I'm Old and Wise Now That I'm 40

This is the year I turn 40, and instead of guilting all my friends into making a big deal out of me (no, really, you're too sweet!) I'm going to give you all a present instead. A present of my Wisdom and Experience. You're welcome.

A Random Number of Things
 I Have Learned in the Past 40 Years 

If you need to get something from the kitchen in the middle of the night, an open microwave gives a nice non-blinding light.

Having Tres Leches cake for your birthday means low-guilt leftovers for breakfast the next day. It's cake soaked in milk. It's basically cereal.

You can get a baby or small child to swallow yucky medicine instead of spiting it out by putting one finger in the corner of their mouth and giving it a tug (so they look like Two-Face) while squirting the meds into their mouth. The kid can't get the right mouth shape for spitting.

If your life is boring, try injecting adventure into your everyday tasks. When cleaning, wear rubber gloves and imagine you're getting rid of incriminating evidence after a murder. When starting the dishwasher or washing machine, pretend you're on a starship. "Set course for the laundry nebula, maximum spin." BOOP BOOP Dial Turn START thrumming noise

It's easier to open a box of macaroni and cheese from the bottom. I'm sorry, did I just BLOW YOUR MIND?

You will never not freak out about your housekeeping when your mother comes to visit. Ironically, embracing this fact can lead to less freaking out. Try leaving something obvious messy or undone or objectionable out for her to focus on. This will deflect her attention from anything you actually feel bad about (which you have stuffed into a closet or basement).

The helpful person in a new workplace who takes you aside to warn you about someone else MIGHT be the person you should watch out for.

If Sunday night is the most depressing night of the week because you have to go back to work the next day, you should consider getting a new job. Don't wait two more years while you lose the will to live.

There is such a thing as too much bacon. Theoretically. Much like Absolute Zero, one can only approach Ultimate Bacon under carefully controlled circumstances.

Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, much like revenge, are best served cold. Stash them in the chest freezer and forget about them until you're looking for freezer space on a boiling August day. Finding cool Thin Mints might change your outlook.

If you rinse off spaghetti, a four-year-old will still be able to detect the foul taint of marinara.

Trash Cake Says I Love You

(FYI, I wrote this a couple of months ago. No need to wish me a happy birthday. You're off the hook.)

I try not to keep sweets in the house because I’m trying to pretend I’m healthy. As long as there aren’t any treats in the house the illusion works. But I also feel that cooking for my family is a major way for me to show my love for them. These two attitudes collide when it’s someone’s birthday.  I baked a two-layer chocolate cake from scratch this week as a present to the birthday girl (me).

Now, it didn’t turn out as jaw-droopingly amazing as I’d hoped, and it wasn’t very sweet or moist or decadent, but still, it was a freaking chocolate cake. It was a moist chocolate genoise with chocolate hazelnut praline sheets wrapped around the whipped ganache frosting, in point of fact. As you can imagine for something with such a long fancy name littered with French words, I worked pretty dang long and hard on that “cake”! It was disappointing, though. I think maybe the chocolate I used was too dark and therefore not sweet or moist enough.

You can always try it yourself. 

I kept the cake around for a couple days hoping that time would improve the flavors or magically create sweetness, so I could feel good about my will power in not eating it, but it just wasn’t tempting. So this morning I tipped it into the kitchen trash can. Out of sight, out of stomach and all that jazz. It no longer taunted me with its failed greatness, its deceptive appearance of deliciousness.
But not five minutes later my sweet five-year-old came to me with her big blue eyes. “Mommy, can I have some chocolate cake?”

Whoops.  She hadn’t asked for cake in three days. Why did she choose NOW? How could I tell her I just threw it all away! That seems really cruel, and one of my parenting goals is to not be cruel. That’s why I tossed the cake when I was alone in the kitchen. I’m not cruel enough to throw away perfectly (mostly) good cake right in front of my kids. If they ask me for a fish, I don’t give them a rock.  I might question why in the world they think they want fish, when it stinks up the whole house and then they don’t really eat it anyway, and hey, isn’t this a pretty little rock? But to tell her she can’t have cake because it’s in the bin seems wrong. So I chickened out.

“Uhhhmmm. Yeah. Go back to the front room and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Yay!” She lifts up the cover to the cake carrier. “Wait. Where’s the cake?”

“I’ll bring it to you.”

“But where is it!?” she insisted.

“Just go back to the other room like I said and I’ll bring you the very last piece!!”

As soon as she was out of sight, I lifted the lid to the trash can. The cake sat on top of some junk mail. I sliced off a piece and placed it decoratively on a plate with a curl of chocolate that had come to rest on an empty medicine bottle.

“Here you go, sweetie-pie! The last piece of cake.”

She took the plate. “Fanks, Mom!” And I felt like an awesome and resourceful mother.

Of course, two minutes later she brought the plate back to the kitchen with most of the cake still there.  I guess I was right to put it in the trash in the first place. It really didn’t turn out the way I wanted.

In Which I Complain About An Ancient Greek

I’m a bit envious of Sisyphus. Who’s Sisyphus, you ask? He’s the Greek king who was doomed by Zeus to forever push a huge boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again, over and over. Sisyphus has come to represent fruitless actions, monotonous, never-ending labor.

As a mom, I feel like I know a little something about monotony, work that is never done, and having my accomplishments undone. It's basically the job description. By the time the dishwasher is finished running there are dishes piling up in the sink. There's always a basket of laundry somewhere in the house (clean? dirty? clean but ruined?).  And I'm pretty sure there are more runny noses per capita than is normal. With luck, in another nine or ten years, I can start paying for college for people who are SURE they know way more than me.

I say, Sisyphus had a good thing going. Sure, working hard at something just to watch it come undone is annoying, but it’s not like Sisyphus was almost to the top when his daughter came up and repeatedly poked him in the leg, “Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad DAD DAD DADDADDAD!” and then when he was distracted the other child hit the boulder with a basketball and knocked it loose. “I told you kids not to bug me when I’m on the top third!!” Sisyphus would yell. “And how many times do I have to tell you, no basketballs near the boulder?!” Nobody actively interfered with his task, is what I’m saying. He pushed that boulder all day long with nobody to bother him.

After the third or the thirtieth or the three-hundredth time pushing that boulder up only to have it tumble back down, I figure Sisyphus must’ve given up and just enjoyed the process. The feeling of strength and power. The cleanness of pure physical exertion. There was probably plenty of time to think, to achieve a meditative state as he pushed and shoved. Lots of time to become one with himself. I mentioned the banging on the bathroom door, right?

And then, at the top-ish, when the boulder tumbles back down. . . Crashing through trees, bouncing off other rocks, getting airborne? That honestly sounds fun to watch. There’s a reason Angry Birds was so popular—it’s fun to wreck stuff, as long as you don’t have to clean up any of the destruction. If I’m in the middle of doing the dishes and suddenly the glasses tumble out of the cupboard, I’m going to have to clean it up. There are consequences. But the myth says nothing about Sisyphus having to replant sacred trees or pay for damaged Parthenons or appear in court to answer for his reckless boulder-pushing.

Maybe, you say, Sisyphus was far away from anyone who would care if the boulder smashed up a Parthenon or a Volvo. Nobody cared about his labors? Nobody cared that he was working super hard on getting that rock from the bottom to the top? Boo. Hoo. Every day I plan, shop for, and cook meals that are not only delicious but healthy, and what are the results? We sit down to the table and my kids inform me that,"Dinner is . . . not good. I want Ramen noodles." That right there is a boulder tumbling back down the hill.

Sisyphus didn’t have to convince the boulder to get itself up that hill. No, he just pushed it, no mind games, no reverse psychology, no making up silly games to fool it into thinking it was fun going up the hill.

"Uppsy-daisy! Let's jump SO high! Let's go see the zebra at the top of the hill! You LIKE zebras!"

Sisyphus only had one boulder. I’d like to see how he’d do with three! Then we’ll talk about insurmountable tasks. Just as he’s getting somewhere with one boulder, the other ones are banging into each other and making a ruckus. Deal with those two, and the first one is rolling into the Aegean. Turn around, and none of the three are where he left them. I doubt that boulder ever embarrassed Sisyphus at a playground or grocery store.

And another thing! The boulder didn’t talk back. “But I don’t WANNA go up the hill! You can’t make me! I hate you! You’re the worstest rock-pusher EVER!” I’ll bet it was really quiet on that hill, nothing but birds and wind and rustling leaves and the crunch of rock on gravel. Sigh. So quiet.

Yeah.

Sisyphus—More like Sissy-wuss. Mothers are the true mythic figures!

A Letter to the Future

Dear September Me,

Hi, it's me, writing to you from the end of the school year, way in the past, before the swimming and the dirt and the zoo trips and the romping through the woods and whatever awesome things you came up with to nurture those kids of ours when they weren't watching PBS Kids and ODing on Minecraft while whining and fighting and spilling food on everything.

School seems like a dream come true, fresh with promise and crisp new supplies. But I'm writing to you to remind you of the things you've probably forgotten in your excitement to have 2/3 of our kids off learning stuff with friends all day. I've put together a list of resolutions for you, so you can do better at this parenting thing than I have.

First of all, great job improving your penmanship over the summer! 

1. Stop putting things in Kimmy's lunches that you know she won't eat, but put in anyway to make yourself look good to the imaginary adults judging her lunches, as if you were competing in a reality show about motherhood. News flash, self! Uneaten food has no nutritive value! Give Kimmy healthy options, sure, but sometimes it's better to just get calories into that girl. Remember how you felt whenever she came home and said all she ate was a baby carrot? Because she "wasn't hungry"? I'll bet she would have eaten some chips, too.

2. You should probably check their folders every day. Or at least every other day. Then you won't have to sign any permission slips with a half-melted crayon in the car while dropping them off at school.

3. You should keep a pen and pad of paper in the car, just in case you forget until the very last possible moment that you needed to send one of those "Please excuse so-and-so's absence. She was puking her guts out" notes.

4. Seriously, aren't the girls old enough to walk home alone? It's like a five-minute walk. If you pick them up in the car they just climb in and start arguing and complaining. Let them walk their issues out before they get home.

5. Don't let them watch TV in the morning before school. They get way too distracted from all the things they need to do, like get dressed and eat. I know I was weak on this, but you are better than me. Be strong.

6. It worked really well to have the kids do their homework as soon as they got home from school. Originally I told them they could play for 30 minutes to relax, then it was homework time, but Kimmy learned she didn't like having her homework hanging over her head and would rush to do it as soon as she came in the door. Remind her of this when she starts complaining about homework.

7. Find a class or something fun for Roman to do now that his sisters are gone all day. Turn off the TV!

That's it, September Me. Make us look good for the cameras!

Love,
Lisa

April's Misadventure

Well. That was an eventful weekend. You may remember from my last post that April was jealous of Kimmy's overnight zoo outing. I think that now April has learned that sometimes boring is good!

Last Friday evening April took a little tumble off her bike.  She wobbled a little and then just tipped over. It was a nothing kind of fall. Except that when I came up to make sure she was ok, I could see that she definitely wasn't. She was holding her right arm which had a wonky bulge at the elbow.  I thought at the time that it was dislocated. I immediately went into crisis mode, trying to remain calm and reassuring to April when really I just wanted to FREAK OUT.  I ditched the bikes on the lawn and ran in the house with the kids.

And thus began some of the longest hours of my life. So much waiting in so many different rooms. We went to the Children's Hospital Urgent Care because it was close and because at the time I thought her elbow was 'only' dislocated. They did x-rays and then I helped April to the bathroom. She didn't want to go at first because she had to use her good arm to support her hurt one, but I assured her that if she held her arm, I would do everything else. "But I will do the peeing," she clarified. She's so precise, she cracks me up.

Later the doctor called me into the hallway to deliver the news that her humerus, the bone in her upper arm, was broken right at the elbow. Her lateral condyle, the one of the knobby bits that forms the elbow joint, had broken off and was out of place and rotated. She was most likely going to need surgery and needed to go downtown to the hospital. They put her arm in a splint and got her ready for transfer.

Poor April was in a lot of pain and even threw up a couple times. She still had her wits about her, though. At the hospital she told the first doctor about falling off her bike, but then refused to answer anyone else who walked in and asked "What happened to your arm?" She was very annoyed that she kept having to talk about it.  She was scared and crying a little. She told me that, "Sometimes when I get scared my nose gets a widdle bit nervous and it over-refloats out of one hole."

This picture breaks my heart. My poor little girl!

April was admitted to the hospital around 2 AM and got some pain medication before finally falling asleep around 3. At 7 AM the doctors started coming in again "Hi April! How did you hurt your arm?" and we waited and waited some more before going to pre-op, where we waited a good hour and a half before surgery.

The surgery took an hour and a half. An hour and a half in which I paced and ate my first food in 18 hours and tried not to think about how surgery is dangerous and sometimes people die in even simple surgeries. It was 90 minutes of being alone without my daughter to be brave for. My nose did some over-refloating.

I was so relieved when the surgeon came to tell me it was over and April was doing great. She had a couple of pins in her arm and was wearing a hard splint, a kind of temporary cast while her arm does the initial healing. We went back up to her room and took a nap before moving from sipping water to eating jello to snarfing down scrambled eggs and bacon.

She pronounced it "very jello-y" and said it tasted "like orange"

She was discharged around 6 on Saturday evening, and my heart was just about full to over-refloating with relief and gratitude for modern medicine. She'll have this splint for a week before we go to the orthopedic clinic for follow-up x-rays and to remove the pins. Apparently pin removal is done in the office and hurts no more than a shot. It seems hard to believe, so I'll let you know if that really is the case.

April is on the mend but still hates telling everyone about what happened. She went back to school today and I had to go in with her to answer her schoolmates' questions while she hid behind me. All the attention bothers her, but she'll probably miss it, at least a little, when her splint is off for good.

In Which the Zoo is Now Underwhelming

April has been really jealous of Kimmy's fun zoo trip last week. "I wish I could stay at the zoo," she moped, shuffling around the house dejectedly.
"Me, too," I agreed.

Every time we told someone about the polar bear leaping at Kimmy, April piped up, "Tell them about how surprised I was when the mustard bottle made that noise!"

So you can imagine how jazzed she was about her kindergarten class taking a field trip to the zoo today. She wrote a list of things she needed to bring or do ("go to school with Kimmy" and "bring a lunch") and she packed her lunch last night so she'd be all ready. This morning before school she was so nervous and excited that she could hardly eat breakfast.

This afternoon when I picked her up after the field trip she showed me her zoo map and told me all about being in a group with the two Kaitlins and talking on the bus.  In the car on the way home I asked her which animals she saw, expecting a long detailed list, but apparently she'd already told me all the pertinent facts.

"Smelly ones," she said bluntly.

So now April remembers that we've been to the zoo, "Like, ten times."

Two Hours Later:
I just asked April what her favorite part of the zoo trip was.
"All it was, was giraffes," she said dismissively.

Put Me in the Zoo

This weekend I dreamed that I was in a women's prison, like in 'Orange is the New Black.' Then I woke up and realized that I actually was sleeping on a thin mattress in a cinderblock room with 15 other women. Luckily for me, none of these other females were felons, but were in fact third-graders and their moms.

I was camping with Kimmy's Girl Scout troop at the Columbus Zoo, and let me just say that it was awesome. We got to walk around the zoo while it was closed, see and pet various animals, and even go behind the scenes to the zoo's animal hospital. I was geeking out. When our zoo counselor was talking to us and asking questions it was all I could do to hold myself back from going, "Ooooh! Oooh! I know! Nictitating membranes!!" I had to remind myself that the trip was for the kids, not the grownup with a background in wildlife biology.

I don't have pictures of any of the best parts of this Zoo Camp-In. Sorry not sorry. I was busy experiencing instead of looking through technology. And for some of our visit we weren't allowed to take pictures, even if we'd wanted to.

Feeding giraffes. This is something anyone can do if they arrive at the right time of day and shell out $3. But it was still amazing. I've taken my kids to do this, but it wasn't the same this time. I wasn't juggling three kids of various ages and interest levels. I just slowly held out the romaine leaf and looked into the giraffe's enormous dark eyes. It slurped out its long tongue and licked the lettuce right out of my hand. There's something about having an encounter with a wild animal, making eye contact, and just being present in the moment. It was amazing.

Everybody loves a tall blonde with big dark eyes that only eats salad.

Speaking of encountering a wild animal, we went to the polar bear exhibit and saw the three bears pacing back and forth in front of the huge viewing window, waiting to be fed. We watched them and talked for several minutes about what made polar bears uniquely adapted to their habitat. Kimmy and the other Brownies were standing right up against the glass, giggling about how gross the polar bear poop was. They weren't paying close attention to the closest bear, who was definitely paying attention to them. She loped up to the glass and pounced right at Kimmy, slamming her paws against the window! I'm pretty sure she did it just to see Kimmy and the other girls freak out.

Behind the scenes at the zoo's animal hospital we saw their treatment and operating rooms and heard about taking care of the zoo's 10,000 animals, some of which are critically endangered. And then we happened to be in just the right place at just the right time to see the zoo's newest inhabitants: 13-day-old Amur tiger cubs. They're being hand-raised after their mother failed to take care of them (I can sympathize with her--it is SO hard being a first-time mom and I can't imagine what it's like not knowing what's going on or having people to talk you through it). The cubs' eyes were still closed (because like all cats, tiger cubs are altricial) and they were all fuzzy and adorable. Their keeper held one up for us to see and he cried, little squawky cries! Poor little guy. It's so hard to be a baby. She switched from holding him up with both hands and instead held him by the scruff of his neck and he instantly quieted down, hanging limp and peaceful. Amazing. I wish my babies had had a neck scruff. The tiger cub only weighed a few pounds, but some day he'll weigh several hundred! Crazy. The keeper told us that the tiger cubs (all males) are named Han, Luke, and Chewie. I approve. You can click here to see official pictures of the cubs.

The last animal encounter I'll mention here was unplanned. We were walking through the Asia Quest area at twilight and happened across a skunk. A WILD skunk. The girls were excited, but the skunk scurried off under the boardwalk to the tiger exhibit, and we all walked away quickly. This sounds like a nothing kind of encounter, lacking drama (thank goodness), but it's significant because April (my six-year-old) has nightmares about skunks. Seriously. Nightmares. She's a fan of Curious George, and there are a couple of episodes about run-ins with skunks, so now she's sure that skunks are everywhere, and to be feared and dreaded. I wish she'd been at the zoo with us to see the skunk flee without spraying us. It would have been just the anticlimax to defuse all those nightmares.