Posts Tagged ‘moms’

I wrote this one last year for Good Housekeeping, but it still holds very true. Here’s one for the moms.

Somehow, I didn’t feel guilty. I was walking down a Manhattan street on my way to dinner with some friends who were attending the same writer’s conference where I was scheduled to speak the next morning, and talking on the phone. (more…)

All moms multi-task, right?

When my husband is on the phone, that’s it: He is just on the phone. He is not emptying the dishwasher. He is not cooking dinner. He is not answering e-mails while simultaneously shouting out the back window, “Don’t play soccer in the mud in your brand new sneakers!” It’s just him and his phone, and it looks so peaceful. Essentially useless, but peaceful. I want me some of that.

I am forever doing several things at once while not concentrating on any one of them for very long. And Twitter and Facebook only feed my addiction to multi-tasking because when my attention span runs out shortly after writing the verb or getting out the mop or — Oooh! There’s a sale at Lands End today. (more…)

This one is really about the fish.

It used to take days to find them, and even then, they’d rarely have photos of themselves handy. Of the kids, sure, but then they had no idea how to send me the pictures anyhow. I’d have to wait a few days until they could get their husbands to photograph them and another day for them to figure out how to send the results to me. And while we might be more tech savvy nowadays, I’m not sure that we’re any nicer to ourselves. (more…)

Smencils — $48

A bucket of Smencils, which are pencils scented like bubble gum, root beer, watermelon and other sugary smells that, when together in one bucket, remind me of a kindergarten birthday party gone bad. My son was supposed to sell them to raise money for the fifth grade class trip, but he’s not allowed to sell door-to-door, on the school bus or at school gatherings. In other words, anywhere where children congregate. And the only adults who would buy the stinky pencils are his grandmothers, because they’re suckers for a cute face. Meanwhile, I had to write a check for 50 bucks to the school so that $25 would be taken off our fee for the class trip. You do the math, because the school obviously didn’t.

Mother-Daughter Shawls — $25 for the pair or best offer

I knitted these myself, and then my 9-year-old daughter informed me she hates yellow. I’d post a photo, but it makes me sad to even think of it, let alone capture the image for my grandchildren to see how their mother broke my heart. $25 or best offer. I’ll throw in the homemade (blue, so I don’t understand the problem) scarf she didn’t wear all winter, too.

There's some cars in here somewhere, I'm sure. They're everywhere.

1,136 Matchbox Cars — $100, as is

They were in the toy box, the boys’ closets, in the couch cushions, under the fridge. I counted them all: 1,136 of them amassed over the years on birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Grandma visits, bribes. But ever since they discovered Mario Kart for the Wii, the Matchbox cars have been collecting dust. It’s a steal at 100 dollars, because really, I could have bought his-and-her massage chairs and a flat screen TV for the money spent on these stupid cars. Mostly in good condition, but I don’t feel like culling out the wheel-less cars or the ones with Bob the Builder stickers on their windshields, so you’ve got to take the entire set as is.

7 Chef’s Hats — Fits Children Under 8 — $50

We planned the birthday party for last October– a chef’s theme, because my son wants to be a “cookerman” when he grows up. You know, like Wolfgang Puck, the Cookerman. We were going to make pizzas and decorate cakes. Fun, right?

I went out and found eight chef’s hats for the birthday boy and his friends. Then his buddy got the Swine Flu and had to un-RSVP. Next, the triplets from next door got sick. We were down to four kids. We’d move it to another weekend, except one kid had soccer and two had lacrosse and one was going to Fiji with his family. (Really? You’re paying to take a third grader to freakin’ Fiji?) Then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then the holidays, and soon, we were out of weekends.

This is the only shot of the hat I could find.

Anyhow, it pretty much had to be that weekend or my son would turn 9 before we could have his 8th birthday party. So we set up the pinata (a chili pepper) and the pizzas and the cakes, and then an hour before the party was to start — you guessed it — the birthday boy fell ill with the Swine Flu, too.  We were going to give all the kids their hats and goody bags, but the logistics of getting the chef’s hats and the cheap plastic toy cookware to seven sets of parents was deemed futile . And once I caught the swine flu (of course), I didn’t care anymore. But on the bright side, the following weekend, we all beat the crap out of the pinata, and I gave out the candy on Halloween.

You know it’s time for the Semi-Annual Culling of the Kids’ Closets when you find Pee-Wee Herman in an underwear drawer.

As I opened my son’s dresser drawer yesterday, I jumped as though I was an expendible character in a horror movie — perhaps Laundry of Chucky. Even after 12 years of motherhood, I just don’t always anticipate stumbling upon such things as Pee Wee Herman staring at me from among a pile of boxer shorts and white crew socks. But there he was, and there went my Sunday afternoon mellow.

The rest of my son’s room has been blissfully uncluttered for much of the summer. Now and then, his bed goes unmade for hours or even a day or two. But I just start singing “Kung Fu Fighting” or “Copacabana” and suddenly, he’s speed straightening his room. Anything not to hear about Lola, “she was a showgirl,” from his mother, with Dad as back-up singer. Hmmmm. Maybe we need dance moves?

But stumbling upon Pee Wee was a sign to me that it’s time to figure out which clothes can stay and which are too small and/or too ratty, the nicest of which will be donated to the church. That way there’s more room for things that fit.

So I whipped through his closet until I had a pile of “Wow, that hasn’t fit in two years” and “Is that ketchup, or blood?” I put them in large plastic bags and we hauled them downstairs to the dining room, where I’d just pawned off boxes of “I have no bookshelves for these” and “I read this four years ago” on the annual library book sale.

As for the drawer, I haven’t had a chance to cull it yet. Frankly, I’m afraid to open it back up. I mean, who knows what I’ll find there? Oh, Pee Wee knows. That’s who. And that’s a little scary.