Did I mention that I’m a contortionist, too?

MSN.com, in some sort of demonic partnership with Good Housekeeping, has put together A Little Slideshow of Guilt and Envy for all of us moms in honor of the upcoming Mother’s Day.

Because looking at a slide of a very pregnant, very beautiful woman, who as it turns out is a mom, a wife, oh, and by the way, a hugely successful Wall Street banker, is just the thing I want to see on a day when I feel, not as if I could do it all, but rather, as if the only thing I could do is curl up in the fetal position and cry.

There are five other slides that manage to push every covetous button I have. The stay-at-home mom who looks like a model (not the sweats-wearing, thirty-pounds-overweight person I became as a SAHM). The mom who looks better at age 62 than I did at 30.

It used to be that, as long as I avoided the Working Mother magazine’s ode to the Mother of the Year, who is always some high-powered executive who teaches underprivileged kids to read when she isn’t tying herself to Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior to save the harp seals and whose kids are all honor students and receiving major awards themselves from major humanitarian agencies, I was fine. I could live in my brave little world where I was coping okay as long as you didn’t look under the couch, in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator, or in my youngest son’s backpack.

It’s not safe out there for moms who work outside the home. If we manage to duck the critics who somehow think it’s their place to judge our decision to add to this nation’s gross national product and determine that we are deficient mothers, the minute we run for cover we find that our biggest supporter is putting up another ideal we can’t live up to.

And if I see one more commercial of Kelly Ripa pretending to juggle motherhood and a career, I’m gonna hurl right in Jennifer Lopez’ lap, who is reportedly putting together a reality show about balancing the same stressful proposition.

I hit the Hork Button hard here because these two and their ilk know nothing about juggling. “Juggling” in this environment means things like greeting a wakened baby who is running a 103 degree temperature, but Daddy dashes out to his car in his underwear because he doesn’t want to have to stay home with the baby, so Mommy sucks it up one more time and stays home, putting her job at risk (the job she has to have to make the mortgage payment, by the way, not the job she has so she can afford the Maserati and the housekeeper) and frantically trying to really phone it in via conference calls.

“Juggling” does not mean handing off the baby to the live-in nanny who will take the baby to the doctor, stand in line at Walgreens, and manage the suppositories, then take the baby and give him his bath and put him to bed so mom can come in and read him a story.

“Juggling” in my house is a circus act. It would make a great reality show (and its ensuing episodes: Try to Make It to The School Play AND Not Miss the Mandatory Meeting, followed by the classic Dodge Snarky Comments From Other Moms About Not Really Loving Your Children Enough To Stay Home and the ever-popular Let’s Clean Puke Off The Walls After A Ten-Hour Day at Work! Whaddaya Mean We Never Do Anything Fun?) except that it wouldn’t be funny.

But it would be real.

 

Oh, no! She just insulted Tokyo; Go, Go Bridezilla!

I completely lost the link to this, but it surfaced in The Knot in early March and it just. blows. me. away.

Apparently The Knot (Mom, that’s a popular website for brides) runs a feature where a wedding-related individual surfaces with a piece of advice, presumably bad, that she’s been given. The Knot, in their infinite wisdom, supplies *better* advice.

And sometimes they afford us a glimpse of The Impending Apocalypse.

Here’s the Bad Advice: 

“I was recently a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. I’m also engaged and was amazed when she told me I couldn’t wear my engagement ring during her wedding because it was larger than hers…ridiculous!” —Scarlet, Longview, TX

Okay, so I’m thinking that better advice would be to drop out of the wedding because this ‘friend’ of yours has turned into a complete megalomaniac and will no doubt lay waste to entire villages as she cuts a wide swath of destruction in her rampage to the altar. But let’s see what The Knot had to say!

The Knot’s *Better* Advice: 
Being upstaged by a bridesmaid can be a very real fear for some brides. Handle the situation gently — explain that you’d rather not take off the ring for personal reasons. If she persists, remove it to avoid more drama. 

Mom, Interrupted’s Advice
Run far. Run fast. If this ‘friend’ can’t understand the significance of a freaking engagement ring (“personal reasons”? I need to invoke “personal reasons” as a reason why I don’t want to take it off???) then there is no telling what kind of petulant demands she’s going to make in service to Her Day, like some sort of tyrannical, minor god demanding more tribute from her tribe.

This is a joke, right? If the Bridezilla thinks that an entire church full of people are going to be so mesmerized by the disco ball on her bridesmaid’s hand that they will forget to look at said Bridezilla, Bridezilla actually should be humored? What if Bridezilla gets it up her nose that no one in the venue should be prettier than her? It’s okay, honey! We’ll just decapitate the ones who offend you, to avoid more drama.

Please. Say it isn’t so. Because if it is, actually, so and this is what weddings have sunk to, I advocate simply tranquilizing brides outright and delivering them, comatose, to their appointed trysts, since letting them get upset is to be avoided at all costs lest their tiaras spontaneously combust and take us all down in flames.

It is famously said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Well, the only thing necessary for crazy brides to triumph is for the rest of us to put up with this stuff to avoid more drama. It’s time we drew a line in the sand, right here, with our eye-popping engagement rings and take a stand against the crazy.

 

 

©     E.S. Evans 2008

 

Luck *is* a lady, and you’re married to her.

Yet another oldie but goodie, published in November, 2006 in the Ahwatukee Foothills News, and going out to all my homedogs who have not yet killed their husbands when they stepped over a Big Wheel to announce they were a) leaving for work and b) did he mention he was going to have to work late and, oh, c) was entered in a weekend-long golf tournament but that’s okay because d) you don’t really work, since you’re home with the kids.

Remember, kids! You can make your own Mom, Interrupted’s Greatest Hits with a printer, some staples, and a good copyright lawyer!

*******************************************************
Talk about your Man Law.

Here’s the first rule of new fatherhood: Never, ever, EVER say this to the wife as you leave for the office:

“You’re so lucky, you get to stay home. I have to work.”

He ignored this rule and found that she can, and will, discover the hidden talent where she can laser him with her eyes and leave him a smoking crater in the front hallway.

He said exactly that to her a week after the baby was born and he was heading out the door back to the cube farm, to a place where no one had mastitis but still had to somehow feed a colicky baby, and where cleaning crews emptied the trash and got the pretzel crumbs out of the carpet. And if her day had consisted solely of cradling her newborn baby and gazing dreamily into a landscape of rainbows and ponies, she would have felt very lucky, indeed.

Instead, that day consisted of cleaning projectile vomit off the walls. She was able to marvel that any creature in God’s creation could move anything that far without a rocket launcher, and was even able to summon gratitude that she had a baby who could go for that kind of distance, but it sure felt like ‘work’ when she was working that mop.

She was also able to spend the day marveling at the other end of God’s creation and just how much it could produce. And cleaning that up, too. Ten times. Twice during the trip to the grocery store.

That day also involved chasing a three-year-old who was hell bent on a) hurling himself off a roof; b) jamming Mr. Potato Head’s eye into a wall outlet; c) leaping from the bunk bed on to the blade of the (mercifully) unmoving ceiling fan; and d) all of the above.

And she was still able to consider herself ‘lucky,’ spending the day with her children.

It’s a good thing she couldn’t consider herself ‘working,’ because that meant she had time to have dinner ready when Poor Working Stiff came home and announced that he was going to watch Monday Night Football and so he didn’t think he’d give the baby a bath tonight or help with the dishes.

If housecleaning, child-rearing, and errands aren’t ‘work,’ and are, in fact, right up there on the Luck Meter with lounging on Waikiki getting cocoa butter rubbed on our backs by a cute cabana boy, then why aren’t new dads dashing home every night at 5:01 so they can get them some of that lucky?

Let’s call a wet wipe a wet wipe. We all know that scraping peanut butter off the curtains is nowhere near an equivalent to an Hawaiian vacation. So quit insulting our intelligence by implying that it is, quit coming home and acting like you’re the only one who’s been ‘working’ all day, and pick up a kid and do something constructive with it.

Face it: the day you got lucky and then made a baby is the day you got lucky and started your family. If taking care of your family is, indeed, the height of good fortune, then I suggest you step up to the table and meet Lady Luck.

Who looks remarkably like your wife.

 

Ó     E.S. Evans 2006

How Shari Rae Koelsch Saved My Life.

The best word to describe Shari is ’serene.’

I learned that in 1986, when I met her. My first husband and I had separated and I knew I needed a place to live and she needed a roommate in her tiny, yet immaculate townhouse in Tempe.

What I didn’t know I needed, but got anyway, was a wonderful, dear friend who was a living example of what it was like to have one’s act together, to live so comfortably in one’s own skin, and to exhibit an aura so peaceful and well, serene that people were just drawn to her like moths to a light.

(Seriously. Men would walk up to her all. the. time. To the point where it was annoying. But they couldn’t resist. Nobody could.)

What I know she didn’t need, but got anyway, was a pretty sloppy roommate who didn’t know what the hell she needed, was drinking too much, and in all ways was a pretty spectacular example of someone who didn’t have her act together.

It was a standing joke between us that, if I was upset, I would start doing things to my hair…henna, blonding, that kind of thing. One night, I came home from a date in a foul mood and was stomping around the townhouse venting to myself like a neurotic T-rex. Shari emerged from her bedroom, obviously awakened from a sound sleep, reached under the sink and plopped a box of Summer Sun on the counter, and then disappeared, without a word, back into her bedroom.

Newly-highlighted, I reconciled with my husband. Shari got married. I had to start relying on other people to stuff a box of Summer Sun into my face when I was upset. We had our first babies the same year. She threw me a beautiful shower.

Over the years, we didn’t stay in touch so well, but her serenity shone out like a beacon from her new home in Chandler. Every time I visited, it was the same: immaculate and happy.

We had re-connected enough for me to know that she was ill, but when I visited her it seemed like nothing had changed. She was managing it, and if she was worried, refused to show it. Her family is just like her: serene and glowing.

Yesterday, right as I was starting work, her parents appeared. (They’re serene, too. There must be a gene for this.) Her father gave me an envelope: it was the kind of card you get at a funeral. Shari’s funeral, to be exact. She had passed away, quickly and unexpectedly, on April 6. She had passed away so quickly that there wasn’t enough time to find everyone (with Shari, there was a lot of everyone to find), and so I missed saying goodbye to her.

It is a huge irony that I missed this: the day Shari died, a very good friend of my teenaged daughter passed away in a car accident, and so I was looking in the obituaries that week, when normally I wouldn’t. I’m wracking my brain trying to remember if I caught even a glimpse of Shari’s tribute, but I’m coming up empty.

As I will be for a long time.

The fact that I didn’t see Shari one more time is my own fault; I cannot believe what it must have cost Elna and Phil in the midst of their own grief to come find me and I am so appreciative.

But I wish I had seen her. I don’t think she needed me. I have no doubt that Shari faced her death with the same serenity that she faced her life. But she saved my life once. I wish I could have returned that favor.

There *is* a God, and He wants me to do WHAT?

I have heard it said that if you believe in God, you don’t believe that there’s any such thing as a coincidence, as everything is part of The Divine Plan. Rarely do you get solid proof of the existence of The Deity on Fox News and Planet Out, on the same day.

I had heard this a few years ago, and all this corroboration does is reinforce the concept that God must be a man. Prostate cancer check = blood test. Breast cancer check = mash sensitive body part between two sheets of glass, cranking them ever closer with a winch hauled out of the Spanish Inquisition.

Now we discover that prostate cancer prevention = pleasuring oneself at every single opportunity. Breast cancer prevention = rigorous diet and exercise.

Okay, okay. I get the point.

But now, to add insult to injury, we get proof that not only is God a man, He dislikes women and has a wicked sense of humor.
Edit: thanks to Jennie for pointing out the broken link.

Oh, and He’s obviously in cahoots with my mother, who is no doubt laughing her fool head off at me right. this. minute.

Note: one could point out that a depressed man could pick up a mop and wash that trouble right out of his hair, but he can’t. He’s too busy on his crusade to prevent prostate cancer.

Dear God: Please Don’t Ever Take Fox News Away From Me.

When I was a teenager, I was cautioned by my mother never to hitchhike. She cited the usual reasons why I should never do such a thing, like the possibility of being hauled off into the desert and left for dead with the scorpions.

Which was chilling enough, but she also mentioned the chance that our neighbor, Esther, would drive by and catch me in the act, thus outing me as a vagrant, hitchhiking teenager. It is presumed that Esther would have picked me up in a New York minute and carted my wayward ass back to my mother.

This story comes back to me when I was reading Fox News, because in a surfeit of Weirdapalooza, right next to the story about Sandra Frosti and her eight-foot alligator I find The Ultimate Story Of Your Mother Discovering You Doing Something Stupid.

Please note that the prostitute involved didn’t think she should maybe tone down the illegal, highly dangerous line of work. No, the lesson we drew from this episode was that maybe we should quit giving interviews as opposed to quit giving…oh, never mind.

Hats off to you, Sandra Frosti. (Or, Why I Will Never, Ever, Ever Live In Florida.)

I’m going to jinx this by saying this, but Phoenix is The Place To Be. Here in Phoenix, we don’t get hurricanes (unless you count a little limp-wristed scare we had a few years ago that was supposed to come charging up the Sea of Cortez and level the city and instead dropped a half-inch of rain) nor do we get earthquakes, or tornadoes.

We do, however, get scorpions.

Unless you’re a small child, a scorpion is about as threatening as a bee in terms of venom and danger. I’ve been assured that if I get nailed by one, a benadryl and some ice oughta do me.

Still, there’s something so viscerally frightening about them that when I see them I seek refuge on top of a chair like some sort of hysterical stereotype of a housewife with a mouse. True Fact: Once, in a manufacturing plant I worked at, a mouse literally jumped on my shoulder and ran down my bare leg and out my office door and I dealt with it more intelligently than I deal with a scorpion.

Another True Fact: I am a Scorpio. Go figure.

Yet Another True Fact: Once the kids and I found a dead scorpion in the kitchen right before we were leaving for school and work. We all assembled in the kitchen to inspect it. The kids were fairly certain that it was, indeed, pushing up little scorpion daisies.

I was not so sure. I suggested that we drop a heavy book on it to make sure…the last thing I wanted was an angry, crippled scorpion stalking me late at night.

It was Abby (maybe eight at the time?) who suggested that we put a paper towel over the creature before we dropped the dictionary on it so as not to leave any creature guts on the book. Abby = Smart. And Calm Under Pressure.

The deed done, I was faced with another dilemma. At some point, I was going to have to deal with a crushed scorpion. Such is the depth of my phobia that I actually called, not my husband, who would only laugh hysterically at me (because he was safe at work where there were no scorpions lurking about his desk), but a good friend, Jim, who offered to stop by the house and dispose of the corpse on his way to work.

That’s a good friend.

Now that you know the strength of my fears of weird, primitive creatures crawling about my kitchen, I invite you to consider this. The fact that Sandra Frosti stumbled into her kitchen in search of coffee and found that rooting around in her tupperware cabinet and was still coherent enough that she could speak to a reporter without needing oxygen first is a sign of major cojones on her part.

Sandra, I salute you, and will send all my scorpions to you. Clearly, you’re better able to deal with these than me.

 

 

 

We interrupted this Mom, Interrupted…

…I was out of town. To be precise, I was in Puerto Penasco, Mexico with nine high school senior girls and four other, presumably uninterrupted, moms.

Now, when I called T-Mobile to secure international service, the very helpful rep, Paula, confessed that nothing sounded more exotic than being in a place called Puerto Penasco and she professed her undying envy that she was stuck in Georgia.

And I guess that it is, actually, a little exotic. To Phoenicians, it’s just Rocky Point, the closest thing we have to a beach. I had only been there once before, on a trip that was quickly and mercifully forgotten, and so it seemed a little exotic to me, to tell you the truth.

But you haven’t lived until you’ve chaperoned nine beautiful girls who were raised in the emotional equivalent of Mayberry on a trip to a place where nine out of ten men won’t “STEP AWAY FROM THE GIRLS. YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE GIRLS” unless you use a cattle prod.

So I’m a little tired.

While I was out, I managed to write the monthly column, and here ’tis: Mom, Interrupted – April, 2008

 

And now a recorded word from your doctor.

Or my doctor, rather. Thanks to those pesky HIPAA laws, I’m not even sure anyone’s allowed to admit that they even *have* a doctor anymore.

Remember Marcus Welby, MD? Remember Joe Gannon? (Remember TV doctors from the 60’s and 70’s? They never joked around and did silly things? They took my health seriously. That’s what’s wrong with our healthcare system now. Too many Grey’s Anatomy docs doing the horizontal bop in the supply closet and not enough Alex Stones who kept their pants on because they were married to Donna Reed and that should be enough for anybody!)

Remember when they had just diagnosed The Disease of the Week and they had their hapless victim patient in their clutches and they had to share the news that the damned thing was going to be impossible to cure, Marcus and Joe and Trapper John would always haul the doomed, wan-looking young woman (well, for Joe it was always a young woman, with whom he’d fall hopelessly in love…Marcus was always looking for a good cup of decaf and was immune to the charms of his patients, and Trapper John passed off the gorgeous ones to Gonzo, who apparently worked a stripper pole to get through med school and why don’t my doctors look like that????)…

Oh. Did I say that out loud?

Anyway, the proud owner of TDOTW would always get the news in a book-lined office. Always. Never sitting on the exam table clutching a paper gown around them, or trying to make the ends meet in the back as they limped down the hall clutching the urine sample no one told them what to do with.

No, everyone sat around looking very grave in the doctor’s office hearing about the prognosis of TDOTW.

I just got done with most of my annual well-woman exam, which is called that because I am, technically, well. Right now. But my dear doctor, who looks nothing like Gonzo or even Joe Gannon, is determined to root through every molecule of my being until she finds something wrong, at which point I will cease to be a ‘well’ woman and then I’ll become a wet-my-pants-worried woman. (In two years, when I turn fifty and become colonoscopy-bait, she’s going to start referring me to spelunking professionals who will *really* leave no stone unturned, but that’s for a different day.)

So, to fulfill my doctor’s quest for peaked-looking molecules I got referred out for bloodwork and ultrasounds and mammograms and whatnot and I obediently complied. And then I wait for the phone calls, because she’s not going to schedule an appointment for me to sit in her office. I’m not even going to get a phone call from a live human being.

Instead, I get Terror Waiting, a diabolical new way to deliver the news that I have TDOTW. It works this way:

1. Phone rings.

2. I answer with the traditional “hello?”

3. I am greeted with a Perky, automated Voice, informing me that I have A Message From My Doctor. (The perky voice has never even dreamed that she had TDOTW, so she remains unsympathetic.)

4. I am told to call a number. I frantically try to find a pen. There is no pen. There might be a crayon. No, wait. There’s a pencil with no lead. Oh, crap. Why don’t I just slice open my finger with a steak knife (that, I can find) and scrawl the phone number in blood on my wall???? Because there is no way I will be able to sleep tonight if I don’t get that message; I’ll lie awake for hours wondering if maybe the Perky Voice sounded sad there because she knew something???

5. I manage to transcribe the number.

6. I call it. I verify that I am, indeed, me several times. And then the Perky Voice deigns to deliver my message.

7. Which tells me that everything is fine. I have cholesterol levels that would make Marcus Welby weep with joy. And no TDOTW.

For now.

 

Cover me, I’ve got playground duty.

First, the third-graders organize: http://mominterrupted.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/chickens-are-not-organized/

So it follows that the teachers would get wise: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-teacher4apr04,1,2917312.story

Insert your own joke….here.