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March 7, 2010

I Lost My Keys to the Gold

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I needed to be at work, Buttercup was sick and Noel had an orthodontist appointment. Sophisticated engineering is required at a time like this and I was like the downhill skier making record time until she crashes at the bottom of the hill just before the finish line.

Blue Eyes got Noel and Sparkles to school and I cuddle with Buttercup. Then I pick up Noel, meet my in-laws at the orthodontist, switch cars (you know, because of the car seats), my in-laws take Buttercup, I wait at the orthodontist, then bring Noel back to school. I might just be able to catch up on my work (I work from home) if I get started fast….

Then I realize two unfortunately-very-related things. One is that I really, really need to go to the bathroom. The second is, as I pull into my driveway, driving my Father-in-law’s car, I realize I really, really, really am locked out of my house.

My ski tip catches the gate and I land hard, tumbling down the hill.

It took a while to recover. I went to the bathroom at a neighbor’s, but then, you won’t believe this, I lost my Father-in-law’s keys.

Now I am stranded and locked out. I thought that was funny. Well, funny in the way that made me say G$%  D^$*& a lot.

While it is true that I am sometimes a world class skier, I have a unique ability to lose keys. Ask Blue Eyes, he can tell you all about it. I should be studied by brain scientists so they might understand how I can otherwise function normally.

But in my defense, my Father-in-law’s car has one of those new cars where you don’t use the keys to start the car. As long as the keys are somewhere nearby, you can push a button to start the car.

Now, let me tell you, this is a VERY bad idea for people like me who have a unique ability to lose their keys. Since you don’t have to keep track of your keys at two key transition points – when you start and stop the car – all this does is give me a thousand new ways to lose my keys.

I am now four hours behind on my part-time six-hour work day.

I try not to panic.

I push the button to start the car.

The car starts.

Is it better or worse that I the keys are so close, but I still can’t find them?

I frisk myself, feeling every possible pocket in all of my clothes. I take everything out of my purse. I search the car, ah, there they are. I was wearing a jacket earlier, I had thrown the jacket into the back seat, the keys are in the pocket.

I drive to Noel’s school and call her to the office to bring her house key. She thinks that is funny. She had trouble keeping track of her key when we first gave it to her, now she was helping me get back into the house.

My 8:00 start time for work was now 12:30.

So, today, I lost my keys and I lost the gold. I don’t know what to say about that. I’ll keep doing the downhill. I know I’m going to crash some times. I’m good at other things and it all balances out somehow. I will try to remember the good things and the balance the next time I realize I’m stranded and locked out when I need to go to the bathroom.

 

February 21, 2010

You Should Have Seen Me Be So Friendly

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You know how in Star Wars, when the Millenium Falcon came out out of Light Speed, you felt your whole body change momentum, everything looked different and you sensed that you might get zapped by a TIE Fighter any second…

I felt like that some today. Nothing special really. The feel of something wet against my skin just after picking up Buttercup onto my hip, then seeing the brown, wet stain on her pants. Setting Olympic-worthy records for distance and coverage for a knocked-over cup of milk. The drama of sweet and lovely parent-and-child bonding moments intermingled with bouts of unexplained, hysterical tears.

Just a regular day.

But so different.

So different than my time in Minneapolis, when I was out of town for work. Work itself had been hectic, but after that I could eat or shop or work out or write or read a magazine. I slept all night every night. No one cried. No one spilled milk. No one pooped a runny poop in their pants.

By the end of the week, I walked with a lighter step. I smiled more. I made conversation with strangers in the elevator. I felt like a small child on Christmas morning when I got to the airport early to go home and I had a whole extra hour all to myself.

Now I’m back in the middle of my regular life. More so even, because Blue Eyes is out of town this week. But I’m going to remember that feeling of lightness. I’m going to remember it and try to get back there now and then. The young kids make it harder, but not impossible.

Some people thought the Millenium Falcon was a piece of junk and who would have thought it could do Light Speed at all? Maybe I can get back to my own version of Light Speed now and then, avoiding the TIE Fighters, smiling along the way.

 

February 18, 2010

Possible Trauma

Posted by Carol under Little Bits, Mom Stories | Tags: , , , |
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I’m in Minneapolis for work, in a Hilton hotel, along with a conference of cheer leaders. Cheer leaders are practicing in all the open spaces and as I walk to the elevators, there are girls in the air, standing on someone’s shoulders, all the time, as if it were normal.

I came back to the hotel from the office today and saw a girl laying on a bench with people hovering around her. She must be hurt. I wonder if she is all right. I get closer.

The people hovering around her are applying her makeup.  Very fancy eye makeup and face-paint letters on her cheeks. Three people are working at one time and she is laying still, so they can work. I’ve never had so much attention on my makeup. Holy cow, I just started wearing lipstick again since Buttercup was born.

I’m glad she is OK. It is fun to see random sights in the open spaces. Just 24 more hours and I’ll be home with my husband and my girls. That will be even more fun.

 

February 18, 2010

In My Dream

Posted by Carol under Little Bits, Mom Stories | Tags: |
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I’m in Minneapolis for work, sleeping through the night, every night. Funny thing is, the girls are sleeping through the night at home too. Go figure.

In my deep, long slumber, I had this dream. I was seeing a doctor and she has my test results. She was calm and serious. She said I had smithergens. Hmmm, I thought, smithergens.

That’s all I remember.  I looked up smithergens on the Internet and it doesn’t mean anything, the firsts hit was for Smithereens, a band I saw play in Houston about twenty years ago. I must be doing all right if my only condition isn’t real.

I’m heading home tomorrow, it will be good to be home.

 

February 1, 2010

The Long Way Home

Posted by Carol under Kid Stories, Little Bits, Mom Stories | Tags: , |
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Do you ever drive the long way home, just because the kids are in their car seats, quiet, content to look out the window, unable to make a mess, not asking for anything and giving you time to think about something or nothing at all? Today it took twenty minutes to drive home from the day care which is 2 miles from my house. Up and down Burnet and Lamar. Completing a few complete circles. Sparkles started to catch on, though, and ask where we were going. I won’t be able to use this trick for long. For today, I enjoyed the long way home.

 

January 31, 2010

Dilbert, the Vachons and My Next Idea

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I had coffee with my friend Katie Malinski, a parenting coach and therapist, and she told me a story about Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. He said that he got emails all the time from people who said “Man, I had that idea! A cartoon about a nerd and the odd quirks of corporate life!” Scott Adams response was something like “Well, after you have the idea, you kind of have to do the work.”

Scott Adams is talking to me when he says that. I have ideas all the time but mostly I just tell them to my friend Katie. I’m writing on this blog now, but I’ve only told six people about it, which is kind of like wearing a rain coat in the shower. I’ve been telling her for years that a family with Mom and Dad both working 40 hours a week doesn’t make sense. The whole family used to work 40 hours and now they work 80 hours? How do you spend time with the kids beyond meals and sleeping and how do you keep up with a house?

30 hours. That was my answer. It should be a common and accepted practice for people to choose between a 30 hour and 40 hour work week, with reduced pay for the 30 hours. Then, when a family has young kids, Mom and Dad can make it all work.

So, I am glad to see that Amy and Marc Vachon have done more than just tell their girlfriend about their idea. They have lived their idea for many years, with Amy and Marc working 32 hours a week. Then they wrote a book and started a blog. Now they are experts on Equally Shared Parenting. Their idea is more than the reduced work week for both Mom and Dad, it is also about equal sharing of the work at home.

I’m glad the Vachons have done the work. I’m glad they were written up in the New York Times and appeared on The Today Show. I think it is a powerful idea and it is something that would work for a lot of families. I’m working part-time now and I love it. I spend part of my day using my grown-up brain and have a lot of my day just for the kids. I like our trips to the park and the museum and I like that they aren’t in day care for nine hours every day.

It is harder for the Dads. I think it is harder for them to make the case to their boss for a part-time week and still be considered an A-player and committed to the company.

I think it is harder still for women to let go. To let the men really, really own the parenting just as much. To let them do it differently. To not assume, because their fathers didn’t do it or men don’t usually do it, that they can’t. The same that we want men to not assume we can’t be CEOs or Presidents.

With books like the Vachon’s and more people asking about it and trying it out, hopefully it will be more common in the future, for companies to support the option, for Dads being willing to take it on and for Moms being willing to letting it happen.

And about those ideas – I’m going to do the work for one of them, I just haven’t figured out which one yet. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

 

January 30, 2010

Looking Like a Squirrel Preparing for Winter

Posted by Carol under Little Bits, Mom Stories | Tags: , |
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Do you ever find a Rice Krispie Treat in the bread box that you forgot about and it isn’t too old but it is definitely the last one and you know your 2-year-old would really like it, but you love Rice Krispie Treats too, so you eat it? Then your two-year-old walks into the kitchen and you turn to the side while you fit the whole thing in your mouth, then you eat it slowly while she plays at her kid-size kichen? Yeah, me too. :)

 

January 24, 2010

Sleeping In (Well, Sort Of)

Posted by Carol under Kid Stories, Little Bits, Mom Stories
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Photo courtesy of wonderground.com.

I’ve been thinking and writing lately about how things have changed now that I have little kids and this morning it came up again. Both of my little girls slept through the night and all the way until 7am. 7am. That is a magic time, because it is later than 5:30 or 6:00 when they sometimes get up.  I would have never thought this before these little kids, that 7am was sleeping in…

 

January 23, 2010

Sing Alongs, Good Coffee and Spoon

Posted by Carol under Austin Stories, Mom Stories | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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We are driving down the street and Sparkles is banging her arms on her car seat arm rests and yelling “Burning Down the House!” She is smiling and giggling and singing all at the same time.

During the holidays, Sparkles started singing for real, Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman were favorite. She has her own playlist on my iPhone now, with some classics by the Beatles, Elvis and the Talking Heads. (You might not think the Talking Heads belongs in that list, but in my family it does.) Then there are the show tunes, because she LOVES the show tunes, with a few songs from The Little Mermaid, Snow White and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  Yes, my play lists have changed.

My Friday nights have changed too. When I was younger, my Friday nights started late, involved a lot of people who I didn’t know and required wine or beer or margaritas, something to drink that signaled a celebration, it was Friday after all!

On this Friday night, I’m at Pacha Coffee House on Burnet near 45th by myself. I had a quiche and iced tea for dinner. Every now and then I stop typing and notice the quiet. (Well, music is playing softly and there is a hum coming from the refrigerated case with food, but no one is squealing or giggling or screaming or crying, so quiet, relatively speaking.) I’ll stay a couple of hours and get home by 9:00 so I can catch up on sleep.

This is my night off, Blue Eyes has the girls. If my younger self were reading this, she might be worried and sad, but I’m not worried or sad. The feeling of this night, the quiet, the good food, being able to write, it feels really good.

I like Pacha for times like this. The coffee is pretty good, I like the coffee, but I LOVE the food, especially for breakfast. Their breakfast tacos are made to order with fresh, organic ingredients. Yummmmm. It is intimate too, there are regulars who know each other, it feels like some of them have been having coffee together at Pacha for a hundred years.

But, I think I will wrap up early here and head to Waterloo to get Spoon’s new album Transference, because things have changed, but they haven’t changed THAT much and there is room for me and Blue Eyes and the kids in what I do. Maybe I will stay up past 10 tonight, for old time’s sake, maybe not, it’s all good here.

 

January 17, 2010

One Second and Thirteen Inches

Posted by Carol under Austin Stories, Kid Stories, Mom Stories | Tags: , , , |
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The top of the mattress on Sparkles’s toddler bed is 13 inches from the floor. The bed is against a wall on one side and has a rail on the other. Her running across the yard, jumping off rocks, walking along anything off the ground that looks like a balance beam and doing aerial stunts with her Dad, all of that seems more dangerous than sleeping in her bed at night, but it took one second for her to fall out of bed last night and break her collarbone.

Here are some highlights of our adventure.

Sparkles was mostly OK as long as she didn’t move her shoulder, but she also tosses and turns a lot in her sleep, so she kept waking up and crying.

I drove to Dell Children’s Hospital first and the parking lot for the emergency room was full and I could see through the windows that it was a standing-room-only night. So I kept on driving the the Heart Hospital near Central Market where Sparkles was the only patient.

The staff didn’t see a lot of children in this hospital, but they did a pretty good job. They gave her crayons and paper when she had to wait and they brought in a portable x-ray instead of bringing her to the big x-ray room, which could have been scary.

The x-ray technician had a small triangle-shaped lead apron, except it wasn’t an apron, just a triangle, and it was to cover Sparkles’s ovaries during the x-ray. I guess it is good that x-ray technicians think ahead that far. It freaked me out a little bit, to think ahead that far, that my little girl has ovaries that might reproduce one day.

Sparkles was brave and sweet, but very quiet with the doctor, she couldn’t describe what hurt or why she was crying. This would have been scary, if this was a complicated case, but when I touched her collarbone she screamed and the x-ray showed it was broken, so it worked out fine.

The communication was harder the other way. I wanted to explain how keeping the wrap on, a really big Ace bandage, sort of, that kept her arm in place against her body, would keep her arm from moving and hurting. But she didn’t understand that, she just didn’t like how the bandage felt. I wanted to tell her her collarbone is broken and it will hurt for a while, but it will get better, but she didn’t understand that either. It just hurt.

I asked the doctor if the bandage was for comfort or if it was needed to help the bone heal, because I know my girl and I know she won’t want to wear it and the doctor doesn’t get why Sparkles wouldn’t wear it. She is an emergency-room heart specialist after all, the trade-off between this emergency room and hours of waiting at the Children’s Hospital. The nurse understands what I’m asking. He says the wrap is for comfort, it isn’t necessary for the bone to heal.

For being in the shortest emergency room line ever, the trip still takes three hours, between waiting for the nurse, then the doctor, then the x-ray technician, then the doctor, then the administrator, then wait for 30 minutes to be sure she doesn’t react to the pain medicine, then drive around for 20 minutes on the way home so she can calm down and fall asleep.

You just can’t know what will happen in one second and 13 inches. I’m glad we didn’t reeaalllly need the Children’s Hospital last night. I’m glad we weren’t upstairs at the Heart Hospital with something serious. I’m glad my husband took care of the kids in the morning and let me sleep. My husband moved the area rug under Sparkle’s toddler bed for extra cushion and I tell her it will be OK. Everything will be OK.

 

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