomas might have bubonic plague instead of just strep. 

“Can we try again?” I ask her.  She sighs and nods, and pulls up our records again, and Thomas sits down, starting to get scared again.  Which means I now turn into the worst parent ever in front of a witness.

“ANYTHING YOU WANT,” I remind him.  “Christmas wreaths and coloring books and – how about a neck brace?  Or crutches?  Pain relievers and lip gloss and packs of cards!”

This calms him.  The nurse may or may not have raised an eyebrow.

She checks his temp, which is now at 103, having likely raised due to the combination of terror and abject greed that is now flooding his system.

Finally she looks up at me.  “You know,” she says.  “He might just have a sinus infection.”

I hear the beginning of the Hallelujah chorus in my head.

“Let’s just…. Call it a sinus infection,” she says. 

“No test?” Thomas whispers.

“No test,” the nurse says, and writes a script for Omnicef. 

Thomas looks at me.  “I CAME IN TO TAKE THE TEST,” he says, and I realize at this point I am thoroughly fucked.  He’s going to play semantics with me and demand his due.

So that is how we ended up leaving the CVS Pharmacy with Motrin, a prescription, a Spongebob Squarepants helium balloon, two coloring books, a Lightning McQueen racecar that talks, two Peanuts Christmas ornaments that light up, two bottles of ginger ale, some potato chips, a pack of crazy straws, and a bag of mini-Butterfingers. 

Birthday Boy.

Today Thomas is six years old.  SIX.  He’s all angles and bony knees and quick movements and ideas, and he is astonishing to me.

He loves Legos and Spongebob Squarepants and books and his gerbil and robots; he hates peanut butter and carrots and is strangely averse to pizza.  He likes zombies and monsters, until it’s bedtime. 

He likes music of all kinds; he loves the 1812 Overture, which he calls “battle music,” and he loves the girl from iCarly, and he still loves above all else the Oasis song “Wonderwall,” which has been his favorite for as long as I can remember.

Last night I laid down in bed with him and told him what it was like to be pregnant with him six years ago, when he made me fat and unwieldy and slow.  And how he’d kick the hell out of me if I ate anything spicy or drank orange juice, and how he’d get the hiccups in utero for days at a time, and how weird and amazing it felt when he’d move around.  And I told him when he was born, he was the slimiest and most beautiful thing we’d ever seen, and how lucky we were to have him, and how loved he was.

And he started crying.

I asked him why he was crying, and he put those little gangly arms around my neck and his hot cheek on mine and he sobbed, and he finally said, “When I grow up I’m just really gonna miss you a lot.”

Oh, sweet boy.  Of six years’ worth of moments and memories – of walking and talking and first steps and first days of school and quiet nights – of all of these, this.  This is the one I maybe love and hate the most.  Such a double-edged sword, this childlike realization of time passing, this knowledge of love and how fast things go.  You can’t have joy without its twin, light without darkness.  And I hate that he’s learning this, but I love that he’s starting to feel how precious it can be.

I kissed him and told him in quiet tones how far off that is, that we have years and years and years before he’s grown up; that we have all the time in the world, that by the time he’s grown up he’ll be ready to be out on his own, that if we’ve done our job right he’ll be prepared for things and want to have his own space.

I told him all of these things, but man, I lied.  Eighteen is a long way from six; but holding onto that sweet, sorrowful boy, all arms and legs and smelling vaguely of chocolate and dirt –

It doesn’t feel very far off at all, somehow.

Soulful Physical Therapy Update, and Warrior Dash

So I'm in physical therapy today, which is one big giant room, basically.  I'm on one of the tables, doing those stupid isometric exercises that make me look like a jackass ("Put your hand against your forehead; now push against it").  Try this.  You look like you're gesturing indicating what a moron you are.  For thirty reps.


The girl on the table next to me is a high-school cheerleader, a flyer who fell and broke her wrist.  Her friend is with her, gum-chewing annoyingly.

The wrist girl asks me how I put my hair up in a pen, which I did because it's a f*cking mess today.  So I show her how to do it.  And then I tell her if she has fine hair, it works best on 2nd-day hair, because the pen won't slide out as easily.

Gum-chewer:  Tsk.  I could never go a day without a shower.
Me:  Well, I shower every day; but I don't wash my hair every day because it would get too dry.
Gum-chewer:  Tsk.  Tsk.  Omigod.  I could never go a day without washing my hair.  I would just feel too... filthy.  *looks at me meaningfully*
Me (pleasantly):  Well, I guess you can't put your hair up in a pen, then.

It should be noted that during this exchange, Soulful Physical Therapist is nearly choking with laughter.

Also of note today:  The physical therapy group is planning a skit for their Christmas party.  So far the plan is to put Soulful Physical Therapist in drag and make him perform Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby, One More Time." 

Warrior Dash

 So, Matt and I decided, of all things to do to celebrate our eighth anniversary, to drive down to Manchester and run the Warrior Dash.

In case you are not familiar with the Warrior Dash, it's basically an exercise in pain and fear masquerading as a good time.  With costumes.  But there's also beer, which frankly was a major draw.

The race itself is a 5k.  Which, no problem, right?  Only they throw in twelve obstacles, consisting of some of the weirdest sh!t this side of ComiCon.  So this is how the race went:

Run run run run run, over grass and gravel and really terrible terrain.  It reminded me a lot of cross-country in high school, where the goal is essentially to make you run on entirely un-run-able surfaces.

At mile one or so, there's a water station.

Obstacle one:  Run up a pile of hay bales and down the other side.  Which is easy, which gives me a huge surge of confidence, which is just plain mean of the race organizers.

Obstacle two:  Run through some tires on the ground for about ten yards, climb up and over a few junk cars (girl beside me:  "People were, like, conceived in these cars. People had sex in them"), then through some more tires (guy to the left a few yards:  " *FACEPLANT * ").

Obstacle three:  A giant felled tree, which was probably just nature f*cking with me.

Obstacle four:  four-foot walls you have to get over, followed by planks you have to go under.  Repeat about six times.  At the end of this I realized I could feel my heartbeat in every part of my body and wondered vaguely if anyone had ever died on the course.

Obstacle five:  a GIANT F*CKING WALL.  You get to scale it with a rope, which I haven't done since gym class in the seventh grade (and I didn't make it to the top then) and climb down a ladder on the other side.  The climbing part was actually okay; what wasn't okay was getting up there, then straddling the top, then looking down.  Let me tell you, my fear reflex?  Is clearly operating just fine.  Hyperventilated for a minute, then realized that my fear of falling was slightly surpassed by my fear of having to be airlifted off the top of a g*ddamn wall.  Climbed down.  (Note:  This is not me in the photo.  I probably looked a lot worse.)

Obstacle six:  A pitch-black tunnel you have to crawl through.  I think they purposely put sharp rocks on the ground.  Tear up knees, mental note to wear stockings to work all week this week.

Obstacle seven:  Another f*cking wall.  This one is slanted, Matt tells me, so no problem, right?  Only it's slanted on both sides, like an inverted V.  Which means when you get to the top, you throw your leg over ... into total nothingness.  You have to slide out and down in order to get to the first rung of the ladder down, which means you have ample opportunity to look down between them and realize that if you fall, you're hitting like six struts on the way down before even landing on the ground, presumably paralyzed for life.

 Obstacle eight:  Crab-crawl your way across a rope net suspended about five feet above the ground, which is hard, but also the most precarious and humiliating pose to be in, ever.  HEY BACK THERE!  LIKE MY ASS?  IT'S STICKING WAY UP!  IN YOUR FACE!

Obstacle nine:  Climb up some steep bleachers, slide down a fireman's pole on the other side, chafe the sh!t out of the thighs.

Obstacle ten:  Wait, another wall?  I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS MANY WALLS, YOU F*CKERS.  This one is constructed of a frame, and then a rope net on both sides.  This one was oddly comforting after the previous climbs; at least a rope net gives you something you can actually wrap your hands around.

 

Obstacle eleven:  Jump over fire.  Which is JUST the thing you want to do after running three miles, because everyone likes heat at that point, right?

Obstacle twelve:  Leap down into a giant pit of mud about three feet deep, and crawl across on your hands and knees.  Realize not only have they covered the bottom of this pit in gravel that is further shredding your kneecaps, but also, you've started running at 4:30pm, which means this same mud pit has seen about five hundred sweating, disgusting bodies before yours.  They may as well have named the twelfth obstacle You Just Try Not To Catch Something Nasty In This Sh!t.

Then, the glorious finish, where you slog across in your ruined shoes.  The cameras capture you as you cross the finish line, and you realize you've just been photographed trying to fish gravel out of your bra.

In short, it was actually kind of awesome and I'm glad I did it.  But I believe somewhere around mile two and a half I deliriously and violently told Matt that next year we're taking a nice trip to a f*cking beach somewhere for our anniversary, and he is not to listen to any hare-brained schemes I have about this sort of thing, ever again.

The Consumerist; also, Nostalgia.

I, ever the whore for marketing, succumbed to peer pressure this morning and bought a pumpkin-spice latte from Starbucks, whose very essence, I am told, would transform me into a unicorn/monkey/happy puppy. 

Sad to say, it did not.  Alas, pumpkin spice lattes are pretty good, but I find it hard to work up to the drooling, frothing anticipation people seem to have for the stuff.  It’s coffee, people.  Overpriced at that.  And mixed up by a surly teenager with more metal in his face than exists in my car frame.

Fuck, I’m old.

The nostalgia part of today’s post is that one of the boys I went to high school with is going to be on the tee-vee, y’all.  This is very exciting, because I do not know famous people.  I’ve had the odd brush with politicians, but since I grew up around DC this is not all that awesome.

So here is what you need to know about Alex, who is apparently magical with a sewing machine and will be on Mad Fashion, premiering on October 4 on Bravo:  

1.  He used to listen sympathetically to my bullshit boyfriend drama while we were in the darkroom of photography class in the eleventh grade and periodically would tell me I was an idiot and my boyfriend was a waste of skin (oddly insightful);

2.  We once both entered a photography contest for extra credit, involving landscapes.  His was of some bushes, entitled “Where’s Elvis #13,” in the hopes that the judges would think it was part of a series.  Mine was titled “This is the Table Upon Which I Left My Shoes” and was of some trees, dyed blue.  Both of these ended up being finalists.  It is nearly twenty years later and I still find this amusing.

3.  He is not to be confused with the other Alex in our photography class, who was a girl who wore Minor Threat t-shirts and was all FUCK THE MAN, YO, and I don’t think ever actually did anything except splice together some scraps from the trash bin and turn it in.  And I’m pretty sure she got an A.  Other Alex was also kind of awesome and I would like her to have a reality show as well, please; and

 4.  He was pretty heavily involved with the drama department in high school.  I did some stuff on the periphery there, because my older sister was into it and very naturally I wanted to fuck up her world as much as possible.  Regardless, I’m pretty sure Alex Bartlett played a waiter in our high-school production of Scapino! and if I find those pictures I’m not sure if I’m going to burn them or use them for blackmail.

October 4. 

Pumpkin Spice OUT.