TGIM?

Wow.  We had quite the weekend here at the Average Mom’s homestead.  My father and step-mother came to visit for her birthday and anyone who knows my family knows that this combination is inevitably leading to Jim Beam, either in Manhattan or Old Fashionform.  This weekend will be remembered as the weekend of the Old Fashions.  Lots and lots of Old Fashions.  We enjoyed a fa-bu meal cooked by yours truly Saturday night: steamed lobster and sweet corn.  Yum. E.  (We had lobbers twice last week!  Seriously, who do we think we are?) Following our meal, we enjoyed Old Fashions, cream puffs and candles while my stepmother opened her presents.  We were also visited by one my husband’s friends from college who we used to see daily and who now rarely comes over.  It was really nice to catch up with him and I think he actually really hit it off  with my Dad, ex-hippie that he is.  Did I mention the Old Fashions? 

Before the gluttony of bourbon and crustacean, we had a really nice day at a local lake we found.  the lake was so clean you could walk out to your chest and still see your toes.  It was lovely and Josie had such a great time.  Nobody had as much fun as Merle, however.  My dog LOVES to swim.  He was so happy to be running free and retrieving sticks.  You would’ve thought we had brought him to Fire Island for the afternoon.  He exhausted himself and slept all. day. yesterday.

We did the same, lazing around on the couch and watching an embarrassing amount of TV (damn you Law & Order marathon!!).  I didn’t even clean one thing, I was so wiped-out.  Kristian didn’t do dishes and Josie was lifeless as well, though I suspect she was just tired from the lake, not from the Jim Beam.  All in all, it was worth it.  My parents are wonderful, loving people and they truly adore their grand daughter.  She, in turn, worships my stepmother (much to my own mother’s chagrin) and this weekend she played with Granddad for the first time.  He is usually overshadowed by his wife, in Josie’s eyes, and I know it used to hurt him a bit.  It was nice to see how he was that she was asking him to play with her.  He must have tossed her in the air 100 times.  I know his back will be paying for that today!   

After our weekend of gluttony and subsequent laziness, it was extremely difficult to get out of bed today.  I really think I could have slept hard until 11 or 12 but Josie climbed into our bed at 7:30am, snuggled up in arms between myself and Merle and asked if we were going to the lake again today.  I wish we were but I don’t think my liver can handle it.

Like a whole in the head…

One of my biggest pet peeves in the whole entire, messed – up, degenerating world is back seat drivers.  May-hap this because I am an “aggressive” driver, or because I was taught to drive by a former NYC cab driver (my dad…) or because my high school sweetheart regularly played “car tag” with me in the passenger seat and then later, with me, as we drove home from school/work/Erin’s house everyday.  Regardless of the reason, I. Hate. Backseat. Drivers.  If someone doesn’t like the way I drive, then by all means…drive the car yourself.  I won’t mind, I promise.  If anything I would appreciate having a DD! 

But nothing gets my panties in a  bunch more then someone in the passenger seat, or backseat, or ANY seat of my vehicle letting me know where to go, or how fast to get there or even worse; not saying anything but gasping and clenching their fists every five seconds. 

Unfortunately, Internet, my karma sucks because I have birthed a backseat driver, even worse: a car seat driver.  My three year old is a constant pain in my ass commentator on my driving.  She has determined the purpose of street lights.  This seemed cute the first few times she pointed out that the light was red or green and what the relevant instruction to that color was.  It was cute the first few times she said “oh Mommy, we’re going fast,” even though I was totally doing the speed limit.  This adorable commentary has manifested itself over the past few weeks into me dreading having to drive her anywhere (I have a similar dread whenever her father gets in the car…)

Imagine this scenario: we are calmly driving down the streets of our fair city to daycare in the morning.  My coffee has yet to kick in.  As I turn the corner, there is a red light three blocks up.  Three.  Blocks.  Up.  From the back of the car my daughter bellows “RED LIGHT!!  STOP!!!”  When I don’t stop, because the red light is three blocks away, panic ensues as my daughter react as if the street light monsters are going to come into our still moving vehicle, take her Lamby away and guillotine the fluffy sheep in the middle of the town square.  Screaming.  Yelling.  Desperate crying.  Until I finally come to a stop, or the light turns green which cues Josie’s delightful reminder that “GREEN MEANS GO, MOMMY!”  Thank you, Josie.  They didn’t cover that on my permit test.  Or my driving test.  Or at the safe driving classes that I took to eliminate my many speeding tickets. 

I don’t know how I managed to drive 12 years without your instruction, my little traffic cop.

Hope.

I was a Clinton fan, but I am happy to see that Barack has a comprehensive plan to re-vamp NCLB and provide new support (and financial incentives) to new & experienced teachers. 

In all honesty, I would love to teach for the rest of my career.  Working in a classroom with the students is USUALLY the reason I can get through the day.  I enjoy getting to know who they are, their passions and fears.  My favorite moments are when the whole class is discussing a current issue, or a past event and I end up tossing my guiding questions in the trash because the students have swept the discussion away, guiding it in a different direction and to a deeper level then I had thought was possible.  Those moments make my heart pound.  But I can’t teach forever.  I know that and it saddens me to think that in order to move my family in the financial direction it needs to go, I will have to leave the classroom, perhaps in as early and two or three years from now, and start working in school administration, either in discipline or curriculum development.  

The reality is that our goal is to move to a more affluent and “urban” section of the state closer to our friends and family.  Naturally, this means that it is more expensive to live there.  Taxes are higher.  Housing is astronomically priced and given my current salary, we would not be able to afford to buy a home there.  Ever.  So, my time in the classroom is limited.  The unfortunate truth is that in order to make a decent salary in education, you need to pursue a career outside the classroom.  It is hopeful to see a Presidential Candidate starting to address this.  Providing financial incentives for teachers to stay, and achieve, in the classroom is a move in the right direction but it won’t be enough.  I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t know who does but I am looking forward with hope that I won’t have to forsake my classroom in order to pursue my family’s goals.

The Possibilities are Endless…..

My husband and daughter have just left to visit his parents for 2. whole. days.  I have an entire day in front of me and the options are so plentiful I don’t even know where to begin.  I could go golfing.  I could lay in the sun.  I can go to the gym for hours.  I could hit the lake.  I can go to lunch at the new cafe in town.  I could paint.  I could read a book.  I could go fly fishing…….. 

Wait, why I am sitting here? 

Later!  I’m off to enjoy my freedom! 

And Then Hell Froze Over

Scene: Me, cooking Bok Choy salad in the kitchen.  Daughter is bathed and laying on the floor in the living room watching Blues Clues. 

Your Average Mom is chopping Bok Choy at the counter, oblivious to the life changing event about to occur. 

Darling Daughter: “Momma?’

Your Average Mom is busy and rolls her eyes as she expects a request for pink gum or “valentines days,” aka: conversation hearts. 

Me: “What, Josie?”

Darling Daughter: “Is it time for bed yet?”

Your Average Mom drops the knife on the counter along with her jaw.  She slowly turns her now-dizzy head to the blue french country clock on the wall.  It reads 8pm.

Me: “Sure, it’s bedtime.”

Darling Daughter: “Okay, I’ll get Lamby.” 

Darling Daughter proceeds to pick up her ragged, well-loved stuffed Lamb off the floor in the living room and walk happily, quietly, WITH OUT PROTEST up the stairs to her bedroom.  Your Average Mom stands dumbfounded in the kitchen, concerned that perhaps she fried her daughters brain with too many microwaved meals unwittingly lobotomizing her.  Your Average Mom then realizes that it was a fair trade-ff, nay, a great trade-off, if it meant her 3 yr old daughter would put herself to bed without hysterics and tears and frantic manipulations for a glass of a water. 

Your Average Mom is awakened from her stunned daze by the sound of her darling daughetr’s voice melodically traveling down the stairs.

Darling Daughter: “Momma, can I have a drink of water?”

Well, you can’t win ‘em all!

I’m a little veclempt…

It appears that many of the Average Mom’s friends and family have become “in a family way” over the past few months.  It seems to be spreading quickly and quietly in the night like Paris Hilton’s sex tape.  One of my besties even knows already that she is having boy numero dos (which, much like the Versailles Treaty, now sets her up for another World War as she will have to try AGAIN for a girl.)  One of my friends at work was luckier equally blessed with a daughter this past Tuesday.  With all this procreation going on around me,  I can’t help but start to think about my sadomasochistic desires to have another child.  It’s a tough subject to discuss in my household, and even in my own brain.  I keep falling back to that argument that Josie need s a companion, someone who completely understands where she is coming from and what she endured at the hands of her crazy loving parents.  My husband, being an only child, has no concept of the bond that exists between siblings, tenuous and challenging as it can be at times, therefor he is blind to the benefits of having another child.  On the other hand, having a baby “for Josie” is probably the worst thing we could do and a truly bad reason for bringing another person onto this overpopulated, over-exploited and unsustainable Earth. 

But I have never been one to just accept a decision and move on, especially when the decision is not the one I want.  So I have been playing with baby names the past few days.  Why?  Because it’s FUN!  I no longer get to play with how I would sign my name if I was married to fill in the name of any of my many crushes here.  I am married and now I knowhow I would sign my name, so that’s kind of a counter productive amusement at this point.  SO! That in mind, here are my two final choices for the names of our future child.  I tried to make them historically relevant, and family-based, names

For a girl: Cady Marie (for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, woman’s suffragist and intellectual, and my momma.)

For a boy: Theodore Lars (for my favorite President, Teddy Roosevelt: environmentalist and ass-kicker, albeit imperialist, and war mongering, and for my husband’s father.)            

     

So tell me, what would you name the fruit of your loins? and why?

Discuss amongst yourselves……   

Aunt Flo

To My Husband:

Here are three signs that I am PMSing and you should just hide in the man room and wear-out the storm:

1.) I begin cleaning the house like Martha Stewart on speed.  It’s true, Internet, I am very clean.  However, when “that time of the month” rolls around, it becomes obsessive and maniacal and rather then the sparkly, dog-hair free floor giving me the sense of accomplishment and pride that it usually does, instead it makes me want to kill kittens in their sleep – very Manson-esque.

2.) I begin acting irrational.  As an example; screaming, yelling and swearing at you in street because you want to take Josie for a nice stroll instead of the power walk I had been planning on.  After you take the wee one for ice cream anyways, I throw shoes into the driveway in a fit if rage (somethings never change, Evers.)  When you return, darling husband, I try to seduce you, which you accept with out question because you are a man and, quite frankly, whether or not I had threatened to divorce your “insensitive, selfish ass” twenty minutes ago does not affect your sex drive. 

(and yes, I know a 3yr old on a power walk is absurd…geez.  This PMS people, not bipolar disorder – there is NO rational thought in this case.) 

3.) Within the first five minutes of watching The Lion King, I am a sobbing heap on the couch, mid-vacuum.  The chorus of “The Circle of Life” has not even finished and I am covered in saline and snot.  And I don’t even really like SImba that much, he’s kind of a brat, all like “just can’t wait to be king” and getting into trouble.  Then he just runs off and abandons his poor grieving mother - for shame!  Look out when you sleep Simba  - I’ve been mopping! and the drying Swiffer juice is singing your feline name to me!

So, my partner in life, please. please. please.  The next time you see any of the above indicators, run for your lifego watch some old Red Sox playoffs in the man room with Josie and Merle and don’t come out for 5-7 days.  If you follow this simple request, you will increase your life span by 10-20 years.

If you choose not to heed my warnings, don’t say I didn’t warn you…….

It’s here…..

The new vintage of Red Sox wine.  The first vintage straight up sucked.  No fancy wine-speak here.  It tasted like poo, especially the Shilling Schardonnay, BUT this vintage has a Sauvignon blanc varietal that might have a chance, plus I love Sauv blancs in the summer.  Apparently there is also a Cabernet sauvignon and a Cab blend but it is so difficult to make a truly unique Cab, or blend thereof, that I have already assumed they will super-suck. 

I hope I am wrong.

How did I find out that they made it to market already……?  My husband purchased them today and tried to SNEAK THEM INTO THE MAN ROOM without me noticing them.  I think for two reasons.  First, he has been harassing me non-stop about “the recession” and “gas prices” and definitely felt guilty that he had purchased my favorite past-time because it had a picture of his favorite past-time on it. Second, HE HAS NO PLANS OF DRINKING THEM!  at all…..ever….they are destined to sit in his man-room gathering dust next to his sports almanacs and old wrestling dolls (sorry, but I don’t clean in there, my OCD has it’s limits.)  SO, this means I must buy a whole new set to taste and enjoy.  All proceeds go to charity, so really…I’m like, helping and stuff. 

By the way, I will let you know if they suck as hard as the first batch once my husband leaves for a weekend and I drink his I get a chance to actually open some up.       

Parenting 101, Section A

Today my husband taught Josie how to remove a DVD from the player, put it in it’s proper holder, put it away and then take out a new DVD, place it in the DVD player and press play.  Did he do this because he thought it might be a marketable skill in the job market which may, or may not, lead to a lucrative career at Blockbuster?  No, he taught her this because he was too lazy to get off the couch and change the Scooby Doo DVD himself.

Next weekend: Momma teaches Josie how to make her a Jim Beam Manhattan on the rocks.  Then we send her to college.  Parenting: check!

A Day in the Life

Welcome to my mothering/marriage/teaching/wine blog-thingy.  Why those four things?  Because they are inextricably linked across space and time, that’s why. 

Enjoy it, or don’t…I’m gonna do it either way.    

So here we go….

Disease has invaded my house.  Disease and pollen…both are loathe to infect my fresh clean sheets.  Josie is sick, like, really sick…not like when I just call in and say she’s sick because my job rarely lets me take a vacation.  But far, far worse then my daughter barfing all over the Disney Princesses that decorate her bed is that my husband. has. allergies. and. it. is. May.  His sinuses are swollen.  His nose is runny.  His head is achy. And he will let me know about it… repeatedly, so that I murder him in his sleep, nuture him.  Amongst the whining and crying, and Josie’s getting sick, I am desperately trying to maintain a germ-free environment because I have OCD care about my family.  This then leads to the tie in with one of the other topics of my blog: wine.  As I have come to discover, marriage and parenting frequently lead to a nice glass, or 5, of wine.  You may ask which I prefer, red or white, or maybe you don’t ask that,  but if you did!! I would say both.  Last evening the chaos of my home led to me open the cheapest wine I had in the house,  Smoking Loon Pinot Noir.  I always seem to gravitate toward SL, though I am constantly disappointed by it lack of complexity but in last evening’s environment, I was not concerned with complexity.  The Smoky Pinot went down easy. 

And as my students would say “that’s what she said.”