Oral Hygiene Queen

A Silver Lining to the Looming Kardashian Cloud

2012-01-03T11:45:00.001-08:00

Remember when I complained about how painful it is to witness the outsized and vapid fame of my former student Kim Kardashian? And how I wished ardently that she would just go away, somewhere out of the public eye? Well, she has only gotten more famous. There was that little wedding thing. Of course, she and her sisters are constantly on the covers of magazines from tabloid to popular-but-not-quite-trashy magazines. But I don't actually pick those up. What's really awful is that she's penetrated the world of media I actually consume. I've read more than one reference to her in the New Yorker and heard her discussed on The Daily Show, among other (many many other) references in the print and visual media locations I frequent in my relatively small media world. The other day my Old Man and I went to see Young Adult and scenes from one of the Kardashian reality shows were used prominently to establish the patheticness of the main character's daily life.

The more famous she gets, the more I seem to feel the need to admit that she was once my student, a fact that I almost never mentioned in the relatively modest days of her early "fame."

This morning in my new Poetry class, as I was passing out notecards for students to fill with relevant bits of personal information, I joked that I would read them carefully and cherish them always. "Or sell them on ebay, in the event that you become famous," I added. But then I had to admit that it was an unlikely scenario, given that I still hadn't figured out how to cash in on the seventh-grade photograph of Kim Kardashian I have in my possession.

"So if anyone knows someone who might want to pay big bucks for a picture of Kim Kardashian when she was in seventh grade, give me their contact information," I announced, mostly but not entirely joking.

"I'll give you fifty cents," one of my students offered.

"Hey, I'm also in the picture," I added.

"Okay, eight-five cents," he said.

And then one of my new students, who has clearly not heard my ambivalent claim to near-fame, asked, a bit confused, "Ms. Queen, did you go to junior high with Kim Kardashian?"

Aww. So sweet that my student thinks I might be anywhere near the same age as Kim Kardashian. Granted, I was a young teacher when I had her in class, but not that young.

So, a tiny silver lining. Ever so tiny. Hardly worth it at all.

But if I could sell that school picture, on the other hand....

Generic Halloween Sexiness

2011-11-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

Checking out PostSecret a couple days late, I saw this Halloween secret, which really resonated with me this year. I am beyond tired of generic "sexy" Halloween costumes for women.

Those "sexy girl" Halloween costumes have been around for awhile. Long enough that they played a role in the 2004 movie Mean Girls, where the likable Cady becomes more likable when she wears a freaky and very unsexy monster bride costume to a party where every other girl there is dressed as a sexy leprechaun, a sexy vampire, a sexy kitty cat, etc.

They've been around for awhile, but this year, for some reason, I have reached my limit with them. Living in a college town, it seems like about three quarters of undergrad women feel the need to wear a "sexy" Halloween costume. And I put "sexy" in scare quotes, because they're so formulaic that they're not actually sexy. This year we even had a couple at the high school where I teach. A sexy sailor and a sexy musketeer. Really? A sexy musketeer?

This is the formula: take a costume, any costume, and make its accessories small, cute, and preferably glittery. Then turn the core clothing that makes up the costume into a tight dress with a very short skirt and cleavage. And presto! You have a "sexy" Halloween costume.

I have nothing against people looking sexy on Halloween. I myself have rocked a few pretty hot costumes over the years. But this prefabricated, totally predictable, sexiness-as-defined-by-short-skirts-and-cleavage version of sexiness is so un-Halloween. Halloween is about the strange, the surprising, the scary, the unheimlich. It's not about getting to be a barbie doll for a day. Or getting to be more of a barbie doll than usual for a day.

Is there anything redeeming about these costumes? I just find them boring, and I think they take the fun out of Halloween, turning it into some kind of generic male fantasy. What do you think?

Wear What You Like

2011-09-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

For the last few months, I've been chewing on the question of whether there's an "appropriate" way to dress once you hit your 40s, your 50s, etc. Or more accurately, if there's an appropriate way for women to dress, since the "what to wear now that I'm X age" question seems much more live for women for a variety of reasons (women being under more scrutiny, women having a lot more sartorial options in general, women having to deal with all manner of aging-related cultural bullshit that men seem much more free from).

Thus far, I've pretty much felt like everyone should wear what they want to wear and fuck the rest of the world if they don't like it. The tarted-up rebel gang who went by the name Sluts Against Rape was one of my favorite aspects of the annual Take Back the Night March back in grad school, and I've always been annoyed when people tsk tsk at hem length or cleavage depth. When bare midriffs became status quo among teenage girls back in the aughts, I was rather pleased to see girls with round bellies letting their round bellies hang out of their shirts. And I don't recall ever looking at a middle-aged woman when I was in my twenties or thirties and thinking Hm. That's a bit young for her.

But in the last few months, partly as a result of conversations I've had with various friends, thought-provoking questions brought up over at DoctorMama, and random overheard comments, and partly because I'm now in my 40s and finding my self questioning whether I can still pull off spaghetti straps, I've begun contemplating whether there are sartorial lines that can't in good taste be crossed by women of a certain age.

And I've pretty much decided that no, there are not. Women of whatever age should wear whatever the hell they want, and if anyone doesn't like it they can piss up a rope.

I have, however, come up with a few guidelines, which I've developed mostly for myself as I continue on toward a middle-age I intend to make as funky, fun, and sexy as I can while still meeting my basic responsibilities as a mother, teacher, and citizen, but which I will also share with you:

* Don't worry about what other people think of what you're wearing. If you love it, go for it. If someone says something snarky about your look behind your back, there's probably more going on than their disapproval at your choice of clothes. (I've noticed that the women I'm close to, who are mostly not "what not to wear" types, only really lay into another woman's choice of clothing when they dislike her or have some other issue with her. I have also found that I am quite capable of sneering at another woman's look, despite my generally laissez faire attitude toward other people's clothes, if I think she's an asshole.)

* Wear what you're comfortable in. If you feel good in it, chances are you'll look good in it. If it's physically uncomfortable, forget about it. And if it exposes a feature that you don't really like to have exposed, don't wear it, even if you find it cute or sexy in theory.

* If you end up wearing something you're not actually comfortable in, try to fake it 'til you can change. I always feel sad for actresses who go on talk shows wearing really short skirts or low-cut tops then spend the entire interview pulling at their hems or fiddling with their necklines. If your skirt feels too short, keep your hands off it and attempt to relax and pull it off for today or tonight. Then get rid of that skirt so you don't end up going out again in something you're not actually comfortable in. (Note: the "rock it for tonight" strategy does not work with high heels. Nothing looks less sexy than someone hobbling down the street or wobbling across the room. I personally don't like to wear shoes that I couldn't run in if I suddenly had to, but if you love heels, just make sure you can actually walk in them.)

* Create your own individual style. One thing I've noticed since I've been contemplating this age-and-clothes issue is that women who wear clothes that may seem in some superficial way to be "too young" for them (because they're too form-fitting, too skin-revealing, too flouncy, too cute, whatever) seem to pull it off when it's part of a look that seems distinctive. Whereas women who look like they nabbed their entire outfit off a mannequin at American Eagle Outfitters tend to look like they're trying to look younger than they are, rather than just wearing clothes they like and feel good in. Note: I'm not saying don't shop at American Eagle Outfitters or the Limited or the juniors section at whatever department store you frequent. But when you do, go in there with your own wordly, nuanced sense of style that you've been developing over the years, and pick individual items that can work with your style. One way to say this is that younger women have the luxury of being cookie-cutter cute if they want to. It works for them (if they're willing to settle for pretty boring, or boring pretty), whereas older women don't so much have that luxury. But another way to say it is that those of us who were born before 1976 have more aesthetic experience and a deeper sense of lived fashion history to draw on. Let's not just settle for whatever crap the mall is offering up this year.

That's what I'm thinking right now. What do you think?

Whither August?

2011-09-02T09:24:00.001-07:00

Gentle Readers,

Damn. I can't believe I let all of August go by without posting. As I know I've said here before, for every post that makes it up, there are at least two or three substantive and ten potentially amusing but relatively lightweight posts that take form in my head but never make it to my qwerty little fingertips.

I had one going in my brain for awhile there that revolved around facebook statuses, and why there aren't more really interesting ones. I think it's largely because we all have way too many "friends" and thus much too wide an audience, which tends to put a damper on actually saying what's on your mind much of the time. And that makes the truly funny or actually interesting facebook status all the more enjoyable, when people manage it. Everyone, I think, has at least a few friends that are masters at the art of the hilarious, striking, and/or keenly observant facebook status update, and it's worth contemplating what makes a great status update great.

There was another one that would've been entitled "Vasectomies are Sexy." I won't say any more about that one, because I may actually write it one day, and I don't want to blow my wad (so to speak) right now.

The one that's currently on my mind is "Are Adult Boring?" Again, I won't say more because that's one I actually want to write. I'm chewing on it, and it may show up before too long. Tune in tomorrow (in other words, in a week or two) to see what develops.

xo,
e.

From Real Siblings to Imagined Grandchildren

2011-07-30T22:23:00.001-07:00

In the midst of our fifteen-hour drive from New Jersey back to the midwest a couple weeks ago, I heard the following conversation quietly conducted in the back seat between Roo and O.:

Roo: O., you are a nice brother. I love you so, so, so much.
O.: Yeah, Roo. You're a nice sister. I love you so much, too.

My heart swelled with almost unbearable joy at hearing this. And though I grabbed my planner to write it down, I didn't say a word, not wanting to kill the moment by letting them know I'd heard them. Nothing makes me so happy as my kids being sweet to each other. When Roo willingly shares a treat she's gotten from a neighbor with her brother. When O. patiently teaches her how to play a game. These ordinary scenes are what I hoped for when we decided to have a second kid. And the rare but intensely adorable moments when they spontaneously express their love for each other with words go far beyond anything I ever imagined.

Lest you think my kids' relationship is all roses and rainbows, however, the very next day Roo accidentally broke the lego front-end loader that O. had recently put together, and he berated her 'til she cried. Then he called her a "crybaby" in a very mean voice, which is the worst thing he can do to her. I held her as she sobbed inconsolably for ten full minutes, my own heart heavy with sadness at her little heart breaking. It seems that no one can hurt her feelings like her brother, and it kills me when he yields that power against her.

I feel very lucky that O. and Roo get along well most of the time. Despite their more than four-year age difference, they play together a lot, and often go for hours busily working on some pretend scenario they've cooked up together. Right now, it's mostly positive, and the squabbling and hurt feelings are only occasional. But I wonder how their sibling relationship will change as they grow older. I've already seen the conflict increase bit by bit as Roo gets older and her will gets stronger, which makes the old pattern of O. as the planner and leader and Roo as the follower less and less the default mode. I have a feeling that they'll always retain that basic connection they've had since she was a baby, though, even if there are also more rough spots and moody moments. I hope I'm right.

Right now, O. and his dad are gone with my stepdad on a five-day river rafting trip in Idaho, while Roo and I hang with my mom. It's been interesting to see Roo's reaction to being the only kid. Last year, when they went on a similar trip, she was a little droopy and complained a lot of missing O. This year, although I can tell she misses having him to play with, she's pretty damned perky. She's really soaking up all the attention from me and my mom, chattering constantly and excitedly making plans for the three of us.

She's also been taking over a role that O. usually plays: bedtime talker and question-asker. Usually, when I say goodnight to O. and Roo, it's O. who takes the opportunity to get in five minutes of eight-year-old philosophizing or hypothetical-question-asking, while Roo just listens. Since O. has been gone, Roo has been asking me some tricky questions in that mellow pre-sleep time together.

Last night she hit me with this one: "Mama, how do women get babies?" I gave her a simplified answer that involved more heteronormativity and less complexity than I'd usually be satisfied with (but she is three, so it's not an easy question to field). Somewhere in there I mentioned finding a man who you would want to be your baby's daddy. After I was done, she told me "I don't want to find a daddy." Okay, I said. There are ways for women to have babies without finding a man. But I noted that it is nice to have someone to help you take care of the baby. Roo thought for a moment, then said "Maybe you could help me take care of my baby."

Whoa. This was getting deep. And, of course, I was hoping she’d be asleep by now.

I have only recently begun even contemplating the reality that some day my children might themselves have children. At this point, I'm not at all invested in the idea of grandchildren. I just want to get the kids raised up without losing too many of my marbles. But I guess if Roo decides somewhere down the line to have a baby on her own, I would be willing to help out.

So we made a deal: I will help her with her baby if she promises to wait to have a baby until she's at least twenty. She balked at this. Twenty seems a long time away for her. But I assured her that she'll want to wait that long, and probably longer. ("Remember, honey, I was thirty-four when I had my first baby," I said. "That's fourteen years older than twenty." After we established that most people live well past thirty-four, this seemed to give her some reassurance that it's not extreme to wait 'til you've got a couple of decades under your belt to begin reproducing.)

When I told my mom about this conversation, she wondered that I didn't establish an older minimum age. I don't know why I said twenty. It was spontaneous, of course. I guess I could have said "'til you finish college." But I'm not sure I regret picking a slightly earlier minimum age than I would truly prefer. Because I want to be realistic, and I also want to remain aware that the way I did things is not the only way or necessarily the best way. It's one way that works. There are other ways. Maybe I picked twenty because my own mom was just shy of twenty when she had me, and I've never regretted that timing.

In any case, now I've made the deal. Roo just better keep her end of it.

Creeping Out with the Kardashians

2011-07-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

Please, Kim Kardashian, please go away.

I know I'm not alone in wishing that Kim K. would go back into relative obscurity and take her whole heavily-made-up, blinged out, attention craving family with her. But I have a special reason that intensifies my desire to see Kim Kardashian's star wane.

I was Kim Kardashian's teacher.

It's true. At my very first teaching job at Our Lady of Perpetual Privilege in Los Angeles, I taught Kim seventh grade English. I also taught her now-famous sister Kourtney eighth-grade English. And there's something really unsettling about having my former students become so famous. And for so little.

I think it would help if Kim were talented in some way. I'm not a fan of Christina Aguillera, but if I she were my former student, I think I could stomach her fame. She obviously has an amazing voice and knows how to use it. And she can dance. She has earned the spotlight. I'm still not sure why Kim became famous in the first place. And it's my understanding that Kourtney is famous because she's Kim's sister, so... It's all very confusing to me.

In some ways, Kourtney's fame bums me out even more than Kim's. Kim, as a seventh grader, was snotty, perpetually bored, and not especially bright. Kourtney was actually a sweetheart. She was smart and engaged in school. She was a normal, likable kid. (Kim was a pretty normal kid, too. Just not likable.) I'm not sure what I would have imagined Kim doing as an adult, but I wouldn't have guessed it would be anything especially impressive or important. Kourtney, on the other hand, could have done something meaningful with her life.

Actually, from the little I've seen of Kim on the four minutes or so I've caught of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, she's gotten a lot nicer since she was in seventh grade. So that's good to see. Either she outgrew her snotty, aggressively blasé attitude or she figured out that snottiness is unattractive and learned how to hide it, at least while the cameras are rolling (which, when you're a reality TV star is more or less always, I guess).

It seems to me that Kim Kardashian's moment in the sun has been a long, long, long one. When she first started getting television and magazine attention, I was icked out, but I figured it couldn't last long. But she just keeps getting more and more famous, it seems. I can't go to the gym without seeing her face staring out at me from at least two magazines on the rack near the door. Needless to say, the check-out line at any grocery or drug store is even more Kardashian-rich. Just yesterday, I was enjoying Tina Fey's hilarious and smart new book, Bossypants, and Fey made a reference to KK. That was perhaps the last straw for me. As Dr. Seuss might say, Kim K. Kardashian, will you PLEASE GO NOW?

It's bound to end some time, the media reign of the Kardashian clan. I'm sure at one time some former teacher of Paris Hilton winced daily at the sight of her former pupil's media antics (Paris Hilton must've gone to school at some point, right?) and wished Paris would just go the hell away. And it happened, more or less. I just hope it happens to my former student soon. I wish her the best, really. But I want her career (if you can call it that) to chill out just enough that I don't have to look at her famous ass on a weekly basis.

'Til such time, if you have any idea where one might be able to sell the school portrait of a really famous, not very talented Armenian bombshell, drop me an email at oralhygienequeen@gmail.com. Thx!

It's (Almost) Always a Good Time to Floss

2011-06-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

I support flossing. I advocate flossing. I floss daily, and encourage my loved ones to do the same. Occasionally, I even floss in public. (Oh so discreetly, of course. Or not. But whatever.)

I recently witnessed a public display of flossing, however, that I disapproved of. Strongly. Flossing behind the wheel. DWF - Driving While Flossing. No!

A few days ago, on the first leg of my family's annual trip out to the Jersey Shore to spend three weeks or so with my beloved in-laws, we were sailing down Interstate 70, my Old Man in the driver's seat and me riding shotgun, kids throwing stuffed animals back and forth in the back seat, when I turned to my right and witnessed this atrocity: A dude flossing his teeth while driving. As anyone who cares about oral hygiene and has ever had a really bad paper cut on one index finger can tell you, you need two hands to floss. This guy was flossing, both hands off the wheel and busily engaged in what would otherwise have been a wholesome exercise in healthy teeth and gum care. I was appalled.

I beg you, good people: when you're behind the wheel and feel the need to floss your teeth, pull over. The same goes for texting, downloading ring tones, applying make-up, or eating tacos. All you should be doing while you're driving is concentrating on the road and conducting your one-ton vehicle down the highways and byways that other motorists are also using. Our lives are in your hands, dude.

Let me say it again: our lives are in your hands.

Things I Do that I'd Like to Do More

2011-06-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

When I think about my overfull life, I sometimes try to think of things I could cut out of it, to create more breathing space, more time to do the things I really care about. I can never come up with anything to cut. Everything "optional" in my life seems essential in some small but important way to my wholeness (playing guitar, reading and writing poetry, writing in my journal and in this blog, and doing yoga are examples that spring to mind). When I think about giving these little things up, I fear I would stop being me, or at least being me as fully as I need to be in order to be happy. As much as I love my job, I would cut that out (or at least cut it back significantly - teach half as many classes as I currently do, say). But of course, I can't do that. I'm actually the primary breadwinner here at Casa Oral Hygiene (the Old Man teaches half-time, wrangles children and cooks a lot of the time, and fits as much freelance editing as he can in the remaining spaces), and we need my whole salary to pay the bills. I don't want to spend less time with my family. In fact, I'd like to spend more. But I'd also like to spend more time alone.

Actually, time alone is probably the one thing I have really and truly given up in my quest to fit everything in. And that is sad. But as important as it is to me, it's the hardest thing to create and the easiest thing to let slide. In order to be alone, I have to make space and time, space and time with no immediate goal or end product. That means enlisting the help of my Old Man, and luckily he is very supportive whenever I do say I need time alone. But it's very abstract, this business of spending time alone. It didn't used to be. It used to happen all the time, naturally. And then we had O., and it seemed like I rarely got to be alone. But as he got older, it became more and more possible to make that time. And then we started thinking seriously about another baby. And I knew, as I grappled with that huge, difficult decision, that one thing I'd probably be giving up, for all intents and purposes, was time spent alone.

And I was so right. Now I'm the mother of two small children and it seems like I'm never alone. Of course, I'm alone sometimes. I drive places alone. I go to the gym and work out without interacting much with anyone. I grade papers alone in the office or at the kitchen table after the kids are in bed. I walk to or from school by myself. But none of those count. Time in the car is not time for reflection or time to let my mind wander, and lord knows time at the gym isn't. Time out walking by myself could be, but not when I'm trucking as fast as I can to make it to work on time, or trucking home as fast as I can so I can pick Roo up from daycare on time or get O. to soccer practice. The one time I'm really alone anymore on a semi-consistent basis is when I go to the library or shut myself in my office to write poetry. Then, I'm by myself, I can let my mind wander, and reflection is part of the process. But that time is so limited anymore, and I sometimes feel like the need to sit and just think is so great a prerequisite for actually trying to begin a poem that I spend an inordinate chunk of writing time just sitting and staring off into space.

It used to be that I'd get an evening alone sometimes when my Old Man was at band practice. But then I joined his band. And I love that - it's fun, fulfilling, and challenging, and it gives me something I'd really missed not playing music with other people for so long. But it's something added to my life. And it eclipses alone time that I didn't even think that much about 'til it was gone. I could certainly just not hang out with my man some evenings when we're both home, and occasionally I do that in order to work on a poem or submit poems to journals. But I like spending time with him, and I feel like I don't get enough of that either, so I don't always think of that as something I want.

At this very moment I'm stealing a few minutes alone to write this post, and I can hear my Old Man and my beloved kids downstairs. And I need to go. It's nearly time to get the kids ready for bed. Its funny: I began this post intending to talk about sleep as one thing I prioritize in my life, but would still like to prioritize a lot more (something I'm especially aware of now that it's summer break and I'm actually getting eight hours of sleep most nights). But I realize that of all the things I value and cling tightly to in my life, one of the ones that is most crucial to me is the one I've really let slide. And it's the easiest to let slide because when it's gone, it becomes nearly invisible. But I sometimes think I can't let it slide much longer and hold on to the relative degree of sanity I currently enjoy.

Thankfully, summer is here and time is more free, so I guess it's time to start working time alone back into my life. Maybe by the time school starts I'll be able to remember how important it is to make it happen, whatever else is also going on.

You Can Have It All, Part II

2011-04-24T19:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I can't have it all, or rather can't do it all. I know. But I try to do as much of it as I can. And, as I mentioned in my first post, that was seeming fairly manageable. And then suddenly it began to seem less manageable.

What happened?

Well, first of all, this guy I'm really into talked me into joining his band.

It's sort of a long story, but my Old Man has been playing in various permutations of nascent rock bands for the past two years or so, having fun playing music again but frustrated that no particular lineup seemed to be gelling. Flakey, drunk drummers and flakey, overcommitted bass players seemed to plague him. But he's been playing with a reliable drummer for awhile, and a couple months ago he began encouraging to come down to the basement and play bass with them. Finally I found a little "extra" time to do it. So now I'm in a band again. A very low-key, low-pressure band, to be sure. But a band takes a certain amount of time, even a low-key one. It also takes energy, and though my main issue is the scarcity of time, I'm still a teacher and mother of two in my early forties: energy is also a precious commodity in my personal economy.

The other thing that happened is that my Old Man and I started cleaning our own house again.

For a bit over three years, we've been having a paid cleaning crew come in and clean our whole house once a month. This was begun at my insistence, inspired by the time issue. We never seemed to have time to clean the house adequately. And having someone else do it once a month was really nice in some ways. I loved the feeling of the whole house being clean all at once, a feat we could never seem to accomplish when we were doing it all ourselves. It was also great to just have it done without having to put in the time. But there were problems. The first cleaning crew we tried kept canceling. We'd spend two harried hours tidying the night before and morning of a house-cleaning day, only to come home to a dirty house that afternoon and an apologetic message on the answering machine. There were always good reasons. Car accidents. Sick children. Surgeries. Asthma and high pollen counts. I don't doubt a single one of the excuses given for any of these missed cleaning days. But the fact was that these cleaners seemed to be coming maybe one in three times they were supposed to come. And straightening up our whole house for no reason again and again was getting old (as was coming home from a tiring day and finding that I had to sweep and mop all the floors like now, before the kids turned them back into a zone of toy chaos).

So we tried another service. They were more expensive, but they came every time. And that was great. For awhile. Then they started missing things. They didn't mop the floor. (Ugh. So now I'm coming home from work and mopping the floor again.) And when I called to tell the owner of the service this, she apologized and took twenty bucks off our bill. But then it happened again. And then we came home to find a damp rag sitting on top of my Old Man's laptop. (WTF?!?, in the parlance of our times.) And then they not only didn't mop the floor, but failed to sweep or vacuum significant areas of the floor (like, behind every single door). I am not a boss lady by nature, and I can only call and bitch about shoddy work so many times. My Old Man, who has never really liked the idea of strangers coming into our house when we're not home, nor of other people cleaning our toilets, suggested maybe we save ourselves the cash and the hassle and go back to doing it ourselves. And so we have.

And, actually, it's great. We clean our house more thoroughly than any service we've used would, and we can tidy and clean when it works for us, not on some preordained day that always seems to be the most hectic time. And I actually like cleaning my house. I'm such a grown-up. It's satisfying and theraputic, and I can blast my ipod and lose myself in the zen of scrubbing. But I don't have time! It's really hard to find a weekend that is not crazy packed with obligations, and/or grading, and/or enticements. And yet, of course, we make the time, just like we make time to have band practice or to record a new song. But it comes at a cost. And I think something else has to give.

I just haven't figured out what yet.

Interlude: tickle = torture

2011-04-10T20:25:00.001-07:00

I was hoping to return for another installment of my post series on too much to do and not enough time, but I'm too busy. (Ironic, non? C'est la guerre.) But I've got a word to say about tickling.

My Non-Fiction Writing students are keeping blogs this semester, and today one student's post was on tickling, how it's really no fun at all if you're truly ticklish. I couldn't agree more. I honestly think it's torture to tickle a kid for more than about one second. Seriously.

When I was a little kid I used to be subject to this torture of being tickled for long, agonizing minutes, and it was so horrible and such a chronic problem that I consciously worked on a way to get grownups to stop it. The maddening dilemma of tickling is that you want to say "No, you asshole! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" but all you can do is laugh, which seems to send a message along the lines of "Oh, what fun I'm having!" It makes the tickling so much worse, this way that your own body seems to be betraying you.

And so, as a very young child, I taught myself to convert the involuntary laughter my body produced when I was ticked to tears. There's a switch in there somewhere, and if you can trip it, you stop laughing and start crying. It was the only way I could get my uncle Joe to stop tickling me for torturous minutes at a time. I know he didn't mean to be cruel, but it was cruel. And he felt terrible the first two or three times I cried when he tickled me hard after I figured out how to cry while being tickled. But I didn't care; I was just so relieved to be able to stop the torture.

You Can Have It All, Part I

2011-03-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

I wrote in a recent post about my desire to figure out a way to "do it all." I know I'm not alone in this. Most of my friends have a similar feeling, as I think many creative, intelligent people with wide interests do. And when it comes right down to it, I know that I can't do it all and that it's probably a recipe for insanity to really try. But I'd like to do most of it.

I've been thinking on this perpetual desire I've had to do more than I can really do, something I've been struggling with since I was in college, but which has gotten a lot more pressing since I've become a mom. Lately I find I've made a certain kind of peace with the limited but still pretty massive amount of stuff I do manage to do. I have a very full life and play many roles, most of them reasonably well, and in my clearer moments I feel proud that I pull it all off in spite of the fact that I'm not naturally very organized or efficient (it's amazing how long it takes me to clean my desk, for example) and the fact that I insist on trying to get eight hours of sleep a night (and actually succeed at getting seven most nights).

In my clearer moments, I look at my life and think I'm really lucky to have a lot of different cool stuff going on and so much stimulation in my life, and I know that even if I'm not able to spend as much time doing any one of the dozen or so things I really care about, still, I manage to spend a decent amount of time doing most of them and some time doing all of them. And, hey, that's really not too shabby.

In my more befuddled moments I think Shit! I'm not doing (or I'm hardly doing) X, Y, and Z thing I want to do! And on top of it all, I think my life is on the verge of being totally out-of-control!

Those more befuddled moments tend to become the norm rather than the exception during periods of my life when I suddenly have something new and time-consuming added to the already precariously balanced load that is any given week of my life. Like last spring when I found myself heading up a contentious search committee at school and when O. joined a little league team that had two ninety-minute practices a week, plus games. That put me over the edge and I really felt like I was losing my mind for about six weeks there. And during that period, I had to give up many of the things I usually like to do at least a little bit each week; my guitar gathered dust, I wrote no poems and read few, I neglected my journal aside from the occasional five-minute pen-scrawled kvetch, I allowed my typically somewhat messy house to devolve into domestic disaster mode.

That was bad, and I felt very harried and harassed for an uncomfortably long stretch. In my normal life, I feel harried and harassed on a pretty regular basis, but usually for about five or ten minutes (in some scenario involving one or both of my children) or occasionally for an hour or two (in some scenario most likely connected to adults at my school). And I can handle those short periods.

But suddenly, just as I've begun to feel that I'm making peace with what I manage to fit into my life and what I can't really fit in to the extent I'd like to, I find myself taking on new stuff, or (perhaps more accurately) reincorporating stuff I'd either consciously chosen not to do or things that had fallen by the wayside. And a meditation on those things, their allure, and my inability to give anything else up in order to accommodate them will follow in a future installment of this post.

In the meantime, tell me your story of balance or lack thereof. (Then watch an adorable performance of the song to which my post title alludes.)

Hollywood? Meh.

2011-02-27T16:07:00.001-08:00

I usually get pretty excited about the Oscars. Even though it's always on Sunday night, the busiest school night of the week, I watch every year. Sometimes I watch with a stack of essays in my lap, grading during the commercials and technical categories while the TV is muted. This year, I'm just not that excited.

Part of it may be that I haven't seen many of the nominated films. My Old Man and I actually made it out to the theater to check out the creepy, dark, but well acted and beautifully twisted Black Swan. (I recommend it, especially if you've seen The Wrestler, also directed by Darren Aronofsky. I see them as companion pieces.) And we rented The Kids are Alright, which I found a compelling portrait of a family in transition and a basically good marriage in crisis. (I also appreciated that the fact that it was a lesbian marriage was simply part of the story, not the main point.) But as much as we wanted to see True Grit, The King's Speech, The Social Network, and 127 Hours, we just didn't make it to any of them, nor any of the other films that got the big Academy nod. We made a point of trying to get out to see more live theater and music performances this year, and I think all those tickets bought in advance to edifying cultural events ate up most of the evenings of babysitter-scored.

(We did take the kids out a few nights ago to see all the animated shorts nominated this year - Thanks, local art theater! Long may you thrive. - and I'm rooting for Madagascar, Travel Diary. O. and Roo are both hoping that the hilariously depressing Let's Pollute wins.)

More than the lack of having seen many of the movies that are going to be in the spotlight tonight, however, I think there's not room in my head and heart this week for thinking about movies, actors, and scripts. My mind has been straying toward Madison, Wisconsin in pretty much every free moment I've had for the past couple of weeks; keeping up with events there and trying to spread the word to my networks of friends and acquaintances about how to support the fight against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's anti-Union, anti-democratic budget bill has taken up all my extra thought and energy. I feel like the future of the American labor movement - and by extension, American democracy and the American middle class - is hanging in the balance. With all that's going on in Madison, I just can't get it up for Hollywood tonight.

They tell me LA's beautiful when it rains...

2011-02-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

But I don't believe them.

My title comes from a poignant and beautiful Neko Case song called "In California,"* which is in my head because I'm going to California in a couple days. Specifically, I'm going to Los Angeles, which is California. But it's also a world in itself.

I've been very excited about my trip to LA, mostly because I'm going to visit my dear friend Feral Mom, and I'm really looking forward to seeing her, Mr. Feral, and their adorable six-year-old twins. But, I have to admit, a smaller but still significant part of why I've been anticipating my LA visit is because after all the snow, ice, and ass-freezing cold we've endured here in the Midwest of late, I want some perfect weather.

Let's check the forecast, shall we? The weather in LA this weekend: around 60 degrees with a 70% chance of rain. The weather in Champaign-Urbana this weekend: around 50 degrees with a 20% chance of rain.

Not the marked contrast I was imagining.

I lived in LA for three years back in the early nineties, and your likely assumptions about the weather in that fabled city are correct. It's 70 degrees and sunny approximately 354 days out of the year. Why do two of the ten or so days that it's going to rain in LA this year have to fall on the two full days that I'm going to be there?

Now, in reality, LA is beautiful when it rains, because rain in LA provides a lovely contrast to the unrelenting sunshine that can, truth be told, get a little oppressive day after day after day. When I lived in LA, I always felt strangely elated when the skies turned gray and poured buckets.

But I don't live in LA now. I live in Central Illinois, where we've had this brutal winter, and I want my two days of balmy sunshine, damnit!

I will settle, however, for seeing my good friend, eating at some amazing restaurants, revisiting my favorite paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and having a latte at the first cafe where I was a regular. And I will still take a walk on Venice Beach, even if it ends up being a walk in the rain.

* Actually written by Lisa Marr, formerly of Cub, who (coincidentally) my and Feral Mom's band played with at the Metro in Chicago. But it's a Neko Case song in the sense that she's the only one who has recorded it (as far as I've been able to ascertain).

Five Things

2011-01-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

Last week I gave my Non-Fiction Writing students a prompt: write about five things you want to figure out in the next five years. After the writing time was up, I was giving students a chance to read their lists aloud, and one of my students asked what my five were. I'd been spending the writing period trying to catch up on paper work, so I hadn't thought about it. But I promised my students I would.

Five Things I Want to Figure Out in the Next Five Years

1. How to keep my desk clean. Make that how to keep my desks clean, since I have clutter disease on both my desks - the one at home and the one in my office at school. It takes me forever to clean my desk, and then when it's finally clean, it seems like it gets cluttered again within a week. Why? One word: paper. Cleaning up clothes, toys, dishes, tchotchkes - that's all relatively easy because they're different colors and shapes and sizes, and I can quickly decide what I use regularly and need to store, and what I don't use and need to get rid of. Provided that I have the time to keep on top of it, keeping that stuff in order is possible. Paper tends to be 8 1/2 by 11, and it tends to be white. And it tends to pile up and pile up, and I can never decide if it's worth recycling or if I need to keep it for future reference. And once I decide to keep it, I can never figure out where to file it, or if it's worth creating a new file folder just for this one piece of paper.

2. How to improvise on guitar. I started playing guitar when I was twenty, so I never had all those hours of noodling around that all my guy friends who began playing when they were adolescents seem to have had. (For some reason all the guys I know who play guitar started when they were fourteen, or younger. All the women I know who play started when they were twenty or older. Pre-teen and teenage girls, if you want to play guitar and haven't started yet, get on it!)

3. How to do it all. I want to be able to do my job well and be a good mom. And I want to read novels that have nothing to do with school. And play my guitar. And exercise regularly. And spend time alone with my Old Man. And write poetry. And go out with friends. And keep my house tidy enough to promote my own sanity. (And clean my desks more often!) I want to spend more time with my kids, and I want to spend more time by myself. And, realistically, I need about 73 hours in a day to get all of this done. Especially since I want eight hours of sleep every night too, please.

4. How not to let crazy people take up my time and energy. One thing I've learned in my years of being an adult is that you can't avoid crazy people. They will show up in almost every area of your life at one point or another. You will have to work with at least one, and chances are you'll eventually have to work closely with one. They'll show up in your family, and if you get married, there's bound to be at least one in the family you marry into. My problem is that I can't just say "Wow, that person is crazy. I think I'll try to ignore him or her to the extent that it's possible." I always have to try to fix things. Thus, time and energy sucked into the gaping maw of insanity. And that makes it harder to figure out how to do all the stuff I want to do up in #3.

5. How to listen to my kids. Before I had kids, I always assumed I'd listen to my kids very intently, once I had kids. Now that I have kids - kids I love to pieces, whose perspective on things I truly care about - I occasionally find myself only half listening to them. Not because I don't care, but because I'm a very busy and distracted adult with a lot going on. And because, although my kids usually say funny, interesting, endearing, or amazing things, sometimes they go on and on in great detail about things that I'm actually not that interested in, and then it's a bit of a struggle to listen. Especially if I'm also trying simultaneously to figure out where I left my keys or what needs to go on the shopping list before my Old Man leaves for the store. But I know that as my children get older, listening will only get more challenging, because as children become more and more their own people, their parents sometimes have to struggle to hear what they're actually saying through the filter of what the parents want to hear (or are afraid to hear). And that, I think, must be when the listening thing gets really challenging.

I Do Not Love My Kindle... Yet

2011-01-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

My beloved aunt who tends toward excessively generous gifts got me a Kindle for Christmas. It never occurred to me that I might want a Kindle, but I do read a lot. I'm an English teacher for Christ's sake! So, fine. I'll own a Kindle.

Still, I was ambivalent. When I saw the commercial for the Kindle (or maybe the Nook... it was on mute) I watched attractive, thin people tossing their Kindles into their backpacks and bike baskets and purses - so convenient! - and thought "Yeah! Compact. Portable. Just like a book." It seemed unnecessary.

If I felt the Kindle might be superfluous, my Old Man was sure of it. His comment on learning about my aunt's gift? "Don't open it. It'll be worth more on eBay if the packaging is intact." And, yes, it's true that we did sell the digital picture frame she gave us on eBay a couple years back. But that gift was really ridiculous. A Kindle's not ridiculous. I'm just not sure it's me.

But it's a gift, so I'll try it. That was my attitude. I opened it. I set it up. I started browsing around for books. But I quickly realized that ebooks are only a few bucks cheaper than actual books. And I had a hard time coming up with a title of a book that I was willing to pay almost full price for without actually ending up with a physical book. I like books! And for those books I don't want to own, my local public library is just down the street.

Part of my problem is that I'm married to a fairly voracious reader. My Old Man reads four books for every one I read, and I'm continually trailing after him, picking up one of his recent reads that he's sold me on. This makes it really hard to think of a title I want to spend twelve bucks on that I couldn't get at the library for free or at my local used book store for way less than an ebook.

Does anyone out there own and love a Kindle? And why should I love mine?

Five Minutes' Worth of Kid Quotes

2010-12-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

Five minutes ago, overseeing Roo washing her hands, I admonished her, "Honey you don't need to use so much soap! That's wasting."

She looked up at me with stern brow furrowed. "Kids gotta do what they need to do!" she informed me emphatically.

Now I'm sitting at the dining room table as O. makes imaginary scenarios on the living room couch with his thirty-six (but who's counting?) silly bandz, and he calls in to me "Mom, come admire what I did!"

It's their world. We just live in it.

Where Are All Those Posts I Wrote?

2010-12-08T20:10:00.001-08:00

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a month. I could swear I've posted at least three times since this last "update on my pukey family" post. That's because I think so much about a post in my head, convinced I'll get fifteen minutes sometime soon to transpose it from my brain to the internets. But then that (apparently) does not happen. Ah, the posts that never were.

Hopefully, I will be posting in earnest soon. In the mean time, here's 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence for you, to still the craziness of this modern world:

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(That's my visual representation of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Now wasn't that lovely? And avant-garde?)

When It Rains...

2010-11-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

it either rains really really hard or for a long time.

Around here, it's been raining hard for a long time. Or, raining hard, then letting up for a few minutes, then raining some more.

It started with my Old Man getting the stomach flu on Halloween. And Halloween happening to be on a Sunday. Now I know why my Old Man is prone to saying "Damn, I hate Sundays." I sort of thought it was just a teacher thing. He hates Sundays like I hate Sundays - it's a school night, and we have to work to prepare for the week ahead. But the fact is that my Old Man does both the grocery shopping and 90-100% of the laundry on Sundays. And last Sunday, with my man laid up, I did the grocery shopping. (Do you know what it's like to do the grocery shopping for a family of four when the last time you did the grocery shopping was ten years ago, in the pre-kid days, approximately seven store-floorplan rearrangements ago? It's like running a 5K through a giant maze stoned out of your mind on benadryl.) And I did the laundry. OK, I did half the laundry. Poorly. And I got the kids ready for Halloween and took them trick-or-treating. Which was fun and the highlight of my day, but exhausting. Especially since Roo the Lion got tired after an hour and needed to be carried the remaining hour, carrying which involved a lot of putting down and picking up because of course she also wanted to keep trick-or-treating. And of course, we had to hustle to keep up with O., dressed up as Rodrick from Diary of a Wimpy Kid and booking ahead with a gang of neighborhood youth. Roo was an adorable lion, but that made all the picking up and putting down and carrying no less exhausting.

(Break for gratuitous Halloween picture.)

So, after the Halloween Sunday from Hell, I appreciated my dear Old Man in a whole new way, the poor nauseated fellow.

Then, just as my Old Man was getting back on his feet, O. came down with the stomach flu, reminding us that he has not yet learned to aim when he pukes. He only puked twice, but ended up hitting all of his bedding, as well as the futon cover and quilt from the living room. More laundry.

Then, Friday night, just as I started to get beyond the paranoia of interpreting every stomach twinge as my turn in the bed of nausea, I began to feel really wiped out. I went to bed at 9 PM, slept like a rock all night, and when I woke up breakfast smelled terrible and I didn't feel so hot. I'll spare you the rest of the details of my restful weekend.

But enough about my week. How are you?

Poop P.S.

2010-10-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let curious readers know the happy ending to the poop saga: Roo is fully potty trained, at long last. She poops in the appropriate place with little ceremony and no need for bizarre rituals involving submersion in warm water. She likes to announce her success loudly, usually characterizing her output as either a "big snake poop" or an "elephant poop," and she still gets a treat whenever she drops a deuce. But aside from that, it's just routine.

She did ask me today, "Why don't you and Daddy and O. get a treat when you poop?" I told her that when you get to a certain age, you just don't get a treat anymore for something so normal. Then I added, "At a certain point, pooping is its own reward." (I refrained from saying "My reward is that I get to be alone and unmolested for five whole minutes!")

"I still like to get a treat when I poop," she told me. Of course you do, little Roo. Of course you do.

The Poop Saga, Part II

2010-10-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

OK, for those of you just tuning in, you need to go back and read part I of the Poop Saga first.

So, we had threatened to withhold dessert unless Roo started pooping in the potty. (Please remember my disclaimer about the word poop - I hate this word! Which makes all of this that much harder. But it's a little to squalid to be constantly talking about your child "shitting" or "dumping" when you have to talk about it so damn much, as you do when you have a toddler. Especially one who refuses to get her shit where all human shit must eventually get.) But now we were ready to actually do it.

It's amazing how hard it is to imagine eating dessert while my barely-three-year-old daughter goes without. Note the subjunctive mood there. My Old Man and I have not actually inflicted this torture on her as of yet. The closest we've come is saying "Well, I guess no dessert tonight." But to actually sit and fill our faces with ice cream sundaes or poppyseed brioche while she looks on, crying inconsolably. No, we haven't had the heart to actually do it yet.

Now DoctorMama sagely comments that no dessert does not in any way approach child abuse, and that is true. But first of all, Roo is only two weeks past her third birthday. The whole "if you don't do this, an unwanted consequence will ensue at some later point" thing is beyond her. Plus, she's totally fucking adorable and the thought of her crying in anguish while watching me do the thing she wants to do more than anything in the world at that moment just makes me lose my appetite, even where chocolate Häagen-Dazs is concerned.

Basically, I just can't say no to this face:

Or, at the very least, I have a really hard time saying "No ice cream for you. But ice cream for me and your dad and your brother!"

Okay, so this brings us to the other night, the night of the "breakthrough" poop. I frame that in air quotes because it was sort of a breakthrough poop for Roo, but more a poop midwifed with much patience and work on my part. So who knows if it is truly the dawn of a new day here at Casa Oral Hygiene.

Okay, the "breakthrough" night. Basically, the Old Man and I had decided Yes, this is it. We will sit and eat dessert and Roo will have none, and this will inspire her to get it in the john where it belongs, and soon! So as dinner ended and we prepared to move on to dessert, Roo, who was well aware of our plan to have dessert without her, proclaimed that she had to poop. Okay, fine, I thought, Maybe she'll be moved to actually make this happen. So we went upstairs and she sat on her little red Baby Björn potty. And she sat. And sat. And it became clear to me that this was not going to happen. She wanted to poop. It had been three days - she undoubtedly had something to work with in there. But she had developed this thing about pooping, and now she really couldn't make it happen.

I've never been so tempted to give my three-year-old a strong cup of coffee.

But then I had a thought. Roo needed a bath. And it had gotten to the point where if she sat in a warm bath for a bit, a turd would emerge without fail. What if I put her in her bath and just waited for a sign, then whisked her out of the bath onto the little red potty? Here we see what a weak soul I truly am. While I should have been downstairs enjoying some dessert to the tune of childish wailing, I was upstairs cooking up a plan that risked yet another terrifying encounter with RMS Turdtanic.

I won't give you a detailed blow-by-blow of the next half hour, but suffice to say that I put Roo in her bath, with the red potty on the bath mat nearby, and we proceeded to do a little dance of in-the-bath, out-of-the-bath-and-on-the-potty, repeat, rinse, repeat. Finally, tired of the back and forth that was getting the floor more and more wet (and determined to avoid another poop-fishing incident), I just set the potty in the bathtub (the bathwater thankfully rising to a point below the potty's rim), and she sat on it while I washed her hair. And, finally, she pooped. And we clapped, and I flushed her turd down the toilet and wiped her ass and finished washing her, and we went downstairs. And we all had dessert.

And I couldn't decide whether I deserved to win some kind of award for parental patience and support, or whether I deserved to be committed.

The Poop Saga Continues

2010-09-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read me right. It's been another couple months since I first blogged the shit and piss storm that is our attempt to potty train our daughter, and things have not yet resolved.

Or maybe they have. We had a breakthrough this evening. But I'll get to that.

Okay, so there have been steps in the right direction. We put Roo back in pull-ups and after a couple of weeks of a carefully calibrated combination of a. pretending we didn't care where the hell she peed, and b. giving her stickers on a chart that added up to gummy worms every time she did pee, she started keeping the pull-ups dry again. But she resolutely refused to poop in the potty. And we tried to pretend we didn't care. But that was hard. Too hard. Both my Old Man and I found ourselves encouraging and cajoling and remonstrating.

And pretty soon, it wasn't just that she wouldn't poop in the potty. Now she just wouldn't poop. At all. She just held it.

Now, no one can hold it forever. But she held it as long as she could. And finally it would come out at some time when she was relaxed and caught off her guard. Where and when is Roo relaxed and off her guard? Two places: when she's in a deep sleep and when she's in the middle of a warm bath.

Cue the bone-chilling theremin music.

Yes, it soon came to pass that my Old Man and I were alternately getting up in the middle of the fucking night to change poopy diapers. Or fishing turds out of our toddler's bath water.

Yes! I know it's horrible! It's a fucking nightmare.

So now we're afraid to bathe the poor girl, and we go to bed each night with the uneasy feeling that we'll be woken mid-REM to deal not just with a poopy diaper, but with the big-ass poopy diaper of a small child who's been holding it for three days.

Desperate measures were called for. We had tried coaxing. We had tried incentive programs: Dora undies, promises of double scooped ice cream cones. Now it was time to try tough love.

We finally told Roo that she would not get dessert 'til she pooped in the potty. That we would sit at the table and eat dessert without her until such time as she pooped in the damn potty. (I am not proud of this measure.) We knew she was capable! She'd done it for three weeks straight back in early summer! And we were desperate. Desperate.

Okay, I know I said I'd tell you about tonight's breakthrough, but I'm getting too worked up remembering the middle-of-the-night and middle-of-the-bath horrors. I need to go watch a Jane Austen movie for a bit, escape to a world where no one poops.

I'll be back to tell the rest soon.

Whippy Cinema

2010-09-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

We had family movie night last night here at Casa Oral Hygiene, watching the new film of the Wimpy Kid diaries, which O. has giggled his way through this summer. Roo is still under her pronunciation misapprehension with regard to the title of those books, and so all day yesterday, excited at the prospect of movie night (and especially, I think at seeing a version of the stories her brother has talked so much about lately), she kept asking me, "Are we gonna watch Diarrhea of a Whippy Kid?"

I didn't think it was possible for that Roo-ism to sound more squalid, but somehow with the verb "watch" preceding it, it does in fact become ... more squalid. Not only is there a kid around here who has diarrhea of the "whippy" variety, but we're actually going to watch said diarrhea. (Then of course, I find myself wondering what exactly that would entail. It seems to suggest watching the whippy kid in the act of... Okay. I realize I'm taking this too far. I'll stop.)

The movie was funny, and I'd recommend it as great family fare.* But I thought the books were actually much funnier, and I wouldn't see the movie 'til you've read at least the first couple of books. (What do you expect? I'm an English teacher.)

* There's one scene that might be scary for little kids - a dark woods on Halloween with a local scary story attached. Roo was unfazed, but I think O. would've been freaked out at her age.

An Open Letter to Victoria's Secret

2010-08-17T15:23:00.001-07:00

Dear Victoria's Secret,

Please go back to making comfortable cotton bikini undies that cover a woman's butt cheeks.

Last summer when I came in for my yearly purchase of new cotton bikinis, I discovered - to my horror - that you had changed the edging along the leg holes and that they no longer covered my butt. Instead, they climbed bit by bit up into my crack as I walked.

Despite the fact that I hate your catalogue and your ads, and despite the fact that I'm uninterested in 99% of your merchandise, I am a loyal customer. For nearly twenty years - twenty years! - I counted on the quality of VS cotton bikinis to cover my butt cheeks and not crawl into my crack. Now, you've changed them and made them just like every other pair of cheap panties out there.

And so, for the past two years, I've been on a sisyphean search for a decent pair of underpants. I've tried numerous different boyshorts that look hot as hell but lack the elastic edge to keep them from crawling into my butt crack. I've confronted and been driven from racks of bikinis sporting silver and teal zebra stripes, proclaiming their affinity for happy hour, or cracking wise about a would-be seducer's chances with the wearer. I've attempted nylon-spandex blends and been reminded of why I began buying cotton undies in the first place. I've tried Hanes cotton briefs that are pretty damned comfortable and cover my ass, but that veer a little too close to the shape of granny panties and only seem to come in atrocious colors.

I want cute undies, but first and foremost I want comfortable undies that I don't have to pull out of my butt crack all day long. I'd rather buy fugly Hanes and be comfortable than buy your new and disimproved panties and be uncomfortable.

Please return to making panties that stay put (like the panties of roughly 1990 to 2008). I'll never buy another bra from you if you don't, because I really come in for the panties. (And I'm getting pretty tired of having your name on so many of my bra straps, anyway.)

Let me know if you return to your former glory, panty-wise.

Sincerely,
E.

Control

2010-08-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

Whoever said that potty training is easier with girls can kiss my ass.

(I'll bet it was the same person that said that your labor comes early with your second pregnancy. I believed that shit, watching my due date approach and fade into the distance, growing bigger and hotter every early September minute.)

At first, it seemed like things would be easier with Roo. When her brother O. was a toddler, he dutifully sat down and peed on the potty his first experimental try at 18 months, but after that wouldn't go near the thing again 'til he was fully three. Once he decided he wanted to go for the big boy undies, however, he never looked back. He never once had an accident. (Okay, never once 'til he got cocky at age five, held it too long, and peed his pants in the back yard.)

Roo started showing a sincere interest in the potty in April, at the tender age of two-and-a-half. By May, she was in pull-ups and peeing exclusively in the potty. (Let me pause here to say that I never used the word "potty" before I had kids, and I fully intend to scrub it from my vocabulary as soon as Roo is using the big toilet full-time. As the daughter of a man who used "potty" as both a verb and a noun well into his fifties, I must announce this resolution to anyone who will listen.) In June the big moment came: poop in the potty. We celebrated and moved her into undies. Everything was awesome. Girls are easier!, I thought to myself.

Not so fast.

After a few successful poops in the potty, the first red flag: Roo shit her undies. What the hell? I was at a loss. I had never experienced this with O., but I figured that accidents happen. I threw out the poopified undies and considered it a fluke. Then it happened again. And again. And again!

As truly horrifying as it is to clean up, you can't really yell at a little kid for shitting her pants, nor can you punish her. We just went back to pull-ups and figured the poop part would work itself out if we continued to encourage her. Which we did. We even let her wear undies once in awhile when we were reasonably sure a poop wasn't imminent.

Then, a couple weeks ago, she started peeing in her undies.

Shit! I mean piss. I mean shit and piss! Fuck.

Part of me was tempted to see this as a case of parental error. We just started her too early. Except we followed her cues. And she did great for weeks.

Now I see it as an issue of control. The potty drama of the past few weeks has been accompanied by bed time drama. Our little girl, who we successfully trained to be an easy and solid sleeper, has started playing crazy-making games at nap time and bed time. Since she was a baby, she's been a snap to put to bed. Lately, though, it's taking my Old Man and/or me 45 minutes to an hour, with lots of negotiating, to get her down to sleep. Hit me with whatever advice you will, but know that we have tried letting her cry it out. She's mobile and tenacious and talented. She will not be kept down.

So, I think it's a control thing. She doesn't have a whole lot of power in her little world, but she can control where she pees and poops, and (to an amazing extent) whether and when she sleeps.

She's back in pull-ups full time now, and we're just letting her use the potty when and if she wants. Hopefully if she gets the idea that we don't really care that much whether she uses it, she'll start to want to use it again.

As far as bed time goes, wish us luck. I just hope this toddler weather blows over before school starts in two weeks.

Frolicking with the Feral Family

2010-07-28T13:21:00.001-07:00

I have about a dozen small post ideas inchoately floating about in my head, and perhaps one or two of them will emerge as actual posts soon, but today the news is that Feral Mom is in town with her excellent family, and the Oral Hygiene family and the Feral family have already gotten together twice in the past 24 hours, and Feral and I have grown-up plans tonight, then more family hanging tomorrow. Woo! Tits! (As someone I love very dearly might say.)