Hair Today, Gone to Maui

Hi blog!  It’s been a while.  I’ve…um… been busy?

If I’m being honest, the only reason I’m even writing now is that I’m trying to avoid doing what I’m supposed to be doing and I’ve already used up all my usual go-to procrastination devices. 

I should be preparing for Thanksgiving.  It’s only one week—seven short days!--  from today.  And my whole family will be descending upon my house on Tuesday.  I should be planning menus and making shopping lists and cleaning out the fridge to make room for four kinds of milk, two kinds of orange juice and umpteen bottles of club soda and seltzer (and googling just what the difference is between the two).  A wise hostess would be figuring out who is sleeping where and on what and whether the (clean) sheets in the linen closet need to be washed before they go on the beds.

Instead, I find myself fixated on towels and pillows and worried about whether I have enough of each.  Every time I go to Target (which is obscenely frequently),  I  pick up towels and pillows.  What am I going to do with all these dang towels and pillows after everyone leaves?

The Thanksgivings that we spend with my family have, historically, been held at my brother’s house.  The bar is set very high.  My sister-in-law is a wonderful hostess.  A real Martha.  She stocks the fridge and pantry ahead of time with things each of us likes.  She effortlessly produces meals and copious baked goods practically from thin air.  She has gobs of great rag magazines that I usually only get to read at the nail salon.  And, exceeding the service of any five star resort, she thoughtfully provides hand-picked toiletries in the bathrooms, tailored to the individual’s needs. 

That last one cuts both ways.   I know it’s the thought that counts and all of that—don’t get me wrong,  I am touched that she takes the time (and spends the money) to make me feel at home.  But it is always kind of funny/awkward that the shampoo and conditioner in the shower that I will be using are labeled  for use on hair that is DRY/DAMAGED/CHEMICALLY TREATED/FRIZZY/GOOD GOD DO YOU CHECK THE MIRROR EVER?! 

I’m sure it comes from a place of love.  Seriously.  But it has left me in a bit of a pickle.  I know that my family has come to expect not to have to BYOShampoo, etc.  so, on my latest Target run, I spent a great deal of time in the toiletries section.  As I surveyed the shampoo options I called to mind each man, woman and child that was going to be using our facilities and, channeling my sister-in-law, tried to guess what their individual hair care needs and wants might be.  

Well.  My brother has been somewhat successfully fighting genetics and a receding hairline since forever.  Do I get him the men’s shampoo for “Fuller, thicker looking hair” or is that mean?  My sister-in-law has been fighting her own battle with hair loss.  Do I get her the shampoo for “fragile, breaking, falling hair?”  Is there such a thing as passive-aggressive shampoo?

 Oof.  The towels and pillows are so much easier.  Maybe I should go get some more.

Goy vey!

I am waiting for my boiler to be serviced (literally, so that's not what this blog is about) and so I thought I would blog about my weekend. Well, actually just Sunday which involved three soccer games and a Bar Mitzvah for my 12-year-old.  I know, high-octane suburbia's twist on "Four Weddings and a Funeral"?

It was our first foray into the Jewish Rite of Passage and we were absolutely under prepared for what was involved.  The invitations read like wedding invitations!  They come with a map, bus info and response cards, pre-stamped, with custom-made stamps depicting a photo of the lucky child or his/her initial.  I sent off a few RSVPs before it occurred to me that it might be traditional to include a gift check with the response.  Oops! And also, how much is appropriate to give?!!!

I finally broke down and grilled a friend of mine who's third daughter is in 7th grade. Here's what I gleaned:

•  Apparently it's fine to send the check with the RSVP and if you have a child who's forgetful, it's a guarantee that the present will reach its intended destination.  
• It is considered lucky to give in multiples of 18.   
• It is acceptable to skip the 3 hour religious ceremony and just go to the party part.
• Daytime parties tend to be less formal than nighttime soirees. Eek - time to revisit that chiffon dress we had picked out.  

Unfortunately, both my husband and I had to take the other two to away soccer games and couldn't see our daughter leave for the Bar Mitzvah. I asked the mom who was picking her up to give her a quick once-over and check there was nothing glaringly wrong with the outfit she chose, or that she had suddenly opted to wear makeup with disastrous results. I think it hurt me more than her that I wasn't there to help her get ready for her first "grown up" party.

Of course, she looked beautiful; so elegant in a navy sheath dress and ballet flats.  She wore an elasticated hairband as a choker but as it was beaded with little pearls nobody noticed. She also misinterpreted my instructions to shave half her legs and only deforested the fronts leaving the backs au naturel. Again, I think nobody would have noticed.  Most importantly, she had an absolute blast.

Oh yeah, and we (we!) won all three soccer games!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

With the school year once again underway, it feels good to gather some of my scattered thoughts and air them out.  I am down to one child in elementary school this year so when I got the call asking if I would be willing to be a class parent I had a bit of a "Sunrise Sunset" moment and hastily agreed. It just felt nice to be asked.  Unfortunately, that warm glow totally blocked out memories of being class parent from years past.

So being a class parent basically means you act as liaison between the teacher and parents, allegedly for coordinating supplies for class parties and chaperones for trips.  In actuality, you are a patsy, regularly caught in the crossfire of psycho, underemployed parents and the teachers who want nothing to do with them.  Cue Kevlar.

In just two weeks since school started I have had to hand-hold a man I've never met before through the logistics of divorce (I'm sure your wife is a bitch but could you just give me an email address where you can be reached and send in $10 for class dues?) and deal with a slew of emails from parents who want to be included on a particular class trip.  One mother even suggested - with conspiracy theory overtones - that she had been "shut out" of being her son's class parent so expected to have first dibs on accompanying him to the zoo. Hmmm ... Guess who's chaperoning the water treatment plant? Ha ha.

The best yet (and, again, I stress that it's only two weeks into the new school year) was the near-mutiny I defused when the teacher announced that due to the high number and range of food allergies in the class, she wouldn't be allowing any food into the classroom. Big deal, right?  So little Madison doesn't get to bring in cupcakes on her birthday. Aren't we supposed to be reducing the sugar and fat in our kids' diets anyway???

You may be surprised to learn that it was the parents of the kids WITH allergies who were up in arms!  I'm assuming it's because they didn't want their kids to be blamed.  Firstly, kids these days just accept that many of their friends have life-threatening allergies. As a result of this new "normal", it wouldn't occur to children without allergies to punish or blame those who do.  I suggested these parents take it up with the school principal who is a lovely and very approachable woman.  Apparently, the main antagonist had burned her bridges there (shocking) so the issue was dropped.

I can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings.  We have a trip coming up in October - maybe I should start charging ...

Camp (Mis)Adventure

I just got a call from the medical emergency company of "I've fallen and I can't get up!" fame. Seriously, how did they know?  No, I'm not in mortal physical peril but I am an emotional puddle.  I put my eldest daughter on a bus to sleep away camp on Monday (at her request) and they called last night to say that she was very homesick and basically when she wasn't playing paintball or riding ATVs or flying down a water slide, she was crying.

Now this kid is tough as nails.  She plays goalkeeper in premiere level soccer.  She never cries and has never been homesick. I keep thinking back to England a few weeks ago when we visited Stonehenge and she declared it, "not bad for a pile of rocks", appalling a British visitor next to her in line.  Seeing the look on his face, I declared "Stupid American!" at which point all three of us lost it.  How can this funny, happy-go-lucky, adventurous epitome of grace be so sad that she is unable to stop crying in public?!!! And what should I do about it?!!

I couldn't think of any advice other than maybe giving her something to help her sleep but the counselor - who bizarrely just graduated from my Alma mater in the UK (small world!) - made it clear that she was there to give comfort and would update me daily (ie. she didn't need my advice). Today's update: more of the same.

I've fallen and I can't get up.

I Plead the Fifth

No more pencils, no more books.
No more teachers' dirty looks.
No more math and history.
Summer time has set us free....

After weeks of counting down the days (and a ridiculous number of seemingly pointless half-days) and jamming in countless end of school parties, field days, and early celebrations of summer birthdays, we finally made it through the school year.  Whew.

The end of the year is so hectic that I relish the lazy summer days--  a fact that would be nice for me to remember when I am signing the kids up for camp.  Here I've been every morning the past few weeks mentally ticking off the remaining healthy/appealing/peanut-free lunches I have left to pack and-- DUH!!!-- I still have to pack lunch.  For camp.   

So, off to the deli counter I trudged.  Begrudgingly, I took a number.  (The deli is like a casino floor in Vegas-- it doesn't matter if it's 8AM or 4PM, there's always lots of action.) 

I should point out that the deli clientele of our A&P is very high maintenance.  No meat can ever be sliced thin enough for this "let me have a pound of the Oven Gold" crowd (never a please or a thank you, natch).  No roast beef can ever be lean enough.  It's brutal.

But today was the topper.

The woman in front of me ordered one-fifth of a pound of turkey.  Like, seriously?  I actually let out a sort of snort/guffaw by mistake.  Maybe she heard me because she clarified.  "I'd like less than a quarter. You know, like a fifth."  What?!  Honestly that has to be a difference of about one slice of turkey (or maybe three paper thin ones) and approximately $.35.  Either way, decidedly NOT worth the confusion it caused behind the counter.

Gosh, I sure hope with all those half days of school my kids still had time to learn fractions....

Nailed It!

The previous owners of our house left behind a number of things.  Some awesome-- a pop-a-shot basketball game in the basement!  Some clearly inadvertant-- their child's third grade rendering of the sun in painted clay.  Some creepy-- what I thought was a decapitated dog sculpture (turns out it is supposed to look like the dog is digging and it's head is in the hole. Still awful).  Some.... well, Weaselsnob already covered the topic of quirky unmentioned/unmentionable house problems that are invariably left behind for the new owners.

But what our house's previous owners left the most of is nails and nail holes. Sakes alive, did they love them some pictures.   It's as if the Art Marshall came out with a clipboard and told them that one frame per foot is Code.  OK, sure, we're not quite talking the Barnes Museum, but it does seem excessive. And the problem is that-- for my taste-- they tended to hang things a bit too high.  So when I go to use the exisiting hooks or holes (and, yes, I'm lazy enough just to hang my stuff where they hung theirs) my picture is always a bit higher than I'd like.  Which doesn't stop me, but still.

A big hook was left on the wall facing the back stairs.  It was bugging me so I hung a dry erase board there.  I hung it vertically, taking advantage of the (poor) placement of the original nails.

The limitless possibilities presented by the blank, crisp whiteness of the board were too much for my daughter to pass up.  Or maybe she too is feeling the stress of the end of the school year crush.  This morning, on tiptoes, she reached up and created the following:

There are three things that I love about this: 1. "Finish This List."   Is that clarifying the concept of what a to-do list is all about?  OR  is she saying that completing the actual writing of this list is the first thing she must do? 2. "Hug Mommy" appears twice.  I am going to take that in the awesome mushy (and list padding) way it was intended and not in the more cynical  'constantly affirm your love to mommy so you can ask for ice cream with puppy dog eyes' way.  3. "Sometimes shower."
  

The Note

Today as I was getting my mail from the mailbox I noticed a folded piece of paper sitting on top of the pile.  When I opened it up here is what I found:

I think I may have mentioned before that I am a HUGE murder mystery aficionado - currently reading Louise Penny's fabulous Three Pines series, btw - so, naturally, I am threatened by this anonymous missive.  My husband thinks I'm crazy.

Here's my argument: There is absolutely nothing welcoming about the note.  There is no exclamation point nor is there a name attached.  Why not write, "Love this house!!! Your new neighbors from #12, Joe and Jane Schmo."?  Much nicer.

My husband's immediate interpretation was that the author was not suggesting that THEY loved our house, but rather was issuing an imperative, the "You'd better!" being implied.  Could be.  But, again, without the jaunty addition of an exclamation point, rather threatening: Love this house or what? Or else?!

The person who wrote the note and put it in my mailbox - bordering on a federal offence, ahem - would probably be horrified to think I had interpreted it as anything other than a nice gesture.  Me?  I'm picturing a Glenn Close lookalike hiding in one of the outbuildings and have raised my personal alert level to DEFCON 3.

What She Said

Jen Hatmaker's recent blog about being the worst end-of-school mom ever (if you haven't read it, look it up.  It's a riot) really struck a chord with me and made me feel a whole lot better about my current ineptitude/attitude.  Judging by the fact that 6 of my friends independently forwarded the link to me, I'm guessing a lot of other moms feel the same way.

Our elementary school decided to wait til mid-June to perform an Ellis Island simulation where costumes, family trees, heirlooms and ethnic foods (minus any ingredients that might induce anaphylaxis) had to be produced in rapid succession.  Seeing as NOBODY wants to eat English food and I had two children home sick from school - on consecutive days, natch - I rummaged through the pantry and came up with the ingredients for plain scones. Genius, right?

But my laurels were not to be rested on.  Sifting through the laundry baskets, I realize that I can't actually recall when my children last showered and I'm wondering if being in a swimming pool counts.  At the very least it gets rid of superficial dirt, no?  Nor can I remember when I last changed the sheets on the beds.  I haven't had a chance to go to the drugstore for new foundation so my makeup routine consists of coating my face with tinted Clearasil.  Again, not the worst thing, especially since the stress has not been kind to my complexion.  I wear what I can grab quickly at 6:30am and even when I feel somewhat put together a fashion felony is not far off. For example, I arrived at my daughter's last soccer game of the season Sunday with giant TJ Maxx price tags hanging down my back.  I had left them out to remind myself to remove them, then promptly forgotten.

Long story short I'm a mess and so are my kids but we are in good company.  Kudos to Ms. Hatmaker for giving a lot of deserving people a good laugh at a very stressful time.  Solidarity sister!

Chot Tub Time Machine

It seems to me that a fair barometer of closeness is how many short-hand references and inside jokes you share.  When my father turned 80 last year we made a loooong list of Dad-isms, most of them things that he had only said in earnest once but that had become family classics and, as such, had been repeated often throughout the years.

In our senior yearbook, my BFF and I jammed a long list of one liners and quotes on our ad page just to remind us of all the fun (and not so fun) times we had shared and things we had done. Sadly, though our friendship is still strong and we are still (overly?) self-referential, time has warped our memories of how some of our little sayings came to be.  We know that they are funny, we just can't always remember why.

Which is why I am going to record here for my future self how my kids and I came to call the thing that sits near the pool bubbling full of hot water the "Chot Tub."

Every school day, my son has Chobani's version of a GoGurt-- yogurt in a tube-- for his mid-morning snack.  Each tube has a rebus puzzle that my son's classmates vie to solve (my son checks out the puzzle at home).  One day last fall, this was the puzzle:

The boys at his table were stumped. (??!)  Finally, one of the boys shouted out-- triumphantly-- "READING IS CHOT TUB!!"

To which another boy responded disdainfully, "There's no 'p' in hot tub."

And, we hope, none in the 'ool either.

Market Share

I ran into a new friend, Y., at the grocery store.  She just moved here from California and she is very California.  Or maybe just very un-New York.  Totally laid back, totally glass half-full, and totally a hoot.

In my very New York way, I have taken to wearing headphones in the grocery store.  Because it's Monday morning and I don't necessarily feel like chatting.  Because hearing people talk on their phones (loudly) while they navigate their carts (poorly) aggravates me.  And because I can't abide by the seemingly endless loop of 80's hits (you have to go away for us to miss you, Tommy Tutone).

My headphones and I got a big thumbs up from Y.  She assumed not that I was being anti-social but that I was rocking out and hoped to see a viral video of me later literally doing the "shopping cart" (you've seen the dance floor move-- reach up as if you were taking something from the shelf and then put it in the imaginary cart).  This is not me.

Y. mentioned that the store's set up made no sense to her and that she felt like she always spent half her time looking for things-- naturally, asking for help would be admitting failure.  After an aisle by aisle search she had just finally located the power bars.  By the diapers.  Why?!  We decided that the powers that be must have decided that mothers of infants have no time to eat real meals.

Which led me to think how I might set up a grocery store.  What would my own logic dictate?  Obviously you'd put the buns, pickles, ketchup, and mustard near the hot dogs and hamburgers.  And the salad dressing near the salad fixings.  Paper towels near the watermelon?  Gum near the garlic?  Milk and ice cream right next to every register?  Shout! near the tomato sauce?

Hmmm.  Not very efficient.  I guess I'll defer to the professionals.  Except I'd put power bars near the cereal and granola bars.  Duh. 

We Bought the Farm

Literally.  We bought an old farm, with lots of land for the kids to hoon around on and a couple of mangy outbuilding for the kids to break limbs/contract tetanus in.  It is desperately in need of some love but it is heaven on earth with the exception of one aspect: the wildlife.  I know, as the owner of a "farm" (although it is completely defunct), I should be more open to Mother Nature and all her wonderful creatures but there is a line, people!

I am happy to follow and photograph a pair of wild turkeys zipping around under the pine trees with their 17 little chicks (giblets?) in tow.  NOT so happy to see the coyote.  I love the hawks and the chipmunks, not so much the big black ants, and stink bugs and lady bugs and mice that have invaded my home.  As the saying goes, if the great outdoors is so great, why are these creatures inside the house?!!!

Sometimes, when I think back to our previous house, I think about the bee hive we had in our walls and wonder if they are back now for the new owners to deal with.  I hope not.  But somewhere, I'm sure, the previous owners of our "farm" are laughing hysterically to each other and saying, "I wonder if they've discovered the ____ yet!!!!"

Che Malo

I'm supposed to be packing right now so I'll keep this brief.  I heard about this meteor crashing into Russia the other day and I would just like to point out that it does not pay to live in a town or region of Russia whose name begins with the letters"che".  Chernobyl - nuclear fallout, Chechnya - brutal civil war, and now a meteorite sears through the sky and injures over a thousand people in (drum roll) Chelyabinsk!

To the residents of Cherbakul, Cheboksary, Chegem, Chekalin, Chekhov, Chelyabinsk, Cherdyn, Cheremkhovo, Cherepanovo, Cherepovets, Cherkessk, Chernogolovka, Chernogorsk, Chernushka and Chernyakhovsk: Ya might want to relo.

OK, that's it for now.  No more stalling.  Back to the boxes ...