36 posts tagged “mama moment”

I want, seriously want, to place the following personal ad in our local community paper. I have no idea if I will. Actually part of me wants to post it in the Stranger, part of me wants to post it in the local paper, and another part of me wants to post it on Craigslist. They're all currently arguing against each other, so it will remain only here. For now.

Wanted: Like Minded Parental Units of Child, 5y-8y

While I understand that it is not always possible that my son's playmate's parents are into the same things I am, or even anything I am, it would be great if they were. This way, there wouldn't be that awkward 10 minute to 2 hour conversation about the weather, sports, the weather, tea, the weather, the school, the weather, the PTSA, the weather, pets, the weather. I have Accuweather, the Parent Organizer site, and the school site for those.

Your child should be between 5 years and 8 or even 9 years, because mine is and if yours is too much older than that then s/he will get bored with mine, and if s/he is too much younger then vice-versa. I don't care if it's a boy or a girl as long as they like *active* kids. Mine will happily play in a park or with light sabers for an hour or more, without stopping. Yes, he has ADHD, but aside from the occasional compunction to hug someone and/or relate, at telling depth and obscure sequence, a particular part of a video game or movie, you can't really tell. No he's not medicated; it's not a philosophical/belief system choice (it's just the way it worked out for him).

You should be any age you are, I don't particularly care. I also don't care if you prefer tea to coffee, beer to wine, knitting to quilting, football to soccer. Really. I'd prefer if you were open minded -- but I'm not going to say "No Republicans" because frankly although I'm socially liberal, I'm fiscally conservative, and I can see both sides. I occasionally get cross eyed while trying to do so. I don't care if you're single, married, polyamorous, gay, or otherwise "alternative" to the nuclear family. I wasn't in a nuclear family growing up and I certainly don't have one.

I honestly don't care if you're stay-at-home. And I appreciate we may have different views on the relative advantages of that. Frankly, on more than one level, if you are, I'm jealous: I don't have the option, but I'm happy to live vicariously through you.  

Things I am equipped to discuss: our kids, books, movies, fiscal policy, pantheistic animism, health issues, diving, gardening, fabric arts, sql programming, geekiness of any kind, monty python, foreign policy, biking/running/swimming, the groan of 9-to-5, having dogs, baking, cooking, the relative and subjective value of chocolate, wine/wineries/wine clubs, religious theory, amusing self-depricating anecdotes, Scrabble, and video games (again, theory on that last).

Things That I Really Can't Discuss Or Will Ruin The Prospect Of "Us": intolerance (race, creed, sexual orientation, etc.) and (I really hate to put this in the same sentence as I will tolerate it much longer than the first) a driving need to keep any and all conversation about "the children".** Also, if I Facebook friend you awkwardly too early on, and you thereby post a reply or comment on *everything I do*, it will drive me bonkers.

But I really, really don't want to fall back on the weather in conversation anymore. I really have enough time with the PTSA in my work with them, and I am so involved in the school itself that I literally check in as frequently as I do with work, who pays me.

I am getting the impression, while reading through this, what I am asking for is a friend with children my son's age. That would be awesome. I have very good friends, none with kids my son's age; and maybe I'm asking for a perfect situation that is not to be. But that's it in a nutshell: you may not be here to make friends.... but I am.

**The children are fine. They are play-acting Star Wars or Adventurers. They are building cities and dungeons of Legos. They are consuming mass quantities of organic, homemade pizza and drinking 100% juice (in my house). They are painting or drawing or making candle holders for us or systematically de-furring the very very patient dog. And they are doing it all within our eyesight. 

...one of these things is not quite the same.

This was one of my favorite games on Sesame Street. The music would come on and I would be riveted, so proud of myself when I was able to figure out which was *different*.

I've been on a quest to get more involved in the C's school and get him together with kids after school to help foster socialization and peer bonding and all of that other psychological term-flinging that essentially describes what it is like to be a normal kid. As such, I am social secretary: setting up "play dates" with friends (as identified by him) at their house or ours.

Play date etiquette is nuanced and not well documented. Some parents identify "play date" as "Free Babysitting" (for you or them), in and of that they do not expect you to be present in their house or vice-versa. Others assume you are inviting the whole family over (or at least all of the siblings). Some will work with the most vague planning available (yeah, let's get together, um, Tuesday?) and others require email back-and-forth (Tuesday, 2pm, my house, until 4:30pm, because Alouitious has piano practice). Some have definite preference as to whose house ("we have a pool") or what activities should be played ("Archibald just loves legos... but we don't let him play Transformers because there are g-u-n-s'").

Invariably, the date will come and I will have anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours of polite conversation with an adult peer while we both keep wary eyes on our offspring, ensuring they don't do something amiss or otherwise embarrass us (or themselves), while silently appraising their choice of playmate. During the course of normal conversation, then, it will come up that I am a working mom, and single at that.

You can see the instant appraisal in their eyes: How much does she make? Does she rely on alimony? What's it like to go back to the workforce after having a kid? In most every case, the other kids' moms do not work, they quit after their 2nd child, and the prospect of going back is something that they are, at most, toying with. Because I live in an area where I am the smallest and oldest house, they are typically in homes that are much larger, with budgets to match (although I suspect some of not being cognizant of the delta between income and outgo, the chances are that hubby makes enough to alleviate any occasional hiccups). Some ask me questions like the above quite frankly, others attempt to "finesse" it out of me. I'm relatively eager to answer, in hopes that it will somehow reduce my feelings of being a social pariah. There is an unspoken assumption that, because I work, my son is not getting the same quality of care that theirs are.

It is entirely possible that this is true, although thanks to an extremely accommodating boss I am able to volunteer in various projects for the school, for my son's class, and pick him up on the days I have him (no nanny, no day care). True, he knows that mommy has a laptop and that she works for Expedia, and there has been more than one occasion where I've had to take a conference call at home and be on sporadic "mute". He's learned that the utility bill is directly impacted by lights left on or turned off, that there is a fixed amount we can spend on things, and that there are quite a few chores to keep a house running.  

I think, then, it's ok to be a little different.  

No small secret, but I love James Bond movies. The books are ok, too, but the movies -- as cheesy as they can get (I'm lookin' at you, Rodger) -- are my braincandy. Every year TCM, TLC, Spike, ad nauseam have their own Tribute To Bond, where they play some or all of the movies over a period of time. Now that I have cable -- or rather Dish -- again, I have the ability to record and review.

Tonight's feature is "The Spy Who Loved Me", my 3rd favorite Bond. It stars Barbara Bach, who married Ringo Starr, which tells you more about him than it does about her.

There's a newfound shock and nostalgia with these movies. Almost everyone smokes; it's casual, even classy. Bond never pulls away because he gets an ashtray mouth, for example. Safe sex isn't a concern in the slightest (one recalls the Saturday Night Live routine with Garth Brooks playing Bond's Doctor... having had to create new names for the VD's he's collected from Bond). Phones are actually ROTARY, with CORDS.  The stunts were appreciably dangerous and not CGI. Silhouettes jumping on trampolines were thought of as classy movie intros. Not once does Bond look to the internet to gather data (well, not in the Dalton and previous ones).

That reminds me: I've just realized my son will go through his entire school career without technically having to GO TO A LIBRARY. The fact that I was able to get a Master's Degree under the same is proof enough for that: he will get the Assignment, and then he will go to his XO laptop, and then he will go to Google. I will never be able to show him a card catalog - they don't exist anymore. I won't be able to express even in words that make sense "how it was in my day".

As he gets older, I'll have to contend with his Myspace (or, hopefully, Facebook -- yeah I'm a social media snob) account and not intrude too much. I won't know, when the phone rings, if "It's a giiiiiiiiiiiiiirl" because he'll have his own phone. If I'm not on top of his teachers and involved in his school, I won't have an accurate understanding of his progress. 

On the flip side, I can give him an "allowance" via a card, and not have to embarrass him in front of his friends. I can check up via texting rather than making him hit pay booths (or borrowing his friends' parents' phones). I can have clandestine (if necessary) discussions with his instructors to head off potential problems. And when I go away for a vacation and leave him "home alone", I can have wireless IP cams tell me exactly who was at the party he held and exactly which rooms they smoked pot in.

It's a small comfort. 

When you're a single mom, plans can change and you have to be adaptable. So when my son's step-mom (aka Mom2 -- I really like her, I hope X doesn't mess this up) wrote to let me know she had contracted H1N1 (and he was with me) I realized there was very little chance he'd be going to his father's house this coming week.

Next week I was scheduled to go on a girls movie night, a sailing trip, and a racing trip in Portland. I had a therapeutic massage scheduled, some late work nights, and dog grooming and boarding all set up. I had budgeted.

And with that email, I spent Tuesday rescheduling it all (well, not the racing trip; that I just dropped out of).

I don't normally do well with change if I don't have a contingency plan all ready and waiting. If I have one ready and waiting, I am the *change master*. Just go ahead and ask me what my plans are if I'm fired tomorrow: I'm totally ready for that. (Likelihood = nil, my boss thinks I'm, quote, awesome, end of quote). I didn't think to have a contingency plan for The Schedule, because The Schedule is the result of The Parenting Plan, and we are Officially Doing Everything According to the Parenting Plan.

We neglected to put in a "roll the 20 sided dice to determine pestilence".

So his other mom is miserably ill, and I gather that his father is as well; this is torture for them (after just having moved in the hottest weather Seattle has ever had, these folks ain't gettin no breaks yo). Meanwhile, I have a bonus week of time off and no work and boy. Ergo, instead of dog boarding and racing, which is all fine and good, we will be doing things like aquarium-ing and biking and grammy-and-grampying. It's summer, we're entitled.

I have no idea how long it takes to get over H1N1; or how the flux in The Schedule will affect the Rest of The Summer Schedule. It can't bleed into the School Year Schedule, because that's a totally different dynamic.

But I'd better get started on my contingency planning... you know, so I don't freak out :)

...Must come to an end. Today is our last day in Waikiki, and it was an even better trip than I thought. I was worried about expense and boredom, the two things that can cause a vacation to suck; neither happened. True, Waikiki is expensive -- but so is Bellevue. Beer is about the same price and is brought by Kevin or Angela, the two people who have been poolside attendants for me. My credit with them is apparently stellar, because yesterday after two (2!) Blue Hawaiis, I forgot to pay my bill when we went up to the room. Kevin paid it out of his pocket, because he knew he'd see me today. Kevin got a nice tip for that. (NB: apparently my credit is good with the bartenders, too. I have seen other people get "Blue Hawaii's" that were green -- mine are crystal blue and if there's any pineapple juice I haven't yet been able to taste it).

When we first got here, I kept a watchful eye on the C, a chair right next to the pool, to be there to do the heroic mom thing in case he got in over his head (the shallow end is 5' -- the deep is 9'). As of today I'm four rows back in the blissfull, non-burning shade. This is because in the 7 days we have been here he has improved his swimming skills exponentially, making friends and cannonballs alike. Also, I am amazingly burnt all over; and my purple bikini is showing off the delicate shades of red and fuscia that mark the exposed skin.

Why are we consistently at the pool? Several reasons, none the least of which is that the C prefers the pool to the beach. This is because the beach is crowded, noisy, and offers very little shade. You compete for swim space with surfers, catamarans, and boogyboards; the pool is saltwater, exclusive, crystaline, and offers a choice of 3 hot tubs. Plus, they bring food and drinks, which has been a novelty to the C. We've had lunch poolside pretty much every single day, which you would think is expensive; but it has been less so than going in to town for lunch (the one day we did that).

I will be glad when we are home and I am able to do some cooking, though. Eating out 24/7 is nice in terms of not having dishes to do or menu planning or wondering if you have enough milk to make BOTH lattes and pancakes. But it is hard on the system in terms of watching what you eat (I haven't run in 10 days) and I'm trying to be good. Fortunately, Hawaii offers many opportunities to be "good" and also explore: we've had teppanyaki (not benihana, much better), sushi, italian, "true" hawaiian, pub, luau, and steakhouse dinners here, the C trying everything and anything. We have discovered he doesn't like macadamia nuts (and good thing, too, the smell makes me want to retch), he loves pineapple, and he's ambivalent on papaya. He will eat the shrimp head with his mom, and likes squid.

I would go on and on about the wonderful relaxation this has given me, and how I will miss it but be glad to be home, and how this was the perfect amount of days... but...

my computer battery is dying. And I hear the boychild calling me from the pool. *splash*

I've got two days left in Hawaii, and I am a deliciously golden fuscia all over (well, except for where the bikini covers). Waterproof, sweatproof spf30 applied every half-hour does nothing, my friends, for my ghostly white (er... pink) ness.

I have discovered the following things in Waikiki these last few days:

• Waikiki prices == Bellevue, WA prices. Now eat out 3 meals a day, 7 days for the week. I planned on this, but somehow your mind rebells at the notion.
• Timeshares -- see next post -- worth it once, but only once.
• Bring 2 sets of sunglasses, as I have lost my 'crappy/running' set at the pool. Mommy had two mai tais...and things at the pool acquire legs and walk off.
• Poolside food delivery is *awesome*
• Every booth in the International Market has a duplicate, or triplicate. Ultimately, there are many variations of the "open the oyster get the pearl" kiosk, the "look! jewelry!" kiosk, the handmade candles kiosk, the "ooh, shark teeth" kiosk, and twenty or thirty stores that will happily sell you tylenol, a ukelele, or a tiki god.
• Men will hit on you even if you have the small child in attendance. Some will recover when the small child comes up and offer to buy a drink for you and your small child.
• Those same men will change their tune when their wife shows up. At least one had a wife, who showed up, and she looked like me plus five years,  minus five pounds, and with blue eyes. Almost down to the bikini design. (ick!)
• There are 8 million wealthy, cute, young japanese tourists in Waikiki, and they are all unfailingly polite, nearly bilingual, and fun to watch. About 40 of them gather each morning on the beach to be instructed in Hula dancing, and that is worth the free show from our breakfast buffet.
• People are crazy friendly on vacation. I have met:
• Suzanne B., from Malibu, CA, who discussed at great length popular mystery authors and her Kindle;
• Naomi C, from San Fransisco, CA, who discussed at some length her recent (2yrs) divorce and her new life selling time shares (more about that later),
• Unnamed cute older couple (with their 2 daughters and 2 nieces and 2 friends of the daughters) from Minneapolis, MN, who discussed the different interpersonal dynamics of carting 6 teenaged girls to Waikiki, and,
• Several couples in various stages of marriage (almost-wed, newlywed, wed 2 years, wed 5 years with kids) who are anxious to hear the next stages. I avoided letting them know what happens with divorce and emphasized the positive.

Naturally, when it comes up that I am a single mom on vacation with my 6 year old, they want to know how long and have I moved on and my how I have gumption to vacation on my own. No, I don't. I have realized that other people's perceptions of what you should and shouldn't be comfortable with, and what you can and cannot do as a mid-30's divorcee with a precocious, intelligent, mischevious boychild, is not dictated by other people's perceptions. I am not down, thusly, with OPP.

So I spent a good time in the pool the last 3 days launching the boychild into the air from the midst of the pool, coaching him on his swimming, ordering whatever the hell I wanted to, and generally having a hell of a good time.

Did I mention there's a Starbucks in our hotel?

On the flight from Seattle Tacoma to Honolulu I read James Michener's Hawaii. This book is 1130 pages thick, and I read it in 5 hours; the flight was uneventful to the point where I only accepted the complimentary mai tai because it was, well, complimentary. When we landed, then, I had no book... for the whole trip.

Within the first hour at the hotel I acquired a book that was truth-vs-fiction about James Michener's Hawaii, or at least a hefty portion of it. It was along the lines of "In James Michener's book, XYZ missionaries did ABC; in Real Life, ZYX missionaries did CBA". Charming, educational, and a brief (2hr) read. I am therefore still bookless.

Not that this trip has been boring; it's been quite relaxing. Up each morning at 6am (9am home time) and asleep by 8 (11pm home time), I've spent enough pool time to be burnt significantly in all of the places one wants tan. It is a ginger expedition to sit on a toilet seat, to put on a bra (oh... my), and to button my pants (despite fairly healthy eating habits).

We visited the Waikiki Aquarium, which is cheap ($10 for the boychild and I) and fascinating (some 60+ exhibits plus those little interactive wand-thingies, plus a touchie-feelie aquarium); we've signed up for a timeshare presentation (a self-avowed no-pressure one; if they can do the math to make themselves truly cheaper than my math -- and my BTCo discount -- and somehow fit into my budget (hello, Student Loans!)) which means we get free breakfast tomorrow and $100 in gimme-gimmies (likely to be turned into luau credit).

Meanwhile, we've taken some pictures...

I am working from home today.

Originally I had signed the C up into The Camp That Was To Be Awesome. TCTWTBA had field trips to Discovery Park and Snoqualmie Falls and promised a diversity of kids, etc. It was to be 6 solid hours of crazy exhausting fun for everyone, at a 4 kids to 1 counselor ratio, and I paid accordingly.

I brought him to the "pick up" location at 8:45, 15 minutes early because I didn't want to be late. By 9 most of the other kids had shown up, and they were diverse all right: between the ages of 10 and 16. There were maybe 3 kids total under that age, one of whom (not mine) picked up a racquet ball paddle and insisted on drumming on the table, despite the protestation and condemnation of his mother and the counselors.

The next wave of kids showed up in the official Van. This was the Van, you see, that was to whisk them off to Discovery Park. It took the next hour for the two counselorettes (and there was a male volunteer counselor) to figure out that 18 kids and 3 adults can't fit into a 12 person Van.

So Discovery Park did not happen, and the C was crying as I left, and I left with severe disappointment. When I came to pick him up, he had had a good day, except for the 10 year old who hit him on the head twice with the plastic bat and the fact that no one wanted to play with him.

I pulled him out of the camp, and found another one where he will be mixed with kids his own age for the next session. In the meantime, he is home with me, squealing (literally, a couple of times) with delight at the antique transformers his Crazy Uncle Dan bestowed on him. Since Crazy Uncle Dan was a meticulous collector of all things legos, transformers, and Star Wars, and has ceded his 5-7 year collection from 1982-1988 to the boy, I expect the squealing to continue... 

I tried explaining the concept of the Summer Solstice to the C today on the phone. He's at his dad's house, for this is not only Father's Day weekend but his brother J's birthday, and these things are important.

"Today** is the longest day of the year!" I told him. "Oh, yah?", he replied, not really caring at all. I then went into detail about how today the sun would be "up" longer than on any other day, and that it's exactly opposite of wintertime, near his birthday, when the sun is up the shortest amount. We agreed this was very neat and moved on to the more important discussion of J's missing a blue coin in Lego Star Wars.

It occurs to me that time has a completely different reference from when you are six, to when you are 36 (almost). School's out for the summer, ten glorious weeks of break time before he goes back to daily sheets and teachers, and I think to myself how that is not long at all. And I'm sure he's thinking to himself how it is infinite... the prospect of school and supplies and back to school shopping and fall and winter clothing and all of that just interminably long from now. Me? I've preordered his school supplies (The PTA had a thing...).

I look around at all of the things to be done: I have gravel pathways to lay and weeding and transplanting and I could always properly catalog my library... and feel overwhelmed. He looks around at all the things to be done: summer camp and a trip to hawaii and a new house (dad is moving to Auburn, which is weirdly closer in terms of drive time than North Seattle) and a camping trip and a trip to grammie's... and feels blissfully overwhelmed.

It's time to live vicariously. I could use a little more bliss. In that vein, I'm headed to CC's to celebrate the summer solstice.

*OK, so modern concept is that the solstices are all perfectly neat on the 21st of the 6th and 12th months. But you see, this planet we live on is round, and the technical definition of the summer solstice is when the tilt of the earth's axis is most inclined toward the sun (and the winter is the inverse). Now, the earth has 360 degrees (being round, and while not technically a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, it works good enough for this example) and rotates around itself every 24 hours. Therefore, the axis is at that "most tilted point" for each 15 degrees of space for one hour. While it would be very neat indeed if that started at 12:01 GMT 06-21, it never quite works that way; probably because when they were calculating this stuff and GMT in the first place it came from the same group who was originally using sundials and stones. It still beats the hell out of a calendar that requires 5 "zero" days, though.

Therefore, Solstice for the Pacific Northwest, specifically Seattle, is *today*. Again, specifically at 10:45pm.

So it's not only a pretty long day, but it's a pretty long post (/babble).   

Today the C went to his very first school-invite based birthday.

I say school-invite based birthday because his school has adopted the notion that the heretofore democratic system of invites-for-all was not quite right, and now if you have a birthday party you, as a parent, need to reach out individually (and outside of the school system) to the parents of the other snowflakes. C has had invites before (I think 2 or 3) but they either fell on inconvenient days (e.g., he was at his father's house) or they were obviously hearkening to the democratic system (e.g., one was for a child with whom he had got into repeated fistfights).

There is a delicate social balance to the birthday party invite, nuanced and not well documented.

First, the adult-esque "show up and bring a bottle of wine" is not the game here. A present is mandatory entrance into the venue. The depth of present expectation to be navigated is shallow and can involve math such as "okay, how much are these people spending on the party/how much did they spend on my kid". Gift receipts are required.

Second, the venue is almost certainly not at anyone's actual home. The parties are typically at offsite locations, where the adults have assigned helpers and usually someone else to clean up the mess. The location will quite likely have a minimum of a play gym but more likely will involve face painting, water play, mask making, and a whole bevy of other stuff to do.

Third, there is no question as to refreshments. There is food and drink and cake and then of course balloons and party favors. Your child/the children will have a massive carbohydrate overload, and probably be pre-diabetic by the time you go home.

There are occasionally parents who stay for the party and parents who view parties as free babysitting. The latter don't often get invited to the next party. For those who stay, you get to see your child with other children that he usually "works" with in school. You discover oftentimes your child is a cherub and some of those other little snowflakes should go melt. The one spitting in the wishing well. The one hitting the birthday boy with a balloon. The one who had to be put on 4 (count 'em) time outs by his father *during* the cake cutting and distribution. The one who arrived at the party 20 minutes late and announced he hated both of the celebrants and wanted his cake now so he could go.

You also discover that children's birthday parties are a progressive series of one-upsmanship and jones'-upkeeping. The first party we were invited to was at the McDonald's playspace. The second was at Skate King. This third was at the Kids Quest Museum. And I'm lying if I don't say I'm considering renting out an aquarium or something for the C's.

After all, *my* little snowflake deserves better.