When I Grow Up....

When I was growing up, my role models were people like Wonder Woman and Denise Huxtable from the Cosby Show. I wanted to be both of them at different times. Wonder Woman was so pretty and strong and smart. Her accessories had magic powers, and that part is still very appealing to me. I could totally go for a bracelet that dissipated traffic or made my children stop fighting. I’d love a tiara that could have dinner ready in ten minutes. But at some point I stopped believing that would happen. (side note: I’d love any tiara; it doesn’t have to make dinner.)

I also had to give up hoping for a chance to be the cool, laid back, hippie child of a loving, well-educated, and affluent black couple in New York. My family is just never going to put on a big musical number on the staircase for my grandparents’ wedding anniversary.

As an adult, I’ve gravitated toward more realistic role models. I aspire to be as put together as the room mommies at school. At 34, organization is more coveted than tall red leather boots and a golden lasso of truth. (Again, not saying I wouldn’t wear the tall red leather boots.) And, as fun as it seemed to be Denise Huxtable, with her constantly changing hairstyles and boyfriends, her love of a directionless life and all that, I don’t do well managing even one hairstyle.

And being a free-spirit is harder to get by with after college. People expect you to pick up your children EXACTLY when school ends, not when you’re done counting the little blue flowers in the meadow where you’re soaking up sunshine. So, women who aren’t as easily distracted as me become super heroes in my mind too.

I don’t just have role models for myself either. I have couple role models for me and my husband. Couples that are older than us and still cool. The ones that continue to update their wardrobes and haven’t retired their sense of humor.

There’s one couple, in particular, that goes to our church, that I want us be. I’d admired them from a distance for awhile, and then I got to know them better and realized they were every bit as cool as I thought they were and then some. They’re witty and attractive, they’re kind and intelligent, they’re active and involved. A few months ago, I leaned over and whispered in my husband’s ear, “I wanna be them when we grow up.” He nodded his consent. He didn’t verbally answer because we really shouldn’t be talking while the teacher is during Sunday school class. That was just my Denise Huxtable coming out.

Now, let me just say that I’m not trying to imply that they’re way older than us. I have no clue how old they are. I just know that their children are grown so they must have some years on us. The point is that whatever their age, I want us to be them at their stage in life. We’re not them now, so we’ve got some work to do.

But the reason I brought all of this up (not that I need a reason for bringing things up), is that I got on here to check my blog and they are official followers! They’re kind of like rock stars in my mind, so I was/am very excited about that! Mrs. It Couple has spoken to me about my blog a couple times recently and let me know she’s enjoying it. It’s one of the reasons I know she has great taste.

I also really appreciate them taking the time to become “followers”. Not everyone does. Clearly. I could name names, but I won’t. I don’t mind entertaining you on the down low. Though, I can assure my readers who haven’t signed on that there’s no credit check and the blood sample you have to give is virtually painless.

Lost In Translation

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to come to terms with what things about me I can change and what I can’t. I was horribly out of shape for most of my twenties, but by my thirtieth birthday, I’d changed that. I not only adapted to a new healthy lifestyle, but I actually became addicted to it.

I’ve also made progress with computers and technology. Granted I’m still the most tech-inept person I know, but believe me I was way worse five years ago. I’m better with money and time management; my Valentine’s gift to my husband is that I’m sticking to our budget like glue. That may not sound romantic, but to him it’s like I hung the moon.

But some things I’m starting to realize are just part of who I am, and always will be. One is that I’m navigationally challenged to the point of it being a physical handicap. I could maybe…MAYBE, find north if I had a compass. Even then….?

Unless I’ve been somewhere at least seven or eight times, there’s a good chance I can’t find it. It doesn’t help to tell me where it is in location to somewhere else, because odds are, I don’t remember where that place, street, store is either. It especially doesn’t work if someone says that my destination is just south of…or west of… x, y, or z….because again, I don’t know those.

And don’t give me that whole the sun rises in the east and sets in the west crap because I’m never going anywhere at seven a.m. on a cloudless day. NEVER! And even if I determine east and west “from the sun”, I don’t know if I’m facing north or south in relation to it!

Last week, I went with the girls on a field trip to the children’s museum downtown. I’ve been downtown maybe a dozen times in the seven years we’ve lived in Raleigh, and was probably only driving on three of those occasions. So, I knew going into it that I should pay attention, i.e. don’t get caught up singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs or talk on my cell phone as I guessed my way through one way streets.

I did okay finding the museum, but then got completely turned around three hours later when I came out of the parking lot. I needed to return to the preschool to reclaim my girls, because they were riding back there on the bus, a wise choice given their mother’s total lack of an internal gps.

A few minutes after I left, I realized I’d probably never see the girls again. I made a literal and figurative wrong turn because I was headed into a part of town that was not ever going to end in a preschool.

I tried to call my husband, but he has this serious full-time job thing that often results in him being unavailable to act as On-star. So, next I called my friend J, who is a very navigationally capable woman. A woman who has lived here longer than me and confidently learned her way around downtown Raleigh.

Thank God she was home because if I didn’t get on the right track really soon, I was going to earn a starring role on a 48 Hours mystery. My choices would be to embrace a life of crime, possibly through being jumped into a gang, or to become statistic and headline of the six o’clock news.

My friend helped me and I escaped back to the suburbs, but, for the record, I’ve always understood why Hansel & Gretel needed to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way home. I feel like I need to do that when I go out to get a jug of milk.

The other thing that I’ve been totally unsuccessful in changing about myself is my propensity for saying exactly what’s on my mind, the very instant I think it.

Case in point: this Sunday, in our Sunday school class, we were listening to a really great lesson that was both uplifting and challenging. Near the end of the discussion, the teacher used a football analogy, as an example of how people recall the same event with different details, like how the apostles recount Jesus’ time on earth with slight variations. Variations, not contradictions…it’s just that some of the things they saw him do stood out more to some of them than others.

Anyway, the analogy started like this, “Remember that sideline catch that the Giants had in the second half of the Super Bowl?” There were lots of nods, and, at the same time, everyone’s eyes turned to me, a well-known lifelong Giants fan. I guess I was completely beaming because the teacher said, “Wow, Heather, you look like you’re remembering your wedding day instead of the Super Bowl!”

That was NOT an appropriate time for the next words that came out of my mouth… “The Super Bowl was way better than my wedding day.” LET ME EXPLAIN! First of all, the couples in that class that know us the best laughed right along with us, because they know that neither my husband nor I enjoyed our wedding all that much. Luckily, you can have a good marriage, even if your wedding wasn’t what you had in mind.

And my husband, who is ever more tolerant of my missing filter, smiled at me, took my hand in his…with the whole class looking on…and said, “It was a really awesome catch!” Basically agreeing that we’d rather toast the Giants’ two recent Super Bowl wins on our anniversary than a stressful wedding day we had twelve years ago.

My mouth and my lack of direction are liabilities, but hopefully I’ll always have people around to get me out of the dangerous situations they both get me into on a regular basis. Because I’m pretty sure that if either of those things was going to change about me, there’d be some sign of that by now.

Just Take My Word For It....

I had this rogue notion to get my Mommy-act together one night last week and update the kids’ baby books. If I had known how far I’d fallen behind or the extent of the things I’d have to try and recall, I would’ve just watched TV, like the actual surviving-day-to-day Mommy that I am.

First up, Brainy. That one seemed promising because a great deal of it was filled out lovingly and methodically back when he was an only child for two and a half years. I even managed to keep up with it for about a year and a half after the twins came home. Because I didn’t leave the house back then. But suddenly, there are no height and weight recordings from his check-ups, though I’m certain he’s grown since he was four. No problem, I’ll call the pediatrician and get those. My goal is to do it before he turns nine.

Next, in an effort to crush my own spirit, I decided to do some work on the twins’ books, which I haven’t touched since they started walking. I recorded that accomplishment for them and have been chasing, wrangling, and peeling them off the ceiling ever since.

Their books start off like a good read, basic information about our family, where we live, the pregnancy, etc. The handwriting in theirs is markedly sloppier than my son’s. Everything I’ve done since August 22^nd of 2006 has been rushed. In the section I was supposed to list gifts, I put toys, clothes, diapers…whereas in my son’s book, I described the clothes and wrote out what toys exactly and from whom. I stopped recording the twins’ growth at age two, so I’m going to have to get a cheat sheet from the pediatrician for that too.

It was the next section is where it got sketchy. Where this blog started to write itself. It was the page of “firsts”. Again, I was recording things left and right until they started walking, then nothing. So, as my husband, mother, and I sat down in the family room that night, I had to rack my brain for things like “First dressed yourself”, “First went potty”, “First brushed your teeth”, “Drew a picture”, “Wrote the alphabet”, “Made a Friend”….Uh-oh, I don’t remember. How exact do these need to be? Can I ballpark it? Like, “Well, I know you were older than one and younger than six.”

I thought maybe my husband and mom could help me piece it together. But, actually, we couldn’t even always agree on what the question was asking. “Do they mean when we brushed her teeth or she brushed her teeth?” “She’s been friends with A for her whole life, but is that a friend I made for her?” “I think they mean when she made a friend by herself.” “A trip where? Like to Nana’s house, or a vacation?”

Okay, wait. One at a time. Stretch…“Dressed yourself”.... Do parents record a certain date. Like Wednesday, April 27^th? We agreed that she was probably three. Sometime that year? We also liked 3 as the answer to when she first drew a picture. We voted on four for her brushing her own teeth… “So, we’re going with four, right?” I asked, pen poised over the book. We exchanged glances, a silent agreement that these made up guesses would become fact in the baby annals. Nods. Done.

That’s when I decided to just fill the rest out with whatever seemed reasonable or appropriate. How will they know the difference? And it’s not a science exam; there’s more than one right answer. There’s only one “true” answer, but I don’t recall it, so que cera cera! Won’t they just be pleased that I took the time to fill it out? It’s very likely that Stretch DID get her first pair of shoes when she was ten months old, at Stride Rite. Stride Rite for sure. Ten months??? She wasn’t walking yet, but I don’t think I took her to church barefoot like a vagrant.

For her first haircut, which was when she was about four, I think….I was supposed to put in a before and after picture. Ooops! I could put in a newborn picture and one from this week. Technically, that’d be before and after.

The book has a place to fill in the address of her first pediatrician. Seriously! I mean, obviously I could look that up, but why? Will thirty-year-old Stretch ever need to know the address of her first pediatrician? Please tell me she’ll have more important things to fill her time with than doing a nostalgic drive by of her childhood doctor’s office. So, some things I’m skipping on principle!

I want to catch up on these books and then find some quiet corner of the attic for them to gather dust. The moments are happening now, and I don’t want to miss them because I’m caught up in recording them. I can just make up something realistic later and none of us will know the difference twenty years from now.

Just another helpful blog on short-cut parenting :)

Let's Just Stick With Amber Waves of Grain!!

I have a speech impediment. I didn’t find out until last spring, on a leisure trip to Houston, and even then, I wasn’t sure, as neither of the two people who diagnosed me are American, so, honestly, how do they know the correct pronunciation of wheat?!

Turns out, they were right. A couple of weeks ago, playing games with my adopted post grads, it came up again. But with far more ridicule directed at me, as you’d expect out of 22-year-olds.

I say something like wHHeat, apparently, and it’s Weeat. I don’t mean to lay the H on so thick, but I’m not entirely comfortable with pretending it’s not there either. There are other words that require me to turn a blind eye…bologna, colonel, Favre, champagne, and island all come quickly to mind, and all of them make me uncomfortable. I mean, I think there are letters that you can sneak in and they’ll fly under the radar, vowels for sure and even Hs, I guess, but Gs???

I feel like it’s asking a lot to overlook a G! Gnats? Why not nats? We weren’t using that for anything else were we? The G serves no purpose, and really what was stopping them from making it Xnats? If we have to skip the first letter anyway, they should’ve made those little buggers seem really terrifying with a silent X!

And if the Favre family wanted it pronounced Farve, why didn’t they just spell it that way?! It’s not enough that you want us to pretend he didn’t retire multiple times, we have to make concessions on the order of that V and R, too?!

Island? Seriously? Just make it iland or eyeland and call it a day. It’s like whenever our forefathers, or Webster, or whoever decided on these things were sitting around at the English word spelling conference, some dude just got bored and said, “Hey, you know what would be hilarious?” A dozen scholarly, responsible faces turned to him inquisitively. “We could add some extra letters that we don’t need, just to trip people up.”

“Whatever do you mean, young Benjamin?” some old white-haired dude probably said. (Most seventeenth century hell raisers were named Benjamin.)

“I don’t know,” he admits, because he was just bored and trying to entertain himself, so he has to start thinking on his feet, “like….how about we put Ks in front of a bunch of N words? Instead of Nee, let’s make it Knee.”

“That would be Kah-nee, though!” someone interjected, someone who had no authority whatsoever.

“Nah, the K would be silent. Just tacked on for kicks and giggles.”

“Ooohh, and we could put it on knuckle and knit and knickers!!”

“KNICKERS!!” they all cackled together, sharing some stupid, inside, third grade, joke.

And before you know it, there’s a well-spoken, intelligent, otherwise pretty together woman in the year 2012 who is being ridiculed for a speech impediment because she dared to pronounce an H that anyone can plainly see in the word WHEAT!!!

She’s getting Family Guy Wheat Thins segments from YouTube posted on her Facebook wall and brochures in the mail about speech therapy! How is this fair?

And saying wheat wrong should not count as a speech impediment! Not if ABC is going to keep passing off Barbara Walters as normal and Lou Holtz gets to announce for ESPN! They’re skipping over more than the silent letters and getting stuck on some of the others. So, you know what, I’ll say wHHeat however I want!

I'll Do Whatever It Takes. . .

Dear Verizon,

Is it too late for us? I know that I said we were through, and at the time, I meant it. Being with you was costing me too much. And there were all these newer, younger providers tempting me with better, more economical deals. Virgin Mobile promised me the sun, moon, stars and unlimited texting….how was I supposed to resist that?

It was a mistake. The month of October was just one disappointment after another with V.M. No coverage, dropped calls, weak signals, and even worse, my new phone/provider woke me up in the middle of the night twice to tell me it was powering down. I had long since powered down myself and resented the interruption.

I finally reached my breaking point with Virgin Mobile today when I realized that my phone wasn’t working. The worst part is my phone was trying to hide it from me, acting all normal like it was sending out my texts. It was only when I went to call my mother that I realized my new provider had abandoned me. Apparently they had the wrong credit card number on file and when the new month started, my service ended. No warning, no customer service call asking me to give them the correct number, nothing. They just cut me off! As the day goes on, I’m beginning to realize all of the things I missed when I was without service.

I’ve seen you out with other people. You seem happy. And clear as a bell. I’m sure you don’t miss me, not after the way I dumped you and immediately took up with another provider. But I think about you all the time. How I never appreciated you when we were together. How you were there for me in even the most remote locations. I just wish we could’ve found a way to work things out.

It’s not that I don’t think you’re worth as much as my mortgage each month, just to have the ability to browse the web, not even fully surf on it, but why? Couldn’t you ease up on the Super Bowl advertising and lower the rates? I mean, I have three children and they’re not cheap. Is it worth sacrificing their futures just so I can have unlimited texting with you? Lately, I’m thinking maybe. But why do you always want such a long commitment from me? Can’t we just agree to take it a day at a time?

V.M.’s not half the provider you are, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much I miss you and wish I could afford you. If you’re ever willing to take me back, I think I could survive with less texting, go without GPS altogether, probably. I just want to be with you. For $49 a month or less.

Wishing I was yours,

Dangerous Credit Lines

Yesterday, after church, we took the kids to the pumpkin farm, because some friends of ours invited our family to join theirs for the seasonal outing, and I’m currently accepting all invitations to everything. My dry erase calendar looks like there was a catastrophic marker explosion. From what I can tell, I still have a little time available on the 36^th of November and maybe a lunch opening in mid-December, but that’s about it for 2011.

Back to the story though. . .we went to the pumpkin farm (the name of which I’m withholding because they don’t need any additional advertising) and as we pulled up the overflowing parking lots it was kind of disappointing, signaling we weren’t the only North Carolinians who had that idea yesterday. Judging by the crowd we endured, I’d speculate that a tenth of the population of our state was at this farm.

As we were parking on top of another minivan, my husband tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Sorry,” I said, “I thought everyone would be at the state fair and we’d have the place to ourselves.” The kids were really excited though and already scanning the swarms of people for our friends, so I decided to just smile and to try to make it out of there at the end of the day with all three children and my sanity. (Or whatever the Heather equivalent of sanity is.)

Obstacle number one to keeping my cool was just paying to get in. (Once we got to the front of the line, which took a fortnight.) The prices at this particular pumpkin farm have $kyrocketed since we were last there three years ago. The superpass was $20 a person ($100 for my family) or there was a bare bones admission for $10, which my frugal husband opted for. “But that doesn’t come with pony rides,” Reckless pointed out. At which point we offered the twins the option to add that on if they would clean the toy room when we got home. “I wanna ride the ponies, but not clean up toys,” Stretch countered. “Yeah, well, I wanna beach house and a live in housekeeper, but life’s a compromise.”

As we passed through the gates I turned to the kids and said, “Remember today. When you’re older, I mean. Remember that we did take you places other than school and Target.” They nodded their consent and we went to get in the first of many, many lines. Some of the lamer options, like the hay jump, didn’t have lines. But if you wanted to do the giant mountain slide, you had to pack an overnight bag.

My son decided he wanted to do the “jumping pillow” and I told him that his pass didn’t include that, but he reminded me that he had his own money and could pay for it. He flashed me a wad of cash and I said, “Deal.” But, wait, why do you have more money than me? Lucky for us, he did though, because later, when the girls got to see those ponies up close, they caved and decided it would be worth it to clean up all the toys. (We got them to sign a legal binding document and had it notarized. With that many people, it wasn’t even hard to find a notary and a lawyer.)

We had exhausted our liquid assets getting into the farm, so we had to commandeer some of Brainy’s cash for his sisters. Looking back, I guess we essentially had our son pay our daughters to clean our house. American Dream REALIZED.

I actually thought I still had some cash back in the van, so I figured I’d repay him in the parking lot. Only I was four dollars short. My husband came up with one more Washington and we gave Brainy the five dollars. He was like, “What’s this? You owe me eight.” My husband said, “It’s a down payment. We’re good for the rest and we’ll get it to you soon.” Brainy scowled at us and started assessing interest that very second. He must have some high rates because he was already demanding eighteen before we even made it home. “Do you know how many things we buy for you?” I reminded him. “Wanna make it twenty?” he argued. I shut my mouth.

As we pulled into the driveway, my husband and I discussed if maybe we might be mismanaging our finances to end up indebted to a seven year old who’s gonna stay on us like a loan shark. Maybe. I have an idea for getting rich though. Buy a few acres of farmland, plant some pumpkin seeds, put a bunch of dried corn kernels in a big box for kids to jump in, purchase a few midget horses on their way to the glue factory, and throw around lots of hay bales and then charge people lot$ of money to stand in line all day. We’ll be printin’ money by this time next year. (Though Brainy already said I’ve only got to the end of the week to pay him back or he’s gonna hire the biggest kid in second grade to come and break my kneecaps.)

Nine Ten Never Sleep Again

I don’t like to be scared. I’m always looking for excitement, but I don’t want it at the cost of being afraid. Therefore, Halloween is not my favorite occasion. It’d be fine if it was all about chocolate, because I definitely believe in celebrating candy. But all the other creepy things that come along with it, like horror movies at the cinema and skeletons in peoples’ driveways make me uneasy.

When I was younger, I always thought that I’d grow out of my sensitivity to being afraid, like I’d learn to appreciate a good haunted house or terrifying movie, but I didn’t. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the theater with my friend and one of the previews was for some frightening, never-be-able-to-sleep-without-nightlight-again movie coming out this month and I turned to her and we, in unison, said, “I don’t like scary movies.”

It was reassuring to find that I’m not the only adult who shies away from intentionally terrifying myself. And that initial admission led to us disclosing that not only do we not like those things now, but that we’re still a little scarred by the experiences we had with them when we were younger. (That’s scarred not scared, though both are true in that sentence.)

For instance, I still freak out a little when I see static on a television screen, even if it's just because we don't get that channel and not because there's a demon who's reaching out and pulling me inside the TV. (I think they'd have a harder time doing that now that we have flat screens.) But, thank you Poltergeist!

And that movie came out in 1982! I was only five, so I’m sure my parents didn’t let me watch it until it made it's way to VHS, but still, whatever age I was, I couldn’t handle the thought of spirits haunting my TV. And over 25 years later, I’m still concerned that they’re there.

And a couple of decades after I was first introduced to Freddy Krueger, I can still remember the words to that scary little nursery rhyme about him: One, two, Freddy's after you. . .okay, I'm already freaking out, let's move on.

My friend and I talked about how upsetting all those haunted houses were that we went to as adolescents. Ironically, my church youth group organized a trip to one every year. It was usually something designed to freak you out about hell, show you the realities of the tormenting there and really bring it to life for you. Mission accomplished. Being forced to make my way through an entire darkened house, filled with horrifying images and blood-curdling screams, did feel like hell.

Once I even got lost and separated from my friends inside the haunted hell house. I was probably about fourteen, and I’m pretty sure that is still the most afraid I’ve ever been in my life. I was crying and trying to get some zombie “worker” person to break character and help me find my way, but that’s the thing about hell, no one’s nice enough to even think about assisting you.

And corn mazes! I hate those things! First of all, I have no sense of direction, so my only chance of ever coming out is to go in with people who can figure it out, or a mouse, or an Indian guide. And secondly, I watched Children of the Corn once and even cornfields that aren’t cut into mazes scare me. Honestly, I don’t even do well with corn on the cob when it’s on the menu.

But no one cares. People are hanging skeletons from nooses in their maple trees and turning their front yards into cemeteries, like my nightmares are my problem.

Last week, I went to Michael’s to pick up some craft supplies the twins needed for a homework project and there was a skeleton bride and groom that were propped up by the poster boards. I don’t know why the fact that these skeletons had on wedding attire made them a hundred times scarier, but it did. Skeletons = scary, Weddings = scary, so Skeletons+Weddings = I’ll never set foot in Michael’s again!

Even some of my regular television shows will have some “Halloween Episode” where they try to ratchet up the drama with some spooky stuff. Why? Can’t we just decorate with pumpkins and gourds and pay homage to Milton Hershey, Willy Wonka, and John Nestle by rotting our teeth out of our heads? (Okay, John is only a guess. And, actually, why do all these Halloween skeletons have all of their teeth? Did they die before trick-or-treating really took off? Or did they just keep up with their regular dental check-ups? That makes them seem pretty responsible, which doesn't make sense because somehow they ended up having their flesh torn clean from their bones and being used as lawn decor, which doesn't seem responsible at all!)

Regardless, I've been enjoying October, but the longer it goes on, the more tense I get, so if November could hurry up and save me from these neighborhood mausoleums and spider web covered coffins, I'd appreciate it!