Sundays with Stretchy Pants

Yeah, yeah, I know you all read Pepper Paints and she already blogged about Thursday’s fun. Too bad. Read about it again.

I missed last Thursday’s homeschool park day because I was in Michigan. The potluck was canceled (obviously, what fun would it have been without me?) Or maybe it was because Dawn has a job or something lame like that. Anyway, we’re on for today and I have an extra kid with me so it will be extra fun. My 10-year-old niece is visiting us for a bit and she’s really sweet so she gets along nicely with my kids and my kids’ friends. The pool even gave her a free membership for us so we wouldn’t have to try to sneak her in. Nice of them. Bryan and I were actually planning to just pay an extra 10 bucks to get a pass for a family of 6 instead of 5, but Bryan didn’t know if she had to be immediate family or what so I guess he stammered around saying, “I forgot, our step-daughter will be with us a lot this summer, so I need a pass for 6, blah, blah, blah.” The kid at the desk was like, “Whatever, geezer, have a free pass.” Yay!

I didn’t say anything to Bryan, but it’s funny that his choice of the word “our” really stood out to me when he was relaying the story. Poor little bunny from a two-parent home doesn’t understand that there is no “our” when you’re talking about step-daughters. Unfortunately, I’m quite in-the-know on all matters of step-crap. For the lie to work really well, he should have said my step-daughter. Right? It’s the little things that make a lie believable.

Speaking of step-crap, I’m making a new rule and I think all children of divorce will get behind me on this one: I decree that our parents only get one shot at “blending” families. Got that? My dad is now going through his 2nd divorce, so I will have an ex-step-mother and 2 ex-step-brothers and 1 ex-step-sister to go along with my ex-step-father whom my mom divorced several years ago. I’m not having anymore steps.  My dad’s next wife will be “my dad’s wife” and my children will call her by her first name or Mrs. Clement, but not grandma. Same goes for my mother’s next husband. If they don’t like that, I will go to plan B, which is to refer to the new spouse as “my dad’s current wife” or “my dad’s next ex-wife” or some such other equally degrading term. I think that’s fair.

Related posts

• We’re Supposed to do Things Right? (10)
• Lest I Be Misunderstood (8)
• Escalator (4)
• Yes We Can (wear matching t-shirts)! (5)
• Things I Love So F*cking Much (2)

My mom gets uncomfortable when I do things differently than she did. This is unfortunate because most of the things that I have ever done differently are all related to parenting, and this parenting thing is going to last the rest of my life. That’s a long time for her to be uncomfortable with me. To be fair, I probably made her uncomfortable right at birth, coming out looking exactly like my dad while her older daughter had the good sense to look exactly like her. I also made her uncomfortable when I didn’t become homecoming queen. She was queen 40 years ago and, let me tell you, when you meet her for the first time it will come up in conversation. I’m a huge disappointment in so many ways, not just as a parent to her granddaughters.

My mom doesn’t come right out and say that she has a problem with my breastfeeding, co-sleeping, homebirthing, and homeschooling. She does other things like write in the Grandmother’s Book of Memories that I gave her:

“Dear Lena and Liberty, It sucks that I didn’t get to bond with you more because I didn’t get to feed you. Your mom is so hateful for hogging up the feeding. Love, Grandma. P.S. I didn’t nurse her and she turned out fine. Except for the hateful part.”

That’s a paraphrase, but I definitely captured the spirit of the sentiment. I know that these choices I’ve made have left her feeling insecure and I know better than to bring up homeschooling, breastfeeding, and co-sleeping, but those are on-going things so I can understand some on-going touchiness. Maya’s homebirth was just a one-time thing so I didn’t know it carried the emotional triggers for her until I was chatting on the phone with her the other day.

I called her just to chat and after a little bit our chit chat turned to the subject of movies. I told her we took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who, and she said, “I wanna see Baby Mama so bad!” and I told her how funny I think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are. She especially agreed about Amy and said she just loved her in that tv series, what was it?

Me: Saturday Night Live?

Mom: No, she’s not in that. It’s the one about the pregnant people. Something about Underbelly.

Me: Oh, I know who you’re talking about; that’s Rachael Harris. I love her! She is not in enough stuff.

Mom: That’s right, I get them confused. I just saw Rachael Harris in a Lifetime movie with Ricki Lake.

(Screw you guys, I am not googling that shit to find a link for you because, not only do I not care what Lifetime movie that would be, I would also be embarrassed for google to see me googling that. And that’s saying something because I google a lot of weird shit.)

Then she went on about how much she likes that Ricki Lake and she saw her on The View and she’s just so sweet and lovely and whatnot. And I’m rollin’ with the conversation and my brain’s trying to focus on keeping the happy vibe going and the closest thing to my brain’s surface about Ricki Lake is that documentary she just made, so I said, “Yeah, she has a documentary out that I want to see called The Business of Being Born.”

“Oh, I know! You know, she had her baby in a bathtub,” she said with what I interpreted as a good-for-her type tone.

I replied, “Not only in a bathtub, but in a bathtub at home!” In my own good-for-her tone, with an underlying tone that said, “You love Ricki Lake and she had a homebirth. You can love me in spite of my homebirth. Right Mommy? Right?”

Silence.

Silence.

“Yeah, well, now she’s a single mother.”

Aaaaand we’re back. There’s that flat, curt tone I’m used to! Let me just snuggle up to it…Mmm…that’s one sharp blankie. Feels like home.

*sigh*

It’s just so rare that we have an actual conversation that feels like 2 grown-ups talking to each other, so I was seduced by the normalcy and I forgot to never, ever, ever bring up anything that is in any way related to the myriad ways in which I slap her in the face with my different choices. Having a normal conversation with her just makes me feel like we’re grown-ups, you know? With different ideas and just different differences that don’t have anything to do with how we feel about each other or what we think about each other. Because we’re mother and daughter. And normal conversation makes me feel like we know that we’re mother and daughter and that’s pretty important, and no differences of opinion or action or dreams can ever change all that. And then when it turns ugly out of the blue, I’m lost again. And I stay lost for a bit because I like to beat myself up over it and wonder when I will learn.

She has told me before that I never remember anything good, but the truth is, I remember the good. I remember because there is nothing like the joy of connecting with this all-important person and then having that awful panic set in when you know that the connection is lost because of some unforseen change in her mood. I remember the good being constantly besieged by the bad. I remember the eggshells and I remember exactly how it felt when they cracked under my feet.

Related posts

• Lest I Be Misunderstood (8)
• TGIThursday! And Other Stuff For Which I Am Un-Thankful (6)
• Sick. Need Peach Hi-C. (6)
• Oh, Children (10)
• Yeah, Yeah, I Need to Blog (4)

I haven’t been this sick in a very long time. I can’t remember the last time I had a fever, but it must have been in the 80s because, darn it, this fever has set off such a hankering for peach Hi-C. A hankering that is destined to go unsatisfied. Unless somebody out there has a bomb shelter set up with all kinds of Hi-C and Spam and whatnot. That would be awesome.

My mom didn’t usually buy Hi-C or anything fun like that when I was growing up, but when I was sick, she would buy me a giant can of my favorite peach drink. That, and a can of Planters cheese balls. Or cheese curls, depending on which texture I was after. I can still remember the smell of those cheese balls when I peeled the foil back. Yum.

I’ve been dreaming about peach Hi-C in a can, opened on 2 sides (to avoid the glugging when it’s poured) with that little thing that used to put triangular holes in the many varied tin cans that held our liquids in the 70s and 80s, and popsicles for my sore, sore throat. I called Bryan at work this morning at about 7:00 and tried to communicate to him with my nearly non-existent voice that I would need him to bring me some popsicles on his way home or else he shouldn’t bother coming home. Only I couldn’t really talk that much, so I didn’t get to threaten him and be all dramatic. So I just used my scary voice to say, “Redrum” over and over and he got the hint. Then I staggered back to bed and dreamed that he couldn’t find any popsicles anywhere because they stopped making them when they stopped making peach Hi-C. After waking up from that nightmare about 23 times, he finally came home with my precious yum yums.

So sad that I’ll be missing the Chair is Art show at Gallery 202 tonight. Bryan will be there with the girls because Liberty worked on a couple of chairs with her art class. Some of our friends also have chairs in the show. It will be fun and I hate to miss the fun. Boo.

Related posts

• Pac-Man Fever (6)
• Lest I Be Misunderstood (8)
• Well, fine. Whatever. (2)
• Weekend Fun (5)
• Things I’ve Smiled About Today (7)

I love April for many reasons. I got married in April. I became a mother in April. My birthday is in early May, which means April is practically my birth month, which means I can start saying, “Guess how many more days until my birthday!” over and over until even the kids try to stab me. So I’ve been trying to write an anniversary post and I’ve been trying to write a happy birthday Lena and Liberty post, but I keep being distracted by April ghosts.

My paternal grandmother, Lena, died when my dad was 14, and I’ve always pined for her. The only time I ever played with a Ouija board, it was her I was after. When I wondered if there was a heaven, it was her I was after. All of my first big questions revolved around her. I knew that, had she not died, my dad never would have moved to Chesaning and met my mom, making my existence impossible. I would ask myself, Is it better that she died so I could live or would it be better if she lived and then had different grandchildren? Of course I always said it would be better if she had lived because, after all, Santa could’ve been listening to my thoughts and I didn’t want him to know I was so selfish. But those imaginary “other” grandchildren she would’ve had? In my mind, they totally ended up sucking and then it was Grandma Lena who was pining for ME!

Anyway, my maternal grandmother is a very special kind of crazy. You know, the kind that translates into, “Wow, you’re really an evil bitch.” So I spent a lot of time as a girl imagining what it would be like if Grandma Lena were alive. I put her up on this pedestal of perfect grandmotherliness and I was always greedy for her. I can remember being relentless with my questioning about her from a very young age. How did she laugh? Did she wear an apron? Would she give us candy? Would she like us? My fascination with her didn’t end with my intense need for a grandmother who would love me. I was drawn to her by the tragedies she endured. First, she didn’t get married until she was 36 and when I was a little KISS-loving princess, to me that was tragic. I didn’t know until I was an adult that she turned down proposals and owned her own car and traveled all over and things like that. One of her sisters told me with a wink, “We weren’t even sure she was the marrying kind!” So she suprised everyone and married Carl Clement on April 23, 1947. Ten years later, on April 22, 1957 when my dad was 8 and his brother was 6, Carl died of a heart attack at work. April, you give and you take away.

Lena might have been used to April’s pissiness by 1957 because on April 12, 1948 she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl named Jane Marie. On the same date, exactly one year later, she gave birth to my dad. Many of my childhood imaginings of her had to do with the fact that every April 12th she had to contend with the warring emotions of grief for her stillborn daughter, and the bliss that was her healthy son. Even as a kid, I knew that there was probably no pain like losing a child and I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like to go through another pregnancy that was due to end around the exact same time as that tragedy, not 2 or 5 or 7 years before, but only 1 year before. And then to give birth on the actual anniversary of the firstborn’s death? How? Seriously, how? I can tell you for a fact that the fear alone would have driven me to a mental institution. And then to be widowed with 2 small boys on the day before her 10th wedding anniversary? That’s just, I don’t know. I wish I had a better vocabulary but as I am, in my heart of hearts, trailer trash, all I can come up with is “bullshit.” It’s total bullshit.

So April? I’m glad you’re making with the sunny because you have a lot of esplainin’ to do and I demand that you atone for my grandmother’s roller-coaster of emotions by drying up the ground at the park and making pretty flowers bloom. Pretty ones! Not marigolds. She carried a lily in the center of her wedding bouquet. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for some early lilies.

Related posts

• Sick. Need Peach Hi-C. (6)
• Pac-Man Fever (6)
• Lest I Be Misunderstood (8)
• Well, fine. Whatever. (2)
• Weekend Fun (5)

I don’t know if any of the godless heathens who read this blog are familiar with Veggie Tales or not, but they are animated vegetables that teach kids about values and whatnot. Christian-lite values. I met them back in 1995 when I was working in a Christian bookstore and you should’ve heard the people bitch about how they were too mainstream and not Christian enough. Their premiere video had a song in it called “God is Bigger than the Boogeyman,” which was deemed demonic by some of the customers. “I don’t want my kid listening to songs about demons!” *sigh* Those were fun times. I have lots of stories about how those customers chipped away at my soul and turned me into the cynic that I am today. Of course, those same customers would blame my current soul condition on the fact that I let Satan get hold of me by doing yoga. (That is most definitely *not* an exagerration. Those are real words spoken by a real customer.) Anyway, in the Veggie Tales show about the Good Samaritan, the veggies keep passing the guy that needs help and they’re all singing this song, “Busy, busy, dreadfully busy! You’ve no idea all I have to do. Busy, busy shockingly busy. Much, much too busy for you.” It has been years since I’ve heard that song in real life, but it is one of those stick-in-your-head-until-you-want-to-stab-yourself-in-the-eye songs. I still get it stuck in my head whenever I have a ton of crap to do, like today. We have dentist appointments, a hair cut, grocery shopping, house cleaning, and all manner of preparation for when my mom and my brother and his family come to stay with us this weekend for Easter. Our Easter celebration is all about food, booze and euchre. Who wouldn’t be excited about that? But before the fun, the busyness.

So this song is stuck in my head. I tried to find it on Youtube, but I could only find it with some moron lip-synching it. I don’t like to give morons any blog-time, but I’m linking to it anyway. Turn your monitor off and get infected by the melody, please. I don’t want to be alone in my suffering. And keep in mind that the vegetable who is singing it is Archibald Asparagus. He wears a monocle. You’re welcome.

Related posts

• We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes (13)
• We’re Back, Y’all! (7)
• Is There Something on My Face? (6)
• First (song) Love (18)
• Budget Schmudget (2)

It’s raining today, what a surprise. I knew it would be raining because it’s homeschool art class day and homeschool art class day is when my friends and I drop our kids off and walk to the most beautiful coffee shop in the world. And on every single homeschool art class day, the weather has treated us like shit. It’s either raining or freezing cold, even if it was sunny and 50 degrees the day before. I think that the universe thinks that if we get to spend an hour and a half chatting in a beautiful coffee shop and have nice weather for our little walk, our heads might just explode with glee. I guess that could happen. The more likely theory is that this kind of thing happens because I once hung up on Oprah and she’s been punishing me in these little ways ever since.

To be fair, I didn’t know Oprah was going to be Queen of the Universe back when I hung up on her and I really think she should take that into consideration. It was the ’80s and I’m not even sure her ratings were better than Donahue’s at that time. She was having a show about bad neighbors and I had a really bad neighbor. When I was 8, he shot my first pet, Pooty the cat, and then pointed a gun at my mom when my parents confronted him. (No, we didn’t live in a trailer park. Why do you ask?) Anyway, this was back in the call-in days. I figured I had a story to tell, so I called and called and called. Every time somebody told their bad neighbor story, I was all, “My story is worse than that you big baby!” while I frantically dialed through my tears. I finally got through during the last commercial break. I don’t remember how the person answered the phone, but I know I said, “My neighbor is so bad, he shot my cat because she walked on his car and then when my dad and mom went over there, he pointed the gun at my mom! And we don’t even live in a trailer park!” The person on the phone said, “Ok,” and then I heard a click. I thought that meant I should hang up. I was little. They came back from commercial and I was bouncing up and down on the couch waiting for Oprah to say something like, “We just had the most precious little girl call in and tell us the worst story we’ve heard yet today. This story puts all of our panel guests’ stories to shame. Oh, the tragedy this little child has faced. I don’t know how she finds the strength to go on.” But she didn’t say anything like that. She said, “Ok, we have a caller. Go ahead, Caller. Caller? Caller, are you there? Jesus H. Christ, Caller? WTF?” And then she turned to her producer and said, “Don’t tell me that little bitch hung up on me.” At least, that’s the way I remember it. And can I tell you how a little piece of me died that day? I watched Oprah get all tense because I hung up on her. I felt an odd mix of elation and dread. I could’ve been on OPRAH! Oh no, I hung up on OPRAH! And then my parents got divorced. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

So, I want to say I’m sorry to Oprah. I also want to say I’m sorry to my homeschool mom friends. I shouldn’t have kept this part of my past from you. I don’t want you to be hurt by any more of Oprah’s cosmic retaliation powers. I mean, I’m not sorry enough that I’m going to skip the coffee shop just so you guys can have a nice walk there, but still. At least now you know the truth.

Related posts

• Sometimes My To-Do List Depresses Me (3)
• Sick. Need Peach Hi-C. (6)
• Lest I Be Misunderstood (8)
• Big Sigh (2)
• TGIThursday! And Other Stuff For Which I Am Un-Thankful (6)

I love my life. I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do. I love my husband. I love my kids. I love staying home with them and I especially love homeschooling. I loved breastfeeding long enough for the weaning stories to include lines like, “Your milk’s all gone, Mama. It went down the drain in your nipple.” I love co-sleeping and I love gentle discipline. However, I’m fully aware that in doing all of these attach-y type things, it is part of an effort to re-do my childhood. I was raised by people who didn’t have very good childhoods. I believe both of my parents have attachment disorders. I believe I have an attachment disorder. And I believe I didn’t know what love was until that first day that I walked out of the hospital and left Lena and Liberty there because they were too premature to come home with me. I further believe that if I hadn’t co-slept and breastfed these girls on demand, I would not have been able to take that fierce mama love and translate it into attachment. I believe my parents love me, but attachment is a whole different thing.

Anyway, I’m putting this out there because, while I would not trade my life for anything, sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard. And sometimes I write about it with a derisive style and I don’t want people to get the wrong idea. I don’t tell my kids that I think they are black holes of need. That would be mean. I try to meet their needs and then I meet my needs by drinking. Just kidding! I try to meet their needs and it is impossible. Because they’re children. This impossibility and my inadequacy as a mother weigh on me and I deal with it, like I deal with most things, with sarcasm. Self-preservation can be ugly. I’m just trying to make it a little bit funny. The end.

Related posts

• Oh, Children (10)
• Sick. Need Peach Hi-C. (6)
• Well, fine. Whatever. (2)
• We’re Supposed to do Things Right? (10)
• Things I’ve Smiled About Today (7)

I don’t know why my training schedule for the half-marathon is such a bitch to me. For some reason, I have personified it and instead of the personality of a sweet cheerleader-type, it has the personality of a crotchety Catholic nun. I’m not Catholic, but my friend Alle did take me to Catechism a couple of times where I learned my very painful and blistery fate as a child of hell. So in my mind my training schedule looks and sounds like a chunky bitch of a Catechism teacher who is continually reminding me of the painful and blistery fate that awaits me on the day of the half-marathon if I don’t take part in all of the sacraments, er, training runs. I don’t know why I don’t give it the persona of, say, my mom. It would be lots easier if my training schedule drank a lot and ignored me and reminded me every fall about how it was homecoming queen 40 years ago. At least then I would probably be trying to win its affection by over-achieving. But I guess then I would realize that it really doesn’t want me to achieve and it even resents me for trying, so then I would just drop out of the race in hopes that it would love me and then, well, then there’s therapy. *sigh*

Fun stuff: We’re going to West Virginia Thursday for my brother’s wedding and I’m very excited about that because I love him and I love his soon-to-be wife and I love their children. Most of all, I love making fun of West Virginians and I reckon I can get me some chuckles iff’n I go to the five-and-dime and just listen a spell.

Related posts

• Let’s Stay Together (10)
• Lady Parts (8)
• Busy, Busy, Dreadfully Busy (13)
• What Happens to Family Traditions. (6)
• Weirdness (4)

Breastfeeding is legal? In Public? But, but, there are breasts and feeding involved. Offensive.Ha ha on you, Fossil, Inc. I’m glad that this case went beyond your typical staged nurse-in with media coverage. I’m glad this mom threatened to sue and I’m glad she walked away with a little bit of compensation from Fossil. It does get me wondering, though, if this kind of thing will stop happening any time soon. Every time there is a publicized case like this, I tend to think, “There, now we’re done with that nonsense.” Um, rose-colored glasses anybody? In my many, many years of baring my breasts for the purpose of sustaining life or, quite frankly, to get a kid to just be quiet for a minute, I was never asked to leave anywhere and I never even endured any mean looks or comments (well, except maybe from family and/or friends and/or other people in the privacy of my own and/or their own home, but that’s to be expected. Ahem). And more than half of my breastfeeding years were spent in a very small town where that kind of thing is just not typical. It’s a little bit shocking to me that this particular case happened in a Manhattan show room. I would think a big city would be the last place a breastfeeding mother would have to endure that kind of harrassment. Small towns, excuse me, some small towns are not typically tolerant of people who do things a little bit differently. Maybe that’s the difference. A small town might have its hands full bitching at the librarian for asking if it would be a problem if she put the award-winning book And Tango Makes Three on the shelf*, so they wouldn’t have time to wig out about public breastfeeding. I wonder if there is a master list somewhere that ranks the wig-out worthiness of these offensive things. Maybe I was never harrassed for breastfeeding at, say, the library in my hometown because the people who would have harrassed me were too busy scouring the shelves for gay penquin porn. GASP! “There’s that Aldrich girl breastfeeding one of her toddlers right here in the library! I’m gonna give her a whatfor. Wait, let me look at the list:
1. Gays
2. Protestants
3. Breastfeeding mothers
4. Murderers”

Who knows? Maybe I was saved by that list on more than one occasion.

*Last time I was visiting family, I attended the hometown book club with my very special friend Mechelle and the librarian asked us what we thought about having that book on the shelf. It’s pretty sad that she had to ask, but it’s super extra sad that one mother (speaking for the majority there) said with a shudder, “I wouldn’t want to explain that to my 4 year old!” Irony of ironies, the book we were actually discussing at the book club was Maus. Well, I thought it was ironic anyway and I had lots of trouble restraining myself from drawing comparisons between this mom’s ideology and that of Hitler’s. It was tough, but I held back. I want it noted that I held back even after she implied that the fact that I don’t have a problem with homosexuality is because my mom is, um, more active socially** than her saintly mother. Huh? I know, it was hard for me to follow too. And it was hard for me to not stand up and say, “Oh, you did not just bring my mama into this!” and stuff. That would’ve been very Jerry Springer of me and that is where I draw the line.

**In this case I’m using the phrase “active socially” with a wink and a nudge. I’m not talking about volunteerism and stuff like that. Just wanted to clear that up.

ETA: If this story leaves you with an overwhelming urge to donate a copy of And Tango Makes Three to this library, do not hesitate to contact me and I will get you the info. I’m donating a copy with a bookplate inside that says “In honor of God and The Holy Spirit who, with the help of their surrogate, Mary, were able to become fathers to their beloved baby Jesus. Amen.”

Related posts

• For the Sake of the Children (9)
• Ugh. (4)
• Tongueless (2)
• Things I Love So F*cking Much (2)
• Some Good TV (6)