6 posts tagged “kids”

If you have a kid in preschool or grade school, high school, scouts, sports, whatever, you probably, as we do, have to contend with a shitload of fundraising activities.  Sellathons, jogathons, walkathons, bookathons, spring carnival, cookie dough sales...(drum roll) the ubiquitous silent auction etc .  And there's no way around it, I know, you know, we all know.  So Jim and I got to talking about what hot item really might sell, create a stir, pull in some real cashola.  And we thought, well, what about a calendar, you know, "Moms of such-and-such School"?  Nothing X-rated or offensive, just, like, moms in bikinis doing...whatever.  We brought the idea to a couple working mom friends.  They laughed, then suggested a 'Dads of same-such-school' calendar.  Even better idea.  Which got us to thinking about, you know, layout...format.  January: Jet Propulsion Lab dad (our kids go to school in Pasadena) in boxers with a bunsen burner, February:  Straight-laced-suit lawyer dad in a Speedo and suspenders in a courtroom diorama, March:  Real Estate dad meeting clients at a house...waving, naked-but-tastefully-hidden-from-the-hips-down behind his Toyota Prius--and as long as we're talking tasteful--photographer dad with his Sony cam hanging at exactly groin length (and nothin' else), writer dad sitting at a desk or in a coffee shop wearing only his laptop.  Come on, go with it.  Try just planning it with a friend at your kid's school next time the annoying and mundane starts dragging you down, making you cranky.  You'll come up with images for days that will, at least, make you laugh aloud on the way to yet another fundraising extravaganza. 

Happy May Day.

I'm starting to think that this 'reality' thing is going to be a theme with me. 

I pick up my six year old after school with her 'date' for the afternoon, a very quiet, sweet little guy, Danny, also in Kindergarten.  First thing A says to me is "I told Danny how we usually fly home, Mom.  Okay?  Right?"  Danny giggles.  "Right, Mom?  We usually fly so could we just do it?"

This is where I usually grapple with the reality thing.  "Fly?  In the sky?  You mean in this car?" 

"Yeah.  Remember?"

"Right.  Okay.  Only I just saw a policeman on a motorcycle and I think he's giving out tickets to all the flying cars today."

"Mom.  We're flying over him.  Remember?  He won't catch us."  She says in a voice much too dry for someone her age (Also her assurance that the cop won't catch us could really disturb me if I let it)

I drive about a mile when A says, "So when are we going to fly?"

"We just did.  Didn't you see it?  We were going so fast.  Danny saw it, right Danny?

Danny giggles again, looks from me to A and back to me again, then says, tentatively, "Yeah."

"Mom, we're still in the sky.  You see?  We're surrounded by clouds.  You see, Danny?  I told you so."

Now I'm wondering how fucked up Danny is going to think this all is.  What will he tell his parents, I wonder.  Do his parents do as much kidding and storytelling as we do?  Does he still believe in Santa Claus or is his family one of those that stresses the importance of reality vs. fantasy after the age of three?  On one hand I secretly hope that my daughter's or son's imagination will continue to soar and give way to some lucrative rewarding career in the arts or scientific invention, and on the other hand I wonder, "Will my daughter's 'stories' morph in ten years into "that's not my bong, Mom.  Amy left it here."  See?  I'm always getting ahead of myself.  Relax, I whisper aloud.  Relax, Karen.  It's just a flying car for Chrissake. 

So I've been more than a little obsessed with the news last week about how the thing MOST responsible for the Titanic's sinking so fast and so furiously was--get this--faulty rivets.  Rivets.  Substandard rivets, of which about three million were needed for the ship, coupled with oversights in trying to get the ship done in time (read: hasty, messy work).  Rivets.  Now don't tell me this isn't, like, a metaphor for life and history and the pursuit of happiness.  Rivets.  The most heralded/modern/impressive ship of the century literally sunk because of rivets.  Mind if I say it again?  Rivets.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15titanic.html?_r=1&oref=slogin .  Read it yourself.

Life is in the details?  I've got the best, most expensive ingredients from freakin' Whole Foods and my casserole comes down to, "not enough salt."  Rivets.

Great-fitting running shoes, the perfect blend in a home-made smoothie, cake and ice-cream on a school night, a friend bearing an iced latte or a hand-made chocolate, a newly discovered micro brew at 5pm on a 102 degree day, water at just the right temperature, making someone laugh.  Moments.  Rivets. 

I'm stewing because I've done a shitload of work for something, above and beyond, up the yingyang, more than the other parent/worker/mother/friend, then all it takes is a heartfelt 'thanks for that' and I'm done...stewing...on to the next insurmountable MUNDANE thing.  Rivets.

My kid is angry/complaining/hurt and I've got a mouthful of multisyllabic words of advice just waiting to spew which I know will only result in both of us speaking in tongues, so instead I choke on my wondrous wisdom and say "Boy, that must've really bugged you." and the steam is let out of yet another hot-air balloon.  Rivets.

Have a good weekend.  --K

Sitting next to me at the coffee shop today...a couple fifty-something women from the same firm and their visiting regional or something-of-the-like thirty-something male manager.  The women are making small talk.  Starts out with a little gossip, you know...

[So-and-so] has been trying to get pregnant for years so it was especially tragic, losing the baby...

I heard she didn't want prenatal care.

Well, Sharon's her best friend and she told me...

Sharon is her best friend?!!  I never knew that...

And so on.
But very soon it becomes:
I don't know what's wrong with my mother.  I don't know.  She's feeding the dog cat food and the cat dog food and taking their water inside when they're outside.  I swear I'm gonna come home one day and my pets will be dead.  I told her not to feed the animals.  I took all the knobs off the stove and put an 'out of order' sign on it.  Frankly, I'm just concerned that she might burn down the house.  We bought her a new coffee maker, but God forbid you bring anything new in the house, there's no way she can handle it.  And the microwave?  Forget it.  I mean, she's a sweet woman, you know.  But, well, she's 92.

Well, my mother's only 68 and she's so shot full of vicadin, morphine, anti-anxiety drugs and the whatnot, I swear, I can't even think about her driving.  It scares me.  So  I just don't think about it.

Well, I don't want to scare you, but my niece was on anti-depressants, nice Catholic girl, and ran a stop sign and killed a 54 year old mother of four.  You can bet my aunt and uncle are gonna lose everything because, you know, four kids, they're gonna sue.  It's sad because my niece is a wonderful woman and she's had her share, I mean, with her ex molesting the girls and her mother dying so young...and having that bi-polar diagnosis didn't help.

Everybody dies young in my family.  My father was 39 and my mother was 42, but that doesn't count because she drank herself to death.  And remember, my nephew--

I hear Hazelton's a good place.

I hear that too.

Isn't this when I, sitting a foot away, am entitled to turn to these people and say:
Your mother has Alzheimers.
Your mother is a drug addict.  Think about it.
Is killing someone as a nice Catholic girl more tragic than killing someone as a nice Jewish or Muslim girl?
Are the laws of attraction as such that if you talk so much about death and tragedy and its inevitability that you will bring on your own premature death?  Or do you think that the floorplans are all in place and there's not a thing that we can do?

I swear, I wanted to drop my head on the table and fall into a deep deep midday-in-window-sunlight sleep.

It is a beautiful day and I'm leaving to pick up my kids at school.  I will buy them ice cream today, try to make them laugh and agree to all their requests until the memory of the grown children in the lunch table next to me fades.  K     

Because there are not enough things for mothers (postpartum, premenstrual, perimenapausal or otherwise)  to obsess on...because said mothers need another way to unceremoniously dump 400 bucks, because the indoor electromagnetic fields created by all the electronic pre-K learning tools, light-up MP3 robo-dolls, computers, video monitors, electric bottle sanitizers and Playstation games aren't powerful enough as they are, there is now an electronic word counter that parents may attach to their toddling new talkers to accurately gauge how the little ones are progressing, verbally.  I kid you not. I read it in the New York Times on Monday.