Why Wine and Group Exercise Classes Don't Mix

So last night I was thinking about how much I love my kids. This is something I often do when it’s 10:00 pm and they’ve both been asleep for 3 hours and I’m lying on the couch watching Glee or The Bachelorette (I’m not proud) and drinking a big ole mug of herbal tea. I love them ALL THE TIME, but it’s just soooo easy to bask in the truly awesome glory of my love for them when they are both sound asleep and not fighting over stupid stuff (“Mommy! William has my cup! That cup has my germs on it! I want my germs baaaaaaack!”).

Now I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re probably thinking, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, that was a big ole mug of chardonnay you were drinking, not herbal tea.” And normally, you’d be right. But I’ve largely given up alcohol lately. Not for any dire reason like alcoholism, but because I absolutely, positively MUST MUST MUST kick my own ass into losing some weight. And since fitting back into my whole entire wardrobe doesn’t seem to be motivation enough, I’ve decided to use alcohol as my incentive. For now, I’m giving it up. If—no, WHEN—I lose 5 pounds, I’ll have a nice glass or two of something to celebrate, then start the process over again.

 

Well, talk about motivation! The Bachelorette is just NOT the same without a teeny little wine buzz (OK, truth: The Bachelorette is just not that good without a teeny little wine buzz). So to speed the process up, I’ve also tried to give up my favorite crappy snacks and I’ve started (*gasp!*) exercising more.

Exercising more has not been as easy as I hoped it would be. It turns out I wasn’t burning many calories ambling along on a treadmill at the Y watching The View with no sound, so I turned to group exercise classes to get my butt moving a bit faster. I started by trying Zumba, but found that I looked like a chicken on ecstasy. Then I tried a Boot Camp class. That was much better. I mean, I still flop around a lot and I still find it’s better for my ego if I don’t look in the mirror much while I’m doing it, but at least I can do most of the moves without falling down. And, I sweat A LOT during Boot Camp class. I don’t mean that oh-is-it-hot-in-here? kind of sweating. I mean an embarrassing, you-can-see-the-outline-of-my-sports-bra-because-its-the-only-part-of-my-shirt-that’s-not-soaked-through-with-sweat kind of sweating. I figure that kind of sweating must equal about 9237598547 calories burned. Hooray!

As an added bonus, I’ve learned a few things since I started my Boot Camp class:

 

The first thing I’ve learned is who/what LMFAO and “I’m Sexy and I Know It” is. I had never heard that song until I heard it in class, and now I know for sure that it is both the absolutely dumbest AND catchiest song I’ve ever heard (sing it with me, “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, yeah!”). I hate myself just a little for loving that song.

The second thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is that there’s this Rihanna song about how “We found love in a hopeless place. We found love in a hoooooopeleessss plaaaaaaaaace” that will play on an endless loop in my head from the second I hear it at class on Tuesday morning until at least lunchtime on Friday. Just that one little part. Over and over and over and over again. I hate myself just a little for hating Rihanna because of it, but I do.

The third thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is what “Mountain Climbers” are. Mountain Climbers are what the Devil down in Hell does when he feels like he needs to lose a few pounds. You put your hands on the floor, stick your butt in the air, and alternate bringing your feet up to your hands over and over and over again. (Not coincidentally, we mostly do this to that damn Rihanna song.) I suppose this is something like climbing an actual mountain, but you can bet your sweet ass I’ve never done that. Anyway, they’re unflattering, hard to do, and I don’t much like doing them.

The fourth thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is that I do, indeed, have triceps, even though I can’t see them. I know they are there because every Wednesday morning I feel them burning when I do strenuous activities like lifting a coffee cup or brushing my teeth. Same with my quads. Can’t quite see them under their comfy padding, but every Wednesday I find myself wincing as I gingerly lower myself into a chair in the Y’s lobby to watch my son’s swimming lesson. People probably think I have hemorrhoids or some other horrible personal problem, but, no, it’s just Rihanna and her dastardly Mountain Climbers From Hell.

The final thing I’ve learned from Boot Camp class is that if I ever had to go to any sort of ACTUAL boot camp, like for the armed forces, I would probably not survive one day. I’m glad there are young, tough, and strong men and women who are willing and able to that and more so I can have the freedom to lie on the couch watching bad tv and eating M&Ms. Er, I mean, rice cakes. And kale chips. NOT ice cream or handfuls of Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits. Really. I swear.

Now will someone explain to me why I’m not losing any weight?

How to Make "The World's Easiest Banana Bread"--the Hard Way

Recently I learned how to make the “World’s Easiest Banana Bread.” Then I learned how to make it the hard way:

Let your four-year-old help you.

 (Photo: Steve Hopson, www.stevehopson.com)

We had three bananas getting brown on the counter, which is a rarity around here. We are serious about our bananas, and they never last long. If my husband or I are at a grocery store—even if the only things on the list are tampons and light bulbs—we will always buy bananas because, well, we always need them or are about to need them.

So. Somehow, these three bananas had been allowed to exist long enough to get a little brown. And the only thing I hate more than mushy bananas is throwing out food, so I decided we would make banana bread. According to the clock we had just under 2 hours until we had to leave for Matthew’s T-ball “practice” (have you ever seen 3- and 4-year-olds play T-ball? If so, you get the need for quotes just there). I figured we had lots of time. No problem, right?

Right.

I Googled “banana bread recipe” and got about 1,000 recipes for banana bread that all included goofy ingredients like buttermilk or rum that would require a trip to the store. Taking two kids to the grocery store was NOT what I had in mind when I imagined making banana bread. (Taking two kids to the grocery store is pretty much NEVER what I have in mind. Ever.) So I refined my search to “EASY banana bread recipe,” and I hit the jackpot. The very first hit, from simplyrecipes.com, required only ingredients I already had! I hit “print” and headed for the kitchen.

I gathered my ingredients and my 4-year-old and soon realized how this was going to go. Matthew was interested ONLY in cracking the eggs. As I squinted at the recipe, he badgered me, “NOW do I crack the eggs? NOW? When, Mommy? Mommy, when? Mommy, WHEN DO I GET TO CRACK THE EGGS??”

I thought that smushing up bananas would be a good distraction, so I pulled a dining room chair up to the counter for him to stand on and told him to go for it. This was a special privilege because standing on chairs is usually not allowed. This is a tough rule for Matthew to follow. Pretty much every time I do something like, I don’t know, clean the cat box or go to the bathroom alone, I emerge to find him standing on a dining room chair. Not doing anything, usually, except gleefully breaking the we-do-not-stand-on-chairs rule. But today? Today he was being a stickler for the rules. And he refused to stand on that chair.

So, as Matthew attempted to mush bananas that he could not see because he was kneeling instead of standing on the chair, I got out some yogurt to substitute for the butter in the recipe. Why? I don’t know exactly. Yogurt is not in the original recipe, but someone in the comments had said that if you replace the butter with yogurt, the bread would be “healthier.” And since I had a feeling that I was going to be eating a LOT of this banana bread, I decided to blindly follow that advice. Now, measuring yogurt shouldn’t be hard. But measuring yogurt with a 4-year-old’s help is very hard. First the yogurt has to be spooned from its container into a measuring cup, then dumped from the measuring cup into a bowl. The result? Some yogurt in the bowl and lots of yogurt everywhere else.

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_bread/

A quick check of the clock told me this was taking a bit longer than planned, what with pleading with my kid to break rules and cleaning yogurt off of my shoes, but we should still have plenty of time to finish up and get it baked before T-ball. I mean, how long could making banana bread take?

Next was sugar.  Once again, I deviated from the original recipe, cutting the sugar down to ¾ cup and using brown sugar instead of white sugar. I couldn’t begin to tell you the difference between brown and white sugar (other than the obvious), but, again, someone in the recipe’s comments said it was a good idea, and who am I to argue with the internet? Though we still hadn’t cracked any eggs, the sight of sugar caught Matthew’s attention. He finally stood up on the chair and offered to help measure and pour, which went about as well as the yogurt. I turned away to grab a sponge to wipe up, and when I turned back I found Matthew, literally up to his elbows in brown sugar, licking his arm, hand, and fingers like a starving wild animal.

I put a stop to the sugar feast, handed him a wooden spoon, and told him to stir. Matthew went for it with gusto, though his speed at mixing far exceeded his effectiveness. “Look at me! I’m an agitator in a washing machine!” he yelled. Before I could ask him where exactly he learned that, he went on, “I’m a tornado! A mixing tornado!” He paused long enough to grab the second spoon that I was holding, stuck it in the sugary, yogurt-y banana goo and yelled, “DOUBLE AGITATOR!”

Apparently, all that sugar was kicking in.

Finally, FINALLY, it was time to crack the egg. Just one, it turns out, which was lucky because that’s all we had. I gave it to Matthew and stood back. Matthew has a strange method of cracking eggs that absolutely demolishes the egg, but somehow lands very little shell in the bowl. There’s also a whole stab-the-yolk-until-it-“pops” thing that can be kind of disturbing if you think about it too much. Once all that was done, it was back to the agitator-tornado for more stirring, and we moved on through the recipe.

When it was time for the flour, I knew I had to proceed with caution. Flour is a pain in the butt to clean up, and we didn’t have a lot of extra time. But of course it went everywhere, leading Matthew to tell me triumphantly, “Mommy! I have flour on my nipples!” (Yes, he was wearing nothing but underpants, his favorite outfit.) The situation didn’t improve as he began his crazy stirring again, which somehow didn’t incorporate the flour into the batter at all but did manage to incorporate it into his hair.

I looked at the clock with dread. At this point, we would be late to T-ball if the bread took a full hour to cook, so I did some damage control. I gave Matthew a spoon to lick while I quickly mixed in the flour, poured the batter into the pan, and put it into the oven. The kitchen was a mess, and I knew that I should enlist Matthew’s help in cleaning it up—you know, teach him that cleaning up is part of the process of baking and all that—but I still had to get us both dressed and sunscreened and get a snack together. So I did what any parent would do (right? RIGHT?). I turned on “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

And then, as I tried to clean brown sugar and flour out of the fruit bowl, the dish drainer, the silverware drawer (???), I heard a question that I would hear at least 40 more times in the next 50 minutes: “Is the banana bread done yet?”

We were NOT going to make it to T-ball on time.

Like A Herd of Turtles

“Off like a herd of turtles” is what my dad always used to say as my family climbed into our green Dodge Dart and headed off to wherever we were going. I always just assumed it was some annoying things grownups say—until I had kids. And tried to go somewhere.

I’m not sure what it is about kids that makes it so HARD to get out the freakin’ door everyday. They could whine all morning about wanting to go to the park, but when it’s actually time to GO TO THE PARK, they turn into, well, a herd of turtles.

Here’s what happened one day this week when we decided to go to the park:

Me: “OK, guys! Time to go to the park!”

Boys: (nothing. Suddenly playing happily with matchbox cars, even though they had spent the last 40 minutes arguing and writhing around on the floor complaining of acute boredom).

Getting out of the house should be easy. I have a simple mental checklist to follow, and once it’s all done, we’re on our way. Here it is:

·      Diaper/Potty

·      Clothes

·      Shoes

·      Sunscreen

·      Bag(s)

·      Out the door

It’s really not much. It really should be quick. Sure, at times there are complications—like the 5 days a year that it rains, for example, when we’ll need umbrellas—but it’s not like I’m putting these kids in snow pants and boots and mittens and all that. (I’m pretty sure if we lived somewhere with snow we wouldn’t leave the house all winter. We would try, but we’d spend all our time putting on and taking off our winter gear instead.)

So, here’s how it went the other day:

Now THIS turtle knows how to get places.

Diaper/Potty: I cornered William and carried him like a football toward the bedroom. Over his loud protests (“NO DIAPER! NO DIAPER! NOOOOOO!”), I told Matthew to go potty. But just hearing the word “potty” set off some 4-year-old obsession with all things toilet-related, and he began stomping around the living room chanting, “You are a poopy stinky butt! You are a poopy stinky butt!” I decided to assume that he’d find his way to the potty eventually and focused on the task at hand—the diaper change.

Sometimes changing William is easy. And sometimes it’s like wrestling an angry alligator. Generally, if I’m trying to get out of the house, it’s ‘gator time. Since reasoning with a two-year-old is only somewhat more effective than reasoning with a houseplant, I resorted to the usual: I pinned him down with one elbow and strapped that diaper on as fast as possible. The results weren’t pretty, but it would do the job.

As I let William go, I could hear from the THREE successive flushes that something—maybe potty, I hoped it was potty—was going on in the bathroom. By the time I poked my head in, Matthew was at the sink, pumping hand soap all over the counter and finger painting with it (or, as he calls it, “washing his hands”). I got him back on track and moved on to…

Clothes: I had managed to wrestle William into his clothes during the diaper fight so I headed for Matthew, who was wearing his favorite outfit: just underpants. I got his pants on, but in the time it took me to lean over and pick up his shirt he wandered off declaring, “I’m going to touch the cat’s eyes!” I rescued the cat (again) and got Matthew’s shirt on. Great. Now it’s time for…

Shoes: I scooped William into my lap and got started. Matthew looked at us, saw an easy target, and before I could stop him hit William gently on the head yelling, “BOP!” William laughed, but I was getting annoyed at this point (WHY WHY WHY was it taking so long to get ready??!! WHY???) so I ordered Matthew to time out. “But Mommy!” he whined. “I didn’t hit him! I bopped him! You never said no bopping!” I’m not proud of it, but then I did that thing where you get crazy eyes and hiss/whisper dire threats through clenched teeth, and he grumbled his way into time out.

Couldn't help it. I just love this.

As he sat there, I decided to move on to…

Sunscreen: I hate this part. My husband and I have been known to fight over who has to do it. I will put my kids in long-sleeved shirts in 80-degree weather just so there is less skin to protect with the evil lotion. Why do kids hate sunscreen so much? Why do they act like you are trying to spread acid all over their faces? Is it because they know I will bribe them into doing it peacefully?

So. Time out finished, sunscreen applied, bribes delivered, we moved on to finding our…

Bags: I grabbed my diaper bag and leaned over to grab the monstrous bag of sand toys we bring to the park. As I did, Matthew yelled, “Show off your tushie! Time for stickers!” and I felt several little pokes to my rear end. I sighed, knowing that my hands were too full to remove the stickers he had just placed there and that I would inevitably forget about them and spend the rest of the day with motivational sayings like “Gr8 job!” and “Way 2 go!” all over my butt.

But that was ok, because we were about to make it…

Out the door: The easiest step, right? Just walk out the door and to the car parked right there in the driveway. Ten glorious feet, and then both kids would be strapped into their car seats, unable to poke, hit, or bop each other for 5-10 glorious minutes. Easy-peasy.

You would think.

Instead, Matthew opened the screen door, took one step out onto the porch and stopped to check out the neighborhood, I guess. I’m not sure exactly what he was doing, but there he stood. Just behind him in the doorway stood William, his tiny fingers placed in the exact spot where they would get pinched if I let the screen door close. One step behind him was me, looking like a hobo Irish step dancer as I juggled my two bags and did a crazy jig designed to keep the cats from darting out to the lawn to eat grass, which they would then just barf up inside the house.

Trying to stay positive (we are SO CLOSE), I chirped, “OK! Let’s go to the car!” No one moved except the cat, who tried to slip between my feet. I danced a little faster and said (not quite so chirpy this time), “COME ON, boys! Let’s start walking to the car!” They were frozen in place. WHAT WERE THEY WAITING FOR? WHAT WERE THEY LOOKING AT?? The cat feinted left and my jig turned into more of a drunken ju-jitsu thing. I dropped all pretense of friendliness. “GO GET IN THAT CAR RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME I WILL LOSE. MY. FREAKIN. MIND!” I yelled. They both looked at me like I’d already lost it, then ambled over to the car while I tackled the cat and threw, I mean, placed him in the house and slammed the door. I smiled and waved at my lovely and childless neighbor, who was obviously thinking she made the right decision at that point. I gathered the sand toys from where they landed all over the porch (why I even bothered I don’t know—they only like to play with the old empty yogurt cups I threw in there once).

And we were off. Like a herd of turtles.

Out of the Rat Race and Into the Poop Race

Two years ago I took a leave of absence from my full-time job teaching 3^rd grade. No more papers to grade, administrators to impress, lessons to plan. I could—and often did—spend all day in my jammies (and by “jammies” I mean “crappy old flannel pants and spit-up-covered t-shirt because SOMEONE around here forgot to do laundry again. Oh wait, that was me.”) My commute went from 18 miles each way to a slow crawl to the coffee pot each morning. In a lot of ways, life became less hectic. But it took me just a few weeks at home with a newborn and an almost-two-year-old to realize I had left the Rat Race—and entered the Poop Race.

Ryan Gosling pix make it ok to blog about poop.

I knew that being a stay-at-home mom would mean that I would end up taking on most of the poop duty (heh heh, I said doody). At first I embraced my role as Head Diaperer. I spent hours and hours researching cloth diapers, and I organized all our diapering supplies in cute little baskets. I had two boys in diapers at that time—and, as it turned out, would for almost another whole year—so keeping track of diapers both clean and dirty took up a decent amount of my waking hours.

(Probably no one needs to know that I have, on occasion, dreamed about those cloth diapers at night—right?)

Anyway, fast forward two years and, yes, my kids are older, but I’m still in the thick of the Poop Race. In fact, I realized not long ago that I am the Primary Butt-Wiper for FOUR out of the six living creatures in our house (4 human, 2 feline). Do the math and you may get worried—do my hubby and I have one of THOSE relationships? No. No no no no no no no no no no. And no. But me and one of my cats apparently do, because she is either too fat or too lazy to take care of business herself and so I have been instructed by my possibly-crazy vet to go after her tushie with a baby wipe once a day.

(Um, that has actually happened maybe three times in the three months that have passed since he suggested it. It just almost never makes it to the top of my priority list, for some reason. Things I would rather do than wipe my cat’s ass: as many loads of laundry as I can possibly find in the house, scrub the kitchen sink with bleach and a toothbrush, read Goodnight Moon 3985239854798 more times—you get the picture.)

One more...

And the thing about poop in our house is that it always seems to happen in a when-it-rains-

it-pours kind of way—one enormous, awful Poop Storm. Here’s how a typical day goes: At some point, my 2-year-old informs me that he has a poopy diaper. This sets off some sort of physiological trigger in my 4-year-old, who then races for the bathroom. Before I can even finish changing William’s diaper, Matthew is yelling from the bathroom, “Mooooooommmmmyyyy!! I poooooooooped!” Translation: “I will sit here screaming about it until the neighbors call the cops or you come wipe me!” I finish up with William, and head for Matthew. As I’m finishing up with him, one of my cats saunters into the bathroom and heads for the litter box—he might as well have a freakin’ newspaper tucked under his arm! That means that within minutes I’ll be scooping HIS poop too if I don’t want all of us to live in a foul cloud of stink.

So. Much. Poop.

The good news is that we have avoided many of the more awful-sounding poop problems that parents of young kids often face. Neither of my children has so much as dabbled in the poop-as-art-on-the-wall movement, and no one poops in the tub anymore. We have so far avoided the stomach flu altogether in our house (though I probably just jinxed it, right?), and…

Special bonus George/Ryan double treat. You're welcome.

And…

Crap. I can’t think of another example. I’m too caught up in worrying that writing about how we’ve never had the stomach flu means we’re now all going to get the stomach flu. And what that will mean for me in terms of cleaning and laundry and my beloved cloth diapers.

Better go. Time to stock up on Clorox wipes and Pedialyte!

Barbie Was Right: Math IS Hard

Remember that talking Barbie doll that caused a media firestorm a while back because one of the several phrases she uttered was, “Math is hard?” I stomped around with everyone else condemning Mattel for peddling such a bad role model to young girls. But secretly, I wanted to give poor beleaguered Barbie a high five and say to her, “Rock on, sister, with your bad math self. We gorgeous, long-legged, mathematically-impaired blondes need to band together!” (Yeah, ok, so I’m not gorgeous, long-legged, or blonde. But I am bad at math. And I do lead a rich fantasy life.)

Like Barbie, I have never been a math whiz. In college I took a class that students jokingly called “Math for Trees,” because even a tree could pass it. Well, I’m proud to say that I did indeed pass “Math for Trees,” but barely. JUST barely. Since then, however, I have managed to get through life just fine with my mediocre math skills. I balanced my checkbook, back when checkbooks were a thing. I double recipes with relative ease. I even taught math to poor, unsuspecting 8-year-olds for years, and did a damn fine job at it.

T-shirt from neatoshop.com

Then I became a mom. And I discovered a secret sub-field of mathematics so tricky, so insidiously nonsensical, that I doubt even a math genius with a full night’s sleep could crack it. When I try to describe the mathematical challenges I face each day, they sound like those dreaded story problems I hated as a kid, but with a maniacal twist. For example:

·      Let’s say you have had just 3 hours of sleep, thanks to a sick toddler. And let’s say you absolutely MUST stay awake later than your children (pesky buggers have to be tucked in and all that). If you drank your first cup of coffee at 5:30 am, at what times throughout the day should you drink MORE cups of coffee so that you can be awake enough not to do something that lands you on the evening news but also tired enough to fall into a dead slumber at 8:30 pm?

·      If your child has a diaper rash that requires Desitin cream, how many times after applying the Desitin must you wash your hands to get rid of the smell?

·      A toy comes with 20 marbles. Child A takes 7 marbles into a closet (why??), loses 5 and finds 2. Child B takes 8 marbles into the bathroom (WHY???), loses 7 but finds 3. The cats chase probably 3 but maybe as many as 5 marbles under the stove. How many marbles do you have now? How long before you lose ALL your marbles completely?

·      Now let’s talk about Girl Scout cookies. If a = the number of Samoas in a box, and b = the number of people in my family, and c = the number of cookies I want to eat, and d = the number of cookies I can realistically blame my brother-in-law for eating on his last visit, then how do I calculate how many cookies I can eat with my glass of chardonnay tonight while still leaving enough for my family members to each have one and not be mad at me?

·      Speaking of Girl Scout cookies, how many pounds can you gain before having to buy larger jeans? How does your answer change if you give up on jeans and just wear yoga pants? What if you wear yoga pants with a long shirt tied around your waist?

·      If Child A needs to take 5 milligrams of Amoxicillin for an ear infection two times a day and Child B needs to take 7 grams of Amoxicillin for HIS ear infection one time a day, how do you keep track of who has taken how much medicine from which bottle and when? If you screw it up, what percentage chance do you have of creating a “Superbug” that is resistant to all antibiotics and will plague all the juvenile residents of your home with repeat ear infections throughout the entire winter?  If you do manage to get all the doses right, what percentage chance is there that everyone will STILL get repeat ear infections all winter?

·      And speaking of antibiotics, exactly how many doses of Amoxicillin must a two-year-old take before his digestive tract revolts and you must buy stock in Clorox wipes and laundry detergent?

·      Finally, if you and your husband want to eat Trader Joe’s Sweet and Sour Chicken that needs to cook for 20 minutes at 425 degrees, but your children insist on Trader Joe’s Breaded Chickenless Nuggets that need to cook for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, how on earth do you get your family fed on time and all at once without spending more than 5 minutes standing in front of the stove holding two boxes of frozen food wondering WTF you learned in Math for Trees that you still can’t figure this out?

If you know the answer to any of these questions, please let me know. I’ll be over here scraping charred Breaded Chickenless Nuggets into the trash. Again.

Did I Marry Mr. Wrong?

I came to an unsettling realization recently: I married the wrong man.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my husband. A lot. He is my best friend, my soul mate, an amazing dad, the whole package. But there’s just no denying that marrying him was a huge mistake. Another man would have been a better choice.

I should have married a pediatrician.

One of my all-time favorite pediatricians.

Think of all the worry I could have avoided! All the questions I could have had answered with no copay or waiting! Like, does my one-year-old wake up 5 times a night, every freakin’ night, because something is wrong with him OR because he’s a pain in the butt? And, is my preschooler hearing impaired or do all kids his age talk so loudly they scare the cats? If I had just married a pediatrician, the whole why-is-my-newborn’s-poop-dark-brown-instead-of-yellow-like-the-books-say-it-should-be fiasco would have just been a sentence in our parenting story, rather than a whole chapter. If I had married a pediatrician, the latest period of our lives—The Ear Infection Epoch—would have involved a lot less time watching Toy Story 2 in 20-minute increments in the doctor’s waiting room. (I think I have now technically seen the whole movie, in jumbled up bits and pieces.)

BUT…on the other hand, we are lucky to have access to good pediatricians. We have health insurance for ourselves and our kids, so seeing a doctor doesn’t necessarily break the bank. I am fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom for now, so we don’t have to rearrange work schedules to get the kids seen.

Hmmmmm….

Never mind. Forget marrying a pediatrician. I should have married a veterinarian.

Chris O'Donnell--hot vet on Grey's Anatomy

Again, think of all the worry I could have avoided! All the questions I could have had answered without paying outrageous fees or having to shove snarling balls of furry fury into the cat carriers! Like, should I worry when my cat sits in the corner staring at the blank wall like there’s something there? And, really truly what is a normal number of times for a cat to barf in a week? If I had just married a veterinarian, maybe he’d have some idea about how to deal with the girl cat—a gorgeous, long-haired calico who is also a raging b*tch who won’t let anyone but me and, inexplicably, just one of my two sisters, get near her. (Since that sister lives about 2,000 miles away, she can’t be relied upon to help with fun things like applying flea medicine and cleaning the cat’s, um, “bikini area,” which the cat is too fat to groom properly. How great is that?)

But wait. My cat hates everyone. She stares daggers at my kids and hisses at my actual husband whenever he dares to get within 10 feet of her. Who’s to say she’d be friendlier to my fantasy veterinarian-husband? He’d still probably have to use general anesthesia to so much as listen to her heart, like my actual veterinarian has to do. While I’m sure we’d get a family discount on the drugs, there’s only so much of that stuff he could give away for free. And I’d still be risking life and limb (OK, mostly just fingers) every time I had to get Her Highness into the carrier.

(Are you thinking right now, “Um, Molly? It’s the 21^st century. Why are you bemoaning the fact that you didn’t marry into all this expertise when you could just as well have become a pediatrician or veterinarian yourself?” Well, you just may have a point there…)

Hmmmmm….

Good news, everyone! It turns out I married the right man! He is funny, tall, smart, kind, and just about all-around wonderful, despite his woeful lack of medical expertise—either human or veterinarian. (Did I say handsome? I meant to say handsome. WOW, is he handsome. I should have said that first. Babe, if you’re reading this—whoo hoo! Are you a handsome devil!) I am a very lucky woman. After all, who else is married to a man who explains to our kids why our toilet clogs by making up a game called “Big Poop, Little Poop?” Who else is married to a man who—thanks to his Xbox and a fervent love of sci fi—could keep us all safe during a zombie apocalypse? Who else is married to a man who has managed to ensure that our sons’ favorite songs are by Creedence Clearwater Revival, rather than Raffi? Turns out I am very lucky, indeed.

Oh yeah. Since I’ve decided to keep him, I guess that means I need to come up with a gift for our fifth wedding anniversary later this month. Anyone have any fabulous ideas to show the man of my life how much I appreciate him?

How to Look Like a Chicken on Ecstasy

So recently I tried Zumba. I’ve been thinking about trying it for a while, and for the past few weeks I’ve been lurking outside the class, sizing up the dance moves and the participants. I was a bit worried that I would be the least coordinated, most jiggly person there. See, I live in a city that is known for its Beautiful Women—here in Southern California it seems that somehow everyone is 22, tanned, and gorgeous. Except me. And, as it turns out, most of the participants in my YMCA’s Zumba class! Hooray for sassy old ladies and one middle-aged bald man!

Anyway, I snuck in just as class was starting and found a spot in the back. To my right was the lone male member of the class, who may have just been there to check out the instructor (she was hot, so I can’t totally blame him). I was a little uncomfortable at first dancing all sexy-like next to a guy, but then I remembered that I’m almost 40 and at the very tippy-top of the “healthy” section of the BMI chart…so the poor guy was probably not going to get whiplash from being around me. To my left was a Workout Queen in brand-new spotless white shoes, makeup, and a super-cute outfit. I was a little nervous about her. In situations like these, I like to be surrounded by mediocrity so I can blend in. She looked like she might just kick Zumba’s ass, leaving me and Mr. Shufflefoot in her dust.

Turns out I didn’t need to worry about her—she seemed not to like the whole sweat factor involved and left the class within 10 minutes. What I needed to be worried about was Zumba itself. Don’t get me wrong, it was a ton of fun. I jumped around with a huge smile on my face for a while. Because I wasn’t standing where I could see a mirror, I figured I looked like this:

Mmmmm...Shakira.

Or maybe this:

Britney, why can't I quit you?

I love my fantasy life.

But then something happened, we all shifted over a few feet, I’m not even sure how, and…there I was, in the mirror, Zumba-ing in living color. I realized a few things with that first glance in the mirror.

#1.  At 5’7”—which is really not all that tall—I was one of the tallest members of the class. Somehow I had found a Zumba class for munchkins. I seemed to tower over all but Mr. Shufflefoot and one or two others. This made me stand out, and I DON’T like to stand out when exercising. Never, ever, ever.

 

#2.  Turns out I don’t look like Britney or Shakira or when I Zumba. Not at all. Turns out I look like a chicken on ecstasy. A sweaty, sweaty, chicken on ecstasy. (To be fair, I haven’t ever done ecstasy so I can’t be entirely sure of how a chicken would look while on it. But I’m pretty sure that if some demented farmer gave a chicken ecstasy, it would dance around and think “Holy Hell! I look like Molly in Zumba!”)

The good news is, I’m slightly nearsighted and if I just squinted up my eyes a bit I couldn’t really see myself in the mirror. Of course, then I looked like a constipated chicken on ecstasy, but I didn’t care because I couldn’t see myself! I also couldn’t see the instructor, so I had to rely on a sassy old lady in front of me for the dance moves. I’m guessing that didn’t improve my performance, but again, with no visible image in the mirror I could assume that Me Doing Zumba =

Gratuitous second photo of Britney

 Like I said, I love my fantasy life.

Chores? More Like, #WINNING!

My kids get to spend most of their days playing. They build marble runs, play hide and seek, pretend to be characters in Disney movies. I get to do most of these activities with them, of course, and I usually have a great time. But I also have a bunch of adult responsibilities to take care of, as well. And frankly, most of those adult responsibilities are downright boring. So, after a glass of chardonnay one recent evening, I decided that some of those grown-up jobs would be more fun if I tried to think about them as games rather than chores.

So, here are some of the “games” I play in the course of my average week:

A solution to my Thursday morning problem?

Beat the Garbage Truck: On Thursday mornings, sometimes as early as 7:30 am, our city’s garbage trucks begin their rounds in our neighborhood. Most of my neighbors manage to get their three cans (garbage, recycling, and lawn clippings) out to the curb before dark on Wednesday night, but sometimes we don’t quite make it. Then the next morning finds either me or my husband—wearing pajamas, of course—racing back and forth between the curb and the gate with the cans as the first of the three trucks lumbers toward our house. (Usually my 3-year-old, wearing nothing but his Thomas underpants, is standing on the sidewalk yelling “Go, Mommy! Go!” while his younger brother screams “GARBAAAAAGE TRUUUUCK!!” as loud as he can.) My very nice, very efficient, and very childless neighbor is often standing on her porch, fully dressed and nicely coiffed, waving politely as I run around in my jammies. She never has to/gets to play Beat the Garbage Truck. And, she always takes each can back to her driveway as soon as it’s emptied, so she never gets to play our next game…

Beat the Street Sweeper: Some sadist in our city government decided that our side of the street should be cleaned on Friday mornings, the DAY AFTER GARBAGE TRUCK DAY. As if it’s not hard enough for us to remember to get those cans out by 7:30 am on Thursday, we then have to scramble to get them back to the gate by the next morning when the street sweeper comes. If we forget, the sweeper passes around them, leaving a wide swath of leaves, sticks, and trash right in front of our house on an otherwise clean street. We might just as well put a huge sign on our house that says, “WE DON’T HAVE OUR SH*T TOGETHER!”

What’s That Smell? Here’s how this one works: Doing chores around the house, I walk into what feels like a wall of stink. I drop whatever I’m doing and hunt down the source so it can be removed/cleaned/doused with Febreze. The problem is that our house contains so many, many potential sources of stink. The litter box, the cats, my toddler’s diaper, the garbage can, the fridge…or any combination thereof. And the savage beauty of this game is that I can play it just about anywhere. Just recently at Mommy And Me I picked up my diaper bag to hunt for a tissue and…there it was. Less a wall of stink and more a cloud of stinky steam rising from the depths of my Bermuda Triangle bag. Horrified that someone else might get a whiff, I smashed the bag into the bottom of my stroller, piled our jackets on top of it, and used my shirt to wipe my son’s nose (not for the first time!). Back at home, the hunt began. The details aren’t necessary; let’s just say this episode of the game ended with my diaper bag in the washing machine (not for the first time!).

Where’s Waldo?: I get to play this fun game when I bring my kids to crowded places like the park, the indoor play place, or the toy store. At some point, I look down to talk to my preschooler and realize he is no longer by my side. When a quick scan of the surrounding area doesn’t reveal his whereabouts, the game begins. Where is he? How far away did he go? Will today be the day some police officer has to test my son’s knowledge of my cell phone number? Fortunately, thanks to a recessive gene or a mix-up in the maternity ward, Matthew has platinum blond hair so he’s easy to spot in most crowds—kind of like Waldo’s striped shirt. Also fortunately, he’s a really good kid who knows not to go too far away. So far, he has always appeared within a few seconds, but that doesn’t mean my heart rate doesn’t go up every time (added benefit—cardio workout!).

Safety device? Or TORTURE device?

Pin the Toddler in the Car Seat: If you have or have had a toddler, then you know that inevitably the day comes when he or she refuses to sit in the car seat. If you’re like me you try reasoning, ordering, even begging and pleading (I’m not proud). But eventually you and your child must actually GO somewhere. And since wearing a seat belt is a no-compromise situation, that’s when you get to play this charming game. Unlike the original Pin the Tail on the Donkey, you don’t have to wear an eyeshade or spin around until you’re dizzy to play. You do need super strength and agility, and having 3 or 4 hands would probably help. I often need one whole arm just to hold my writhing, screaming, hot mess of a toddler in place, then I find myself using my chin, or my knee, or even my teeth along with my remaining hand to snap the belt in place. All while being screamed at. Good times.

Name That Sesame Street Episode: Since having kids, I seem to have lost quite a few brain cells. Once a fairly quick-witted person, I now have trouble remembering such “easy” details as say, my own age or the names of my cats. But, for some reason, my brain has no problem remembering various details of pretty much every single episode of Sesame Street that has aired in the last three years. As soon as Elmo or Zoe or Telly or whoever starts speaking, I can tell Matthew which episode it is. This is important in case it is one of the two episodes that feature the inexplicably terrifying-to-Matthew Jack Black, or the one where the Big Bad Wolf SINGS “huff and puff!” rather than growling it (unacceptable), or the “boring” one about amphibians. These must be stopped, deleted from the DVR, and replaced with another before I can get back to doing dishes/farting around on the internet (so, the sooner the better).

There are lots of other games I play with my kids over the course of any given day.   At bedtime we play Staring Contest (or, Mommy Must Stay Awake Longer Than The Children). Most evenings we play Freezer Roulette (or, What’s For Dinner?). I have really improved my reflexes playing Dodge the Cough/Sneeze. And the ever popular How Dirty is Too Dirty? can be played with food dropped on the floor, hands, clothes, the cats, you name it.

Home Invasion

Recently, we were the victims of a home invasion. No, we weren’t robbed—except of more of the precious few naturally colored strands of hair I have left. Rather, my two strictly indoor cats somehow, SOMEHOW, got fleas. (Are you itchy yet? The second I think about fleas, I start itching all over.)

When I indignantly called my vet, demanding an explanation, he chuckled and said, in his heavy French accent, “Zis is Southern California! Ze fleas, zey are everywhere! Zey come in the house on your shoes, through the screens…Zey are ubiquitous!” (New bucket list item: Speak another language well enough to use words like “ubiquitous” while doing so). Then he dropped the hammer (le marteau, if you’re wondering): “Of course, now ze fleas are probably in your house. You must treat ze cats AND ze whole house.” But, I pleaded, we have absolutely no rugs or carpets in our house for fleas to live in. “NONE??” he asked incredulously.

[That’s when I began to wonder if he was a quack vet. Because anyone who has cats knows that if you have a large living room with a hardwood floor and you put down a carpet sample even as small as a dishtowel, within an hour one or both of your cats will barf on that exact spot. Not on the easy-to-clean tile floors of the kitchen or bathroom or the hardwood in the living room, but on those six square inches of carpet. Because of this, and because we have small children who are as careful with their drinks as a frat boy at the end of a party, my husband and I made the decision not to put down any rugs in our house, except for the bedrooms where the cats are not allowed. My one cat has been so stymied/challenged by our “radical” interior design choice that she has decided that the only acceptable place for her to barf is on the mat I placed next to the litter box to try to capture some of the litter the little darlings track out. All I know is that if that stupid mat captured litter the way it captures cat barf, I would be sweeping a LOT less frequently.]

ANYWAY. Fleas. According to ze vet, they can hide their evil little eggs in hardwood flooring too. And in almost-brand-new couches, like ours. And, of course, on the cats themselves. So, that night, after the kids were in bed and my husband was busy keeping the world safe from zombies with his Xbox 360, I decided to face the problem head-on. Step 1: Wash the cats. WAIT! No. Step 1: Down a hefty glass of chardonnay while googling “wash a cat.” Step 2: Wash the cats.

Have you ever washed a cat before? I would not wish this experience on anyone (except maybe those horrible people who bring toddlers to scary movies rather than finding child care). I have never loved cleaning, but I do like that sense of accomplishment you get after completing a particularly tough job—like washing toddler vomit out of a car seat or scrubbing large blobs of dried glue off foam play mats. These jobs are no fun, but at least you have a sparkling clean product as a result of your effort. This is not true when you wash a cat. Because when you’re done your cat is clean, yes, but he’s also soaking wet and ticked off—with the sole goal in life of escaping the bathroom and flinging his wet body onto your new couch.   

But, I had the flea shampoo and I had cats with fleas, so even though I didn’t want to, I got down to business. Unfortunately, our house does not have a removable shower head, so I was forced to fill the tub with about 3 inches of water and, one at a time, plop each cat into it. I quickly learned that in order to both wash the cat and hold onto the cat, I would have to climb in the tub myself and stand ankle-deep in nasty cat water. (A LONG, hot shower for me followed this whole process, needless to say.) The cats complied more than I thought they would, though each one made a noise so horrible throughout their scrubbings that it made me wish I could listen to a CD of my kids whining instead. I actually worried that they would wake the kids with their howls of clean-cat misery, and “poor” Chris had trouble hearing the moans of approaching zombies over their complaints (he managed, thank goodness).

Once the cats were clean I dried them as best as I could (so, not much), then watched them respond to their trauma. One went straight to the toilet to drink away his worries, and one decided to take a nap in the litter box. Great! Wet cat IN THE LITTER BOX! That sealed their fate, and the two of them ended up spending the night locked in the bathroom while they dried out.

Step 3 in my war on fleas was to treat the house. I had bought a can of flea-killing spray, but balked at spreading the deadly chemicals around areas where my kids play. I actually stopped and mentally tallied the pros and cons of chemicals vs. flea bites. Then, like any helicopter mom would, I called poison control. I love poison control. They don’t judge you when you call to find out if your toddler will get sick from eating apricot facial scrub. They are sympathetic when you cry just a little about the mold you discovered in your house. And they know everything there is to know about chemicals that kill fleas. They reassured me that only the fleas would suffer ill effects from my spray, so spray I did.

Finally, I bought some depressingly expensive flea medicine to put on the cats at the vet (have you noticed how the vet’s office is like a not-fun Target? Both places you can’t leave without spending $100, but at least at Target you end up with stuff like purses, slippers, yet another set of sand toys for the kids…). So, it looks like we have the flea problem beat for now. And, since the expensive flea meds must be reapplied every three weeks, I’m sure my vet will enjoy a nice vacation each year on me. Maybe he’ll take the cats with him.

Why We Won't Need Noisemakers At Our House This New Year's Eve

It’s that time of year again…New Year’s. These days, that no longer means wild parties and copious amounts of alcohol for me—more like a glass of Two Buck Chuck chardonnay and asleep on the couch by 9 pm (hey, I’m not proud but I’m not ashamed either—nothing, NOTHING, trumps sleep anymore. N.O.T.H.I.N.G.). It’s also a time for Resolutions—or, as I like to call them, Opportunities to Fail.

As a kid, I used to love making New Year’s Resolutions. I had a sort of Jillian Michaels streak back then—I believed that as resolutions go, the more the better and the more extreme the better. Collect money for homeless cats! NO, wait! Give all my allowance every week to homeless cats! NO, wait! Build a kennel in the basement and take in homeless cats! My heart was in the right place, but usually by January 3^rd I had given up and gone back to reading “Sweet Valley High” and doodling in my Trapper Keeper.

As an adult, I gave up resolutions because, let’s face it, I don’t like failure. But something happened recently that made me rethink my position. I was building a train track with my 1-year-old when I let out a…how shall I say it?...a zephyr, as my grandma called them. A toot. The call of the Barking Spider. OK, it is what it is: I farted. And though I consider myself to be fairly feminine and ladylike (stop laughing), apparently this one was less zephyr and more hurricane because my son looked around, confused, and asked, “Daddy???”

The thing about tooting is that it’s one of those bad habits—like swearing and eating microwave popcorn for dinner—that you can get away with when you have a little baby. “It’s ok!” you tell yourself. “He’s just a baby, he doesn’t understand! I’ll worry about it when he’s older!” But then, before you know it you have a fairly astute preschooler and a no-filter, mimicking toddler. Eventually, you have to watch your mouth, eat something green, and, I guess, stop farting in front of your kids.

I swear I wasn’t always this crass. In my 20s, I would hold a toot in for DAYS while my long-distance boyfriend was in town for a visit. But you get older, you have babies, you take time off work to stay home, and things…well, they change. I no longer spend my days in a classroom dealing with students, administrators, and parents. Most of the time, it’s just me, the cats, and my two boys. There are no great standards of decorum here. My 3-year-old runs around mostly naked all day and quite frequently demands that I “smell this butt!” My 1-year-old likes to announce to anyone who will listen that “Daddy has pee-nit!” and “Mommy has nigh-na!” For them (and, let’s be honest, for their dad as well), tooting is a common event, always at least acknowledged (“I tooted, Mommy!”) or even celebrated (“William, did you hear that noise that sounded like thunder? I tooted!”) Big or small, all toots are funny to them. Tub toots usually garner the most laughs (What’s funnier than a fart? A fart that bubbles!), and a super loud toot, or “toot quake” as we like to say, can stop a conversation dead in its tracks with fits of giggles.

Now, I know passing gas is a natural bodily function and in no way do I expect my kids to stop doing it. And I spent enough time hanging out in fraternity houses in college to know that a well-timed toot can, indeed, be funny. But—and maybe it’s a little bit sexist—as the lone female in this family I seem to shoulder most of the responsibility for modeling social graces in this regard. I may be fighting an uphill battle in this house of boys and men, but my one and only New Year’s resolution this year is to model proper tooting etiquette at all times: Hold ‘em in when you can, say “excuse me” when you can’t.

And if you absolutely, positively have to let one rip, wait until Daddy is telling that poignant story, the one that always makes him cry, about the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Olympics. There’s a cookie in it for you if you do.