Ice Making & Dishwashing

 Charming Baby examined the plastic ice cube trays as if I had brought home some interesting fossils. 

“What are these for, Mom?”

“They’re ice cube trays!”

“Why do we need special trays to carry our ice?”

“They are for making ice!  The automatic ice maker is broken, so we’ll use these instead.”

He was fascinated, and asked if he could be the one to fill up the trays and put them in the freezer.  He kept checking on them all afternoon, reporting on the progress.  At one point he said, “Dad is going to be so happy we made ice for him!"

Can we just freeze everything right here?

As luck would have it, the dishwasher then broke, so I have been doing all the dishes by hand this past week, too.  At first I was on the phone pushing the appliance repair guys to hurry up and save me and then I realized no one in upstate New York cares if you are left washing your own dishes or making your own ice.

I found a therapeutic rhythm to my evenings.   Why is it so incredibly satisfying to clean up an entire kitchen?  Have I gone completely mad rattling around this old house?  I even love vacuuming up the floor at the very end, clearing away all the dirt that has been dragged in and crumbs that were carelessly dropped.  Maybe it is taking something from a mess to spotless, all while enjoying a glass of wine, that feels like an accomplishment.

Or, it could be knowing that if I can manage the 300 square-foot heart of our home, no matter what breaks down, I can somehow handle the rest of it all.  I am on guard these days as the boys race towards independence and maturity.  They need me less in many ways and so much more in others.  One day I am scheduling play dates, the next I'm supervising e-mails and texts.  I can’t freeze time or wash away problems but I can be there, with plastic trays and rubber gloves, making sure nothing gets the best of us.

Growth Spurts

The first time I dined with a conscious eater I thought maybe she was in a cult.  Before diving into our meal, she bowed her head and quietly moved her lips whispering something I couldn’t hear.  This after giving so many amendments to her order that I thought for sure the waiter was going to wipe the floor with her tortilla before serving us.  I remember thinking there must be something wrong with someone who inquires about the origin of a fish she’s going to eat.

I’m different now.  I try to model slow, healthy eating for my boys and I definitely think twice about where my food comes from.  I understand what my friend was doing all those years ago in the booth at our favorite restaurant.  Sitting down to a bounty of food is a privilege and it’s really nice to stop and take a moment to thank somebody—God, the farmer, the cook.  I am trying to teach my children to not take it all for granted.  Also to not shovel food into their mouths. 

On the average, my boys grew over 8 inches a year when they went from babies to toddlers, are now growing at the rate of 3 inches per year, and according to the last doctor we saw, will have the majority of their growth between the ages of 12 and 17.  It’s all very exciting to be raising Beowulf and Bunyan but it’s almost impossible to work gratitude, conversation and mindfulness into the meal experience.

“Mom, Charlie didn’t put his fork down between bites.”  Charming Baby tattles as he’s licking the sauce off the chicken he’s holding like a lollipop.  The owner of the Thai food place walks over to our table and offers him a knife.

As I am cutting the chicken off the skewer for him, he gets grouchy and impatient.  I try to redirect him.

“How was recess today?  Did you play wall ball?”

“Fine, yes.  Mom!  Don’t’ let Charlie take any of my chicken!”

First Born Prince’s eyes are scanning the table like a snake near a baby bird’s nest.

“Never mind, don’t worry, settle down.  There is plenty to eat!”

They both harrumph.

Gone Local

The woman in the organic produce section stuck out like a sore prima donna.  She was wearing huge sunglasses, as if she were impersonating a bee, with her thick hair ballooned up in a big, loose bun on top of her head.  She had on shiny tights (Exercise? Fashion?  Superhero?) and some black boots that looked like they belonged at an after-party with Eminem.  Any one of those items individually would have announced to the world of Wegman’s, “I have style!” But all together they suggested she needed an intervention.

As I was looking for a check-out line that wasn’t three shoppers deep, I caught her again, wheeling her child, organic mushrooms and paper towels over to the Express lane.  I glanced at my own cart and kept going.  I sometimes make jokes to the cashiers or the person behind me if I notice them staring at what I’m buying.

“No, I don’t have a pet Killer Whale at home.”

I started thinking about crazy ballerina and what her story was.  I can’t remember a time when I had the leisure of waltzing through a store with just a baby and 10 items-or-less in my cart, but I do recall feeling out of place in a town where if you wear make-up, people will ask where you've been.  I used to hope for things like my jeans working the magic my friend promised they would.  Your ass will look better than Jennifer Aniston’s in these!  Now all I want is to be waterproof and dog friendly.

I loaded up.  My car, dirty, hadn’t been cleaned since before winter.  Washing cars in upstate NY is borderline mental.  Reusable grocery bags, torn, but still in working condition.  Wouldn’t replacing them be defeating the purpose?  I turned the radio on, the college station still blaring from when I was bopping around from home to school to the dog park to the gym earlier.  And what else would I be doing?  I sat behind the wheel, happily munching on my local apple. Without realizing it, I had gone totally Ithaca.

Dwight, My Hero

 In an episode of The Office: 

“Dwight is opening enormous cans and jars of food such as tomatoes, cereal, mayonnaise and pickled okra.  He explains, not surprisingly, that he has the best-stocked survival shelter in all of Northeastern Pennsylvania.  However, everything has a shelf life, so he must eat and replace all the food before it expires.  He’s sitting at a table in the break room during lunch, surrounded by his enormous containers, eating tomatoes right out of the can and grossing out his co-workers.

As they chastise him for eating 8-year-old tomatoes, Dwight reprimands them for their lack of emergency preparedness and describes what would happen to each of them in the event of an apocalypse:  Kevin will be eaten, Pam will be taken slave, Jim would be made a warlord’s jester, but Meredith would do ok, all because Dwight wouldn’t let them into his shelter, not because of the sign that says, No Pounding, No Begging, but because they laughed at him… “

Some people use humor as a weapon to avoid facing heavy subjects.  I have learned that when I start making too many jokes, it’s usually a sign that I am hiding behind comedy.  Just last night I started teasing the Professor.

“You know, I am going to start serving you all that emergency food you bought so we don’t have to move it back to La Jolla this summer.”

“What?  We need that food!”

“It’s almost four years old, it weighs hundreds of pounds.  It’s not worth it.”

“Well, check the expiration dates to be sure because I am just going to have to go out and buy it all again.”

“Maybe you’ll think twice about what you buy after you’ve had cold Dinty Moore Beef Stew out of a 5 lb can for three days straight.”

He laughed and we joked around about how this reminded us of Dwight and it was all very funny until I realized what I was doing.  It was time to face the crisis in Japan.  In many respects, it feels as horrible and saddening as the aftermath of 9-11.  Some of my friends have been sending out good information on where we can donate*, which, even if only a drop in the bucket, is something.  When I heard that others I know are going to special prayer meetings at their churches this weekend, I wanted to make jokes about how lighting a candle isn’t going help with nuclear reaction, but then, there I would go again.

Time for me to be serious.  What are you going to do?

*Relief Efforts for the March 11 Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, as recommended by my friend’s (former Professor at Harvard) colleagues in Japan:

American Red Cross

http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main

AmeriCares

http:www.americares.org/

Donate via PayPal

https://www.paypal-donations.com/pp-charity/web.us/campaign.jsp?cid=-12

Give2Asia

http://give2asia.org/japantsunami-2011

Global Giving

www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief/

InterAction

http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-support-japan-earthquake-response

JEN (Japan Emergency NGO’s)

http://www.jen-npo.org/en/index.html

Four Ways to Move Your Lover

There are four ways to transport four-legged humans (that’s what the Jet Blue booking agent called them) across country.  Any pet under 20 lbs. can be carried on and stowed under the seat in front of you. Her Royal Majesty is only 11 lbs. and that’s what we'll do for her.  I bought the largest airline carrier they offer and it's still tight.  I have no idea how you stuff one of Mama’s Good Eaters into one of those things.  If you have a Garfieldesque cat, or a dog that cannot be passed off as a squirrel, here is what you can do:

1.     Drive them. As much as I adore Lucky Bastard, I am not willing to drive for 15 hours a day for five days straight, trying to find places for him to relieve himself as I go.

2.     Have someone else drive them. My mother offered to fly out and drive him back for us.  The Professor ruled that one out immediately.  He said, “I love your mother, and I love Huck, too much, to allow that.”  How much trouble can a 68-year-old lady and a mutt can get into?

3.     Fly them on PetAirways (they are then called Pawsengers).  If you are afraid of checking your furry family into the belly of a plane (I had visions of our dog arriving in San Diego motionless), you can pay $700 for a ticket on PetAirways.  There is an additional $200 charge if you need to rent a crate and since we don’t have an industrial strength refridgerator box laying around, that’s $900.  They only fly westbound on certain days, and only out of NYC to LA.  They make five stops and it takes 14 hours.  Sure, the Pawsengers are served meals and probably champagne at those prices, but non-stop to San Diego seemed like a better route.

4.     Fly them on your flight.  Continental Airlines is known for being the most pet-friendly airline.  They guarantee your canine cargo flies with you, the animals are the last to board and the first to deplane (seems like every breathing thing gets off before I do now).  Supposedly there is temperature control (more awful visions), both in the cargo area and in the van that transports them to and from the plane.  The cost for their special PetSafe program is $395 one way. 

Sure we considered other options.  The classic motor home trip, or maybe even just the station wagon, all packed up with me leading  camp songs as we rolled along.  I had vignettes of stopping at national parks and eating at roadside diners.  “Easy Rider” could be my handle.  But then, in the quiet of the night, alone with my Google Maps, I broke it down:  one vehicle, two drivers, two children, two live animals, six motels, seven days, 21 meals.  Did I forget the 3,000 miles?  As much as I hate to admit it, I’ll take sane and practical for $400.

Not Pictured: [My son’s name here]

I missed the notice from the after-school math club about them taking the photo for the yearbook last week.  I can’t believe after two years of attending this enrichment program, run by a volunteer math professor from Cornell, my older son missed out on getting pictured with the rest of the Math Olympiad team.  He doesn’t know yet and won’t until June, or he reads this post, whichever comes first.   I am not sure if he’ll resent me, but I feel bad.  Letting him down in this way is right up there with the other top ten mothering offenses I’ve committed during my boys’ formative years. 

1.     Losing my younger son’s blanket.  I have been the trusted guardian when we are out of the house, having carried it on countless trips in my bag for him before.  He has slept with it pulled up to his nose every night of his seven-year life.  I accidentally left it on the Disney cruise ship last month.  Everyone keeps saying, “Oh, it’s Disney, you’ll get it back.”  So far, no dice.

2.     Tossed my older son’s first diorama he ever made into the recycling bin just as he walked into the laundry room to catch me giving it one last final smash down.

3.     Missed a play/performance at school (both children, different events).

4.     Forgot to play tooth fairy (both children, different nights).  I swear this is not due to chardonnay consumption.

5.     Insisted First Born Prince have a circus theme party for his 3^rd birthday when he wanted a Batman party.  He cried over the clown.  Now that I think about it, hired entertainment in a tight Batman suit might have been more interesting than the clown.

6.     Yelled at Charming Baby to stop being such a baby and get his shoes on.  Turns out there was a sock stuffed into the toe.

7.     Yelled at Charming Baby to stop being such a baby and get his shoes on.  Turns out his feet did grow a size while we were on vacation.

8.     Worried that First Born Prince wasn't making friends at lacrosse practice, I asked an older brother of one of the players to go out and introduce some of the kids to him.  My son wanted to know if I was meddling (after he begged me not to) and I said, "No."  "Oh, really, Mom, then why did that big kid come tell me if I want to know people's names, I should ask the coach, not have my mommy help me?"

9.     Lied for my own good, versus theirs.  I do this all the time.  (“Sorry, they weren’t home”, “Sorry, they were sold out”, “Sorry, it’s a pool club rule”)

10. A few weeks ago at the end-of-the-season ski club party at the water park, I swear Charming Baby told me he was packing his own swimsuit, just like his brother.  When we got to the water park, neither of us had a suit for him.  I forced him to dig through the Lost & Found and try on the only suit we could find, too-big, had-to-be-cinched at the waist, hanging almost to his ankles.  While we were arguing over whether or not he would wear the damn thing, he missed the ski club photo being taken around the corner.  He adores ski club, his favorite activity, bar none.  To top it off, later that day, one of the guys who works at the park stopped him and said, “Hey, that’s my suit!”

Dude (Looks Like a Lady)

 Aerosmith formed as a band when Steve Tyler was 22 years old.  I was only two-years-old then, so I didn’t get to enjoy what must have been a fun rise-to-fame to watch.  I didn’t start listening to the band until well into high school.  I was too geeky in middle school to even consider hard rock.  Only the girls with lockers in the smoking section knew any of their songs.

By the time I was in college even my mother knew the music that this talented group put out, mostly because they were Top 40 by then and you couldn’t turn on your car radio without something from Aerosmith blasting the air waves.  My college boyfriend told me he lost his virginity to “Sweet Emotion.”  For some reason that made me think he was cool and interesting.

Fast forward to post-college when my friend who was living in Boston called me up one day to tell me she worked out in the gym next to Steve Tyler.  I wanted to know if he was as bad ass and sexy as he sounded.

“No, he is painfully thin and holds his hands in that limpy position when he’s on the treadmill.”

“Gross.”

“I know.”

I guess I’ll just have to “Dream On.”  Although I honestly never really fantasized about running off with someone who wore leather pants to work, his voice is still one of my all time favorites and Aerosmith always makes my playlists.  I drove, partied, danced, and now cook and do laundry to that music.

Last night my friend was kissed and hugged by 62 year-old Steven Tyler at the taping of American Idol in L.A.  I haven’t watched the show or thought of making a poster to tease a 5’5” aging rock star so I laughed out loud when I saw the photos of my friend.  She held up a sign that read, “Hey, Steve, Walk this Way and Just Gimme a Kiss!”  He obliged, several times.  She is gorgeous and I am sure Steven Tyler would have done anything she asked him to but that’s another story.

Viruses, Good and Bad

Charming Baby has two warts (that I know about) I haven’t treated, although I did buy the medication.  This is newsworthy because my brother used to terrorize me when we were the same age by pinning me down and rubbing his wart on my exposed skin.  I still have nightmares that I will wake up, covered in miniature cauliflowers.  “Not the face!”  I would yell.  I have pulled the little glass wand out of the vial several times but my son runs off shouting, “Nooooo!”  I say to him, “Fine, be warty.”

Both my children have had warts.  Sharing this information is a good way to see who is being real with me and who is pretending.  Some people think that things like warts only happen to dirty children.  This, despite all evidence to the contrary.  I am here to tell you that my kids are some of the cleanest in town, but I wouldn't mind debating it.  Precious few mothers are willing to go there.  Most of us are so busy trying to put out a respectable image that we miss the opportunity to really connect and bond.  I am working on it.

My friend told me last night she loves that about me.  This is dangerous.  It’s reminiscent of the time my husband told me he thought it was sexy that I cursed.  I really, truly should not be encouraged.  For a year after that I was fucking sloppy. We had to have a talk about how it’s more powerful when used discriminately.  He’s right.  Fucker.  My friend said that she feels safe being her true self with me, that I won’t judge her if she reveals something bad.

I appreciate her compliment, but I would say most everyone is relieved to hear someone else is having a bad day, thought or problem.  There is no bigger turn-off than little Miss Perfect.  I am eternally grateful for the friends who confide in me.  We all have issues; it’s just a matter of who is willing to fess up and who isn’t.  I think our most powerful way to grow and heal is by sharing the worst and realizing we are not scaring anyone off.   Sometimes this sharing process yields helpful information--like the name of a good therapist, or the tip on applying Compound W while he is asleep.  Often, it is just knowing we are still loved, warts and all.

Perspective is Everything

One of the things that blows my mind here in Ithaca is that you can be hanging out with someone for months thinking she is just some nice stay-at-home mom and then one day you find out she is a Harvard MBA and used to eat investment bankers for breakfast.  My friend decided to quit the rat race and move to a sweet, affordable college town to raise her babies with her husband.

Yesterday I was chatting with my mommy friend at the ski club end-of-season party.  We were at the Greek Peak water park, sitting in our bathing suits, watching all the adorable elementary school kids get high on soda.   I was talking about moving back to La Jolla and we hit upon the subject of perspective and peer group. 

I was fascinated about her example of one of her colleagues who lives in NYC.  She said he is literally one of the smartest guys in the world and I believe her.  She and he were talking about his decision on whether or not to hire a third shift of nannies at home.  Among power couples you have Nanny Shift 1—for daytime, Nanny Shift 2—for evenings, because trust me there is no way you are walking out the door at 5:30 when you are pulling down $2 million a year, and then most have Nanny Shift 3 for weekends.  How are you supposed to attend the opera and recuperate from your heinous work week of brokering deals and going out to dinner every night unless there is a nanny to run the kids to karate and soccer on Saturday???  He prudently decided to not hire shift # 3 and his peer group was shocked.  They strongly advised him to reconsider.  It would be a huge mistake to give up all that flexibility.  You could always spend time with your kid, but you might regret not having the nanny there just in case you felt like going to the gym.

I came home and was incredulous to the Professor.

“We are raising a generation of freaks!  Why are these people choosing lifestyle over being with their kids?  Is the house in the Hamptons, condo in Aspen and yacht in Florida really that important?”

“Calm down we are only talking about something like 6,000 people in NYC, 6,000 people in London…”

I relaxed but it still made me think about how we arrive at our stations in life thinking we couldn’t possibly live without what we have.  We tell ourselves it is all a trade off.  For most Americans, it’s working for a mortgage and a car, for some it’s a cleaning woman or family vacation, and for .001 percent it’s a personal chef and energy healer named “Eagle” who makes house calls.

I am so very thankful I was forced to live without a lot of help (it isn’t available here in Ithaca unless you pay through the nose and have some rather questionable looking/sounding people in your yard, pool or home) for two years.  I am planning to go back to La Jolla and live with less so I can do more.

Slovenia?

Leaving California and Other States of Mind Audience Distribution

OMG!  I decided to check the stats on my blog readers, which I haven’t done in over a year.   I only have a handful of registered followers on the site and about a hundred that have an e-mail subscription.  I get dozens of clicks from Facebook and Twitter everyday, but I was not prepared to see the numbers I just saw:

Over 5,000 page views.  This is over 2 years and 175 posts, but still I couldn’t believe it.  Where are these readers coming from?

I clicked on the little map showing me the distribution (see above).  Mostly U.S. (no surprise), followed by Canada and then the UK (okay, fine).  But then:

South Korea  62

Belize  45

China  39

Netherlands  38

Russia  37

Germany  30

Philippines 18 There were also a handful of visits from Japan, Slovenia, Spain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and India. How they found my blog is a mystery.  Either there are some serious bilingual methamphetamine addicts overseas or my friends have cousins in places I didn’t know about. “Dear Vladimir, You must check out this blog!  You will laugh out loud when she jokes around about her cat!” I will never know if I have accidental tourists or if I am spreading the joy as far away as the north pole on my sheer hope that readers find me, but I thought I should do a little more research and see at least which post was my audience’s favorite. “Something’s Fishy” (http://leavingcaliforniaandotherstatesofmind.blogspot.com/2009/11/somethings-fishy.html) got 160 unique views.  Maybe because it had the word “Harvard” in it?    It’s funny that it was that post, too, because I received one of the nicest e-mails about it from a random fan.  He is an attorney in a suburb of NYC who was also a Cornell grad and was searching Twitter for the Harvard v. Cornell score last year.  He came across my tweet, and blog, and felt compelled to write to me and let me know that my tales of life in Ithaca made him laugh and think about his happy days here and that it was fun to fantasize about living in a college town, raising a family.   Social media experts will tell you it is important to manage your "klout" score and engage your readers.  I haven’t pushed for feedback, or tried to track what is going on.  I just wanted to share a little bit of the fun and now I see it’s grown organically.  You know, that is really why I do it.  Enjoy!