Archive for September, 2009

Dear Teacher,

If you’d been raised where I was, when I was, you’d understand. It’s not personal. It’s Springsteen. (more…)

Reason #243 why I never get to the bottom of my laundry.

Answer:Question: “Where’s the tape?”

That’s my yard. But that’s not my kid. Or my trumpet.

I didn't sit down for a good six years.

We were passing by the community playground on Saturday when a dark thought hit me: I don’t miss that at all. It was so unexpected, it actually made me catch my breath. (more…)

I didn’t want to go in the first place, but then, I had the list. My husband insisted on heading to the supermarket together — all four of us — after church on Sunday, even though I was secretly hoping he’d shop while I was off coaching soccer that afternoon 45 minutes away.

There are just some things better done alone, and I strongly believe that food shopping is one of them. (more…)

I’ve asked for a cure for cancer so often, perhaps it’s time to lower my expecations a bit. So last night, while I laid awake thinking about life and whether or not I remembered to buy milk at the supermarket, I came up with five simpler things I’d ask God for:

1. Middle-aged insomnia should coincide with parenting babies. That way, you’re already up, so you might as well change a diaper.
2. People should be able to order dreams from Netflix. (Sorry, no Horror is available.)
3. Cars should lose their old car smell, just like they lose their new car smell, preferably before I take my friends to the Springsteen concert next week.
4. Sock dispensers.
5. Signs from God that are actual signs (i.e. “STOP eating the Mint Milanos when you think no one’s looking.)

I probably can't wait to get out of that itchy yellow dress and go run through puddles with Paula.

Paula and I had chicken pox together. And once you’ve had an itchy contagion during childhood, you are connected for life.

Then there was the time we ticked off the boys’ gym teacher for insisting on playing soccer with the boys instead of field hockey with the girls. (Thanks Paula! Also, thanks Title IX.)

But my friend Paula, second from the left in this photo from our preschool graduation (I’m to her right, looking unhappy in that frilly dress), was my best friend through much of our childhood.

Together, we made a secret club in the chicken coop in her backyard, complete with homemade latrine, and we made up a game where we’d have to come up with a song given just one letter. “I… ‘I Love You, Baby’.”

When I think of Paula, I think of playing. Hours and hours of doing not much else but running around her yard or mine, playing some sort of game we’d made up. Or, when we got older (though not really old enough), driving her mom’s car around the driveway. (It was the 70’s and early 80’s – nobody paid that close attention to what we kids did, really).

When I had cancer two years ago, I laid awake one night, listening to songs on my iPod, when I remembered playing soccer in the snow, under the moonlight, with a huge group of kids in Paula’s yard. It was just so much fun — fun in a way that can’t be planned or recreated. It’s one of my happiest memories of my childhood, when life was simpler and less structured. When we just played. When Paula was my best friend.

Paula and I still keep in touch. She sent me the photo yesterday with this short note:

Just going through some stuff for my mom’s 80th… time flies!!!

Now, nearly 40 years since preschool graduation, I remember time with Paula like it was yesterday– and not just the itchy parts. After all, we are connected for life.

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Win all of Jen Singer’s books: Enter The Housewife Award® contest by September 28th for your chance to win signed copies of every book Jen Singer has written, plus a certificate for the fridge

I’m running around with one soccer shoe on and no lunch in my belly, so I’m going to post a MommaSaid Classic. This one first appeared in my book, 14 Hours ’til Bedtime, and has also run in American Baby. Enjoy and remember, share, share, that’s fair.

Jen

A MommaSaid.net Classic

20 Ways Parenthood is Just Like College

by Jen Singer

1. You feel like you’re constantly being tested.
2. Someone’s always smarter than you (or at least they think they are).
3. Your roommates are slobs, and they steal your food.
4. All-nighters.
5. You get kicked out of the library for leaving behind crumbs and creating a ruckus.
6. Keg parties and Chuck E Cheese’s parties produce the same kind of hangover.
7. You never seem to be able to get the place to yourself.
8. Naps.
9. People talk to you while you’re in the shower.
10. You hate your roommates’ music, and they hate yours.
11. You can neither identify nor locate the source of that funky smell coming from the closet.
12. There’s nothing in your bank account.
13. Five a.m. is really, really early – or really, really late – depending on whether you’ve been to bed yet.
14. Hey! How about a pizza? Again!
15. You’re too exhausted to retain what you’re reading.
16. Oh, now you can identify that smell:  You forgot to take that half-eaten sandwich out of the backpack yesterday.
17. You’re wearing your college sweatshirt again today, because it’s the cleanest thing you could find.
18. Someone always leaves a party crying.
19. You think you’re the only one who feels clueless.
20. It goes so fast.

Win all of Jen Singer’s books: Enter The Housewife Award® contest by September 28th for your chance to win signed copies of every book Jen Singer has written, plus a certificate for the fridge

Sometimes I feel like Al Roker. I read the hour-by-hour forecast on Weather.com so often that I can tell you what it’ll be like outside when the school bus returns this afternoon. While the little sun & cloud drawings and the chance of rain percentages are helpful, I’d prefer something a little more personal and therefore, more helpful. Here’s my own wish for an hour-by-hour forecast:
(more…)

Nobody had ever offered me a farting elephant before. Not a real elephant. I wouldn’t know where to keep one of those, though perhaps it would keep the bears out of our garbage cans, which would be nice. No, this was a toy farting elephant, a “Phartephant,” which, the PR person who offered it to me promised is “hilarious fun.”

Oh how I love hilarious fun. It’s my favorite kind of fun.

Normally, I delete these type of e-mails, but this time, I e-mailed back: (more…)