Yesterday The Boy's school closed at 1:00 for a "teacher work day" and I didn't cry about it.
My equanimity rather surprised me. After all, just a week before I had experienced a bit of a breakdown when they sent him home early with a teething temperature. Two weeks before that I wondered what exactly I was paying for when he spent 10 days at home with the virus that culminated in pneumonia. That bout was preceded by a snow day, our second, after the one just a week before that capped off winter break.
In other words, by all rights I needed a work day more than the teachers.
To further stack the deck against my sanity, on Sunday we had, as a family, used my ace-in-the-hole for days when I must entertain The Boy singlehandedly -- Health Adventure. Health Adventure is a sort of poor man's Museum of Science and Industry, the Oz of kids' museums with which I grew up. Some of my earliest memories involve the incubator where you could watch chicks hatching and the tongue rug surrounded by big, white, plastic teeth where one sat to watch movies about the importance of good dental hygiene. I made the mistake of returning when I was 18 and was deeply saddened to discover my favorite quaint exhibits overrun by computer games. So goes one's youth.
Health Adventure comes from more humble origins. Apparently it began as a way of entertaining kids in a hospital. It now shares space with the Asheville Museum of Art but in a couple of years will move to a grand new location, just as The Boy is old enough to appreciate the expansion.
Right now, what he appreciates the most is the Play Room. There's nothing particularly science or health related about the Play Room, unless you spend time discussing with your toddler the benefits of eating real versions of the plastic fruits and vegetables to be found strewn amongst the more popular baby dolls and xylophones. Or maybe the point is that exercise is good for you, and the Play Room is a place where smalls kids can run and climb and do what kids naturally do but adults somehow have to coax themselves into in the hopes of squeezing another couple of years out of their life expectancy.
This was Hubby's first trip to Health Adventure. He gamely sat in the rocking chair facing the tube The Boy likes to crawl through and waited patiently. The Boy, however, has decided the best way to use the tube is to crawl almost to Daddy and then turn around and shimmy himself back up to the platform where Mommy -- more accustomed to displacing small children on the equipment where The Boy needs a little help -- waits.
It was Hubby's idea to take The Boy down the tongue slide, something he's never done before. I think I enjoyed it more than The Boy, perhaps owing to latent happy memories of teeth brushing movies.
But Hubby's greatest idea was to venture out of the Play Room to the upstairs exhibits I had never seen, since I was convinced The Boy is too young to appreciate anything more sophisticated than the plastic washer/dryer he loves so much in the Play Room.
It turns out there's lots of room to crawl upstairs in Health Adventure as well. With wide, serious eyes The Boy checked out the six-year-old Dorothy running out of a private party, her hair in blue ribbons, her feet in sparkly red slippers. He gazed hopefully at the dizzy room until I asked Hubby to take him in. (My inner ears are partial to solid ground, thanks.) He dutifully studied the fish tank until he was sick of hearing Mommy say, "Fish. Fish. Fish."
About the only thing The Boy didn't like about Health Adventure was being forced to leave the pretty pink golf ball with the physics exhibit to which it belonged. I'm sure it wouldn't have been the first time the volunteers found a colored golf ball amongst the Leggos. But one has to begin setting boundaries some time.
We ran back to the car in a gale of wind that made The Boy cry and reminded me of why I had blown Health Adventure on a Sunday afternoon instead of a Teacher Work Day.
And yet. By the time 12:30 rolled around on Monday, I was ready to pick up The Boy. I needed to do a Target run, and he enjoys shopping. It was a little bit chilly for the park, but he was happily playing in front of his school, so I figured the park would be a good back up. We would, I felt certain, gracefully fly through the six hours until Daddy got home to help with his bath.
"Doh. Doh," The Boy crowed at me as I wrapped him in my arms.
"Tree," I explained as he pointed at one. "Tree." I glanced around to see if any of his caregivers was nearby to appreciate this example of good parenting.
"Tree," one of them joined in. A moment later another told me The Boy had taken two steps on his own that day. I left feeling happy and relaxed and like this motherhood thing isn't too tough. After all, how often do you get to sit with your baby in your lap on a Monday afternoon as he drinks a warm bottle of milk and the world stops for twenty minutes?
Hmm, a clue to my equanimity. Missed it?
The world STOPPED. Even though I had a full list of to-do's upstairs. This is very big news.
By the time I woke The Boy up from a two-hour-plus nap at 4:00, it wasn't feeling all that different from a normal Monday. A quick run to Target with the aid of cookies in the car, a struggle of wills over whether The Boy got to drink juice with dinner (I scored a hollow victory that left The Boy refusing to eat much of anything and me wondering if 13 months is really the age at which to train a child to appreciate plain water), and before I knew it Hubby was walking through the door and I hadn't even drawn the bath yet.
I'm still marveling at how effortlessly I accommodated a half-day of school. Could it be the acupuncture? Sure does help. The wonders of a few therapy sessions? My brain is feeling less scrambled these days.
Or maybe those aids merely helped me relax enough to discover the pleasure of a little boy on the verge of walking, talking, and otherwise bringing his mother all sorts of joyful moments.
Now that I'm slowing down enough to be in them.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Radio Shame
At first, I was ashamed to admit it. I hid it on the 6th preset station, separated from NPR by at least three unprogrammed buttons, in a spot to which Hubby's finger seemed unlikely to wander. When I parked the car in front of our house, I carefully returned the radio to the NPR station, just in case someone other than me and The Boy might be in the car the next time I turned the key in the ignition. This being winter, I was saved the discomfort of keeping the windows firmly up and all sounds inside, shielded from the prying ears of neighboring cars.
And yet. I am no longer ashamed to admit it. I listen to a Top 40 radio station.
I could defend myself by pointing out that I was practically bullied into it. The Asheville radio choices are dismal -- at least to a sophisticated former city dweller such as myself, spoiled by the endless airwaves choices of Southern California. Morning Becomes Eclectic, bluegrass, alt-country, even good flamenco is available there if you know how to spot it.
Oh, come on. Who's kidding whom? If I'm fully disclosing, I might as well admit that in Los Angeles I alternated between presetting the radio to the second NPR station I knew I should be listening to and a cheesy player of 70's and 80's fare that I justified preferring when I was pregnant for reasons no longer readily apparent to me.
Still, the choices are far more limited in our new home. During those first long months before daycare shined a smiling face on us, I hoped for the comforts of NPR shows to entertain me as I entertained The Boy. To my chagrin, instead of gorging myself on episodes of The World, Day to Day, and The Business, I found myself feeding The Boy lunch to the strains of not particularly imaginative classical music. This lulling, tear-inducing fare began at 9 a.m., pretty much as soon as Hubby abandoned me for the "excitement" of the newsroom, and continued until 3:00, when I was generally wandering the streets with the stroller in search of stimulation and thus, sadly, oh so sadly, missing Fresh Air. Once The Boy was ready for dinner, All Things Considered had already ended and I had to listen to local talk shows about gardening or, um, nothing.
I did try to make up for this void by diligently downloading podcasts of my favorite shows. But -- and this might be a big, fat, sad clue to my affinity for Top 40 fare -- I didn't purchase an iPod until a few months ago. At this point, The Boy was in school and I was (supposedly) busy at work on my computer and no longer in desperate need of public radio. In my novice iPod fever, I downloaded exactly half of my CD selection to my computer (the other half seems to have mysteriously disappeared during the move, something about which I'm just sure Hubby knows not a thing). But playing the tinny sounding familiar songs while I worked proved too distracting.
As for my podcasts, they can be great company in the car. The only problem is, it never takes more than 10 minutes to get anywhere by car in Asheville. That's a lot of grocery trips to get in one full episode of Filmspotting. (And perhaps too many of The Loh Down on Science, which, I've found, is best sampled through the occasional, "Oh, it's The Loh Down on Science!" rather than in frenzied blocks designed to clear off the iPod for the next sync session.)
For a time, when driving I felt obligated to take advantage of our lingering XM subscription, a byproduct of Hubby's hound-accompanied cross-country drive. While I got an initial jolt of nostalgia from Fred's alt-tinged 80's fare, it quickly began to seem less like an enjoyable way to get from our house to the pediatrician's office and more like something I was trying to use up, like a series of yoga classes with a fast-approaching expiration date.
And so, the other day, I reached for the scan button, willing, just for the hell of it, to warble along to some bad country music or to join Dido in an rousing rendition of "Thank You" while recalling the old days in St. Louis, where such songs made me feel sadly defiant about living alone with my basset hound.
I can't say what song it was that made me stop. But as soon as I heard the ubiquitous "Star" moniker, I pressed firmly and decisively on the preset button. I knew I would return, so why resist?
Thereafter came the shame. Had I truly become one of those old people so uncool she doesn't even care how uncool she is? No longer can I pretend to be the young gal wearing an unwrinkled, coordinated outfit, prettified in make-up that is less than three years old, and sporting hair that she has actually bothered to style. That woman cruised along in her frequently clean Audi A4 unafraid to open the windows to the alternative station that maybe set her apart as being too old to appreciate -- or even listen to -- rap, but signaled that she was something more exotic than her faded, motherly, thirtysomething counterparts.
Now you can spot me on Merrimon Avenue in my Honda CRV (not a Highlander because when were child-car hunting and Hubby mentioned the Highlander, I cried real tears), my hair in a messy brown ponytail, some mascara my only admission that the "natural" look is something no one really looks good in, even though we pretend we think so. A child seat is the main decoration visible from the outside, but if you were to enter my auto realm you would be treated to a floor strewn with organic imitation Cheerios, a blue polka-dotted grocery cart seat cover, and a few very old bottles of sun block that used to occupy The Boy while strapped in for a ride.
So, really, how much could a little Top 40 hurt my image?
It was Tuesday when I embraced my Top 40 proclivities, and not in capitulation to life as a deeply unhip over-the-hill mother. No, on that lovely, 70-degrees-and-sunny day that felt like spring and Long Beach, I decided my dirty little secret isn't so dirty after all.
I started the day feeling pretty down. The day before I felt I had begun to hit my stride after our orgy of out-patient surgery and viral pneumonia and snow days. I was just finishing up a legal project, clearing the way to a week of time to write, write write. In my mind I would post a fabulous story on my blog, muscle my way into a weekly column at the Citizen Times, finish my book proposal, rouse at least fifty more reviewers for my Amazon.com contest excerpt, and maybe even have time to delve back into my yoga teacher sleuth novel.
My high hopes blew up with a resigned little gasp when The Boy's school called at 3:00. "He's got a fever of 100.5, and he had a loose bowel movement," they informed me solemnly. "You need to come pick him up."
Ha, I thought to myself as I sweetly promised to be right there. This was nothing more than the result of indulgently letting The Boy eat as much venison sausage as he wanted at the Super Bowl party the night before. He would be fine while I at least finished my paying work.
One impatient phone call informing me that his temperature had climbed to 101.1 later, I finally showed up to collect him. Rather belligerently, I noted that, "This means he can't come tomorrow either, doesn't it?"
"Twenty-four hours fever free without medication," one of the caregivers told me in that annoying way some people have of telling you the rule you already knew without offering you some hope that there is a way to interpret it that might allow you to bring your child to daycare the next day.
And so I found myself Tuesday morning with another day devoted to my child.
This is not, I hasten to explain, a bad thing in theory. I love my child, and I love spending time with him, even if I do like to do it in a room with a clock and, for a mere 45 minutes a day (which can't have long term negative effects, right?), a television set. But I've been working for months to figure out what I want to do with my life outside of mothering, and I am, frankly, more than ready to get on with it. A snow day here, an illness there -- I can convince myself that these are opportunities to slow down and enjoy The Boy before he grows up. But at some point it's only fair that I get my chance.
Apparently, Tuesday was not the day when that chance would come. Instead, I made the best of it and resolved to do the things that needed doing but couldn't get done while I was at my desk writing.
Next thing The Boy knew, he was in the car on his way to Amazing Savings. And, yes, the Top 40 radio station was playing.
Freed from the house, basking in the sunshine like a basset hound flopped belly-up on the back porch, enjoying my new coral-and-brown New Balance shoes that the teacher at Jack's school with a degree from the Fashion Institute proclaimed "great," I started feeling almost as great as my shoes. And the song about the woman whose kids make fun of her because she's still stuck in the 80's didn't make a dent in my mood.
We parked at the Amazing Savings closer to town -- the one I hadn't been to because everyone told me it was smaller and dirtier than the one a 20-minute drive away. But it was a day for adventure. If I could brave the derision of those who knew I dared listen to a Top 40 station, then I could brave the derided local Amazing Savings.
Making our way past the loading dock and through the doors of the windowless warehouse, The Boy and I stepped into something that felt familiar, in a hip, Californian way. The crowded aisles, the nonsuburban shoppers -- there was something faintly Trader Joe's-esque about this place. The rival Amazing Savings's fluorescent lighting, scarred floors, and dirty-ish shelves had scared me off their produce; the ghost of the supermarket the space had once been haunted the zucchini, making them seem older than they were, and introduced the suggestion of mold on the garlic. In this market-like space, however, the organic red peppers glowed, and, at $3.99 a pound, made me weep with joy. (If you are reading this from California, please stop laughing and have some pity for me, living in a place where organic red peppers regularly sell for -- I kid you not -- $7.99 a pound and thus have been absent from my diet since we moved here.)
But here's the thing that made me happiest. As The Boy and I cruised the aisles looking for all natural deals, I found myself humming along to Michelle Branch. And Peter Gabriel. And old Foo Fighters. Music I had just been listening to in my car.
It really doesn't matter to me that I had a baby in my shopping cart or that most of the people in the store were at least as old as I am or even that I was grocery shopping for goodness sakes, not checking out some funky So Ho boutique. I felt young and lighthearted and cool enough to be buying discount organic food in a warehouse on the outskirts of a kind of funky, kind of artsy, progressive, and, yes, hip city. Even though slightly outdated Top 40 was playing over the loudspeakers and would soon be playing in my car as we drove home. Or maybe because of it.
Besides, how can I resist a radio station where I get to hear songs with lyrics likening your love to a tattoo because, "I will always have it with me"? With such treats awaiting me, I'm happy to admit that I'd rather have a good laugh and a tune I can sing with than something the critics tell me it's okay to like.
And yet. I am no longer ashamed to admit it. I listen to a Top 40 radio station.
I could defend myself by pointing out that I was practically bullied into it. The Asheville radio choices are dismal -- at least to a sophisticated former city dweller such as myself, spoiled by the endless airwaves choices of Southern California. Morning Becomes Eclectic, bluegrass, alt-country, even good flamenco is available there if you know how to spot it.
Oh, come on. Who's kidding whom? If I'm fully disclosing, I might as well admit that in Los Angeles I alternated between presetting the radio to the second NPR station I knew I should be listening to and a cheesy player of 70's and 80's fare that I justified preferring when I was pregnant for reasons no longer readily apparent to me.
Still, the choices are far more limited in our new home. During those first long months before daycare shined a smiling face on us, I hoped for the comforts of NPR shows to entertain me as I entertained The Boy. To my chagrin, instead of gorging myself on episodes of The World, Day to Day, and The Business, I found myself feeding The Boy lunch to the strains of not particularly imaginative classical music. This lulling, tear-inducing fare began at 9 a.m., pretty much as soon as Hubby abandoned me for the "excitement" of the newsroom, and continued until 3:00, when I was generally wandering the streets with the stroller in search of stimulation and thus, sadly, oh so sadly, missing Fresh Air. Once The Boy was ready for dinner, All Things Considered had already ended and I had to listen to local talk shows about gardening or, um, nothing.
I did try to make up for this void by diligently downloading podcasts of my favorite shows. But -- and this might be a big, fat, sad clue to my affinity for Top 40 fare -- I didn't purchase an iPod until a few months ago. At this point, The Boy was in school and I was (supposedly) busy at work on my computer and no longer in desperate need of public radio. In my novice iPod fever, I downloaded exactly half of my CD selection to my computer (the other half seems to have mysteriously disappeared during the move, something about which I'm just sure Hubby knows not a thing). But playing the tinny sounding familiar songs while I worked proved too distracting.
As for my podcasts, they can be great company in the car. The only problem is, it never takes more than 10 minutes to get anywhere by car in Asheville. That's a lot of grocery trips to get in one full episode of Filmspotting. (And perhaps too many of The Loh Down on Science, which, I've found, is best sampled through the occasional, "Oh, it's The Loh Down on Science!" rather than in frenzied blocks designed to clear off the iPod for the next sync session.)
For a time, when driving I felt obligated to take advantage of our lingering XM subscription, a byproduct of Hubby's hound-accompanied cross-country drive. While I got an initial jolt of nostalgia from Fred's alt-tinged 80's fare, it quickly began to seem less like an enjoyable way to get from our house to the pediatrician's office and more like something I was trying to use up, like a series of yoga classes with a fast-approaching expiration date.
And so, the other day, I reached for the scan button, willing, just for the hell of it, to warble along to some bad country music or to join Dido in an rousing rendition of "Thank You" while recalling the old days in St. Louis, where such songs made me feel sadly defiant about living alone with my basset hound.
I can't say what song it was that made me stop. But as soon as I heard the ubiquitous "Star" moniker, I pressed firmly and decisively on the preset button. I knew I would return, so why resist?
Thereafter came the shame. Had I truly become one of those old people so uncool she doesn't even care how uncool she is? No longer can I pretend to be the young gal wearing an unwrinkled, coordinated outfit, prettified in make-up that is less than three years old, and sporting hair that she has actually bothered to style. That woman cruised along in her frequently clean Audi A4 unafraid to open the windows to the alternative station that maybe set her apart as being too old to appreciate -- or even listen to -- rap, but signaled that she was something more exotic than her faded, motherly, thirtysomething counterparts.
Now you can spot me on Merrimon Avenue in my Honda CRV (not a Highlander because when were child-car hunting and Hubby mentioned the Highlander, I cried real tears), my hair in a messy brown ponytail, some mascara my only admission that the "natural" look is something no one really looks good in, even though we pretend we think so. A child seat is the main decoration visible from the outside, but if you were to enter my auto realm you would be treated to a floor strewn with organic imitation Cheerios, a blue polka-dotted grocery cart seat cover, and a few very old bottles of sun block that used to occupy The Boy while strapped in for a ride.
So, really, how much could a little Top 40 hurt my image?
It was Tuesday when I embraced my Top 40 proclivities, and not in capitulation to life as a deeply unhip over-the-hill mother. No, on that lovely, 70-degrees-and-sunny day that felt like spring and Long Beach, I decided my dirty little secret isn't so dirty after all.
I started the day feeling pretty down. The day before I felt I had begun to hit my stride after our orgy of out-patient surgery and viral pneumonia and snow days. I was just finishing up a legal project, clearing the way to a week of time to write, write write. In my mind I would post a fabulous story on my blog, muscle my way into a weekly column at the Citizen Times, finish my book proposal, rouse at least fifty more reviewers for my Amazon.com contest excerpt, and maybe even have time to delve back into my yoga teacher sleuth novel.
My high hopes blew up with a resigned little gasp when The Boy's school called at 3:00. "He's got a fever of 100.5, and he had a loose bowel movement," they informed me solemnly. "You need to come pick him up."
Ha, I thought to myself as I sweetly promised to be right there. This was nothing more than the result of indulgently letting The Boy eat as much venison sausage as he wanted at the Super Bowl party the night before. He would be fine while I at least finished my paying work.
One impatient phone call informing me that his temperature had climbed to 101.1 later, I finally showed up to collect him. Rather belligerently, I noted that, "This means he can't come tomorrow either, doesn't it?"
"Twenty-four hours fever free without medication," one of the caregivers told me in that annoying way some people have of telling you the rule you already knew without offering you some hope that there is a way to interpret it that might allow you to bring your child to daycare the next day.
And so I found myself Tuesday morning with another day devoted to my child.
This is not, I hasten to explain, a bad thing in theory. I love my child, and I love spending time with him, even if I do like to do it in a room with a clock and, for a mere 45 minutes a day (which can't have long term negative effects, right?), a television set. But I've been working for months to figure out what I want to do with my life outside of mothering, and I am, frankly, more than ready to get on with it. A snow day here, an illness there -- I can convince myself that these are opportunities to slow down and enjoy The Boy before he grows up. But at some point it's only fair that I get my chance.
Apparently, Tuesday was not the day when that chance would come. Instead, I made the best of it and resolved to do the things that needed doing but couldn't get done while I was at my desk writing.
Next thing The Boy knew, he was in the car on his way to Amazing Savings. And, yes, the Top 40 radio station was playing.
Freed from the house, basking in the sunshine like a basset hound flopped belly-up on the back porch, enjoying my new coral-and-brown New Balance shoes that the teacher at Jack's school with a degree from the Fashion Institute proclaimed "great," I started feeling almost as great as my shoes. And the song about the woman whose kids make fun of her because she's still stuck in the 80's didn't make a dent in my mood.
We parked at the Amazing Savings closer to town -- the one I hadn't been to because everyone told me it was smaller and dirtier than the one a 20-minute drive away. But it was a day for adventure. If I could brave the derision of those who knew I dared listen to a Top 40 station, then I could brave the derided local Amazing Savings.
Making our way past the loading dock and through the doors of the windowless warehouse, The Boy and I stepped into something that felt familiar, in a hip, Californian way. The crowded aisles, the nonsuburban shoppers -- there was something faintly Trader Joe's-esque about this place. The rival Amazing Savings's fluorescent lighting, scarred floors, and dirty-ish shelves had scared me off their produce; the ghost of the supermarket the space had once been haunted the zucchini, making them seem older than they were, and introduced the suggestion of mold on the garlic. In this market-like space, however, the organic red peppers glowed, and, at $3.99 a pound, made me weep with joy. (If you are reading this from California, please stop laughing and have some pity for me, living in a place where organic red peppers regularly sell for -- I kid you not -- $7.99 a pound and thus have been absent from my diet since we moved here.)
But here's the thing that made me happiest. As The Boy and I cruised the aisles looking for all natural deals, I found myself humming along to Michelle Branch. And Peter Gabriel. And old Foo Fighters. Music I had just been listening to in my car.
It really doesn't matter to me that I had a baby in my shopping cart or that most of the people in the store were at least as old as I am or even that I was grocery shopping for goodness sakes, not checking out some funky So Ho boutique. I felt young and lighthearted and cool enough to be buying discount organic food in a warehouse on the outskirts of a kind of funky, kind of artsy, progressive, and, yes, hip city. Even though slightly outdated Top 40 was playing over the loudspeakers and would soon be playing in my car as we drove home. Or maybe because of it.
Besides, how can I resist a radio station where I get to hear songs with lyrics likening your love to a tattoo because, "I will always have it with me"? With such treats awaiting me, I'm happy to admit that I'd rather have a good laugh and a tune I can sing with than something the critics tell me it's okay to like.
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