An uncomfortable feeling

"Momma." I just hear the soft rasp over the dialogue on a saved version of Grey's Anatomy and I hit the mute button, listening.

"Momma?" The word floats down the stairs again and hovers around my head.

"What is it, Garrett?"

"I have an uncomfortable feeling." Uh oh. My mind jumps instantly to puke. My mind always jumps to puke. Great. He'll puke and I'll have to clean it up and two days later I'll be puking, like clockwork. I have yet to avoid a single childhood stomach virus. I think some higher power thinks it's funny when I swear around my regurgitated dinner to get my tubes tied in the morning.

"In your tummy? Does your tummy hurt?" I stand at the bottom of the stairs now, looking up at him, so little suddenly with his bright red mop head and footy pajamas. Oh my god, how will I give up footy pajamas next year? The 5Ts pull at their shoulders.

"No, not in my tummy. Here." He touches his chest. He is such a strange, endearing, deliberate, brilliant child.

I take the stairs two at a time and touch his cool forehead. When I kneel before him, he meets my eyes. "I have an uncomfortable feeling here," he touches above his heart again, "because of the soap." He barely whispers.

"The soap?"

A reluctant nod. "I went to the bathroom and then I washed my hands, but then I played with the soap and it all spilled out."

"Oh." I am at a loss for a moment. I can't think around the hot tears pressing behind my eyes. Shame. Guilt. Fear of disappointing someone. They are uncomfortable feelings, aren't they? Right in that sore spot. Above the heart.

"Okay. Listen. It's really good that you told me. You told the truth and that's the best way to fix a mistake. Right?"

He nods around his tears and I can't help but but send a quick thank you to whatever powers that be. Thank you for sending me these easy situations sometimes. Thank you for showing me their fragile, little hearts wrapped up in inner strength and innate knowledge of right and wrong so that I can remember not only that I am doing something right, some of the time, and that they are good, good children all on their own, but also that I should keep my voice measured more often, treat them gently as they learn.

"Doesn't that feel better? That you told me and we can fix it? I'm proud of you. But," - Oh god, there's always a but. I'm sorry, there's no getting around it. The healing red helium balloon called THE RIGHT THING is always attached with an unbreakable string to a big old BUT. "But, it's not okay to dump out all of the soap. I have to buy more and also, it's not good for our world. The soap goes into the drain and down to the ground and into our rivers. It makes our fish sick. We need to be gentle with our world."

He nods again into my shoulder, his skinny little boy arms wrapped around my neck.

"Bedtime now. Do you feel better?"

"Yes. It's gone. I'm sorry about the fish."

"It's okay. We'll try to be extra careful with the soap tomorrow."

He's asleep now, face soft and smooth, untroubled and young. The uncomfortable feeling forgotten. If only it were always that easy.

Then and now

First pregnancy:  It hasn't been too hard to adjust my diet. It's for the baby. Who needs soft cheese, raw seafood or wine? I've switched to organic vegetables and I'm limiting my carbs. I have to watch my sugar!
Third pregnancy:  Yes, I did order the Gorgonzola pizza with clams, the ahi appetizer and a glass of white wine and if you glance at my belly again I will cut you.

First pregnancy:  Oh my god! I'm having contractions 20 minutes apart. Giggle.  Let's go! It' time.  Call everyone. Let me just glance lovingly at the Land of Nod nursery before we leave.
Third pregnancy:  Matt, they are only 2.5 minutes apart. I'll wait in the car, you see if that mothereffing infant seat is under the sleds in the garage.  And shit. We need to borrow a crib mattress.

First baby:  Bath time, then books and snuggles and bed.
Fourth baby:  Mom! Can we take a bath? No. no. NO.  I hate baths, baths are slow and wet. And you all had one like five days ago.

First baby:  Oh, please don't give him that cheerio whole, I break them in half.  Choking hazard, you know.
Fourth baby:  Amy: Nate has like ten grapes in his mouth. Stacey: Nate! Chew.

First baby:  I try to make sure he only watches one instructional signing video a day.  He likes the songs and I have to shower.
Fourth baby:  Nate cries when the Star Wars theme song comes on. Isn't that cute?

First baby:  Well, he naps at 10:34 a.m. and 1:46 p.m. and eats at 8:00, 10:00, 12:00, 4:00 and 6:00.  So, I'm not sure if we can make it.
Fourth baby:  Nap? Oh I don't know. Nate naps in the car sometimes.  We will be there.

First baby:  I brought grapes and bananas cut them into pieces the long way.  I also brought strawberries cut into pieces the long way, but they are separate because I know some pediatricians recommend not trying strawberries until the second birthday.
Fourth baby:  It's my snack day?

First baby:  I am going to cry if you won't try this organic nature's perfect be the best mom you can be $85.00 macaroni and cheese.
Four children:  Come ON! It's the kind you like with the yellow dye and the Star Wars Lego noodles.  Eat it, curse you all, it was on sale at Winco and we have 200 boxes.

First baby:  It's important to validate their feelings. We try to acknowledge the emotion, even when we don't like the behavior.
Yesterday:  I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE SAD! YOU KNOW WHO'S SAD? ME! I'M SAD. BECAUSE I HAVE TO CLEAN UP ALL THAT SOGGY TOILET PAPER AND UNCLOG THE TOILET.  THAT'S THE WHOLE IDEA OF TIME OUT - TO MAKE YOU SAD. TO MAKE YOU AS SAD AND MISERABLE AS I AM IF NOT MORE SAD. GO! SIT! ON! THE! STAIRS! AND PLEASE TRY TO BE AS SAD AS POSSIBLE. QUIETLY. WITHOUT INVOLVING ME IN ANY WAY.

Ahem.

And they wonder why personality traits depend on birth order.  How about you ... how have you changed?

Cleaning out my cupboard

So, you're on your knees, except you're not, if you're me. You are speaking metaphysically or allegorically perhaps.  If you're me you are, literally, curled into a ball on your side, clutching the knot in your chest, Matt snoring beside you, because you absolutely refuse to give up and break the seal of the covers and force yourself out into the freezing cold air of the house.  The heat resets to 68 in the middle of the night no matter how you try to force it up over Matt's Medieval conditions.

It is 3:45 a.m. and I remember 2:45 a.m. and 1:45 a.m.  Two hours is an impossibly long time to wish for sleep around my irrationally energetic heart, but I can't blame my heart. Some reptilian artifact in my brain is screaming at it MARATHON! FIRE! SABER TOOTH TIGER! and it is forced to believe and respond to the whip, though the higher mammal in me recites calmly, it's fine; make a list; you can deal with it tomorrow; OMFG, you cold-blooded dimwit, saber tooth tigers are extinct, nothing is chasing you nor is anything likely to chase you, ever, so go.to.sleep.

First, it's a phone call that I didn't make. Nothing, really. A running list of things to do for Listen to Your Mother. Will we sell enough tickets? Because I want these women to be heard. I didn't record the kids' voices today. Again. Tomorrow they will be a day older. Quinn will wake up and he will say "my foot's asleep" instead of "my weg has bwees" and I will have missed it.

It is painful, the way my heart squeezes and releases when I can't sleep. A pointless exercise in indeterminate stress. It's almost enough to make me wish for something bigger to happen, something I could actually worry about, because that would, for a brief time, make the focus clear. It would give me something to do. But, I don't really want those things to do. It's a false promise. The burst of action isn't worth the grief of calamity, which lasts forever.

Besides, I can always clean the kitchen.

At 4:45, I rip off the comforter, as fast as possible, like a bandaid. I don't want the frigid air to stick to my skin. I pull Matt's fleece over my head and yesterday's socks over my freezing feet and I feel my way downstairs. The dog peers at me, irritated and then hopeful. There's a watery winter light; we have spring light now, sifting through the weave of the clouds at 5:00, though no one is fooled except the maples and the daffodils.

I pick the worst cupboard - the one that is always a disaster - the one that is two cupboard stories tall and six layers of junk deep. The one where I throw every single thing smaller than a toddler's first. I empty it onto the kitchen floor with the dog hair and the stray cheerios. Ten broken flashlights. Corroding batteries. The candles and the shot glasses and the crayons and the presumed lost bubble wand. Seventy-five blue plastic forks without a box. I count them as I put them away. I don't turn on the lights; I let my pupils contract slowly with the arriving day, adjust moment by moment. Somewhere between the 45th blue fork and the spilled glue, the lizard is tamed. It curls up into a tiny, green doughnut and goes to sleep and I am left alone, exhausted and relaxed, making the most of the final half hour before the day begins.

I crouch on my knees in front of the perfectly organized cupboard when he shuffles around the corner from the bottom of the stairs in his red footie pajamas with the dark blue racing stripe. "Watchya doing? I waked up. I have to pee pee but I can't do my zipper by myself. Can I help you?" He butts against me until he can wiggle  into my lap.  "I want to hug you. I wuv you. My weg has bees."

And there you go, take that lizard, he didn't lose his lisp last night.  Sometimes, it pays to stop struggling and enjoy the view from your knees. You can always clean the kitchen.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you for your open, loving, thoughtful responses to "Faithless." I drew a ton of comfort and knowledge from your comments. Thank you for your stories and for sharing your struggles and your conclusions. I could write a post to each of you in response. Really, for such a hard and charged topic, I deleted only two comments because I found them hateful.

Heather summed it up for me. "All that to say that it's really interesting that I'm a "believer" and yet we share these same feelings. I would love to talk about it for hours and hours."

I would love to have you all over, pour some wine (or soda) and talk for hours and hours and hours.

Faithless

For god so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Garrett recites this to me often.  It is used as a daily prayer at his school. He pipes it in his sweet sing song voice from the back of the car.  He chants it with his pajama shirt half over his head in the morning. He says it before dinner.

It is one of my least favorite new testament verses.  The words are lovely, there is no doubt, but the implied message makes me shiver.  It's not the words or their sentiment. It never is. It's their reflection in the mirror. It's their anagram written backwards in the space between the words. It's the dark conclusion that shadows the love and the light.

For god so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever does not believe in him shall perish and be denied eternal life.

"Garrett," I say to him softly, for the hundredth or so time. "There are many ways to believe about the force we call god.  There are unlimited ways to god, as many ways as there are people on the planet, past, present and future, as many ways as there are flower petals, as many ways as there are thoughts. Billions upon billions of paths. Trillions. Each path leading to the same place."

He shakes his head.  "I know, he tells me, you don't believe, but I believe."

What does it matter? People have asked me. If he learns kindness, if he learns faith. Does it matter if it is one faith over another?  Does it matter if it is Christian faith? I thought maybe not, for a brief time, though friends warned me that the lessons sink in fast, that I might regret it. But, I thought, it's Kindergarten, will it really make a difference? It is a good school and he is learning so much.   He is learning to read and write. He is learning to count by fives. He is learning addition and subtraction, science, music, Spanish, as far as I can tell faster and more thoroughly than many of his peers in other programs.

And he is learning Christian faith. My sweet boy, my Gee. His heart is open and he takes what he learns and swallows it whole until it is a part of him. He is swift and vigorous in its defense. One might say zealous.

"Mommy," he tells me in excitement, knowledge seeping from his pores, "Jesus died on the cross and they put him in a cave and when they went back he wasn't there.  It's a mystery and a miracle. Because he's God's son."

"That's what some people believe," I answer, "but many, many people believe other things.  There are so many ways to believe about god. Mommy doesn't believe that, for instance, she has other beliefs about god."

"Mrs. S. believes that." He pouts, shaken and teary-eyed, because his idolized teacher has told him that there are two options, to believe or not to believe, and she has made it clear, with her body language and her voice and her word choice that "to believe" is good and right and "not to believe" is wrong.

"You should believe," he tells me and my heart stops and I know. I know I have made a mistake. I did not expect Kindergarten theology to go beyond kindness and acceptance, but it has.  Somewhere in there between the love everlasting and the do onto others, the real message has come home. The shadow of John 3:16. You either believe or you don't. One being good and right and light. Accepted. Approved.

Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  

The other being bad. Sad. Unfortunate. Wrong. Unworthy. Outside of god.

Whoever does not believe in him shall perish and be denied eternal life.

We talk for a long time, but I make little headway against a year's indoctrination.  He waits for Matt, his wheels turning until they smoke, his outrage ready.  "I believe," he states, "but mommy doesn't.  She's Jewish."  It is almost a sneer.  If a five-year-old could cluck his tongue while shaking his head over the state of my soul, he would have.

And I can tell you - though you probably knew it already, though you laugh at my obliviousness and apathy - it matters.  Kindness is all well and good but it is a tenet of every religion.  The flaw - and yes to me it is a flaw - comes in the central tenet of most organized religions  - the one that sets each apart from the others. Believe this, or know god not.

I suppose that I am faithless in that I have no faith in religions.  I have no faith in their ability to keep their faithful from subverting their message.  Believe this or be worth less.

It matters because in my inbox is an email from my father with a high school boy's report on the holocaust experience of his grandfather attached. His grandfather, whom I know as Steve, a close friend of my father, a man my grandfather helped to escape from Austria after the horror of Nazi Germany, survived Auschwitz.  A man who, in his own words to his grandson, stood before the notorious German doctor Joseph Mengela at the gates of Auschwitz and watched his mother be directed left, to the gas chambers, while he was motioned right, to the work camps.

I know that the holocaust rests on the shoulders of a madman, not on religion. But it can't be denied that Steve stood before Mengela at the gates of Auschwitz because he was Jewish. Because of his difference in faith.

So yes, it matters. It matters to me and I am his mother.  I will consider it a colossal failure of my parenting - laughably beyond whether or not they read at an appropriate level as they enter elementary school - if I raise adults that believe that there is only one path to god or one definition of god or such a thing as a god who cares what path we take to empathy and goodness, kindness and light.

I don't write this to make anyone mad, to argue or parse or theologize.  I write it for me.  So that I will read this and remember:  Shame on you, Stacey.  This is important and you shrugged your shoulders and left it to people who teach the exact opposite of the only message that matters to you.  You are more thoughtful than that as a parent and as a person.

I thought that I was faithless and so others could teach them about faith. Turns out, I have a very strong faith and it doesn't lie in John 3:16.  Turns out, when you want someone in this world to see love and kindness and belief from a certain perspective, with all your heart and soul, it clarifies what's important, albeit belatedly.

I don't mind if my son, or any of my children, find guidance and solace in the New Testament. If that is their path to an understanding of god and peace, to a reconciliation of the bizarre miracle of this planet and all the life on it, I accept that. But I emphatically reject the shadow of John 3:16 and I want my children to reject it too. Which means - surprise - that I have to take the time to teach them.

Walk in the light of the words, babies. That's all I ask. I will try to do the same.

Hampton walks me

I have already posted this to twitter and facebook, which makes this a bit overkill, except that my mom will never see it unless I put it here and she must know how I suffer.

It's ridiculous really. This happens at least four times a day.  My favorite part is when I'm still yelling "WAIT" off camera. Like it's done an ounce of fu.cking good to that point.  He dragged me down the street. You can hear my sweet neighbor telling me that I need to be careful of my arms. Or maybe it's when I gravel surf behind him at the beginning. Or possibly when he slams into me and knocks me sideways like three feet.

The things I do. And I do them so gracefully. Obviously.  (I am a huge dork.)

P.S. Don't you love that I finally used my flip camera and I had absolutely no interest in recording my children. No. I'm all, look at my freakishly big dog yank me around on the end of a chain.  It's like I'm going to get my mommyblogging license revoked.

Comment love, book love

Seriously, I am so spoiled. Thank you for your comments on the tv/digital games issue.  I have the best, most laid back, realistic, funny, rational community of people hanging out around here.  I love the ticket idea from Shanna and the suggestion of Texan Mama and Pamela that much loved activities like video games be tied to chores.  Most of all, I love the overall tone of the comments, the calm, self-aware, supporting acknowledgment that parenting is 55% principles and 45% survival on a good day. I have found my tribe.

In case you think that I don't listen or that your thoughts don't matter, I read every single comment several times and then I relaxed a little on the game thing. I am now closer to rules that make me comfortable. I need to convey them clearly and best of all remember to tell the children that the game will disappear until they are thirty-five if I am nagged about it even once ever, ever again.  Hallelujah.

Also, the honeybadger love made my week.  Senses of humor after my own heart. I laugh until I cry every time I watch that damn video.  If you don't know what I'm talking about - click right here.  If you don't think it's funny, I can't help you. It makes my side hurt.  EW! GROSS! What's that in its mouth?

And while my lovely friend Amy - who is blogless and therefore must remain linkless, but who invited me and my entire small flock over for dinner tonight because she knows I have long weeks alone when Matt works - gets full credit for the honeybadger shout out, the comment of the week goes to Patois for this nugget of delicious snark on my fungus diatribe:

"I take rude joy in seeing this happen to you rather than me." Brilliant.

Enough of my foolishness. I have a blog service announcements (BSA).

I'm going to write about books occasionally.  Mainly books by bloggers whom I adore.  I started a whole new page link thing up there called "Book Love."  It won't be truly "reviews" because I only plan to write about books that I recommend.  I want to recognize the talented women with whom I have fallen in love over and over since I started reading blogs - and their amazing accomplishments.  Not only because my own attempt at writing fiction has taught me how hard it is, but also because I truly believe in the communities that can form on the internet and the good things we can bring to others when we share what we love. The first book featured is Half Baked by Alexa Stevenson of Flotsam.

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If you are in town, please give yourself a gift, help us give motherhood a microphone and come to LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER Spokane on Mother's Day. Tickets on sale now.

Crowdsourcing parenting: Screen time

A few weeks ago I tweeted:

@anymommy The longer I have children the less I care about how much TV they watch. That is called *survival instinct.*

I wasn't kidding. I didn't expect either the volume or the positive vibe of the responses I received.  I think I truly believed, somewhere in the back of my mind, that my slipping TV standards were a part of a general avalanche of all of the principles and dearly held beliefs on which rested, precariously, apparently, my parenting philosophy.  Beginning with that time in the tropics when my three toddlers gave me butt worms and I unceremoniously dumped them on the daycare at a religious cult while I moaned in first trimester misery and guzzled Pepsi at a rate which no doubt has caused cancer in lab rats and culminating yesterday when I handed Nate the banana that I told him repeatedly he could not have during the first fifteen minutes of his impressive banana tantrum so that he would just stop.making.that.horrible.noise and then threatened all of my kids with the dire, much-feared consequence of watching the guests eat cupcakes at their sweet friend's birthday party tomorrow if they did not lay silently in their beds until they fell asleep; I SO do not care that it is 6:45 p.m. and still light out. I swear - HAND TO GOD - I will do it. You know I will. Do not test me because you will be sobbing on that birthday party floor and Ms. Kristina makes awesome cupcakes. Amen.  Could someone please pull me out from under this pile of parenting-principle rocks.  Thank you.

I felt sure that my children were the only ones in my hyper-parenting circle whose children watched close to, let alone over, the recommended two hour limit on daily television viewing. I could tell by the wild, googly-eyed with horror way my fellow parents at our Waldorfy-granola-outdoor preschool look at me whenever I mention that Saige & Garrett will be attending morning Kindergarten at the public elementary next year and then staying for the after school care.  Until three. BECAUSE IF I HAVE LEARNED ONE THING FROM MY SOMETIMES UNFORTUNATE YEAR IN ALL DAY CHRISTIAN KINDERGARTEN IT IS THAT SCHOOL SHOULD BEGIN AT 9:00 AM AND END AT 3:00 PM FOR EVER AND EVER AMEN.

I watched a bit of TV growing up. (Yes, that does explain a lot. Shut. Up.) I remember stepping in the door after school to the familiar strains of the Days of Our Lives theme song.  Like sands through the hour glass. The TV stayed on until dinner, through soaps and into old-school sitcoms.  I've seen every episode of Mash, Welcome Back Kotter and Little House on the Prairie. And I'm only slightly neurotic with OCD tendencies, control issues and an unhealthy dose of crippling procrastination mixed with perfectionism. WHAT?

I'm not looking for you to disparage or validate my parental TV choices. I think it's fine if they watch a few Doras in the morning and few Wild Kratts and Scooby Doos in the afternoon, especially in these cold, bleak, parkless winter months. I know lots of people don't agree. It's all good.

Here's where I need help if you lean more toward my side of the TV fence: Digital games. Saige and Garrett have recently discovered them and they could play games on my computer or on their ridiculous little digital cameras basically forever.

How do you define "screen time?" What are your rules? Do you limit total screen time? Do you let them play certain games (math/reading games, for example) as much as they want? Do you let them choose between TV & games? Do you think it matters? Why?

So far, any computer/digital games are a very special treat, mainly because we watch quite a bit of TV, but they beg to play them constantly. I feel myself caving like a mother of four whose toddler wants a banana before dinner.

(thank you.)

P.S. If your opinion is that children shouldn't have any screen time because it's evil and mind-numbing, you are an awesome parent. Go away. You're making me look bad.

A corny meditative exercise

This is, with some changes, the way we began our first rehearsal for LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER Spokane 2011.  I do this sometimes when I am feeling less than delighted and acting less than delightfully.  But first, I said this:  It's hard to be open to our own emotion and the emotion of others.  It's easy to hide behind attitude, sarcasm and snark (as opposed to humor).  I know because I am the heiress and crowned princess in a long, unbroken line of snarky, emotional abstainers.  So, I'll ask you, and myself, to let go a little. Suspend disbelief.  Let's be dorks together and allow room for vulnerability.

Breathe deeply.

Relax your muscles.

Open your chest and bring your shoulders back.

Open your arms and rest them on the chair of the person next to you. You needn't touch. It's a symbolic openness to connection.

Close your eyes.

I learned from a prominent, local psychologist - and I firmly believe - (and don't firmly believe everything that you learn without question; only learn those things that you believe firmly after investigation) - this:

People long to be delighted in.

In the next few minutes, let's try, together, to understand the meaning of being delighted in.

If you have children, you understand delighting in someone else, but do we truly understand and hold tight those moments in which someone delights in us?

As you read each cue, hold the answer gently in your mind and then set it aside for revisiting.

Ready?  How are you delightful as a mother or father?

Careful now.  Not how do you delight in your children.  How are you delightful in your mothering.  Imagine I'm writing a chapter about you in a book in the third person.  I would write, "Amanda was a delightful mother in that she ...  "

How are you delightful as a partner.  Past or present. Any relationship.  (Same rules.)


Set those aside.  Now.  How are you delightful as a daughter or son?  (Or grandchild. To any caregiver.)



And finally, how are you delightful as a friend?  Picture a moment in which you were delightful or a trait in yourself that makes you a delightful friend.


Set them aside.

I find the stories of women and men, mothers and fathers, people, shared online, delightful.  I delight in your courage, your honesty, the beauty of your words, your humor and your truth. I delight in storytelling and shared experiences.  I've been delighted by the concept of Listen To Your Mother from the first moment I heard about Ann's Madison auditions last year.

I hope, often, that some of you are delighted by some of the same things when you read my words here and I am always delighted when you respond to me.

(Dorky affirmation exercise over. Yes, I can be this obnoxiously sappy if provoked.)


(How glad are you right now that you don't have to sit in my forced emotion circles?  After this, I promise you, we had a normal, funny, delightful rehearsal. We talked and then we ran through the show. And everyone sobbed and laughed and smiled and fought bittersweet tears because it's a damn damn DAMN good (great! astonishing!) show.  I wish you could all come.  If you can come, tickets are on sale here.  This is the thing, the. thing., outside of my family, that I have done in my life so far of which I am the proudest and delights me the most.  That is the most awkward sentence I have ever written and I can't fix it because it's true. xo.)

Hair raising

Daughters are harder than sons in some ways.  Let me rephrase that:  my daughter is harder for me than my sons in some ways.

Here's the problem (okay, here's the current problem that I'm pondering) - I don't care about cooking, recipes, clothes, shopping or personal beauty beyond the basics.  I know. Someone kick me off of the blogosphere right this instant. I think I may have just alienated 85% of the women in the world.  Don't misunderstand; I care about personal hygiene and I like to look pretty as much as the next girl, but not enough to take it to the next level. The level where you semi-sort-of have to know what you're doing.  Teeth brushed regularly? Yes.  Lipstick? No.  My hair can look gorgeous. It truly can. When my hair stylist blows it out and puts various expensive products in it.  However - despite the fact that I love the confidence and ego boost that feeling great about my hair gives me - I've had the same hair style for ELEVEN years and I have bought no tools  - NOT ONE SINGLE SOLITARY TOOL - and made not one iota of progress (not even a sliver of an iota) toward learning to make it look gorgeous myself.

Every six weeks I get my hair done and then I wear it down for seven days (I have crazy thick hair) and then I put it back up in a pony tail for five weeks and then I get it done again. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and know I could look better - but it doesn't affect me strongly. Does that make sense? I don't feel sad or even irritated enough to buy a hair dryer.  Or a brush.  Do not own. You see?  Hopeless.

Enter my daughter. She's gorgeous without any help from me. But I want her to feel like I feel when I get my hair done all the time.  I don't want to emphasize looks too much.  It's a fact, however, that when you feel good about the reflection you see - as a package - confident, with pride in your accomplishments, kindness and security and love, and a healthy liking of the way you look - it makes a difference.

I know it makes a difference because tonight I will run my very first rehearsal of my very first production. LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER Spokane 2011. (I can not wait. I'm so excited. I know the cast is going to be speechless when they realize how awesome the show is as a whole.) Elise and I will lead eleven astonishingly talented women through a hell of an experience. And I will be good at it. But I will get my damn hair done first. Because how I look makes a difference in how I feel.

I want that for my daughter day to day. So I have to face the fact that she looks better, her hair looks better, when it's braided in 25-30 tiny braids. Confession of a selfish, busy, happy, wonderful mother - I hate doing hair.  I hate doing my own damn hair and Saige's hair is ... hard.  It takes me two hours or more. She whines.  My arthritic fingers hurt.  She cries.  I get peckish. The other children wreak havoc on my house.  It is really, really hard to intervene in havoc wreaking when one's hands are covered in hair grease.  She whines some more. I drop tiny beads everywhere. We all whine together.

I'm basically whining at you right now.

Still, I persevere.  And I pray - oh MY GOD DO I PRAY, I PRAY EVERY SINGLE DAY (brief song interlude brought to you by my endless crap pop knowledge) - that she'll have a best friend in high school who knows how to braid.  That way, they can do each other's hair.  Please.  Pleasepleaseprettyplease.

Three hours and a lot of whining worth of work. On all our parts. My hair looks fabulous too (because I paid someone to make it so), but you'll have to trust me on that because I can not take a non-ugly picture of myself to save my life. Wish us all luck tonight!

Catching up (continued)

(And now we continue with our epic story of gag-inducing adventures in the anyfamily household.  UPDATE: After much encouragement and due to popular demand, the ass towel is in the garbage. I don't know how I didn't think of that myself.  I'm slipping. That and I didn't consider buying towels at The Dollar Store.)

Where were we?  Ah. Quinn.

Not that Quinn in and of himself is disgusting, he's actually adorable (see below), but his skin has proven to be highly desirable as a media for other species, which is both horrifying and disgusting.

The barnacles in his arm pit are unchanged and it lulled me into complacency.  I'd about get rid of one and another would grow, but they didn't seem to be multiplying faster than I could irritate them into submission. He started complaining about itchiness on the bottom of his foot and taking off his socks in embarrassing locations - like the middle of the supermarket aisle or the doorway of preschool - to dig enthusiastically at his foot bottom crevices.

I asked my resident pioneer pharmacist, who said to buy "lotrimin." I found it, but the tube was labeled "Jock Itch" not "Horrifically Itchy Foot."  (That is foreshadowing.) I bought it anyway.  It had the right active ingredient. And then I treated the shit out of the bottom of his foot for a week.  My reward for my diligence was Quinn waking up one morning with a bright red rash in his und.erwear area at which he scratched with similar enthusiasm. Gusto even.  When I  mentioned the growing problem to pioneer pharmacist Matt, he shrugged again and said, "Well, it's the same fungus."

"I'm sorry, fungus?"

"Athlete's foot and jock itch."

Let's go back to the part where it's a fungus?

"He probably spread it up on his und.erwear. Or on his fingers."

Shudder. I think I requested the phone and then I may have lost consciousness briefly but as I revived I asked for the phone again from my spot on the hardwood floor.

"Phone?" Matt mocked me.

"I. need. the. phone."

"No. You are not taking him to the pediatrician. I'm not paying $25.00 plus 20% for jock itch."

-- Intermission where I lose consciousness again from horror and ire. --

"GIVE ME THE PHONE.  I want the phone now before I get jockfoot fungus on my face."

"Maybe you should keep your face off the floor?"

Matt is annoyingly always right, for the record, and our no-nonsense, public-health, HMO-minded pediatrician looked at me like I was certifiable.  I have not a clue where anyone gets that idea.

"Yep. It's a fungus," she agreed.

Me:  ---

"You need to keep it open to the air."

"Mmmmm," I hedged. "But that involves uncovering his foot."

Her:  ---

"He walks around my house."

"Fungi hate light and air. It will die quicker."

"Yes, but, here's the thing, I have to walk around my house."

She was astonishingly unsympathetic and while I can, from a healthy distance, appreciate her dry, sarcastic mocking of my amateur-mother-of-fungus-sprouting-boys horror, at the time, I was unamused.

"Isn't there a prescription or something, so that we can just clear this up?"

My lovely, HMO-public-health-minded pediatrician rolled her eyes, a gesture that clearly conveyed that Matt and I paid the lowest premium for herd medicine.  And the herd could take a little fungus.  It was expected. Healthy even.  The herd was fine and the herd manager, Group Health, refused to pay for a prescription because the herd's mother is squeamish about public displays of fungus scratching.  THE END.

I support this in principle.  I agree that health care is more efficient in the aggregate and that trivial problems that are capable of being handled by our sufficient, if slow, immune response ought to be left to their own devices.  EXCEPT WHEN IT'S A FUNGUS THAT MY CHILD IS SCRATCHING FROM ONE END OF MY SMALL MOTHER WORLD TO THE OTHER.

Therein, my lovelies, resides the downfall of mass health care if not marketed correctly.  I would also like to point out, to be fair, that if I had an actual herd, one option might be to take the fungusy cow out to the back forty and shoot it.  This not being an option I am considering for my three-year-old. At least not yet.

Dr. W also reminded me that I have three boys.  "Your point?" I inquired politely.  She looked me dead in the eye. "You're going to have to get used to this. It's only the beginning. Also. Don't share towels. Towels ar moist. That's how it spreads."

That is it. We are going to need a lot of towels if I'm going to be throwing away towels after every use.

To add injustice to indignity on top of fungus and dog toilet paper in my washing machine, Matt suggested, when the substantial bill arrived for the ill-advised, fungus-related pediatrician visit, that the amount come out of MY discretionary line item in the household budget.  This is how couples end up on 20/20.  I mean what really did happen to her towel-ruining, cheaptastic, fungus-promoting husband in that cold, bakery-deficient pioneer town that day? (Cue spooky music.) I suggested that he take over both the fungus war with the ineffective L cream weaponry at his disposal and towel washing. Starting with beating the ass towel in the mud room on a rock.

That is the current state of the any herd.  Fungusy. With a side of ass wiping.

Wait? Are you leaving?  You haven't finished your wine? Why are you washing your hands?  Did you just wipe your hands on your sweater?  Don't you want to use the towel ... ?