Let Them Eat Cake

December 22, 2010 in Daily Life | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

I sit with a steaming mug of coffee and the laptop, idly surfing the net. The furnace guy has just left and I have mopped the floor to erase his bootprints. He has erased my kitchen island budget but he’s given me the gift of hot water and so I am determined not to complain (much). Henry is happily watching the Cars movie for the nine millionth time. I contemplate a shower.

Forty-five minutes and many clicks later, I make lunch. Such a treat to have a morning at home. Three loads of laundry done; all the dishes washed and put away. Lots of time left to get ready for Nora’s teacher’s surprise baby shower. I go through my To-Do list mentally: Shower gifts wrapped? Check. Extra presents for kids who may not have a gift to give? Check. Reminder email sent to other parents? Check. Tablecloth and utensils packed? Check. Serving utensils for the cake? Check. The cake? F*#%!

I had remembered to order the cake but I hadn’t remembered to pick it up.

“Henry, put on your boots! Go to the bathroom! We’re leaving!”

I got dressed this morning in deference to the furnace guy. I had not, however, bothered to comb my hair or put on make-up. We have no time now for such niceties. Henry moseys over to his coat, windmills his arms like he’s off-balance and collapses to the floor, laughing.

“Boots! Coat! Now!”

Slamming the van in gear, I peer out the smallish hole I scraped in the windshield. I pray the defroster works quickly. I spray washer fluid to speed up the melting process. I curse our useless garage and my idiocy for forgetting my own plans. How is it possible to forget the task one assigned to oneself? Damn! Damn! Damn!

“What did you say, Mommy?”

“Nothing! Don’t listen to me!”

I estimate the amount of time needed to drive to Costco, park, purchase the cake and drive back. I calculate how much time I have. Not enough. What to do? My mind races. Brendan! He works half-way between home and Costco. I speed dial his cell. He doesn’t pick up. I call it again. Ditto. I call the phone on his desk. He answers on the first ring. He’s eating lunch. I skip the issue of his not answering his cell phone and get to the point. Can he pick up the cake? He’d like to, but no, he can’t. He doesn’t have his membership card with him at the office.

The van slides into a parking spot at the grocery store. I plead with Henry to hurry. We run to the bakery, nearly bumping into a friend of mine. I shout over my shoulder, “I’ll call you later about that playdate tomorrow!” She raises her eyebrows at me and nods. I know I must look like I’ve lost my mind. I pick out two cakes that cost more than twice the price of the now superfluous Costco cake. I ask a young baker to write out Nora’s teacher’s name. She messes it up. Twice. I dart to the check-out trailed by Henry who has helped himself to a double dutch chocolate muffin and has dark brown crumbs ringing his mouth.

We make it to school with five minutes to spare. The receptionist, either noticing that I am balancing two cakes and a bag with a large knife or catching the crazed look in my eye (or both), courteously signs me in. We ignore the “No Running” rule and fly down the hall, gathering class parents along the way.

We’re just in time. The rest of the plan goes off without a hitch. Nora’s teacher is surprised and pleased; the kids are thrilled. I exhale. It’s all good.

Happy holidays everyone. If you’re in the area, please stop by. I’ll be serving Costco cake between now and the end of January.

Everyone Poops Stopping By Woods on Snowy Evening

December 21, 2010 in All in the Family | Tags: , , , | 2 comments

Robert Frost meet Taro Gomi. 

I’m fairly certain that this is considered an inappropriate subject but I am going to talk about it nonetheless. This is one advantage of being a little-read blogger. Another is that you don’t have to send out the annual Christmas newsletter because your friends and family have been reading installments all year.

I want to talk about poop. Every member of my family has a poop thing. A few of us like to disappear into the bathroom with reading material and hang out for an indecent amount of time. One of us doesn’t check to make sure he has wiped well enough and so another of us is constantly finding skid marks on his undies on laundry day. Somebody has to be constantly reminded to flush. But when it comes to making Number 2, no member of our family can top the pooping rituals of our family dog.

I’ve explained previously that Paco is a runner. He is, therefore, leash-bound. I am thinking he has some beagle in him because his nose is permanently attached to the ground as soon as we step outdoors. Three seasons of the year, this is fine. Our neighborhood is close to wooded walking trails and in the woods, he is happy. His curly tail bounces, his mouth splits in a doggy grin. When he sees an evergreen scrub tree he circles it like a predator, pees on it several times and then, if the leash holder is lucky, one of his “marks” will turn into a three-legged poop. It’s bizarre. He balances his weight on his front paws (the same paws that he tends to pee on) holding one of his back legs out to the side while arching his back. If a scrub tree is not available, woe is the walker for Paco will only drop the bomb if he is backed up into something prickly. He prefers hemlocks over spruce and pine; he eschews all hardwood varieties. Occasionally, he’ll decide mid-spin that the setting is not quite right and will abort the poop by tugging his human companion to another tree, thereby causing him or her to complain loudly about how weird he is.

Winter has just begun and Paco has already decided that the fluffy white crystals covering his static prey have made them undesirable. The white stuff has so muffled the smells of the woods that it is taking him longer and longer to do his business. When his handlers’ fingers and toes are numb, they beg him to poop on something. When he doesn’t, they conclude he has had ample time to go and will trudge back to the house through the knee deep snow muttering obscenities. On these failed poop days, he will attempt to sneak away to a corner of the living room, release his bowels, and then frolic around in a happy dance. He is often successful. Once, he squeezed out a stealth poop on the cushion of our friends’ couch minutes after we arrived at their house where we were staying for the weekend.

I am at wits end. He is making me crazier than I already am. My children are no longer in diapers. I am done with other mammals’ poop. Is there such a thing as Metamucil for dogs?

What’s Old is New Again

November 29, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 3 comments

Is it me? Or have the current fashion trends come full circle? Having spent my pre-teen and teen years excitedly ordering clothes from J.C. Penney catalogs, I am no fashionista. When I was twelve or thirteen, we visited a family in Pennsylvania. My counterpart was the same age and ethnicity as I but that was where our similarities ended. Shortly after we arrived, she took me to her bedroom with the walk-in closet and proceeded to model a seemingly endless supply of sweaters from the United Colors of Benetton and J. Crew. She was stunned when I admitted I had never heard of either brand.

“But where do you get your clothes?” she asked.

I pushed my pink, twisted bandana headband from my forehead to the top of my head before I answered, “Uh, from Ames.”

Now, my standard uniform is jeans with a sweater. Old, broken-in jeans with machine washable sweaters. I reside in a world lightyears away from couture and a distant cry from even prêt-à-porter lines. In spite of this and my fashion apathy, I do occasionally wander through websites that cater to women who think nothing of dropping $1K on a pair of shoes that remind them of Carrie Bradshaw. And this is what they’re selling:

C’mon people. Really? Weren’t these ensembles in fashion when Kurt Cobain was alive? Who brought plaid shirts back? I wore a vest and gray leggings in the early 90s. And I had a black zippered mini-skirt from Express that I practically wore out. Not that I would (could!) wear them now. If I had them, which I don’t. So, who is wearing these clothes? Better question: Who is BUYING these clothes?

I don’t have the answers but I think Olivia Newton John wants her blue jumpsuit back.

Work It Real Good

November 9, 2010 in Mary and Fitness | Tags: , , , , | 4 comments

It’s been many, many years since I got sweaty in a dark room in the company of strangers.

Back then, I was a nightclub dancing fool (the dancing and the fool parts were the direct results of generous amounts of liquid courage). Now, it is morning and I have come to my gym to squeeze in a workout before I am required to don my family’s chauffeur’s hat. The field house, with its indoor sports friendly carpeting, is halved by an enormous plastic divider. Light from the empty half of the room trickles through the mesh at the top of the curtain. I am confused. Are we exercising in the dark?

My confusion turns to hilarity when I realize that yes, indeed, we are going to get our hearts pumping and adrenaline flowing whilst lined up in rows in the semi-dark. They have set up a stage, lit it with alternately flashing colored lights, and hung inspirational posters behind and beside it. Airbrushed images of insanely fit people seem to be saying “Unleash Your Inner Warrior” and “Smiling is Optional, Quitting is Not.”

Five months ago, I posted about the beginning of my quest for less squishy abs. I joined a gym. Bought work out clothes. Dragged myself to group fitness classes. I have done these things before, only to have my self-motivation drop faster than an italian grinder with a side of potato salad down my esophagus. Group aerobics have never been my thing. In college, I tried workout videos. Cindy Crawford in her red leotard was beautiful but in more of an aggravating than inspiring way. Eight weeks after Liam was born, I went to a “Mommy and Me” class where you used your baby as resistance weight. I spent more time getting the two of us ready to go to class than I spent in the class itself. The Step classes I took were dreadfully embarrassing; my two left feet work independently from my arms and my keen sense of direction results in wrong-way shuffles, skips and turns. Plus, I couldn’t stand the perky instructors. For god’s sake, don’t clap and whoop and look like you are enjoying this misery!

That is how it was until I stumbled into a Les Mills Body Combat class at the Edge Sports and Fitness.

I was hooked after the first class. The music is loud, the instructor is powerful. I can only dream of my arms and abs looking like hers. She encourages participants to grab their (imaginary) opponents and throw them to the ground. She yells at us to visualize our punches connecting with our targets: “Are they bleeding? Keep going!” (Obviously, I am more pro-Jillian than Bob.) I may have accepted Body Combat more easily than some because the moves feel semi-familiar to me from practicing Tae Kwon Do. But punching and kicking are purposeful movements for anybody. They are not useless movements designed solely to keep uncoordinated cynics like me in perpetual motion. They are not perky. If I am ever accosted in a dark alley (and I don’t freeze), I will attempt to defend myself by blocking and punching and kicking.

Practicalities aside, there is no question that Body Combat is still a group fitness class. And sometimes, the trappings of group fitness cannot be ignored or overlooked. Such as when they are having an all morning “release party.” My suggestion for when this happens, do as I did: Laugh at yourself and all the other people who have drunk the proverbial Kool-aid. Then get down to business and kick some ass.

P.S. Points to those who know from whence this title came!

Monsters and Mobsters

October 15, 2010 in oinkdaddy, Small moments | Tags: , , , , , | 2 comments

Small has his heart set on a being a bad guy this Halloween. He wants to be a Goomba.

“A what?” I asked.

“Mom, they’re the little mushroom guyth on Thuper Mario Brotherth.”

I hadn’t a clue. Showing more patience with me than I often do with him, he flipped open our Nintendo DS (yes, we have one – I relaxed my stance on hand-held video devices after the kids saved their allowances for three months to buy one).

“Look, I’ll show you,” he said.

Thanks to the internet and an inspired mom who blogs at What I Made Today, I now know exactly how to turn Henry into the creature of his dreams.

As soon as his father came home, Henry danced over, exclaiming, “I get to be a Goomba for trick or treat!”

Brendan shot a confused look over at me then scraped the backs of his fingers under his chin in a gesture he must have picked up in college. “He’s gonna be a mobster for Halloween?”

“A mon-ster, Daddy,” Henry corrected. “A Goomba monster!”

I think the mobster costume might be easier to make.

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