Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

If you're planning on visiting the state of Maine anytime soon, bring your foul weather gear, a rowboat, and some towels.  It has been raining here -- sometimes torrentially -- for more than 48 hours.  In fact, it's much like that scene in Forrest Gump where he's fighting in Vietnam and remarking on all the different types, strengths, and directions of rain he encounters during his combat tour.  Minus the rice paddies and the war paraphernalia. 

Yes, the hallmark of the past weekend was plain old wetness. I'm not even sure that "wetness" was a noun before this weekend, but it certainly is one now. The satellite imagery of our state just shows a large, unmoving green blob, with said blob representing gushing rain.  And according to the sadistic weatherman I listened to during my drive to work, the earliest we're going to see the sun in these here parts is Wednesday.  Reminder: today is Monday.

There's nothing better than having every outdoor activity condemned by Mother Nature when you have two young children and one antsy husband. 

Check that.  Everything is better than the above scenario.

Given my limited range of activity over the weekend, I took the time to jot down some of the conversations (both internal and external) we had during our forced quarantine.  Enjoy.

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ME:  Won't this be so nice?  We can spend some quality time indoors playing games, baking, being creative, and just getting back to family basics.  Plus, there are all those chores I've been trying to find time to get done, and this monsoon provides the perfect opportunity to focus on those.  This is just great.  Tupperware drawer?  Here.  I.  Come!

MYSELF: You are highly over-estimating your stamina, motivation, and imagination and dangerously under-estimating the needs of your offspring, the energy of your spouse, and the number of minutes you are about to spend inside your small house.  Good luck.  Idiot.

**********

ME: Who's up for chutes & ladders?!?

4-year-old daughter: I want a treat! 

ME:  It's 9 in the morning, you wouldn't eat breakfast, and we're concentrating on bonding right now.  Would you rather do a puzzle?

Daughter: I would rather eat a treat!  T-R-E-A-T!

ME: Here's a treat: your mother's undivided attention.  Now, shall we break out a new pack of finger paints?

Daughter: That's insulting.  I am not following you down that dead-end street.  My focus is undivided, my object is clear.  Give me a treat or I'll give you my fury.

ME: Hey, look!  Your princesses are talking!  They're telling me they want to play with us too!

Daughter: Not going to work, mother.  I will not be distrac -- hey!  There's the lollipop I didn't finish in February!  Right here where I left it in the dollhouse!

ME:  I said we're BONDING!  Now put down the frigging lollipop and be cute!

**********

ME: What would YOU like to do during your special mommy-and-me time?

8-month-old son: I would like you to watch me stick things in my mouth.  Like that knife.  Or that hammer.  Or the multiple plastic rings my sister has in her room.  Which would be more fun for you?

ME: How about we skip the choking hazards and concentrate on more wholesome diversions.  Wanna sit up and clap?

Son: I'm going to take that offer and add it to my diaper.  Try this on for size.  Put me on your bed.  You know, the elevated one with no prison bars.  Leave me there unattended.  Let's just see what happens.  I promise not to roll over....more than thrice.

ME: I'd prefer your first sky-diving expedition to include a parachute, professionals, and the urn containing my ashes.  Do you want to bang some plastic cups together?

Son:  What's....that....over...there?  Let....me.... creep....over....and....SUCCESS!  Papi's flip-flop!

ME:  Did you just....??  Was that just.....?  Did you just show the first signs of someone who is going to crawl sooner rather than later?  NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

**********

ME:  Time for grocery shopping!  We'll pretend we're Dora and explore for dry spots as we sprint from the car to the store.  Fun fun fun!!!

Daughter:  Can I bring my singing globe and my Barbie computer?

ME:  Sure!  Great car entertainment for the drive over!

Daughter: No.  I want to bring them in the store WITH me. 

ME:  Oh.  Okay....

Son:  And I'd prefer not to get soaked during this sure-fire disaster of an outing.  Could you rig some sort of contraption over my car seat using multiple blankets, an over-sized rain coat, and perhaps some plastic baggies?

ME:  That sounds cumbersome.  Couldn't you just --

Son:  I will not negotiate this point.  You're the one who could have sprung for an actual, waterproof cover for my car seat.  You chose not to.  This was your destiny.  Not mine.

ME:  Point taken.  I should have no problem juggling you, your 50-pound car seat covered in new layers of material, your 30-pound sister who refuses to walk, her bulky toys, and the pile of reusable bags.  I'm sure there will be open parking spots near the store entrance.  It really shouldn't be that far of a walk.  This will all go really well.

MYSELF:  I.d.i.o.t.

**********

ME:  Honey?  I'm kind of out of games and local errands.  Do you want to do a story-time with me?  Or take Daughter to see a movie?  Or plug that hair-dryer into the outdoor outlet, position me under the drainage spout, and play catch?

HUSBAND: What?  I can't hear you!

ME:  That's because you're working outside in the middle of Noah's Revenge and I'm shouting at you from the porch.  I know the chicken coop needs to be finished, but couldn't you just --

HUSBAND:  Speak UP!  Can't you see the geysers shooting sideways out of my ears?  Also, could you wipe off my glasses?  They're so foggy!  I haven't seen anything out of them in about 3 hours.

ME:  HOW ABOUT AFTER LUNCH YOU TAKE DAUGHTER TO THE LIBRARY?

HUSBAND:  Can't!  Have azaleas to plant! 

**********

ME:  Honey?  Remember that little stream or creek or sewage slurpie that runs alongside our house?  It's kind of almost overflowing.  Should we be concerned or buying sand bags?

....

ME:  Honey?  That little stream or creek or sewage slurpie is now kind of a raging river.  Should we call the Maine tourism board or its equivalent and list our yard as an attraction?  I think that's what white water river rafters look at and think "vacation!"

....

ME:  Honey?  That little stream or creek or sewage slurpie is now kind of a boiling witch's cauldron.  And...hey!  Call the cops!  Someone is white water river rafting down our yard! 

HUSBAND:  Hey, great!  I'll call the cops as soon as I make a kayak out of that birch bark I've been saving and the left over wood chips!  I've always wanted to see how it feels to have raging floodwaters underneath me.  This is my Man versus Wild moment!  I can finally understand what Bear Grylls felt like all those times he was wearing bear skin and eating poisonous mushrooms.  This is the best weekend ever!!!!!!!

ME:  I strongly disagree. 

Where Have All The Weekends Gone?

Even back when I was working at a law firm, I looked forward to the weekends.  I say "even" because on most of those weekends, I was going to be doing at least a few hours of work.  And often, that work would have to be done in the office.

Sometimes, a Saturday or Sunday really wasn't all that different from a Tuesday or Wednesday in terms of the hours I was billing. 

Despite that depressing statistic, there was still something qualitatively different about a weekend.  Even being in the office felt different.  The halls were quieter, the phone didn't ring, the volume on Pandora was turned up louder, and my attire was non-business.  That's right.  On Saturdays, I wore pajamas or a tu-tued leotard to the office.  So that was awesome.

Then when I left the office, I could go meet my husband for dinner or a movie or the circus I'd been practicing for.  I could return to our small apartment that took 5 minutes and one swiffer cloth to clean.  I could do a single load of laundry, pick up pressed shirts at the dry-cleaners, and spend 20 minutes grocery shopping at the glorified convenience store half a block from our building.

We could sleep in a bit on weekend mornings, have a muffin and a coffee in Central Park, and go for a run whenever the mood struck.

As much of a bear New York City was to live in, there were those little things that, in retrospect, I can now appreciate.  Because now?   Oh...Now, you slippery little devil.  Now, you've taught me about the innocence of my lost youth.  Those halcyon days when the only person I had to plan for was myself.  That Gilded Age when waking up at 6AM was something to be bragged about or reported to a medical professional.

The weekends of today, with two children in the mix, are a much different story.  All the mothers reading this post are nodding their heads and wiping the Cheerios off their yoga pants (which have never been used for actual yoga).  Can I get an Amen, sister?

For those of you who don't automatically understand the Before-and-After I'm putting in front of you, allow me to dazzle you with a simile.  (I'm pretty sure it's a simile because I'm going to use the word "like" in the next sentence, which I think disqualifies it as a metaphor.  If you're trying to stifle a correction in your throat or at your fingertips, chill.  It doesn't really matter.)  A weekend of today is like being shot out of a sling-shot.  When the first child cries out, in the wee hours of a soft Saturday morning, you're the rubber ball being launched into the next 14 hours of your day, landing only when the last child's head hits the pillow.

I can honestly say that I'm more exhausted when I arrive at work on a Monday morning than I was when I left it Friday afternoon.  The preceding 60 or so hours are nothing but a blur of meals and chores and inane conversations and bottles and activities and the dreaded grocery shopping extravaganza.  I wish I was talented enough to write a symphony displaying the cacophony of sounds that makes up any given weekend.  I'm not even close, but I know it would include the sound plates make when they're being unloaded from the dishwasher, the clack of a washing machine door, the whining of one child, the fussing of another, the car door opening and closing, the refrigerator door opening and closing, shoes falling off feet, sand spilling, the creak of a swing, the wave of a rattle, a crayon on paper, the whir of a blender, the ping of an oven, the water spray of a shower, and the unfolding of a diaper. 

Oh, and "Mami?  Mami?  Mami?" being repeated ad infinitum in the background.  My daughter begins everything that comes out of her mouth with a "Mami?" or a Mami!" or a "Mami."  By the end of the day, I literally tell her she is no longer allowed to say That Word.

The fact that she has a running play-by-play of the day makes any sort of self-censorship quite a challenge.  I get reports on where the ants are, how many times she's dribbled a ball, when she needs to go to the bathroom, who was funny at school two weeks ago, and why she needs a snack RIGHT NOW.  I am immediately apprised of when a crow lands on the lawn, what toy her brother is playing with, how many bites she's eaten of an apple, who was funny at school yesterday, and where she plans on having a play-date tomorrow.  Yesterday she had so many things to tell me at once that this sentence came out of her mouth:

"Yesterday Hadley wouldn't swing with me and tomorrow I am going to swimming lessons can Molly come play I don't want strawberries because Mateo is rolling over."

There's no good response to that kind of update.  Our conversations are entirely one-sided, with her doing all the talking and me doing all the wondering when I stopped understanding either the English or Spanish language. 

It's these kind of mental gymnastics and the physical feats of keeping up with every move and request and near-catastrophe two small people can make and voice and cause that have me gasping for air by the time Sunday night rolls around.

And this past weekend I did the unspeakable.  I went out both Friday and Saturday night after the kids were ready for bed.  I stayed up until 11PM both nights like some kind of God damned teenager. 

Don't get me wrong.  I know this is what I signed up for, and this is the life of mothers everywhere.  I also know that I love my children dearly, and I wouldn't go back in time for all the ego in Kobe.

But sometime, maybe just for 5 minutes on a Saturday, I would like to sit down with an empty brain in a quiet room and close my eyes.

I think the surrounding I just described is a psych ward. 

Does anyone know if they have hourly rates?

HoHells.com

My open letter to Dara Khosrowshahi, President and Chief Executive Officer, Expedia, Inc., and President, Expedia Worldwide

Dear Mr. Khosrowshahi,

First, I want to congratulate the Expedia Board of Directors and the shareholders they are beholden to.  It is an impressive gambit to appoint, as president of what is billed as the "largest travel company in the world," a man with a name such as yours.  At first blush, your name indicates that you are a female prodigy in the world of tennis and/or ice dancing.  Instead, you are a certifiable Big Shot.  Perhaps they picked you and your moniker because no one can easily yell, "Damn you, Khosrowshahi!", even in a fit of anger.

I am sorry to inform you and yours that this gal is not so easily deterred.  I married a guy named "Aristides."  I know how to get around a name.  I am going to save myself for duping by the likes of JP Morgan and the $2 billion they want to lose on my behalf.

Ergo, I now pronounce you DarK.

DarK, you and I have a problem. 

I'll go first. 

This weekend I took a trip with my family.  I booked each of our three hotels through Hotels.com.  I don't think I need to remind you that Hotels.com is one of the websites your little conglomerate operates.  On night three of my family's never-ending-story road trip, we pulled into the Marriott in Stamford, CT.  Using your website's booking engine, I had booked two stately rooms at that fine establishment.  Lo and behold, upon check-in I was told by Gaston that a reservation for only one room was in their system.  (By the way, Gaston is from Ecuador but was named after the French blow-hard from Beauty & the Beast - go figure.)   Long story short, I ended up paying directly for a second room at the check-in counter.  Gaston and then the gal I checked out with (forget her name, but she wears too much foundation and tied her perky Marriott scarf impressively tight around her neck, if you need to talk to her) assured me that I could resolve any over-payment issues with dear old Hotels.com.

Now it's your turn.

Here  is your problem:  I read the confirmation notice Hotels.com emailed me forwards and backwards, up and down, back to front, and side to side.  And guess what that confirmation do-hickey confirmed?  It confirmed that I reserved two rooms, and I paid Hotels.com for both of them. 

Where does that put us, DarK?  Again, I'll go first.  That puts me in the unenviable position of having paid for three hotel rooms, but only having gotten two.  That puts YOU in the sneaky position of having billed me for two rooms, but only telling the Stamford Marriott to give me one.  In case you're reading this without your abacus within arm's reach, that means you owe me $119.

"Just call customer service," you say?  Ahhhh, DarK.  DarK, Diddy DarK Dark DARK!  I did, my friend, I did!  This is the part of the letter where you should sit down, grab a Perrier, and have your assistant's assistant whip out a fresh stack of pink slips.

I spent more than one hour on the phone with two of your customer "service" agents.  After I dialed your 800 number, I was patched through to a scarf farm in rural India.  I only had to go through about 13 menu prompts to finally reach a talking human.  The connection was faint, but Sunny greeted me cheerfully (I assume that's how he got his nickname, DarK) and assured me I didn't have the wrong number.  He listened to my situation, told me two or three times to speak up because he couldn't hear me over the clacking of the looms, and then put me on hold while he contacted the Stamford Marriott.  Had to confirm that I actually paid for the room you all failed to book for me, he says.

Well guess what, DarK?  After being on hold and listening to violins die for 10 minutes, THE LINE CUT OUT.  That's right, Donnie DarK-o.  DEAD.  KAPUT.  TONY SOPRANOED.  D-E-A-D.

I summoned my inner Dr. Oz, thought healthy thoughts, and went through the whole rigmarole again.  This time Cheery (seriously, DarK, give these people better fake names) went through the whole she-bang again.  THIS time, though, I was on hold for 20 MINUTES.  Cheery would come back on the line every five minutes or so to report that the front desk staff either wasn't answering or was trying to track down the "appropriate person" to confirm my payment at the hotel.  THEN Cheery gets on the line to tell me that "appropriate person" was out to lunch, and COULD I PLEASE CALL BACK IN AN HOUR WHEN HE/SHE "SHOULD BE" BACK AT THEIR DESK.

How are you feeling at this point, DarK?  Livid?  Ashamed?  Soul-crushed?  Good. 

Now how do you feel after I tell  you that Cheery ended our 45-minute call with this query: "Anything else I can help you with today?"  If flabbergasted isn't your answer, I'm calling Brown to see if you actually did graduate from there.  Because, you see, Cheery failed to help me with anything at all, so even Einstein couldn't figure out a way for her to help me with "anything else."

An hour after I threw the phone against the wall, I decided to take a new approach and "live chat" with one of your minions.  Good old Michael looked through my "file" and told me that Cheery was going to take care of everything and get back to me.  This sounded fishy, since Cheery hadn't mentioned anything about that.  So I followed up with two questions: when would she be getting in touch, and how?  Michael's response?

"IF YOU DON'T HEAR BACK FROM HER, GIVE US A CALL."

Do you see the problems with that response, DarK?  Namely that it's not a response at all?  Or that to the extent it is a response, it's the kind of response a defense lawyer would consider a case-winner were I to be prosecuted for any aggressive act I choose to take against Michael?  My point here is that Michael should be carrying something other than mace in his messenger bag tote.

My other point is that you have a lot of work on your hands.  Job one is to change your name plate to DarK.  Job two is to figure out how to reiumburse your customers without requiring them to take a sick day and rob a Rite Aid to score some Xanax.  Job three is to improve your phone connections to India.  I don't want anyone else to have to scream "I overpaid for that one night of service!"  It's awkward and people start getting suspicious.

Do this for me, DarK.  For crying out loud, I gave up good years of my life providing legal services to your company.  This is no way to repay me.

I want my $119.  I want 119 complimentary nights at the Marriott of my choice.  And I want you to write your name on the white board in your most uncomfortable conference room 119 times.  Your FULL name, DarK.

Then, we'll call it even.

Yours truly,

Abby

Concrete Sailing

This past weekend was a long weekend for me.  "Long" in the sense that I had Friday off from work, and "long" in the sense that I spent most of it in a car with my husband, two children, and mother-in-law.  So that second "long" is basically short for "you're a fool and you deserve those varicose veins."

You see, my supremely adorable nephew was being baptized in a Philly suburb on Saturday.  My husband was the godfather.  My children wanted to see if they could discover new dimensions of fidgeting.  My mother-in-law was in town for a visit.  And I wanted to see if super soakers shoot holy water just as well as they shoot regular tap water.  (They do.)

The motivations for the trip, therefore, were all pure.  And the time spent with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew were dynamite.  I wouldn't pass that up for anything, and I don't regret going to see them at all.

We just should have picked a different way to transport ourselves to those moments.  Because I think I can safely say that an 8-hour road trip with the crew we had on board was not the best idea.  I don't know why it took doing that road trip to understand that.  The silver lining is that now, when I go on tour with my band Mothering Mullets, I know I have to look beyond my kitchen counter for roadies.

In the context of a bad decision to drive farther than next door with an under-five and over-70 set, there was one good decision: my husband suggested we rent a mini-van for the trip.  I can officially report that five people have never been so gleeful to step inside a such a vehicle.  It was brand, spanking new, and the doors opened automatically, and it had lots of secret compartments, AND IT HAD SATELLITE RADIO AND A DVD PLAYER.  My husband and I were choking back the tears as we loaded our 57 suitcases into the spacious trunk.  We just kept looking at each other with looks we both understood to mean, "wow, look at us -- we've really made it."  It was special.

The first leg of the trip was easy -- after leaving work early on Thursday, we just had to make it to Boston where we were meeting up with my mother-in-law.  We were happy campers as we sailed out of the rental car lot.  My daughter was playing with the toys I'd hidden for the trip, my son was napping, and my husband was gleefully singing along to the 80s station he found on the satellite radio.  We survived a bit of traffic in Boston and bunked down for the night at a Doubletree Suites.  We were all still high enough on life that it seemed "cozy" to cuddle up in a bedroom/living room combo that is the size of most master bathrooms. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, I was up at 3:30 on Friday morning.  Everyone was snoring (including my 7-month-old) and my daughter was lying on me.  I mean that literally.  She was lying ON. ME.  But again, Mrs. Brightside here just figured, well, this is great!  I'll get in a work out and even have the gym to myself.  So I did.  I went to the gym at 4:30 that morning.

Thus began my slow but steady descent into a series of poor decisions caused by a complete lack of restorative sleep.  Actually, just sleep, period.

POOR DECISION #1: Allow husband to pack the car and forget to identify for him the bag containing the snacks.

Traveling with a four-year-old requires an endless supplies of diversions.  Perhaps the most important one is food.  It keeps their mouths busy with all the chewing and the swallowing, and it offers the promise of a food coma that knocks them out for at least a couple hours of the trip.

That food and drink should be available at a moment's notice.  In fact, it's best if it can be supplied at warp speed, something akin to however it would feel to be on the receiving end of a dog digging up a mound of earth.  In this scenario, you (the parent) are the dog, the food is the dirt, and your kid is whatever is receiving the spray.

Well, of course the non-descript black bag that I had meticulously packed with pre-packaged organic goods was at the bottom of the suitcase volcano slowing erupting out of our trunk.  By the time we left Boston and hit Newton, my daughter asked for her first snack.  The snack bag was nowhere to be reached.  We spent the next 4 hours trying to convince her that water was as delicious as a Grover granola bar.

POOR DECISION #2:  Put mother-in-law in the back seat.

In some ways, this seating arrangement made good sense and paid dividends.  She was able to give a running report on what our backwards-facing son was up to at any moment of the trip.  She was able to feed him during traffic jams.  She had a good view of the DVDs.

But the downsides were dramatic.  To simply exit the car, she had to navigate an obstacle course of bags, toys, and debris that I think looked something like the first challenge producers prepare for contenders on Survivor.  A pretty basic goal of any car trip should be "let's not maim the mother-in-law with a Barbie limb lying between the captain seats."  We flirted with that catastrophe for three full days.

The other downside was the communication.  Those status updates about my son came fast and furious, as did the instructions about when to have the EZPass ready and when to adjust the volume and/or temperature.  But since she was in the back, and since there was a lot of "ambient noise," she had to SCREAM every report, instruction, or request.  Accordingly, when we got word that "THE BABY IS ASLEEP!!!" we soon thereafter learned that "AH!  THE BABY WOKE UP!  HE'S AWAKE!  BE ADVISED!  HE. IS. AWAKE!!!"

POOR DECISION #3: Take a road-trip that has anything to do with New York City.

You know you're a bad-ass city when the STATES in your vicinity suffer just from being near you.  I bet when New York City was in high school, he was totally the guy stuffing Providence into lockers and getting Newark and Stamford suspended just because they were friends with him.  New York City was the reason Greenwich had to do a PG year before Yale. 

After barreling through the wide open spaces of western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut, you arrive in New Haven.  You see the signs for Yale, and you start to feel dumb and not worthy.  Then you see the signs for New York City, and you immediately start to feel stalled.  That's because you are. You are sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, even though it's noon on a Friday and even though you're 80 miles outside of New York City.  You creep forward at about 12 mph for the next 5 hours, giving the finger to the cars full of people trying to spell SoHo and fighting over whether they're going to go to the M&M Store in Times Square before or after they take the free ferry ride to Staten Island. 

Your reward is the George Washington bridge.  Scratch that.  The GW bridge is an architectural dunce cap, given to road warriors who stupidly opt against taking the Tappan Zee bridge.  No one in the history of time or Detroit has ever crossed the GW bridge in a car and in a good mood.  Maybe it's all the signs warning you of HEAVY DELAYS as a mini Cooper tries to piggy-back your car.  Maybe it's the lady rolling her laundry down the streets of the Bronx who haughtily informs you she's washed both her darks and her whites in the time it took you to move one block south.  Maybe it's the $12 toll you pay for the privilege of slowly moving through hell.  I don't know.

I just know that when my husband tried to lighten the mood by screaming "we're concrete sailing!  WEEEEEE!" like that pig in the Geico commercials, I almost had to beat him to death with a coloring book.

POOR DECISION #4: Take Comfort Suites at its word.

Our second hotel for the trip was a Comfort Suites in Exton, PA.  My thinking here was such a room would be (a) a suite (ie. a living room and a bedroom) that could accommodate 5 people, one of whom would be sleeping in a pack 'n play; and (b) comfortable.  Apparently the guy who comes up with the names over at Comfort Suites is a real wise guy.

The room we walked into, after driving for so many hours my son sprouted two new teeth, was the size of my cubicle.  I could have done one somersault in it.  Maybe one round-off.  Certainly not a full cartwheel.

My husband called downstairs and tried to see if he could resolve the mix-up.  Our hero at the front desk said he'd call right back.  15 minutes later, I was bleeding from my brain.

I went downstairs to see if a face-to-face could speed up the science project.  This is the conversation I had:

ME:  Ummmm....hi?  My husband called 20 minutes ago to see if we could get the suite we made a reservation for.  I see you're heavily consulting a clipboard with a thin sheet of paper. Might I suggest firing up that computer in front of you?

DESK GUY:  ttttttttttttt

ME:  What we need, here, is a suite.  Like the one in your name?  Well, not YOUR name, Ramesh.  But the name of the hotel? 

DESK GUY:  I just found a room with a jacuzzi!  You want that?

ME:  Thanks so much for asking, Ramesh, but no.  What I really need here is a suite.  Like with a living room containing a plush pull-out couch, a bathroom, and a bedroom. Maybe a swanky kitchenette with a miniature coffee maker and some of that atomized coffee "creamer."  Is the picture I'm painting here of any help whatsoever?  Can you stop staring at the lights and focus?

DESK GUY:  Oh.  But we don't have any rooms like that.

ME:  You don't have any suites?  Why is this place called Comfort Suites?  Why did I book a room called a "suite" when I made this hotel reservation?   Bonus points if you can answer why God hates me?

DESK GUY:  When we say "suites" here, it means that chair that pushes into your desk.  Without the chair, it'd just be your standard room, but with the chair, it's a suite.  Do you I look taller when I stand up to talk to you?

The moral of the story is when you're traveling through Exton, PA and you've rented a minivan, sleep in the minivan. 

POOR DECISION #5: Plan anything for the week after the road trip.

By the time we left for our third hotel in three nights, and certainly by yesterday morning when we embarked on the final leg of our drive home, my husband and I were plum out of the crazy enthusiasm we'd had in supply when we began our journey.

By the time we limped into our driveway yesterday afternoon, we felt like we'd just walked through a car wash that was on the setting for getting road salt off the underside of your car after a particularly rough winter.

I spent the next eight hours unpacking, doing dishes, doing laundry, bathing over-tired children, ridding our house of the distinct smell of baby chicks, and making a birthday cake for my daughter to take to school today.

This morning my daughter woke up complaining of an earache.

I just received a call from my son's daycare.  They called to report he's cranky and running a temperature.

Needless to say, I think swimming lessons this afternoon will resemble an Olympic qualifying meet, and when I host book club on Wednesday night, those ladies are going to leave my house embarrassed that they'd spent their whole lives thinking Martha Stewart was a slightly rotund blonde living in Connecticut.

Off to The Races

This was a big weekend for stupid hats and limes.  Saturday was both Cinco de Mayo and the running of the Kentucky Derby.  For some reason, people (or at least Twitter) thought that coincidence was pretty epic.  I just thought Cinco de Mayo should back off and let those horses get their glory.

To me, Cinco de Mayo is the slightly delayed twin sister of St. Patrick's Day.  These are two "holidays" that pretend to be steeped in some kind of cultural, traditional lore but really signify nothing more than ready-made excuses for all the drinking that gets done.  The key demographic on both days are college students and overweight, middle-aged men.  Both of those sets would be, and are, drinking heavily on Saturdays throughout the calendar year anyway.  Cinco de Drinko and St. Find-A-Pub Day simply mean they don't have to come up with their own theme for the foreplay to vomit and hangovers.  It's gotten to the point that, if I see a sombrero or anything green, I immediately conclude that the object sporting that attire must be drunk and supremely idiotic.  Which is unfair to mariachis and frogs, but it's just the kind of stereotyping I have to assign to keep some order in my world.

The Kentucky Derby, on the other hand, is an annual highlight in my sporting world.  I close my eyes whenever they pan the crowd, as rich blonds in large hats warbling "My Old Kentucky Home" kind of makes me want to go out drinking with sombrero-wearing college students.  But those gals aside, I love just about everything about the event.  Appropriately enough, the thing that really gets me every time are those horses.  How hard they work, how earnest they seem, and how they don't do a stupid dance or point to the heavens after they accomplish insane feats of athleticism.  My kind of athletes.

It was fitting that the kick-off to the Triple Crown was this weekend, because I feel as though I have been kicked off to a race of my own.  In my case, though, that race is going to last about two weeks.  And I'm nowhere near the athlete those horses are.  In fact, my thoroughbred name should be Please Just Let Me Lie Down or This Won't End Well.

I have the same feeling about the next two weeks as I used to have about any given day at my old law firm: like I spend the day trying to climb up a mountain of quicksand.  No matter what I do, I am falling behind.  No matter what I get done, the pile of to-do's keeps getting bigger.

This is a month of birthdays and birthday parties, including one of each for my daughter.  Home renovations.  A swing-set getting set up.  Teacher Appreciation parties.  A no-school day.  A four-day road-trip.  A visit from my mother-in-law.  Doctor's appointments.  Hosting book club.   Then all the normal stuff of school and daycare and work and housework and dinners and updating my list on why Bethenny Frankel is annoying.  Et cetera.  For Pete's sake, there are two (2!!) mornings this week where I need to have myself and both children out of the house by 7:30am.  As we all know, that won't go well.  The producers of the Dr. Phil Show have already called to book me for a segment they're calling "Mothers to Avoid (Especially If You're Their Child)."

As I type these things, I realize how banal this must sound.  People are doing much bigger and busier things.  I have a girlfriend who runs her own business, has a 15-month-old, and managed to win a baby shower we were at yesterday with her perfect gifts.  Amazing.  Francois Hollande has eight days to learn how to be President of France.  Impressive.  The Knicks have two more games to try to figure out how to covertly poison LeBron James' mouth guard.  Daunting.  (And sketchy.)

I get that people are facing into much bigger things than I am.  So please trust me when I write that I am not going for melodrama or sympathy here.  It just is what it is, and that "it" is all relative.  In my world, things seem really busy right now, and I don't like feeling as though I'm just never going to be able to get in front of my calendar.  I'd love to know how the aforementioned girlfriend manages it all, and I'd take any advice Monsieur Hollande wants to give me over a crepe nutella.  (I think I'll leave the Knicks and their arsenic-lacing to themselves.)  Because right now, my to-do list is dictating its own to-do list, and I just don't think that's helpful to anyone.  If there's anything I don't have time for right now, it's cross-referencing.

In fact, my current mentality is nothing more than a series of "if there's anything I don't have time for, it's X."  When "X" inevitably strikes, my response is nuclear.  Here are some "X's" that happened just this morning:

• I slept until 6:30.  That means I was already about 2 hours behind schedule.  My reaction was to cancel Christmas.
• My daughter refused to get dressed.  That means we left the house around the time her peers were "criss-cross, apple-saucing" their legs for circle time.  My reaction was to drop my daughter off at school naked.
• I got to work late.  That means there were no parking spaces left in the lot.  My reaction was to leave my car idling on the highway with a note that said "Back Soon."  (I put a smiley face to ensure no one will steal the car.  Plus, I double-checked and I do still live in Maine.  So that car's safety is guaranteed.)

Every little thing just seems conspiring against me this morning.  My computer wouldn't boot up properly and I kept having to restart it so that Microsoft Outlook would stop demanding my "authentication."  I have a low-grade cold that gives me a raspy voice, which scares anyone who has to talk to me.  Last night I took NyQuil and I think I'm still medically impaired -- I can't really get a hold of a single word or thought.  Which means this must be an awesome post.  And when I turned to the radio for a little musical inspiration, the first two stations I checked were BOTH playing Rihanna's "We Found Love."  If that girl can't take the time to write actual song lyrics, how am I supposed to get motivated to write 18 thank-you notes on behalf of my daughter?  How, I ask you?!?

Seriously, guys, I am so whacked out on NyQuil, I can't even muster the courage to wrap this up nicely.  Good luck, and Godspeed. 

Also, could someone please remind me of that Very Important Thing my husband told me I absolutely must do?  My to-do list's to-do list doesn't have it noted. 

Thanks.  You're the best.

So You Think You Can Tweet

The other day I did something I'd been dreading for a long time.  It was kind of just sitting out there, staring at me.  I'd try to ignore it, I'd try to avoid it, I'd try to pretend it wasn't there.  Because it was just too scary.  Too dramatic.  Too traumatic.

But I couldn't run any longer.  It was going to track me down, snuff me out, bring me to justice.  That's right -- in this metaphorical scenario, the "IT" was George W. Bush and I was Osama bin Laden.  Minus the facial hair.  Oddly enough, I have been into turbans lately, so on that score I was even dressing the part.

Anyway, my time hiding out in a Bora Bora of made-up errands and endless procrastination came to an end.  It was time to rip the Band-Aid off and just do the thing that had been scaring me for weeks.

So I did it.  I helped my mother get an account on Twitter.

My mother is a woman of extremes.  She is extremely happy and optimistic, and extremely opposed to swearing.  What a bitch, right?  She loves everything and hates nothing (EXCEPT maybe Osama bin Laden, but she'd even say he probably just didn't get enough attention as a boy with all those siblings and his father's numerous wives running around.  "That's a crock of shit," I like to tell her.).  She is really good with kids and she is ... well, not really good with technology.

Back when email was all the rage, I was a senior in college.  (That is a horrifying sentence to write.)  I remember when my mother set up an email account from our home computer, and she sent off a little missive to me at school.  As soon as she hit "send," she CALLED ME to see if I had received the email.  Then we had a long conversation about how email is supposed to allow you to communicate information and pretend interaction without actually having to communicate or interact.  Then I called her an "asshole" and hung up.  (If you haven't caught on yet, I like to swear at her just to remind her of all the fun she could be having.)

Over the years, she's accumulated a laptop, a Facebook account, and an iPhone.  Watching her receive and use these things is sometimes cute and fun, like watching a puppy get a fresh tennis ball.  It's all excitement and unbridled enthusiasm.  Less drooling, though.  And no one throws her iPhone at her.  Okay, it's nothing at all like a dog with a tennis ball.  The picture I'm trying to paint here is that my mother gets excited and enthusiastic about what the kids are doing these days ... whenever those days are. 

The problem is, the excitement and the enthusiasm don't usually translate to a full-blown embrace of the power and the responsibility she has at her fingertips.  Her laptop's primary function has been to create and order Chrismas cards.  It's protesting its neglect with a deteriorating connection speed.  A tea kettle works faster than that computer.  She's always amazed when my sisters and I reference a picture, or a status update, or a video of a baby's birth and ensuing 6 months of life, on Facebook.  She gives us this hang-dog look, like we're in cahoots to keep her in the dark on all the details of that girl we kind of knew in 3rd grade because we went roller-skating with her on early release days.  The four of us just look at her and shout "MA!  THE FACEBOOK!"  Because that's code for "you, too, could be enjoying all these nuggets from the ghosts of your/our class pictures past if you just logged in every now and then."  For all we know, the vice president of her elementary school student council has been trying to get in touch with her for years, and mum's just been missing out on reminiscing about the all-vegetable bake sale they did in 1962 to raise money for a litter of neglected kittens. 

I can't even get started on her abject failure to properly respect her iPhone.  If she raised her children the way she is raising her iPhone, I'd be dictating this post (since I'd be illiterate) to my probation officer (since I had to steal a tv to pay for my crystal meth) in Omaha (since they have the worst tv store security).  Let's just leave it at that.

But now she wants in on the random bursts of laugther, the recounting of out-of-left-field facts, the references to SmartyPants267 and GoFishFish.  She wants to speak @ and # and * and RT.  She wants to follow people.  Probably to tell them how wonderful they are.  Again, BITCH, right?

So I hooked my girl up.  And now she asks me shit like, "so, honey, now that I have Twitter, can you teach me how to tweet?"  Or "so, honey, now that I have Twitter, I can just go to w-w-w-dot-twitter-dot-com and see what everyone is saying to me?"  Or, "so, honey, now that I have Twitter, there will be no more starving children in Africa?"  It's like with every question she has to brag about having Twitter now, then boondoggle my brain, and then sneak in a reference to "poor Osama's" birthplace.  It's like she just can't stop thinking about the guy.

Editor's Note: If you read this post and you are associated in any way with a government agency that has ever had the words "counter" or "terrorism" reside on any document on your server, put down your warrant and cut the wire-tap.  The references here to Osama bin Laden are a fancy literary device.  That device is called "satire."  If that word is too big for you, then think of it as "humor."  If that word is too big for you, then think of it as "funny."  If that word is too big for you, then I have no idea how you have a job, much less one for our government.  Also, I hate you.

P.S. Mum still hasn't sent a tweet.

P.P.S.  Mum has 4,326 unread emails in her inbox.

P.P.P.S.  I think I might tell mum there's an Internet law that says you can't tweet, or ask questions about tweeting, until your Inbox is appropriately indexed.  Government counter-terrorism agents aren't the only sneaky ones in these here parts.  And mum is extremely into following the law.

Pass The Peace Pipe

I've known my husband for more than a decade; we've been married almost 8 years.  And it's true what they say -- you are always learning something new about your spouse.

This weekend, I learned that if my husband were Native American, his name would be Sir Chips A Lot and his animal spirit would be a beaver.  Which I think would make him a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe, but I'm no expert.

Alas, he's Puerto Rican.  So I gave him a borinquen name, which is cabron, por que no puedes jugar al golf?  Roughly translated, that means "Hey Asshole, can't you just play golf?"

You know about his chicken mongering.  You know about his skunk trapping.  Someday I'll tell you about the rusted-out, 1960s Jeep truck he bought days before our son was born that sits at the top of our driveway.  Today's focus is on the wood-clearing efforts he has dedicated the past two weekends to.

Editor's Note:  Yes, our home is available for weddings.  No, I don't know when the next vacancy is.  Yes, if you want to use our livestock in your still shots, it's an extra cost.  No, I don't think you'll be able to use the truck for your drive-away.  It doesn't have seats.

This husband of mine has never met a hamper he likes to put laundry in.  The last time he made a bed was in this dream he had about military school.  He thinks wet towels dry best when they're lying on the floor.

This same husband was annoyed by all the sticks lying in the woods surrounding our house.  He thought they looked too messy, just lying there being sticks.  He wanted to clean out those grounds so that they boasted nothing more than plain old dirt.  Like God and tent-pitchers intended.

So last weekend he spent two days clearing out all the sticks.  He laid them in piles along the perimeter of our property.  Picture, if you will, our home as the scene of one of the obstacle course challenges the Hunger Games tributes had to tackle before earning their scores for sponsorship.  It was real homey.  If your home is a dam.

He spent last week like some pioneer man, drinking his coffee standing at the window, staring out at his piles of sticks, deep in thought.  As if he was going to reckon when the locusts were going to strike or if the weevil bugs were going to threaten the crops this year.  Only in his version, he was wondering how he was going to get rid of the woods he'd just removed from the woods.

His answer: a wood chipper.

Now, I know I live in Maine.  I even grew up in Maine.  But all that living has been done in the populated part, not the potato part.  So before this past weekend, I had no idea what a wood chipper even looked like.  It's not like we have BYOL (Bring Your Own Log) parties on Saturday nights where the kids get to decorate safety glasses with puffy paint and glitter.  Yet somehow my better half seemed to know about these contraptions, and he was confident it was just what we needed.  THEY EVEN RENT THEM AT THE HARDWARE STORE RIGHT DOWN THE STREET!  It's as if a wood chipper was our destiny.  We couldn't NOT rent it.  (Screw you, destiny.)

So on Saturday afternoon, my husband borrowed my father's truck and went to pick up our Hungry Hippo.  My children and I were frolicking in the lawn, just waiting for Norman Rockwell to come paint us.  All of a sudden, it got shady and the temperature dropped.  I looked up from the daisy chains we were making and saw a small tank making its way down the street.  I started leading the way to the bomb shelter, thinking surely we were under attack, when I saw a familiar looking arm waving gleefully out of what I slowly discerned to be the driver's side window.  It was my husband. Towing a large, lumbering, yellow thing I now know to be a wood chipper.  Into our driveway.

We spent the next five minutes just staring at each other.  He was grinning.  I was not.  We were each trying to figure out why the other was having the reaction he/she was.  Finally, we both gave up and the conversation returned to our relationship.

We had to figure out where to put this wood chipper.  It was currently behind the truck at the very end of our driveway, and if we agreed on anything that Saturday, it was that we could not send a spray of wood chips into the main public road.  My husband volunteered to back the entire rig out the driveway, and then back it into the driveway.  That way the chipper would be at the top and could then be angled to shoot wood chips along the side of our driveway and kind of back into the woods. 

Problem is, my husband had never driven a trailer before.  So he had a hard time figuring out how to maneuver the world's largest truck attached to a man-made mountain of metal.  For every two feet he backed up, the wood chipper only jack-knifed two feet more in the exact opposite direction we wanted it to.  At one point, the right front tire of the truck was perched precariously on the low stone wall lining one side of our driveway, and the chipper was about to take its first bath in the shallow creek that runs along the other.  It was at that very moment where I turned to my daughter and asked her "How do you think Papi is doing?".  Her answer: "Not very good."

The lesson here is that we should start letting our 3-year-old plan our weekends.

Finally I started shouting directions at my husband, which were of course very helpful and very precise.  They didn't compute, though.  Soon I was just standing expressionless in the middle of our driveway, stone-cold still except for my mouth, which was screaming "LEFT!!!  NO MY LEFT!!!  OKAY, YOUR RIGHT!!!  WATCH THE BIKER!"

At that point, my husband put the car in park and asked me why I was berating him so publicly.

I said I wasn't berating him, I was just giving directions.

He requested that I please do so in a more loving tone.

I responded that he was dangerously close to death-do-us-parting.

So we abandoned ship and decided that we would PUSH the wood chipper to its final resting place.  That effort turned out not to be so bad.  The chipper finally got to where we "wanted" it, and I got to squeeze my spleen out my ear.

With all systems go, my husband spent the next 36 hours chipping wood.  Feeding sticks and logs and tree limbs alike into the mouth of a digestive system that would make a champion hot-dog eater jealous.  It's moments like this that make a guy appreciate hanging on to that hard hat he lucked into during a company outing. 

Everything -- from our house to our cars to our 7-month-old -- soon became covered in a thin layer of saw dust, and our neighbors all brought over casseroles to thank us for the droning hum coming from our house.  It was busy.

At one point on Sunday, my aunt and two cousins stopped by for a visit.  They hadn't gotten the memo about our wood-chipping extravaganza.  They stepped out of the car, saw the activity, and looked at me.  I could tell they were trying to decide if they should greet me with a "hey!  how are you?" or a "we're so sorry for your loss."  They left soon after.

But eventually it ended.  The last bit of earth was cleared, the last stick was munched.  The wood chipper was returned to its rightful owners, and peace was ours again.

The sun was shining.  We had a late lunch.  We de-sand-blasted my husband's exposed body parts.  We bonfired his "work clothes."  We tossed his ear plugs. 

Then he looked at me and queried:

"Now what do we do with all those piles of wood chips?"

It's at times like that you really do wish you were Native American and that someone was passing you a pipe.  Both because they can weaponized and because you can smoke your husband normal.

Coop, There It Is

When my husband isn't busy wrestling woodchucks and skunks, he has been occupying himself with building a chicken coop.  In our backyard.  That is going to house actual chickens.

We've come a long way from New York City, baby.

Our efforts to domesticate poultry begin on May 1st -- just in time for my birthday -- and I am sure I will have more to say about becoming a Mother Hen after I've done some late-night feedings and rocked Chicken Little back to sleep after a bad dream about sky-falling.

Today, I just want to talk about the chicken coop itself.

My feelings about having a chicken coop with real live chickens are lukewarm at best.  My grandfather was the ultimate Mainer/farmer/man's man, a guy whose idea of entertaining me and my sisters was to take us to the racetrack for some betting or enlist us to pull up buckets of water from the fresh-water spring he dug.  Even he would warn us, as we mucked out horse stalls, that chickens were the stinkiest animal you could find on a farm.  I'm a bit queasy at the thought of those odors greeting friend and Johnny Depp alike during a cook-out or drop-by visit.  Their little beaks also freak me out, and I have images of myself streaking across our backyard as my heels get nipped by a gang of crazy chickens who want their eggs back.  I hear those eggs are dirty when they are first laid (I imagined they'd come out as pristine as I find them at the grocery store), and I have enough to clean without "chicken eggs" being added to the list.  Finally, my daughter is paralyzed with fear in the face of any non-human living creature, from ants to water buffalo to cats and dogs.  In fact, before we go anywhere, she asks me "will there be a cat, dog, or any animal of the four-legged variety," and only if I swear on a bible that there will not be does she agree to come along.  Now we're introducing a flock of chickens into her own backyard.  A backyard I predict she avoids until she's 52 and we're dead and she has to come tie up the loose ends surrounding our estate because we forgot to add a provision in our will about who the chickens go to.

BUT, my feelings about my husband are several degrees above lukewarm most days, and he really wanted to Dr. Doolittle the place up.  So here we go.

Now, I must admit, as the days tick by, I'm pretty impressed by the whole chicken coop enterprise.  My husband grew up in a suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico; he is an attorney; he can speak several languages; he has skin that has never known a blemish; he has eyebrows that today's runway-walkers would kill for.  This same guy has designed and constructed a chicken coop that would make Martha Stewart and Ty Pennington's love child blush.  It has glass-paned windows, a sky-light, a flower box, a hook for a hanging plant, doors that swing open on brushed-nickel hinges, trellised walls for "cross-ventilation," and a roof made of sticks he found in the woods behind our house and thatched together himself.  It is a chicken coop extraordinaire, situated at a just-right angle in the back corner of our house.  If the chickens don't like it, I might move in myself.

He is proud of it, and I am proud of him.  So proud that I am willing to risk our daughter's emotional stability and the ire of every guest ever to pull into our driveway.

Here's the problem.  Our lone adjacent neighbor is an asshole.

To be fair, the lady that actually lives next door to us, in the sense that she receives bills there and takes care of the lawn and when asked "where do you live" provides that street address, is the perfect neighbor.  She keeps to herself and lets us keep to ourselves.  It's her brother that's the asshole.

This guy lives in Texas (of course) and swoops in for visits with Sissy every quarter or so.  On his most recent trip home, the chicken coop was in its earliest stages.  Sensing something afoot, this genius moseyed over and, with the subtlety of a Secret Service agent looking for a good time in Colombia, interrogated my husband as to his intentions with said coop.  My husband was forth-coming, and even went so far as to give Asshole his business card should further communication about what we were doing on our damned property ever be necessary. 

Yesterday, it arrived.  The little emailed missive poorly disguised as a friendly request from neighbor to neighbor.  Asshole just wanted to know, if it wasn't too much trouble, could we please move the now-finished coop to the other side of the lawn.  Pretty please with a cherry on top but really he doesn't care what we prefer do it now or he's going to make our lives miserable with a Chinese water torture of his follow-up emails written in sickly-sweet idiot speak.  Asshole has the nerve to blame the request on his sister (whose only previous interaction with us was to pass along her congratulations, through my mother, on the birth of our son).  Asshole also thought it pertinent to "explain" that the reason for the request is that on their side of the privacy fence that divides our lawns is their "fire pit."  He left it for us to insinuate why that'd be a problem.  Maybe when Asshole and his sister roast marshmallows over the pit they feel badly that the chickens can't join in.  Maybe it's harder to get a fire to start when there are chickens nearby.  Maybe when chickens hear people say "let's go hang out at the pit," they hear "spit" instead and think they're about to get roasted, apple-in-pig-mouth style, and start making a fuss.  I don't know.

What I do know is that last summer, I never saw anyone at or within a stone's throw of the fire pit.  But now our chicken coop is cramping the style of that wasted space.

My husband was of course frustrated but resigned himself to the fact that he'll have to do some disassembling and cart the coop to the approved space.  I am frustrated but resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to start ticking through my list of Things to Do in Retaliation to A Prick:

1.  Gather signatures from all the people in his past and present who agree he's an idiot and present it to him at Christmas on a scroll like the one Santa keeps of naughty vs. nice.

2.  Fire blaze my initials onto his front lawn.

3.  Hire Ke$ha to give nightly performances of Tik-Tok in our backyard for the entire summer.

4.  Tell Octo-Mom he's looking for boarders.

5.  Make him live the rest of his life in Texas.

Feel free to chime in if you have other ideas.

Peter Pan Is My Co-Pilot

Last week, during my travels for work, something happened to me that seared my soul.  It was worse than my regular confrontations with a slip-in-slide, worse than sharing elevator rides with tweens jacked up on pop rocks, worse than the hours traveling on canoes gussied up as airplanes.  It was so jarring, in fact, that it's only now I can talk about it.

I spent an hour with sixty people lost on a tour bus.

The wind-up to this spiritual Armageddon was actually something bordering on euphoria.  My company had generously sponsored a night out for all conference attendees.  And it was not some rent-out-Olive-Garden type of breadstick bonanza.  This was the real deal.  They rented out the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium for a grown-up's evening of make-pretend: 

• when we arrived our images were projected on the world's largest television screen that dominates mid-field (I wore a paper bag over my head and crawled in on my back, but I heard it was cool);
• there was a huge bar-b-que buffet (I don't understand the fascination with bar-b-que but I couldn't get anyone to explain it to me because they were all brow-deep in sauce);
• Emmitt Smith spoke to the crowd about his Super Bowl rings and Dancing With The Stars trophy (the fact he puts those two things in the same speech prompted me to sell my Emmitt Smith trading cards);
• the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders performed (yes, I was embarrassed when they asked me to join them but no, my high-kick did not disappoint); and
• there was a pass, punt, catch competition (I don't want to brag.  Nailed it!).

By the time 8:30PM rolled around, I was starving, sore, and tired of all the attention, so I figured it was time to pack my act up and head back to my "hotel."  I also knew that there were 100 buses snaking around the bowels of the stadium, waiting to ferry us 2,500 visitors out of Never-Neverland.  Since I hate waiting in lines, especially when they are trying to be funneled into a mode of transportation, I was all the more motivated to concrete sail my way out of there. 

As I approached the door to my chariot, I overheard a disturbing conversation.  The driver of my particular bus was in deep consultation with one of the event coordinators on the subject of...directions.  To wit, the driver charged with delivering us from point A to point B wasn't exactly clear on where point B was, or on how to get there.  The event planner was obliging with seemingly detailed, turn-by-turn instructions, complete with lots of hand-waving and finger-diagramming.  As the driver appeared to have the faculty of hearing, seemed to at least understand the English language, and presumably was from the area, I told myself all would be fine and we would arrive safely at our destination.

But they must have laced the cornbread, because my decision-making capabilities were WAY OFF.

Just exiting the stadium took about ten minutes, and I think our bus clipped some of the poor catering staff on the way out.  When we finally saw the friendly lights of convenience stores and fast-food restaurants again, I knew we'd made it out and were back in the charming embrace of northeast Texas.  The highway our driver navigated us onto looked familiar, and the nagging voice in the back of my head that had been channeling worrying thoughts started to pipe down.

Soon, though, my lullaby was interrupted by a ferocious sight.  The driver had slowed the bus to a snail's pace and was doing something I'd never seen done to a tour bus: he managed to get it to shake its head like a dog sniffing out the right trail home.  Back and forth and back and forth - highway or exit, highway or exit?  The driver finally opted for the exit, but I quickly realized that was only because he thought the lights above the toll booths were pretty.

So now we were on some road running parallel to the highway, high-fiving all the folks strutting in for a late-night snack at Chili's, Waffle House, and/or Taco Bell. 

By now we'd been on the bus for about 30 minutes.  The entire ride back should have taken 15.  We'd seen the same line up of fast food restaurants so many times that I had already developed heart disease and diabetes.  Things were going downhill, fast.

I was sitting towards the front of the bus, so I heard it when one of my fellow doubters tremulously asked the driver if he knew where he was going.  The driver had the nerve to admit:

"Not really, but I think something will start to look familiar."

Oh really, Wendy?  Why did Peter Pan have to pick THIS bus to find his damned shadow?  Mr. Driver, you do know that the instruction "sixth strip mall to the right and straight on 'til morning" is not  a MapQuest-approved direction?  MOMMMMMMMYYYYYY!!!!!

We finally exited Bowel Barrier Boulevard, only to end up in residential development after residential development.  Round and round the cul-de-sacs we went.  I think I heard the driver say "weeeeeeee!" at one point, but that might have been the sound I made when I leapt off my seat to assume the fetal position on the floor.

In case it's not already clear, here is why this whole series of non-events drove me bonkers.  First, I hate being lost.  It necessarily means that you are wasting time and behind schedule.  It also means that you either didn't plan well enough, or you screwed up your pristine plans with some unidentified misstep that you must now identify so as to right your wrong.  Second, worse than being lost is being lost on someone else's watch.  In this case, I was not driving and could not drive the bus, so I had to leave it to the knuckle-head up front to figure his way out of the mess.  The same guy who goes into the night knowing he has to ferry dozens of people from a nationally recognized sporting venue to one of the world's largest conference centers, but who couldn't identify either one on a to-scale map and nevertheless figures he'll just wing it.  Third, I feel like ants are crawling all over me when I think about the dunces at the bus company that didn't think about sending their A-team out for this job.  And by A-team, I mean people that know the difference between "highway" and "paper route."

So here is what I did.  I prayed to Steve Jobs and asked him for guidance.  He told me to whip out my Genius Phone, plot where we were in relation to where we had to go, and baby-step the driver there.  And that's what I did. 

When we arrived, the driver turned to me and thanked me.  Then he had another doozy of a confession.  He told me that he'd never had any idea where he was supposed to have been going, and that the directions from the event planner back at the stadium had never really "clicked."  I had no response to that other than to punch him in the face.

I do hope, though, that someone or some phone was waiting for him when he got home to help him with the rest of his night - the unlocking of his front door, the removing of his shoes, the brushing of his teeth, etc.

Several psychiatrists, a couple of blood thinners, and one Long Island Iced Tea later, I've moved past the trauma of that night.  On the bright side, my daughter was thrilled when I told her about my adventure with a real life Disney character.

I Smell Trouble, Part Dos

This morning my husband left for work really early.  While I was giving my son his wake-up bottle, I reviewed the emails I had received overnight.  I had gotten one from my husband at 6AM that caught my eye. 

Title: "Good news."

Content: "I caught the skunk."

Allow me to explain.

As some of you may remember, our home was recently invaded by a skunk attack.  We lived to tell the story, but it shook us to the core.  I started scanning the local real estate listings, but fortunately I am married to someone smarter and calmer than I.  Never one to back down in the face of adversity, my husband copped some serious Ace Ventura pet detective skills and got to sleuthing in our back-yard.  I would catch him just sitting out there, skunk-whisperer style, waiting for the grass to share the secrets of the lawn with him.  Eventually, it coughed up the following facts:

1.  A skunk is roaming our lawn on a nightly basis, foraging for food.

2.  When that skunk is tired and full, he takes a day-long nap under our shed.  The one connected to our house.  The one we walk by every time we exit and enter our house.

3.  That skunk has access to our shed all because my husband left a tiny gap between the foundation and the lawn that was enough for the little rascal to creep under.

4.  We need to start using fertilizer.

Now I am sorry, but other than a Middle Eastern dictator trying to outrun the Arab Spring, a skunk is among the very last creatures I would like to invite to live under our shed.  I don't know what it is about that place, but apparently it's cozy and there's a No Vacancy sign out front that our forest friends can read, because just last summer we had a woodchuck living under there, which my husband also had to catch.

(As an aside, for those of you reading this who don't live in Maine, I feel really great about all the free advertising I am doing about the joys of living in this state.  See you soon.)

Anywho, once my husband isolated the variables at work, he put his two elbows to the table, propped up his iPad, and got to studying.  If you have any questions about skunks -- their foraging habits, spraying tendencies, options for higher education -- just drop me a line and I will pass them along to him.  After sleepless nights of serious analysis, my better half decided on the solution to our problem:  shoot the skunk.

I think the real reason why this solution thrilled him so was that it meant (a) an excuse to go to Wal-Mart; (b) an excuse to wear a stupid hat (bought at Wal-Mart); (c) an excuse to buy a BB gun; and (d) an excuse to sit up all night patrolling the lawn for signs of life to shoot at.

The only problem is that I hate guns, and I especially hate the thought of a gun in my house.  But my husband convinced me we'd only keep it until we (he) killed the skunk and then he would return it.  Cross his heart and hope the skunk to die.

What happens next was a near-tragedy of epic proportions.  The skunk indeed emerged from his cocoon under our shed, and indeed began foraging for dinner, just two gun lengths from my husband's perch in our half-bathroom.  My husband, heart-racing and palms sweating, knew that this was his moment.  He aimed, shot, and hit that sucker....somewhere.  So he aimed, shot and hit that sucker....somewhere else.  The point is he hit him twice but the area of impact was unclear, and our furry striped friend managed to limp BACK UNDER OUR SHED!!!  To die a slow, smelly death right next to our porch furniture.  Lovely.

Deflated but not defeated, my husband brought out the big guns.  And by big guns I mean not an actual gun at all but the "Have a Heart" trap that had served him so well with the woodchuck.  He laid out a can of tuna -- because skunks are stupid enough to enjoy mercury-laden sea bait, I guess -- and waited.

And last night, Petunia got hungry.

Upon reading the announcement that our uninvited guest had finally been evicted, I was equal parts joyous and horrified.  Okay, mostly horrified.  I called my husband as soon as I finished reading his email.  Here are the funnest parts of our conversation.  I'll leave you to guess who is saying what.

"YOU CAUGHT THE SKUNK AND JUST LEFT THE HOUSE?!?  WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?  I MEAN WHAT DO I DO?   THERE IS A SKUNK IN A TRAP JUST OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE??  I MEAN WHAT DO I DOOOOOOOOOOO???"

"Um, nothing.  I will take it away when I get home from work tonight."

"BUT, BUT, IT'S RIGHT OUTSIDE!!!"

"I know.  In a trap.  It can't do anything to you.

"BUT WHAT IF IT SPRAYS AGAIN?"

"It can't.  It can't lift its tail.  And you don't have to go near it."

"BUT WHERE IS THE TRAP AGAIN???"

"Outside, near the bathroom.  You can go look at it."

"Go look at it???  Are you HIGH?  I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT!!!!"

"Then why did you ask where it is?"



I hate it when it talks to me like that.

Needless to say, I spent the morning hover-crafting around the house, yelling at the children anytime they went to the western wall of our house and commanding that we speak/gurgle in low voices so as not to alert the lurking beast .  I was just waiting for that skunk to knock on the door, accost me for marrying such a wily trapper, and spraying me for all he was worth.  I shuttled my children to the car like we were the von Trapp family fleeing Austria -- moving quietly but humming softly to keep our spirits up in the face of near-death. 

And we aren't going back to that House of Horrors until my husband has taken the skunk to Canada.  I pray to God he does not get sprayed in the process.  I hear divorce is expensive.

Seriously?

Today was a Monday morning like any other in my recent history.  Internal, fiery debate over whether and when to wake up.  Scrambling through laundry, dressing, breakfasting, packing lunches, and hustling out the door.  The only difference I was planning for this Monday was that I would be dropping my son off first, since my daughter is doing "vacation camp" at school while all the nice parents take their kids somewhere warm and whimsical for April vacation.  Vacation camp starts later than school, hence the reversal in drop-offs.  I would be traversing the same 4-mile strip about 6 times over the course of 20 minutes, but hey, it's vacation for some people - let's live it up!  Isn't Mami F-U-N!?!?

Imagine my surprise when I pulled into daycare and found.....nothing.  Not a car in the parking lot.  Not a human to be found.  Not a breath of wind other than the exhaust from my car and the sputtering breath I heaved as I realized what was going on.  Daycare was closed.  It's Patriot's Day.  Those asshats that I entrust with the care of my son can't be trusted with applying some perspective to their calendar.

This was mind-boggling to me on a number of levels.  Let me put this in perspective for you.

When I first started working at a NYC law firm, the place I worked didn't even give us Martin Luther King day off.  ("Off" in private practice is a relative term - they day may or may not be recognized as a holiday, but regardless, you probably still had to go into the office.  It just meant maybe you were there for 8 hours instead of 12.)  After a couple years of associate agitation, the firm changed course and decided that it, like the rest of America, would accord the day its due respect by adding it to the list of our paid holidays.

Now that I live in Maine, I'd been hearing grumblings about this thing called Patriot's Day, but they'd mostly gone something like this:

"Hey, Monday's Patriot's Day.  So they're running the Boston Marathon."

Or like this:

"Excuse me, what in the hell is Patriot's Day?"

Actually, that second question is the one I asked myself once I arrived home, down one daughter (vacation camp!  weeeeeee!), but up one son.  He and I sat down at the computer and I taught him about Google.  Together we learned that Patriot's Day is "celebrated" to recognize the battles at Lexington and Concord.  We looked at each other and smiled.  Ahhhh....the good old battles.  They just don't fight 'em like they used to, do they son?  Let me wedge you into the crook of my arm, shove a bottle into your mouth, and tell you all about the L&C Beatdowns so that you can understand why it is that your world and mine have been turned upside down this fine Monday morning.

Once upon a time....

Screw it.  Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Snow White.  Have you heard this one?

I have no idea what the story is behind Lexington and Concord other than that they're in Massachusetts and Louisa May Alcott's family lived in Concord during their hippie commune spell.  Apparently whatever story there is hasn't really caught fire, as Google also told us that the only states in the union to recognize this day as a holiday are Massachusetts (okay)....and Maine.  The holiday even leap-frogged over New Hampshire, and they have a liquor store as soon as you enter the state from any direction, so you'd assume they're always up for an excuse to take a knee on a Monday.  But even THEY passed on Patriot's Day.  Good old Maine is taking the whole "vacationland"moniker a bit too far in this instance, if you ask me.  But lesson learned - I'm making a list of all the Canadian holidays so I can be prepared when our town goes into shut-down mode on Boxing Day or Canadian Thanksgiving.

The other aspect of this that fries my freckles is that one of the big attractions to having my son in daycare (as opposed to being with a nanny or fending for himself) is the notion of dependability.  I didn't have to worry about someone showing up on time or getting car trouble or falling ill.  Daycare was always there, always open.  Except, apparently, on Patriot's Day.  I'm a lawyer and I didn't read the damned fine print.

So here I am, "working from home."  I don't want my kids to feel like they've missed out, so later on they're going to don their red, white and blue track-suits for their 26.2 miler, and then they're going to watch their dad and me duke it out with bayonets in the back-yard.

Wishing you all the happiest of Patriot's Days!

Are We There Yet?

Well, I thiiiinnnkk we should say our good-byes.  I think my death is imminent, and I think I've been tapped for an eternity of fireside chats and 75 SPF.  I say this because today I took several steps down the ladder to hell.

For the first time since baby #2, I am away from my little family, traveling for work.  I left today and return home on Friday.  I haven't flown on a plane in one year.

Now I remember why.

I showed up at the appointed 5-hour early mark for my 9AM flight.  There were approximately 3 other travelers at the airport.  And there was about a 7:1 ratio of TSA agents to travelers.  In the hush of the security line, as I took off my scarf, shoes, and wire tracking devices, it was me versus the masses - 17 men and women ready to pop out of their polyester blue unis, just daring me to put my carry-on through without taking out my ziploc bag of 3 oz liquids.  I got scanned within an inch of my life, maybe because they were bored or maybe because I was wearing my "please mess with me, I'm an asshole" sticker again.

Nothing really starts the day off like a good pat-down, so I celebrated by going to the airport Starbucks. For the first time in the history of mankind, there was a one-person line at Starbucks, and that lucky person was yours truly.  The duo behind the register didn't look like they could put their own coats on, but I tossed my underestimations aside and chirped out my order: grande nonfat latte.  Imagine my smug satisfaction/flabbergasted rage when I received an iced mocha in return.  Had my lone order really thrown that much of a curveball?  I wanted hot, not cold.  I wanted espresso with foamed milk, not the chocolatey mystery mix that comprises a mocha.  I did the only sensible thing one can do in that kind of situation: I chugged the mocha, declared it disgusting, and demanded my proper drink.  That in hand, I went off to my gate to make new friends.

The first leg of the trip wasn't so bad, if you like flying in a coffin.  I actually prefer room for all of my extremities, so I felt a bit cramped.  But by the time I lost feeling from my ankles down, things improved somewhat and I made it to my layover destination -- Philadelphia -- in relatively good spirits.

Then things went downhill fast.  Because the first thing I did when I landed in Philly was realize that I had landed in Philly.  That city has to boast one of the world's worst airports.  It is sprawling, old, and looks like there's a chain smoker hiding behind every over-flowing trashcan -- there's some sort of unhealthy-looking film in the air.  And now they've remodeled it to make you feel like you're a mouse in some MIT science major's wet dream - you try to move with some purpose  towards your connecting gate 3 miles away, but you keep running up against walls that have no purpose and no contour - just big white hunks of concrete.  Several years and 1 shuttle bus ride later, I arrived at my connecting flight, just in time to buy a puddle of yogurt.  You know, for lunch.

That probiotic detour was a ghastly mistake.  It put me towards the end of the line for boarding, and that's when I heard the words no traveler in their right mind ever wants to hear: "All remaining carry-on bags will have to be checked and will meet you at your final destination."

Ummmm....let's do this instead.  Just send me back.  Turn me around, pat me on my head, and tell me to click my heels til I get home.  This can't be happening.  I stuffed that suitcase silly for the sole purpose of avoiding the fate you are condemning me to.  Please don't make me go spend an hour of my life standing at that silver whirl-a-majig waiting for a black, nondescript rectangle that is either on the first flight to Moscow or is going to get picked up by some other cheap bastard who bought the exact same black, nondescript rectangle to shuttle his khakis and button-down shirts. 

Tough luck.  On the plane I went, all alone with my laptop bag.  And then guess what?!?  We pulled away from the gate EARLY.  We were getting ready for an EARLY take-off and an EARLY arrival when the second most-dreaded statement was proclaimed over the PA system: "We are going to have to head back to the gate to deal with a customer situation."  Actually, scratch the "second most" label, because I have never heard that announcement before.  But turns out some gal in first class just did NOT want to turn her electronic devices off, and she was getting booted from the flight.  I didn't know Alec Baldwin cross-dressed, but apparently he does and apparently he was on my flight.  Or what became my flight after he/she was escorted off.

After 3 glorious hours of neck-straining, concussion-inducing naps to a background symphony of inane conversation ("wait, you really think the per diems cover tipping??"), we arrived.  And then I went to my hotel -- sorry, my "lodge."

The moment my toes crossed the threshold of this establishment, I knew I was about to meet my maker.  I was greeted by a plastic forest of trees and guided to the check-in desk by fake fencing.  My view as I checked in was of....well, it was of....okay, it was of an INDOOR WATER PARK.  Wave pool.  Super slides.  Rope swings.  Children wearing neon shirts over their swimsuits.

Waterparks are like mullets and t-shirts tie-dyed with their wearer's name.  They scream "nothing good is happening here."  This was my home for the next three nights.

After I checked into my "den," (seriously) I boarded an elevator with about 7 10-year-old kids, each of whom wanted a chance to press the buttons.  16 minutes and one kid with a nose-bleed later, I arrived at my floor, where I was greeted with the gentle hum of symphonized forest sounds: crickets, wind rustling the trees, bears growling.  Children were running everywhere, zapped up on all the sugar they hadn't worked off in the "Lottsa Water Fall," their parents lagging behind eating drippy pizza from a tired paper plate.  I reached for my room "key" - it's a wristband like what you get when you go to an amusement park - lunged into my room, and wept into the 21 cotton towels in my bathroom.  The good news here is that if my end has indeed come and some higher power is going to send a flood to wipe me away, I have the cotton reserves to prevent a complete deluge.

So here I am, snuggling up in my bed that overlooks my sink.  The pitter-patter of over-tired feet race up and down the hallway just outside my door.  I gaze out the window, wondering whether it's made of tempered glass that would prevent me from hurling myself through it.

And to all, a good night.

It's Up to You, New York

I hate tax season.  I hate scrounging around for all the documents you need to prove you spent money here, wasted money there, and lost money everywhere.  I hate waiting for the numbers to be crunched.  But my least favorite day of the year is the day I learn how much more I'm going to owe Uncle Sam and/or any of his cousins collecting money for the states.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess some of you feel the same way.

Tax preparation and payment was an especially painful process when I was in private practice.  I worked all the time, sometimes literally.  It was a rare weekend where I didn't have to do at least some work for at least part of a day.  It often felt as though the only good thing about the job was the paycheck.  But even that reward wasn't completely sweet.  Every pay period there was a big line item for the taxes being deducted from my gross pay. 

Then April 15th would roll around and I would inevitably be told to cut yet another check.  Had I hired the government as a household employee?  If not, why was I paying it all the time? 

To make matters worse, much of my time in private practice was spent in New York City.  As you may have heard, that place is expensive.  It distorts everything.  My husband and I (and eventually our daughter) lived in an apartment the size of some walk-in closets.  Not only did we have to pay for our own apartment expenses, but every month we also had to pay maintenance fees to the building - like a second rent or mortgage.  We paid around $2.00 per trip to commute to work in a subway car where people packed in like sardines, many of them with umbrellas cocked for immediate eyeball dislocation or a backpack stuffed full of encyclopedias that inevitably smooshed your face into the stomach of the tall man beside you.  Venturing out for a meal meant paying a lot of money to eat food hovered around a table the size of a garden stool, with your next-door couple close enough to spoon feed.  If we had waited around until our daughter was of school-going age, she could have learned how to sit cross-legged for circle time for the bargain price of about $25,000 per year.  The only relatively economical thing about New York City is the dry-cleaning.

After a few years of this, I had built up a lot of unhealthy but really adrenaline-inspiring rage towards the State of New York.  In my mind's jaundiced eye, it took the human form of some sickly twisted tyrant that only found enjoyment at my expense.  It seemed the harder my life was, the more the State of New York enjoyed it.  In fact, I think Suzanne Collins might have used my internal war with the Empire State as the basis for the Hunger Games.  (The next thing on my to-do list, right after "put away laundry," is "sue Suzanne.")  The harder I worked, the more money it wanted.  Whatever disposable income I had, the more ways the State found to pry it from my death grip.  As I roamed the city streets, my smile eventually faded to a snarl, my conversational tone turned more to a growl, and my glass half-empty became my glass of water to throw in someone's face.  In short, I'd turned feral.

It wasn't good.

By 2009, we realized that we had three options: stay and end up in a jail, stay and end up in a hospital, or leave.  We left.  Screw you, New York - we're outta here!  We're taking our sour attitude, crippling fatigue and the measly pennies you've left us and we are hitting the road!

Not so fast, said New York.  That little prick of a state made it impossible for us to sell our godforsaken apartment until the spring of 2011.  So we spent 24 months paying a mortgage for a place we didn't live in and maintenance fees to a building we didn't set foot in.  When we finally sold the apartment, it was for a loss. 

But by then, it almost didn't matter.  We were done with New York, once and for all.  Didn't have to think about how it was bleeding us dry.  Could start to let the toxic memories go and move on.  Suspend the plans for a one-woman civil war to be fought with hateful thoughts and a vengeful letter-writing campaign.  Just let go.

Then this tax season, the unbelievable happened.  Thanks to the loss we took on the apartment, we did not owe taxes to the State of New York.  In fact, we were owed a REFUND!  EEEKKKK!  Our first refund EVER!  We took a picture of the amount and put it in our tax scrap book, right next to the stenciled copies of our social security cards and the pens we used to sign our first returns.  It was a glorious day.  I saw the first robin of spring, could smell freshly cut grass, felt an ocean breeze in my hair, and tried to calculate if I'd be able to buy 23 or 24 cafe lattes with the check New York State was finally going to be writing US.

But I'd underestimated that ever-wily, always-slippery state.  It just couldn't let us have the last word.  Didn't want to part with a piggy-bank of quarters.  Wants us to answer "who's your daddy?" with a resounding "New! York! State!"

Exactly one week after our return was filed, the State of New York dropped us a line to say that they'd "recomputed our taxable income."  Guess what that meant?!?   You'll be amazed!  THE STATE NO LONGER OWED US A REFUND!  Apparently New York only acts with any speed when (1) New Jersey goes around bragging that it's the New Jersey Giants, or (2) anyone tries to leave the state with any money.

Fine, New York, you win.  I won't drink cafe lattes this year, and you can buy some paper to print checks to yourself on in my name.  It's all up to you.  You write the rules, I just lose at the game.  You're my daddy.

Just FYI - I'm filing for emancipation.  And I'm bringing Jeremy Lin with me.