October 5, 2011 · 8:42 pm

Rainy Days and Too Much to Carry Always Get Me Down

Mary Belle's broken umbrella

This morning I awoke to the sound of the sprinklers hitting the window way too early in the morning, only to realize that it was actually raining. I swear it was over 90 degrees only a couple of days ago. And because it rains so seldom in Los Angeles, it throws everyone into a tizzy – including myself. Yes, I heard the weather prediction, but I didn’t believe it.

So at 6:45 am I realized that my 5-year old is now three sizes too big for last spring’s rain boots, that he doesn’t own a waterproof hoodie, and that my windshield wipers merely smear, not wipe. I also discovered that every umbrella we own is broken. There were a variety of reactions from my kids about this piece of news. My rebel oldest daughter refused to take a broken umbrella, and I’m sure she was aiming to stand under a rain gutter just so she could wear her soaking wet clothes as a badge of honor. My 10-year old didn’t seem to care that the umbrellas were broken – she just wanted the prettiest one. And my son refused to take the girlie umbrella, even though that was the only one his size.

Today’s rain reminded me of an incident about ten years ago. Mary Belle was just a baby in an infant carrier, and Emily was about 4-1/2 years old. She had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes the year before, and we carried a bag of syringes, insulin, glucose tabs, Glucagon, glucose meter, lancets, and strips everywhere we went. Fortunately Emily performs pack mule duty with her diabetes kit these days, but back then, it was a large bag, and I’m the one who carried it.

Anyway, we were headed to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s for one of Emily’s friends, and it was raining cats and dogs. Emily fell asleep on the way to the party, and when we arrived, I couldn’t wake her up (don’t worry – it wasn’t a diabetic coma… she was just taking a very hard nap).

It was a busy day at Chuck E. Cheese’s, so I parked at the far end of the parking lot. I picked up Emily and figured I could lay her down in the booth inside until she woke up. I scooped up Mary Belle in the infant carrier. Then the diabetes kit. The diaper bag. My purse. The birthday gift. And a bag of toys that were left at our house from the last playgroup that included the guests that were coming to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Then, balancing all these items with my arms, legs, elbows and knees, I struggled to open the umbrella and move everyone out of the car. I did a little twist with my hips and slammed the car door with my butt.

Unfortunately, I was physically incapable of straightening. I could feel the bags slipping. The umbrella caught a gust of wind and I lost it. I was suddenly caught in the downpour and the girls and I were completely drenched. Emily woke up. Mary Belle started wailing. The birthday present fell in a puddle along with the bags.

Just then, a friend of mine and her daughter approached. They were also going to the party. She asked, “Can I help you?”

I said, “No, I’m fine.”

And then I started to cry.

It was the first time as a mom that I realized that I really, truly needed help, that there was no physical way for me to do this on my own. My friend scooped up the bags, her daughter picked up the gift, and Emily was finally awake enough to walk on her own.

I blubbered all the way across the parking lot to Chuck E. Cheese’s. And I suddenly accepted the fact that it’s not so bad asking for help when you need it. I doubt my friend was keeping score, as in, “I helped Cathy in the rain so now she owes me big time,” which was one of my great fears about asking for help. She was just being kind. And by trying to do it all on my own, I was being stubborn. And foolish. And stupid.

I’m still not very good at asking for help, but I’m getting better.

I had originally thought of playing around with the song Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down and titling this week’s blog Rainy Days and sleeping-children-and babies-in-infant-carriers-and-diabetes-kits-and diaper-bags-and-purses-and-birthday-presents-and-a-bag-of-lost-and-found-toys-and-a-broken-umbrella Always Get Me Down, but it would have been just too dang long.

In conclusion:

I believe if God was just a little bit smarter and kinder, he/she would instantly grow an additional arm for every mother of young children whenever it rains. That, and give her the humility to ask for help.

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October 1, 2011 · 8:53 pm

♪♫ The 12 Days of LAUSD ♪♫

3 kids + 3 LAUSD Schools

The term “hit the ground running” must have been coined by the parents of school-aged children during the weeks following Labor Day. The days of kids staying up til 10 or 11, eating pop tarts and chips and watching endless hours of the Disney Channel have come to a screeching halt.

No more hitting the snooze button three times before crawling out of bed. I pop up like a Jack-in-the-Box on the first ring, suddenly a Marine Drill Sergeant yelling, “Move! Move! Move!” as I coax my kids out the door using more stick than carrot.

That’s just the morning. My nights are now filled with parent meetings: orientation, back to school, PTA, Governance, committee meetings, and restaurant fundraisers as hundreds of my fellow parents huddle up like a pro football team, strategizing budget cuts, plotting ways to help our overworked teachers, and basically taking our already limited time from our little angels with the goal of improving public education.

Classes for most of the 2011-2012 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have been back in session for three weeks now, and with my kids’ ages of 5, 10 and 15, I am now a parent in three different LAUSD schools: Colfax Charter Elementary School in Valley Village; Millikan Middle School & Performing Arts Magnet in Sherman Oaks; and Cleveland High School Humanities Magnet in Reseda.

So in honor of the other LAUSD parents, here’s a little ditty you can sing to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas. I’ve created an accompanying video with subtitles so you can sing along…

The 12 Days of LAUSD

By the 12th day of school at LAUSD

(we got)

12 discarded lunches

11 trips to Staples

10 forms to fill out

9 parent meetings

8 rescinded teachers

7 vaccinations

6 weekly emails

5 unanswered rings

4 requests for cash

3 dozen robo calls

2 buses broken down

and a lock down from a chemical spill

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September 25, 2011 · 9:41 am

My husband asks: “Where’s MY birthday blog?”

There are three things I love about my husband. One: he is very VERY funny. Two: he is not a butt-kisser. Three: he is very low maintenance.

This last feature really came in handy last Wednesday on the day of his 44th birthday. The poor guy had to go into work at 5:00 in the morning and he had a pretty stressful day. He should have come home to a clean house, his favorite home-cooked meal, a terrific gift of the “Thanks… it’s just what I wanted” category, and his adoring children singing a round of “Happy Birthday to You” in front of a delicious birthday cake.

Instead, he walked in the door, and I gave him the following greeting: “Happy birthday, Honey! I have a meeting at the middle school, then a Neighborhood Council meeting. Can we have your birthday dinner on Sunday instead? I know you said you didn’t want a present, so I didn’t get you anything. Can you fix the toilet? It’s backed up again. Here’s your card.”

I handed him a funny birthday card of barnyard animals farting. The kids and I signed it. Our 5-year old drew a picture of SpongeBob next to his name. Then I deserted my husband with three kids, no dinner and a filthy toilet that was a millimeter away from overflowing.

On his birthday.

Did I tell you he was low maintenance? Another husband would already be filing the divorce papers. Actually most husbands.

That night I came home at 9:30 – a half hour after his bedtime (he had to be at work again at 5:00 am) and my husband asked, “Did you write a blog about me?”

“Huh?”

“You wrote a blog about everyone else’s birthday. Did you write one for me?”

I’ve been blogging for four months now, and it never occurred to me that I have a standard birthday blog. I’d be blogging about birthdays every post if that was the case.

Looking back, I did blog about my daughter Emily last July when she turned 15, talking about how I felt like such a clueless mom. In August I wrote a sentimental story on my sister’s birthday called “Life with my Irish Twin.” And last week for my birthday I ranted about how I hate it when people buy me a birthday gift. But my son turned 5 on September 14, and I didn’t blog about him. I informed my husband of this piece of evidence.

“But you wrote about being the oldest kindergarten mom at the school,” he said.

Apparently in my husband’s mind, this was in the realm of the birthday blog tradition.

My husband, who endured a crappy birthday by picking up the pieces of my overcrowded time management, wanted an actual present other than the farting barnyard animals: his own birthday blog.

So here goes…

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to my funny, low-maintenance, non-butt-kissing husband, Tom, who always replies to my Patch blogs with something even funnier than I wrote. Thank you for being a great stepdad to my girls by teaching Emily heavy metal guitar and playing endless rounds of pool volleyball with Mary Belle. Thank you for giving me a fart/burp/coconut-loving son who never stops talking. Thank you for helping Emily make a harp in 3rd grade even though we had just started dating and it would confirm early on that I don’t have a crafty bone in my body. Thank you for not leaving me when I volunteered you for grill duty at our block party on the hottest day of the year. Thank you for practicing calligraphy for months to create a beautiful fairy tale book to propose to me. Thank you for smelling like barbeque in the evening because it means I didn’t have to cook dinner. Thank you for making me laugh, fixing door knobs, killing household bugs, washing our dogs, mowing / edging / pool care, cooking way better than I do, being PACE treasurer, dumping the trash (even when it’s raining), watching CSI with me even though it clearly jumped the shark a year ago, plunging toilets and always saving the day when I overcommit… which is often. You are a prince, and I’m so lucky to have you as my husband.

(Big exhale)

Do I still have to cook you dinner on Sunday?

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September 24, 2011 · 12:01 am

My Daughter Turns 15 Today and I Am Still Completely Clueless

Totally clueless mom

This blog is reprinted from my Patch blog from July 28, 2011: http://patch.com/B-mV4

My oldest baby turned 15 today.

Emily was due in mid-September, which I thought was a great plan. I was excited to have a little Virgo like myself – an obedient people-pleaser, striving to get straight A’s, correct everyone’s typos, and yet generally appear modest.

Instead, my water broke at week 33.

Emily’s premature arrival was a clear indication of the Leo she was destined to become – stubborn, independent, and outside-the-box (or in this case, outside-the-womb).

She was early and I was unprepared… in other words, completely clueless. If I wanted to mold this young being properly, I was going to need as much information as possible.

I poured through Dr. Sears, followed every week of What to Expect and Ages and Stages, practiced the exercises in building my baby’s self-esteem, raising my child in a moral world, and taming my toddler. I block-booked my little darling in a variety of parks & rec classes, Gymboree, dance, arts & crafts, and sports. I joined a mommies group that met every Wednesday and listened intently to the advice of other moms.

Still, I felt completely clueless.

When the other kids played together, Emily wandered off on her own, exploring someplace not so kid-friendly. The other toddlers chatted with their Barbies and stuffed animals, while Emily spent the afternoon playing in a drawer full of kitchen towels. She transformed each towel into a superhero cape, the fabric over a magic trick, a hijab, or a cast for her pretend broken leg.

We went to the movies one Christmas week when she was 4 years old. The other kids brought their favorite new toys to the theatre to hold during the movie. Emily brought an empty box covered with… you guessed it – a kitchen towel. She called her box “Cogsworth.” Other parents must have looked at her box and figured we were dirt poor.

Emily just gave Cogsworth a hug.

Again, I felt completely clueless.

In elementary school, when other children were writing their biographical book reports on Anne Frank and Babe Ruth, Emily gave a presentation on Sabina Spielrein, one of the first female psychoanalysts (and the test patient for psychoanalysis).

She tried to shake up her middle school dress code by alternately wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, Army camouflage, and a bloody Sweeney Todd apron to school. When Emily was summoned to the dean’s office, he asked her, “Why are you wearing a vampire cape?”

Emily answered, “There’s nothing in the dress code against it.”

When she started high school last year, Emily was at the height of her fashion quest. She wore heels, vintage 1950’s form-fitting dresses and her long red hair in a bun. This look, coupled with her 5’7” stature and Marilyn Monroe-like curves, had many students mistaking her for a teacher rather than a freshman.

Emily’s 15 years have brought me hundreds of clueless moments: when she was diagnosed with type-1 (insulin dependent) diabetes on her 3rd birthday; at 12 years, when she announced she was a vegetarian (and hasn’t had a bite of meat since); and last year when she told me that she likes boys and girls  – and yes… in that way.

While other kids her age ore texting and hovering over Facebook, Emily is busy reading Allen Ginsberg, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sherlock Holmes. She turned me on to My Chemical Romance and Eddie Izzard, and her musical tastes run the gamut from The Beatles to Edith Piaf to Black Sabbath. Emily uploads her eclectic drawings to DeviantArt and creates hundreds of pages of elaborate costume designs. She’s an avid fan of Watchmen, Young Avengers and Legion of Superheroes comics, collects Star Wars and Star Trek figurines, and writes deep, disturbing essays about the morality of man.

I am a conventional gal. Emily is not.

I have had many more clueless moments, and I still have them often. The difference between 15 years ago and today is I accept that I’m a clueless mom. But instead of immediately running to a book or googling some expert (or more often than not, just some pseudo-expert who managed to get a book deal), I try to look to my 15-year old daughter for the answers.

Or at least some clues.

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September 22, 2011 · 12:01 am

Raising (the Cash for) My Debt Ceiling

This blog is reprinted from from my original Patch blog on July 15, 2011: http://patch.com/B-lGC

When giving someone directions to my house, I’d specify by saying, “It’s the house with the big blue tarp.” Strapped on by hefty ropes and a variety of bungee cords, the 50 by 30 foot tarp enabled us to use our mixing bowls for cooking rather than collecting rain water indoors. On stormy nights, it sounded like we were raging choppy seas on a medieval sailing ship, and on windy days we raced from the car to the front door, maneuvering an obstacle course of flying tiles and cement.

After getting multiple quotes from roofers, it was apparent that the tarp was here to stay. At the bare minimum, a new roof was going to cost ten grand. They might as well have told us ten million. We just didn’t have the money.

Then tragedy struck. Specifically, that tragedy struck my left breast. On a clear, calm day, a large Mexican tile hurled itself from the roof, took aim and collided with my not-so-endowed chest. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) I don’t have implants, or I may have needed a quick silicone patch.

The debris could have hit one of my three kids in the head – or the head of one of their 30 regular playdates. Our 81-year old roof was no longer the brunt of my poor white trash jokes. It was now a life or death issue. At the very least, it was a costly lawsuit waiting to happen.

My husband and I bought our home in 2005, just as the height of the market was starting to peak. We’re not necessarily underwater, but we’re like a young toddler wildly treading that water, barely staying afloat. We’ve been trying to refinance, and I had hoped we could get some equity out of the house to pay for a new roof, but it turns out my hopes were higher than our collapsing roof.

We cleaned out our two $1000 Rainy Day Funds. After all, there’s nothing like a leaky roof to realize that Rainy Day Funds should literally be spent before that Rainy Day wrecks havoc on your indoor furniture. We tapped out the last of our home equity line of credit (AKA the Monsoon Day Fund) that enables us to pay our bills while I’m on hiatus. We juggled bills, cancelled services, and postponed debts that wouldn’t hurt our credit score.

I awkwardly mentioned to friends I’ve loaned money to that now would be a really good time to consider paying me back. Unfortunately, they were all in the same financial dire straits they were in when they hit me up in the first place, and as they say, you can’t get blood from a turnip.

A relative of mine has a few bucks, so stuttered through a humiliating plea, only to get immediately turned down. I crawled with my tail between my legs and asked my ex-husband for an advance in child support for our two daughters, and he actually came through for me – even graciously. Now I have to be really really nice to him for a very very long time. On the other hand, it’s a pretty small price to pay for the safety of his little princesses’ noggins.

We were now completely tapped out, and still had $5000 to go. I was losing sleep, wondering how much money I could make if I sold oranges and lemons from my backyard trees. Could I take in laundry or clean houses? Sell blood? Plasma? Did we have anything of value we could sell on ebay? The only jewelry worth more than 50 bucks is my wedding ring, and that would just be sad – pawning off the symbol of my (current) husband’s love to literally pay for the roof over my head. Even if I was desperate enough to search for a little Mafia money, how in the world would you find a loan shark in Valley Village?

The answer came to me not in a vision, but in an audible message called NPR:

On August 2, the federal government will reach its debt ceiling limit of $14.3 trillion. 

This was my answer.

I had reached my own debt ceiling, and mine was nowhere near $14.3 trillion. And like the US government’s AAA rating, my credit score is good, and I’d like to keep it that way. So I just did what any other worthy Democrat would do.

I raised my debt ceiling and got a cash advance.

It’s actually a great deal. Just a 3% fee and no interest until July 2012.

Now my ceiling is in debt, but at least it no longer leaks.

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September 20, 2011 · 12:01 am

I Can See Clearly Now (as long as it’s further than two feet away)

This blog is reprinted from my Patch blog from August 9, 2011:  http://patch.com/B-nQf

I vividly remember the day: 3rd grade, when an optometrist came to my school and gave me my first eye exam. She covered my left eye and I read the first two or three lines of random letters and numbers. After that it was blurry. Then she covered my right eye and I uttered the words that would change my life forever:

“Wasn’t that first thing an E?”

It turns out my left eye was legally blind, and suddenly I was subjected to glasses as thick as hockey pucks. I also wore a flesh-colored patch over my good eye, trying to train the nearly blind one (AKA lazy eye) to see. The only result that little exercise succeeded in accomplishing was my being branded as a nerd for life.

Glasses corrected my right eye to nearly 20/20, but my left eye was just good enough that I wouldn’t bump into large obstacles. As the years passed, both my eyes worsened. Uncorrected, I had a sweet spot of about four inches in front of my face in which I could focus clearly. Beyond that, it was like looking through the bottom of a murky pool.

Flash forward to four decades later. Last January, after wearing glasses for five years and painful gas permeable contact lenses for another 35 years (the more comfortable soft lenses weren’t strong enough to correct my stigmatism) I applied for a zero interest Credit Care card and like millions of other four-eyes, I got LASIK.

What everyone failed to tell me was how scary it was. My eyes were pried open with mini forceps while a laser sliced a flap out of my eye. I was trapped like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, but instead of watching the freak show, I was the freak show.

They also didn’t tell me about the smell of burning when the laser actually vaporizes the eye tissue. And as much common sense as I thought I actually possessed, it didn’t really hit me that as soon as they’re done monkeying around with one eye, they move on to the next one.

With the help of the same little pill that probably knocked out Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, I slept all afternoon and all night, and woke up the next morning… unable to see. Distance wasn’t so bad, but my face in the mirror reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder” when the audience realizes it’s not the plastic surgery patient, but everyone else who is deformed (check it out – the reveal is at 2:51). I couldn’t recognize my own children from across a room, and I got into many embarrassing situations confusing one person for another (especially bad when you mistake a man for a woman or vice versa).

Unfortunately, I was one of those really bad cases that had to go for a second round of LASIK. I’ve now spent the past seven months wearing one pair of glasses to read, another pair to see the computer, and distance vision that has been in the general category of “not bad.”

Last Wednesday I went back to get my eyes re-grinded. Easy peasy. Apparently my doctor just needed to lift the flap that had been created in January and give my eyes a remodel. Unfortunately, recuperation turned out to be more painful than the last one. I woke up after a couple of hours and cried in agony. Not childbirth agony, but enough pain that I couldn’t champ it out without tears.

The waterworks returned the next morning when the slightest bit of light made me feel like a pill bug being burned alive by a boy with a magnifying glass. Every shade in my house was drawn, every light dimmed, and I had visions of the rest of my life as a shut-in, waiting for food deliveries and befriending Jehovah’s Witnesses who wandered on my front porch.

It’s now been nearly a week since my surgery, and I can finally see clearly. I’m still a bit sensitive to light, and I can see my computer best when it’s about three feet away. I’m over 40, so I already knew that reading glasses would be here to stay whether or not I had LASIK. But I can actually wake up and see what time it is without putting on glasses. And for the first time in my life, I have a genuine card that says I am able to drive without corrective lenses.

I know that big thing at the top of the reading chart is an E. But it’s such a pleasure to now recognize rows of random letters and numbers below that big E. And the only Patch I use today is the one this blog is on.

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September 18, 2011 · 12:01 am

10 New Uses for an Old Emmy

Emmy & Emmy with a Woody (Barbies - Hugh Hefner style)

The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards takes place tonight at the Nokia Theatre in Hollywood, celebrating excellence in television. Between last week’s creative arts awards ceremony and tonight’s event, a total of 101 categories are honored (at least that’s what I was able to count on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences website while my 5-year old was nagging me for milk).

An award may be won by a single person (as in “Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series”) or by each member of a team (as in the 27 writers of Saturday Night Live in the “Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series” category). By tonight, hundreds of entertainment professionals will have these sleek statuettes perched on their mantles, joining the ranks of thousands of others who have won in previous years.

For any of you living a Unibomber-like existence and are unfamiliar with the Emmy, it is a golden statuette of a woman on her tippy toes, leaning backwards and holding large spiraling ball. The ball is actually an atom, which should of course be impossibly too small to see, yet it is actually about ten times the size of her head. Emmy also has wings on her back. Not angelic wings, mind you. They are thin, pointy wings more reminiscent of Freddy Krueger’s razor-like fingers, and probably just as deadly.

It is an honor and a privilege to win an Emmy. But like your Little League, karate, or bowling trophies, what do you do with them after a year or two or a decade or more?

I actually have two Emmys for “Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series” as the dialogue editor for the long-running drama ER. I won them in 1995 and 1998, and then went on to edit The West Wing and Brothers & Sisters, which were not big winners in the category of sound editing. My old sound supervisor gets nominated every year, and has won so many awards I think he probably keeps one in his bathroom. Maybe another in his garage. There’s only so much room on a mantle.

Because our chimney came down in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, we don’t have a mantle to display my Emmys. Instead, the statues rest on top of a bookshelf which houses a variety of parenting, self-help, and spirituality books that I could really benefit from right now, but don’t have time to read.

As I’m in the process of clearing away clutter in my home, I began to wonder if after all these years, do my Emmys serve any functional purpose?

Absolutely!

Here’s my list of 10 New Uses for an Old Emmy:

1. Gold prices are at a record high! Now’s the time to melt that statue and put some food on the table (of course this might be considered somewhat blasphemous).

2. If you lean up against those pointy wings, it makes a very handy back scratcher.

3. You can also use those pointy wings to clean the lint trap in your dryer.

Emmy Use #4 - Exercise ball workout

4. Use Miss Emmy as a model for stretching backwards with an exercise ball during your morning workout.

5. Those pointy wings are great for opening stubborn potato chip bags.

6. Brandish those pointy wings to scare away unwanted door-to-door solicitors or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

7. Those pointy wings are also useful for popping balloons after your 5-year old’s birthday party (which coincidentally I’ll be doing the night of the Emmys. Obviously the only red carpet I’ll be walking on is the one stained by cherry Koolaid).

8. The pointy wings are also great tools for cleaning fingernails, toenails and gunk between your teeth. However, they’re probably a little too dangerous for cleaning out ear wax. I’m not willing to try since one slip might jeopardize my career as a sound editor. And that would ruin my chance of a possible Charlie’s Angels trio of winged beauties.

9. If you’re a little short on cash, you can charge your friends and neighbors (or more likely – strangers) to hold your Emmy as you snap a photo with their Smartphone and let them post it on Facebook. Your customer’s friends probably won’t believe they were at the Emmys wearing cut offs and a tank top, but it’s Hollywood. It’s still more believable than what Lady Gaga wears on a daily basis.

Emmy Use #10 - Play with Barbies

10. Let your kids borrow your statuette when they play Barbies. Although Emmy is too wide to sit in Barbie’s Corvette, you can dress her up in Barbie’s ball gowns. If Ken’s off playing poker with his buddies, your Golden Girl and the blondie with the 36-18-33 body can race off for a discreet double date with Buzz and Woody. Note: Under no circumstances should you invite rowdy friends to the Emmy-Barbie play date! The afternoon is sure to end with a trip to the emergency ward.

Don’t be too discouraged if you happen to be one of the homes lacking the new, functional Emmy. Times are tough, even in the entertainment industry. After tonight, a statuette might be found on a craigslist near you.

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September 13, 2011 · 3:19 pm

It’s My Birthday Today. Please PLEASE Don’t Get Me Anything!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. For one day out of 365 and a quarter days I get to have my cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, I have a lot of wonderful friends who want to give me more cake, and as much as I appreciate the thought, effort and financial exchange, I don’t want to eat their cake too. At 49, my metabolism isn’t what it used to be.

My husband Tom asked me what I wanted for my birthday. “Your homemade jambalaya and a funny card,” I answered. I’ve now made it to the age where that answer doesn’t secretly mean: “And dinner at a really expensive restaurant this weekend. And something sparkly. And flowers.” I can’t afford the money or calories for the dinner, we’re not going anywhere that requires any bling, and in just two days that bouquet will be dead and stinky. However I will probably give my husband the pseudo-silent treatment if that funny card is something lame like a zany cat hanging upside down.

My kids asked me what I wanted for my birthday. For a few years now, I’ve been giving them the same answer: “I want you to be really REALLY nice to me all day.” Too bad this isn’t the kind of gift that just keeps giving. But it’s still what I wish for every year when I blow out my candles.

I have friends who want to buy me gifts, and I try to nix that one before it pops out of their well-meaning mouths. Here are my reasons:

1. I’m trying to get rid of the crap I already have. I don’t need new crap to add to it (not to say that your gift is crap, but frankly the formula is: GIFT + TIME = CRAP).

2. If you give me something, I will feel inclined to buy something on your birthday, and I’m pretty broke. It’ll probably be something from the Dollar Tree in the line of that lame and zany cat hanging upside down and it will immediately fall into your crap category. Let’s just not do that dance.

3. If you buy me something, I will have to send you a thank you card. That means $3.95 plus tax for the card and the 44 cent stamp, and that’s about the price of a venti café mocha from Starbucks, which I can’t afford. There’s also the time to drive over to the drug store, park, pick out something better than a lame and zany cat hanging upside down, and then the real clincher – trying to think of something funny to say on it when I’ve already used up my funny trying to write this damn blog.

For the three previous years, between work and getting my MLS, I was very VERY busy on my birthday. So busy that I didn’t answer the phone or look at one email. Throughout the day I heard various slightly off-key voices singing: “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Cathy. Happy birthday to you.” I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to turn the volume down, so I just put a pillow over the answering machine. No offense to any of you who sang to me last year. I wasn’t talking to you. Your voice is lovely.

It took me over a week to get to the emails, and I don’t think I even answered them. I believe I was just visualizing a virtual high-five as a response. The Facebook messages were long gone out of the Facebooksphere by the time I read them. I felt like a very bad friend.

Happy Birthday Facebook notifications

This year I’m answering the phone (and unfortunately hearing the entire happy birthday tune without the ability to fast-forward), glancing at emails and reading my Facebook responses. Although I’m still very busy this year (rather than very VERY busy) it is a high quality problem to have a lack of time to read birthday wishes from your friends. I am lucky to have so many great friends, or at least people who claim to be my friend on Facebook.

My good friend Lisa just popped over with some flowers and a card. Fortunately the card has a pair of Renaissance angels instead of a lame and zany cat hanging upside down. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the flowers will be dead and stinky in a couple of days, and she could have got herself two Starbucks venti café mochas for the price.

I think I’d better not inform my good friend Lisa about my latest blog.

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September 12, 2011 · 2:20 pm

Confessions of the Oldest Kindergarten Mom

Lots of kindergarten parents are anxious about the first week of school. Will their little post-preschooler make friends? Will he know his ABC’s? Will she be able to count to 20? Will he hold his pencil like a madman wielding a knife?

I have actually had some low-grade anxiety about kindergarten for exactly five years now. I gave birth to my son Jake the day after my 44th birthday, and almost from the moment the doctor clipped the umbilical cord, I’ve been worrying about being the school’s oldest kindergarten mom.

I remember as a child reading the Guinness Book of World Records and studying the photo of the world’s oldest mom, circa 1950. With her prune-like face, she looked more like the girl’s great-grandmother, and I imagined the mom teaching her daughter how to churn butter and scrub clothes with a washboard while the poor daughters’ friends were sampling new-fangled tv dinners and learning how to do the twist.

This Tuesday is my 49th birthday. My mom had me at 19, and by the time she was my age she already had seven grandchildren. My two younger sisters have three grandchildren between them, with another on the way. The norm of my upbringing taught me that mothering is a job for the young. Very young.

Since my nieces and nephew started having kids in their early 20’s, I was sure that I’d be joining young parents like them who hang out at Usher concerts and only write in lower case abbreviated text.

Fresh-faced 20-somethings are still blessed with a young metabolism, a chest that is naturally at attention, and strong bladder control. It’ll be at least two decades before they can relate to my menopause symptoms, perpetually gray roots or the fact that my right knee cracks every time I try to squat. They’re still paying for auto insurance up the wazu in the young driver category while I’m a year away from getting my AARP card. Would I have anything in common with these new parents besides our 5-year olds being placed in the same kindergarten class?

Last Wednesday my son started kindergarten at Colfax Charter Elementary School in Valley Village, and my fears were… totally unfounded. It’s true that I very well may be the oldest kindergarten mom at the school, but the other parents didn’t look like they recently attended their senior prom either. The class was filled with parents in their 30’s, some in their 40’s and one dad who might actually be in his 50’s. If there were 20-somethings in the room, they didn’t seem to be bothered by sea of fine lines. Instead of feeling like the freak of nature mom who got knocked up despite having eggs full of cobwebs, I felt like I was in a room with parents who might actually have been alive long enough to hear the original versions of the Glee remakes.

The other lesson that became immediately apparent: It’s not all about me. No one was looking at me – the ancient mom – and wondering why I crashed their party. The other parents were admiring their beautiful children. Some kids were excited. Some were scared. Some cried, hanging on to mom’s pant leg. One even threw up (the child – not the parent) she was so nervous.

I glanced across the room and wondered which of these moms might end up becoming my very best friends for the next six years. We might actually have some interests in common besides having five-year olds in the same kindergarten class.

Eventually they’ll all become as old as I am today and I’ll be able to share my experience, strength and hope about getting rid of gray roots. Many of them will give birth to more children. And some day one of them will enter their future child’s kindergarten class as a card-carrying member of the AARP.

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September 8, 2011 · 1:22 am

There is Nothing Sexy About Washing My Filthy Minivan

Very unsexy latex gloves

I don’t consider myself to be particularly vain or superficial, but I do try to take pride in my appearance. I bathe regularly. I use deodorant. And I attempt to do the same for my car. After all, with the exception of sleeping or working, I spend a good chunk of my daily life behind the wheel of my automobile, and like myself, I try to keep it as attractive and sweet smelling as possible.

So once a month or so, I fork over a coupon and tip money to the hard-working gents at Studio City Hand Car Wash where they vacuum, scrub, rinse and buff my car to a dull shine. Then I insert a new two-dimensional evergreen around my rear view mirror so my vehicle can smell like an olfactory Big Sur for a day or two until the pine scent dissipates.

Unfortunately the economy has not been kind to me, and I’ve now resorted to washing my own car.

So you can guess that I might especially enjoy this summer’s Bad Teacher where I heard there was a scene in which Cameron Diaz works at a car wash fundraiser. There’s Something About Mary is one of my all-time favorite comedies, and I consider Cameron to be somewhat brighter than your typical 30-something movie bombshell. Besides studying the moves from the pros at the car wash, maybe Cameron could give me a few suggestions on how to wash a car.

It turns out that Cameron has only two things in common with the guys at Studio City Hand Car Wash. She too is working for tips, and she also washes cars by hand. And that is where the similarities end.

Even before my LASIK, it would be easy to see that Cameron Diaz is a wee more attractive than basically any living being who works at any car wash. Her shirt is knotted 6 inches above her belly button and she bumps and grinds in her ultra short shorts while washing a Corvette. Cameron sloshes the car (but mostly herself) with the soapy sponge and wrestles with the snake-like hose as it bursts in slow motion. It’s basically a lap dance for the high school dads and lesbian PE instructor with the car mercilessly used merely as a secondary prop. By the end of the day, Cameron has made enough tip money to pay for the new boob job she obviously doesn’t need.

The scene in Bad Teacher has very little resemblance to real life – particularly in my driveway. First of all, Cameron is unbelievably sexy, and as I’ve got a good decade or more on her, the best I can say is I look pretty good in clothes. Rather than hot pants and a clingy wet shirt, my car wash attire consists of an oversized top covered in paint and hair dye, boxer shorts, and a ball cap advertising my kid’s elementary school. To crush even the slightest expectation of sexiness, I also don a large pair of Playtex rubber gloves.

In Bad Teacher, as well as any Whitesnake video, the vehicles are always shiny new luxury cars – Corvettes, Ferraris, Jaguars. There’s not a minivan in sight, especially nothing that resembles my filthy 1998 kid mobile. Cameron lovingly strokes each car with her large soapy sponge, even though the vehicles already appear to be squeaky clean. You never find her manically scrubbing mud-crusted hubcaps or individually scratching off the hundreds of yellow insect gut splatters off the windshield.

Perhaps it ended up on the cutting room floor, but you don’t actually see Cameron cleaning the inside of any car. I imagine the filmmakers could have had a field day with Cameron maneuvering an enormous vacuum hose, bending over car seats, discovering secret incriminating artifacts lost by her paying customers.

In reality, there is absolutely nothing sexy about cleaning the inside of a minivan. There’s cereal crumbs and raisins embedded in the carpet, sand clinging to seat crevices, windows streaked with sticky juice and sun block, ashtrays overflowing with candy wrappers and snot-filled Kleenex, and the overpowering stench of overturned milk and coffee creamer. A pine tree scented ornament can mask it for a day or two, but by the end of the week you realize why a mom with a minivan has every reason to cry over spilled milk.

One day, I’d like to see a movie that shows the truth of how totally unsexy a driveway car wash really is. Maybe when Cameron’s pushing 50 she’ll do a Bad Teacher sequel: Bad Tenured Teacher. She’ll wear rubber gloves, a muumuu, and begrudgingly scrub the aftermath of carsickness and potty training from her dented minivan. The only slow motion shot will be of her sobbing and lamenting her terrible lot in life. But instead of being rated R, this movie would be rated G. And McDonald’s will have a Bad Tenured Teacher tie-in and hand out plastic vomit and poo with each Happy Meal.

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