Winning The Disgusting Trifecta

Some days you have to wash your hands so many times you just want to hang it up and take a second (or third) shower. Today was one of those days. First, and sincerely struggling not to be too graphic, I had to plunge a toilet, a job I hate hate hate and would never ask the kids to do because that would be cruel but my real reason is they'd surely mess it up and then I'd have an even bigger mess on my hands. Besides, it's important my kids see me using tools because I'm their only parent, and they need to understand that girls and women can do most of the same things men can do. So I got out the plunger and the scrubber and the bleach to eradicate one of the worst clogs I've ever seen, and carried everything out to the garage in a bucket to a chorus of "Ew ew ew eeeww!"

Then I washed my hands and washed my hands again.

After dinner my son decided to clean out the aquarium recently vacated by two very sad little fish. In his youthful impulsiveness -- er -- enthusiasm, yeah, that's the word -- he scooped eight gallons of seriously fermented aquarium water into a huge bucket and then couldn't lift it, so I carried it through the kitchen and dumped it in another toilet, which I then had to clean inside and out because you try dumping eight gallons of nasty water without splashing or spilling and then let me know how you accomplished it.

I washed my hands a few more times, this time well past the wrists.

Then I noticed the aquarium pump, coated with green schlucky stuff, abandoned on the kitchen counter next to the sink -- a perfectly functional pump which I was tempted to pitch because I'd been grossed out enough for one day, but I just couldn't because I hate wasting anything, so I scrubbed off the green glop, dumped the pump in the fish bucket in the garage, and went back to the kitchen to scrub the sink, again, and wash my hands, again and again and again, this time well past the elbows.

If I'd had the stomach for it I could also have cleaned out the robot vacuum brushes but geez, that's enough for one evening.

Thank You Solo Mother -- Man! I Love The Web!

I'm thoroughly enjoying hearing my son play Hava Nagila on the clarinet. He's pretty good -- nice mellow sound, good rhythm. Think of all the money I'll save on a band if I can persuade him to play his own Bar Mitzvah.

Thanks to SoloMother for referring us to this hilarious piece to which we can all relate, whether we've been the victim, the perpetrator or both.

It's funny -- when my niece (now nearly 18) was a baby my sister noticed that most of their books had to do with sleepy time, nap time, rest time, time for bed, time to go sleep, time to be quiet... yet that kid never slept. You could pat her on the back for 45 minutes and just as you'd nearly made it to the door, tiptoeing backwards and not even blinking, she'd rear up in bed with a gummy grin and that was the end of nap time.

Don't worry -- she's making up for lost time now.

Look for this book:


Once Upon a Time, the End (Asleep in 60 Seconds) by Geoffrey Kloske and Barry Blitt

... a fresh approach to fractured fairy tales: take one small child's insatiable demand for Just one more story and add a sleepy parent's wish to get the bedtime ritual over with as quickly as possible. The result is this collection of eight condensed folktales. For example, Goldilocks and the Bears begins, There were some bears;/It doesn't really matter how many./There was a bunch./Let's get to the point: and ends, When the bears came back,/They found her asleep./She woke up, screamed, and ran home/So she could sleep in her own bed./Just like you. A few nursery rhymes (Hickory, dickory, dock,/A mouse ran up the clock./The clock struck eight./Oh, my, it's late!/So the mouse went straight to bed) and jokes round out the book... The cover shows an intensely alert toddler on the lap of a sleeping father, surrounded by several dozing characters (Goliath sucking his thumb, for example, and Red Riding Hood conked out next to the wolf dressed as Grandma). The sometimes sly, sometimes outrageous, sometimes simply silly humor will go over the heads of most preschoolers, but it's right on target for their older siblings (and tired parents, of course).–Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Let's Talk About Entitlement

(I started this post about ten days ago. Then I had to go to the bathroom, get something to eat, answer the phone, drive eleventy million places, and I'm just picking it up again because it's been on my mind. So, please pardon my tardiness.)

Chili over at Don't Try This At Home (btw -- love the Groucho glasses!) writes about teaching kids to save and appreciate money:

What about allowance? I'm torn here. I want to teach my kids NOW how to deal with money. I don't want them figuring out at 20 what happens if you make a regrettable purchase. At the same time, where do they get said money? From allowance? Should I be paying them for things that are necessary to the family's well-being? Shouldn't these chores be done simply because they need to be done? It's a catch-22 as far as I can tell.

Periodically Cleo and Robey try to finagle me into giving them an allowance, for what I can't be certain because they have everything they need, most things they want, lots of things they don't need, and I almost never require them to pay for anything themselves. Well, there was that Webkins...

They don't need money, but they still wish for piles of it to count and sort over and over. I think it's that childlike compulsion to squirrel away stuff and measure by volume instead of value. When I was about Robey's age I earnestly declared my intention to take all the money out of my savings account in nickels; my mother wisely rolled her eyes at me noncommittally. I haven't progressed much; if I could I'd stuff every dollar I own under my mattress.

I know some of their friends get allowances because their parents don't understand or accept the word "no." I know other friends receive allowances because they're expected to cover some of their own expenses, especially for indulgences. But neither of these issues seems to apply to my kids. First, I am the Queen of No, armed with an endless loop of speeches about how computer games rot your mind, Polly Pockets are a waste of money, and authentic baseball jerseys are outgrown so quickly that it simply makes more sense to buy the plain tee shirt. And second, I don't require my kids to pay for their own stuff. Well, there was that box of Pokemon cards...

So why should I give my kids an allowance? When I was a kid my parents tried bribing us to fulfill daily responsibilities by offering an allowance of a nickel a week (I'm not that old -- my parents were being stingy) with the understanding that our pay would be docked for not, say, getting out of bed in the morning (yeah, they set the bar pretty low). It doesn't take long to deplete a nickel; soon we owed them money, and in less than two months the allowance was just a memory.

Instead of offering a pointless allowance, whenever my kids whine for one (or even worse, compensation for good grades) I remind them that I won't pay just for the pleasure of their company but I will pay for an honest day's (okay -- quarter hour's) work. Vacuum the car -- get paid. Mop the floor -- get paid. Rake leaves -- get paid. Load the dishwasher -- get bupkes (I'm not crazy -- why should I have to do all the housework?)

It works, even though they still occasionally try to argue me into the allowance. They get paid for doing jobs, the jobs get done without my having to do them, and we avoid the resentment that would come from regular arguments over who owes what.

Miracle Times Infinity

I wish there were words more superlative than all the superlatives I know, because sometimes common words seem woefully tepid, scrawny and inapplicable. I typically feel this way regarding overexposed, redundant and unimaginative profanity. We used to employ such colorful curses, and now our expletives mostly have to do with bodily functions and ancestry. It's not that I feel compelled to employ profanity regularly or that I miss the small amount of cursing I used to indulge in before my kids developed their listening ears and repeating mouths. It's just that life would be so much more interesting if we could express frustration, disdain or anger in more colorful, memorable language than most of us can muster.*

I feel the same way when attempting to describe overwhelming feelings of joy, amazement, ecstasy, pleasure or whatever, because standard issue language just isn't adequate. I've often found it maddeningly frustrating (or frustratingly maddening?) to convey sufficiently how incredible (yuk) it is to be a mom to my two kids. The best description I ever came up with was that even though mothering was the most commonplace, mundane activity out there, it still was/is the most hands down special, perfect experience one can have (even the diaper/sleepless/midnight vomiting parts).

In any case, all this long-winded introduction leads me to my point, which is this: I cannot come up with anything more appropriate than the word "miracle" to describe this story:

Kevin Everett will be transferred Friday morning to a Houston hospital to begin the next phase of his rehabilitation, less than two weeks after the Buffalo Bills tight end sustained a life-threatening spinal cord injury.

And doctors said Thursday they believe he will be walking within weeks -- perhaps sooner.

In case you missed it, this 25-year-old professional football player was as close to death two weeks ago as a man can be and not be actually dead. There was no doubt in the minds of the finest neurosurgeons in the country that Kevin Everett would never walk, never move, never breathe on his own. Nevertheless, thanks to outstanding care immediately after his devastating injury (if you haven't heard or read about it, he broke his neck during a football game and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital doctors cooled his body to about ninety-two degrees with a chilled intravenous saline solution, thus preventing the devastating swelling of the spinal cord that leads to paralysis), he will likely walk again, and while his football career is over (?) he'll have a functioning life.

Of course, Kevin Everett received the most outstanding care available; there were doctors on the premises to commence immediate and urgent treatment. Still, the fact that such treatment can be effective under any circumstances is frankly astonishing. And I'm at a loss for words.

Well, actually I'm at a loss for suitable words. I'm rarely at a loss for any words.

I'm awestruck at the implications of this remarkable accomplishment. Preventing paralysis after a catastrophic spinal cord injury is tantamount to bringing back dinosaurs or dodos, reaching infinity, or the Cubs winning the World Series (sorry -- Cardinals fan. Just had to throw that in).

It's performing the impossible, people!

I keep revisiting this story in my mind, especially when pelted by horrible news everywhere I look. Stories like this one, no matter how implausible or unimaginable, give me a sorely needed feeling of well-being which I try to protect and nurture for as long as I can.

*Here are just a few delicious Yiddish curses; whence creativity?

• All problems I have in my heart, should go to his head.
• One misfortune is too few for him.
• They should free a madman, and lock him up.
• He should grow a wooden tongue.
• God should visit upon him the best of the Ten Plagues.
• He should have a large store, and whatever people ask for he shouldn’t have, and what he does have shouldn’t be requested.
• A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.
• All his teeth should fall out except one to make him suffer.

Little Baby Steps

Fresh out of my second week of blogging boot camp, and my hair seems to be growing back already. Yesterday we talked about making connections with other sites whose eyeballs are connected to my ideal customer base; at one point we discussed offering product giveaways to get some attention ("Helloooo? Anybody out there?") to our site. It seemed so obvious once Drill Sergeant Kristen suggested it that I was embarrassed not to have come up with the idea myself.

Today, while practicing maneuvers and spit-polishing my combat boots, I came across an announcement on Solo Mother of exactly the kind of promotion I need to get my feet wet, and just in time for the Christmas season no less! They're hosting the Family and Relationships Channel Blogtoberfest (guess which month it occurs in?). Among many other cool and desirable prizes will be a Personalized Photo Bucket Bag from my site, FeeFiFoto.com.

Take a look:

It's a microfiber handbag with your favorite photo printed on each side.

I have one of these. I printed a picture of our dog, the Tibetan Terror -- um -- I mean Terrier. It's one of the few things in our house she hasn't yet managed to steal and mangle.

Anyway -- check out the contest and look for my link. I'm so proud! (snif)

Unexpected Uses for Children

Paid a visit to IzzyMom.com, one of those marvelous mom blogs that saves me the trouble of thinking my own thoughts and putting them into words. She writes about browsing internet sites looking for:

...moms to date. Well, not to date exactly but something like that. I want to meet them for kid playdates during the day and for grown-up playdates at night.

I’ve decided that I need to find some local friends as cool as the ones in the little white box on my desk (uh…that would be you guys). My closest IRL friends live in other states and my friendships here with other moms are mostly based on the friendships shared by our kids.

In other words, she's searching the internet for friends so she won't have only internet friends.

Thank goodness we have our kids to lean on! Before Robespierre was born, when I was slightly disappointed not to have someone to dress in a tutu and fairy wings (well, I could have, I suppose, but it would have attracted unwanted stares), I decided a boy might come in handy when he was old enough to program the VCR and do the heavy lifting; until that time I could use him as a paper weight.

But after he came along, and then Cleopatra-Queen-of-the-Nile two years later, I discovered an unanticipated benefit to having kids: instant community! Kindermusik -- check! Nursery school -- check! Gyminee -- check! Playgroups -- check! Turns out having a kid is similar to having a cute dog -- at the very least, it's a conversation starter.

And it turns out, they really can program the VCR and lift heavy objects.

I Get It Now...

My fifth grade son, Robespierre, is exploring actual history this year instead of the more intangible "social studies." They've begun with prehistory, ie the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age (or is it Iron first and then Bronze? I was so young back then...) Anyway, he's been bringing home his assignments so I can help him, and so far the questions have to do with issues that seem instinctive to me but obviously must be learned somewhere, and I suppose fifth grade might have been where I learned about them originally. For example, he needed to write a paragraph about the effect of a surplus of food on people and society; I suggested he think about improvements in health and strength, increased population, and increased power of a community over their ill-fed, weaker neighbors.

Meanwhile I've signed up for a blogger boot camp to learn to maximize my blog exposure and help build my internet business, which was my original goal when I began blogging. As I browse other people's blogs and observe how they create their own communities, I see us engaging in the same kind of alliance development as our Stone Age / Iron Age / Bronze Age ancestors, although to my knowledge the Starbucks caves didn't offer WiFi.

I explore other blogs like eMoms at Home, 5Minutes for Mom and Mommy Haven and see a tapestry of connections whereby almost anybody can link to almost anybody else about almost anything, and I see the huge disparity between what they're building and what so many vanity bloggers do. The difference between community blogging and individual blogging is like the difference between participating in a book discussion group and standing on a street corner declaiming about your favorite book to anyone who happens by; in the first scenario you're engaged in a conversation with people whose interests resemble your own, while in the second you're throwing your thoughts out there in the hope that someone might be interested. It's an astonishingly potent tool, and those who harness it can be seen as having attained super powers.

And really, haven't we all at one time or another harbored secret fantasies of being super heroes?

Why Ever Would You Suggest I Get Off The Couch?

Where do you suppose she gets the black rubbery stuff she uses to upholster her little snout?

For Sale: New Red Kids Tae Kwon Doe Uniform Result of a Hissy Fit

For Sale: one brand new Tae Kwon Doe (or maybe Karate -- I have no idea) uniform, never worn, even though I spent hours sewing on a bunch of cockamamie patches by hand in an attempt to inspire a reluctant seven-year-old to continue taking classes long after she'd lost interest. I made her start martial arts partly because her brother had been getting really good at it and I thought it was a great opportunity to be able to drive them to the same place for the same class instead of dropping him off someplace and then dropping her off someplace else and then having to retrace my steps to pick them both up. I also anticipated the relief of not having to color with her or listen to her complain about being bored while he took a class. Besides, after she was expelled from camp for fighting I had to emphasize to her the need to solve disputes without shoving, and in Tae Kwon Doe they're not allowed to touch each other.

Sounds perfect, right?

At first she refused to yell with the rest of the class; she even got in trouble for it a couple times. That “hiii-yaaah!!” is really crucial in Tae Kwon Doe because – well, I have no idea why, but I know she had to sit in the corner a couple times because she refused to do it. I guess all my harping on using her “inside voice” had really sunk in.

After learning to scream on command she poked along for about a year, moving up through the early belts at a leisurely pace and lamenting the lack of any fun girls in the class. Meanwhile, big brother was sailing up the ranks at lightning speed, hurtling toward the black belt and taking classes for which she wasn’t yet qualified, so here I was again driving to two sets of classes but at least this time they were at the same place.

In an attempt to inspire her to put in more effort into moving up to big brother’s level, I promoted her from the white uniform to the red one. Most parents bestow the uniforms and afterwards attach the patches in their own good time, but I spent hours sewing on all the patches, stabbing myself repeatedly and shifting my reading glasses up and down and up and down. When I gave her the uniform she refused to wear it because the pants were too long, and before I could get them hemmed she decided to quit Tae Kwon Doe. So the uniform has been sitting crumpled up in a bag, along with the pink sparring helmet and gloves, which I’m also selling.

Last week we bought ballet slippers. At least it wasn’t a grand piano.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Personalized photo calendars, mugs, handbags, jewelry, ornaments and porcelain plates make great gifts for Christmas, Hanukkah, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, birthday, anniversary, new baby and graduates.

Hi Linda!

Nothing else. Just Hi.

Grateful to Michael Vick

Before anyone jumps on me, let me explain. People (I'm using this term loosely here) like Michael Vick do us all a favor by garnering publicity for issues that mostly fly under the radar. Sure, everyone's heard about the tragedy of paralysis, but Christoper Reeve put a noble (and handsome) face to the issue. We've all heard about the traumas of Parkinson's, but Michael J. Fox gives the disease a vivid, personal quality. Similarly, the Humane Society is a well-known fixture in every state, but because of Michael Vick (ick!) they've gotten more free publicity than they ever could afford to buy.

Two weeks ago a Missouri woman sold on Ebay a handful of Vick cards chewed up and slobbered on by her dogs; she raised $7400 for the Humane Society. This week the U.S. Humane Society is auctioning a slip of paper purported to be Vick's jotted notes for his gee-I'm-sorry-but-hey-I've-found-salvation speech; in an ironic stroke of luck, the head of the Humane Society's Video Services section found the crumpled note on the podium while retrieving his microphone after the press conference.

I feel terrible for those poor dogs (apparently Vick couldn't have cared less about them, as he failed to mention the animals in his speech), but the cynic in me is grateful to a man who is more vicious than any of those pit bulls ever was, for bringing this horrifying practice to the public eye. Just like Barry Bonds, Michael Vick has given millions of people something to care about that's much more meaningful than American Idol, and an avenue to teaching our kids about the right and wrong things to do.