The UnderToad

So I realize how very little I’ve updated the blog this summer.  The reasons are several-fold.  (1) I never did get rid of my iPhone allowing the majority of my daily computer time to be complete at the breakfast table within but one cup of coffee.  I’m not sure if it was teacher discount or the sudden rise in Wait Law productivity which prompted me to keep it.  Either way, barring an accidental drop into a lake or toilet, the iPhone stays.  And though it can, and has been done, using it to type an entire blog entry is far less appealing than not writing at all.  (2) Both of my sisters are getting married in the next 3 months, a fact which nulled and technically voided my manifesto to avoid official participation in any wedding after my own.  (A further fact of which I was fully aware at the time of my original declaration.  Who could have predicted that both of my only two sisters would actually get married, and then, in the same year?  *Answer: possibly my mother-in-law, who successfully wed-off both of her sons within 2 weeks of each other.*  Furthermore, I play not only the role of a married bridesmaid (just hate the substitution of “matron” here) but also the mother figure to the flower girls.  Result: lots of dresses, shoes, decisions (not necessarily mine but of which I play a role in the process), celebrating, emails, phone calls, and traveling.  *Aside to the brides-to-be: in your potential wedding planning stress, do not read into this as complaint or begrudgery.  Simply noting the reasons for summer busyness which might have otherwise gone undocumented.*  (3) I have enjoyed an afternoon nap almost every non-weekend afternoon that I have been home with my children.  In fact, revolving my daily schedule around nap-time has never been more selfishly motivated.  For those of you who will understand this, compare it to siesta during every session of counseling anything but CIT’s or 8-year olds.  And then there was… (4) Swim Lessons.  (5) Vacation Bible School  (6) Trip to Michigan.  (7) John and Claire’s 4th of July celebrate-pregnant-friends-around-North-Carolina-who-do-not-include-Claire weekend trip without children.  *We drank because the mothers could not.*  (8) Trip to Tennessee.  (9) Bachelorette party in Las Vegas.

This brings us to today.

I have a little bit of jet-lag which I have exactly three weeks to get over before the wedding in Spokane, my 30th birthday, the beginning of school, the wedding in Tennessee, and Thanksgiving in Michigan.

So forgive me for my lack of summertime stories to tell.  It isn’t that they do not exist.  It is more that they lose their luster when compared to that ever tempting afternoon nap.  And  by now we all know my stories are good like a soufflet is good: timed to perfection, served immediately, and, if left unfinished, really no way to bag up and take home the leftovers.

In every way, our summer has been mostly non stop excitement.  But none of it is happening in Clemmons.

Things are pleasantly boring around here.

And if you need me, I’ll be at the pool or the gym all week…catching up on my reading for Book Club.

I have come to believe that, growing up, a girl’s identity is mostly shaped by her father.  In fact, this might be true for all children, boys and girls.  I often use this personal belief system as a threat to John, that if any of our kids need therapy one day, it is likely to be more his fault than mine.  But the fact is, I really truly am not worried about the kind of man Eliott and Carter will each marry one day.  Whoever he is, he’s got some pretty big (and pretty good looking) shoes to fill.

I’m not saying that I was a “Daddy’s girl” growing up, because I hate that term.  (For one thing, I never called my Dad “Daddy” after the age of 4, and when I went to Baylor I mostly wanted not to be one of those girls.)  But the truth is, when my mother threatened us with, “Just wait until your father gets home,” it usually evoked more relief than fear.  (I think subconsciously she knew this, but was sometimes just tired of always being the “bad guy.”)

Now, I can safely say that the majority of the self-confident women I met in and after college, especially the ones with unusually high husband standards, all had really freakishly awesome fathers.  I count myself among these women.

There’s not much I can say to my dad that I probably haven’t already said at some point.  I actually hoped to post a list today of the “Lessons, advice, and words of my Dad” that I apparently wrote down sometime in college.  Unfortunately, I can’t find it.  A better late than never post will hopefully follow, but for today, my main message is this: Dad, it is difficult to put a finger on all of the little things you did outstandingly well as a father, or outstandingly terribly.  But you need to know this: it might be true that when the garbage disposal stopped running 3 days ago, my husband told me to call you.  And it might also be true that my husband –for a few months– didn’t catch the “thermostat” problem in my car that you diagnosed –in a few seconds– as an empty coolant problem.  However.  In about a hundred million more ways, he is the most outstanding man for me on the planet Earth.  And whether I knew it at the time or not, I wasn’t actually holding out for someone who resembled Jesus.  I was always holding out for someone who resembled you.

If you ever wonder “how good” you were, as a father to three daughters (I can’t really speak for Jeff here, he’s a boy), I think all you need to do is look at who we chose for husbands.  I’m pretty sure that’s your fault.

I love you.

And Happy Father’s Day.

There are a few things in my life that might have gone forever unnoticed, but once discovered, quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite things. One is a paper-cutter. Now that I’ve left my daily position in a classroom I’d probably never own one. But I sure do miss using it. Another thing is wax paper. I’m not even exactly sure what aisle of the store to find it on, but my stay-at-home-mom-sense tells me it is probably near the aluminum foil and Ziplocs.

Whenever John’s mom comes to visit, I’ve noticed she purchases wax paper and probably only uses a foot of it. So I frequently have some on hand, and for a long time, I didn’t really know what to use it for. John informs me that there was a time when people “wrapped their sandwiches” in it. I seriously can’t even imagine how that worked, but I wonder if a rubber band or some Scotch tape was also involved. Another thing that gets left behind after a Grandma visit is leftover pie crust dough. I just had to stop and Google “pie crust dough” to make sure I was even writing it correctly. —Dough, for pie crust? Just, pie crust? Unbaked pie crust? A ball of frozen dough that can be rolled into the shape of pie crust?— This should tell you how savvy I am with the homemade baked goods. (Pillsbury Ready-Made Pie Crust on the other hand, rolls off my tongue like Slice-and-Bake Cookies or Box of Brownie Mix. No Google necessary. I not only know exactly what I’m talking about, but I know exactly where to find it in every grocery store in town.)

The first time some extra pie crust dough was left in our freezer, like the wax paper, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. John’s mom listed about six quick suggestions before she left (none of which were actually bake a pie) but I think I ended up on the computer and executing a “leftover pie crust” recipe search. I ended up making a quiche. And I fell in love with that quiche. And now we eat quiche at least once every ten days or so. And, for the record, I’m absolutely not complaining about Grandma’s leftover dough in the freezer, as somehow, even with only three ingredients, I have yet to make anything that tastes even remotely similar. I’m sure there’s also some sort of secret to making the stuff stick together better, and I suspect it is either more butter or a golden Grandma teardrop. Either way, I haven’t mastered it yet.

As for using anything other than the stuff that comes out of a bag and rolls into a perfect pie-pan-ready circle, I’m sure I have a rolling pin, somewhere. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it since we moved. So I usually just grab an empty or completely unopened bottle of wine. You can only imagine the mess this makes. Flour everywhere. Sticky dough residue. The last two drops of wine in the dough and sometimes flecks from the label.

Then one day, I thought about the 74 feet of wax paper just sitting in the drawer wishing to feel needed again.

Who KNEW?!

This stuff is amazing.

Dear wax paper, where have you been all of my obsessively-clean-non-baking life?!

*And, in other non-kitchen related kitchen discoveries, vegetable oil makes a very suitable do-it-yourself-bikini-waxing-gone-bad wax remover.

I realize at some point in every stay-at-home-parent’s existence, a list is made. A “What the hell do I do all day?” list. And thanks to the Internet, I also realize many of these lists have been published somewhere, and have circulated, mostly on Mommy websites, in Mom-to-Mom emails, and as “rants” on those ever growing cliches called Mommy Blogs.

Today I made a list.

I made a list and put it in an email and sent it to my husband. In hindsight, I maybe should have done this before I called him and went off about the garbage. We used to have an agreement that whatever I was mad about after he left for work, I had to type it as a Google Chat message and he’d read it when he arrived. I was allowed to use all-caps if necessary and he promised to hear the anger in my voice, as such.

Well, we had a rough morning. Somehow, all-caps cursing via G-chat just wasn’t going to do it for me today.

Mornings. Mornings are always difficult due to their unpredictability. If we have somewhere to be by a certain time, my children will inevitably sleep in. If we have no where to be and absolutely nothing to do (and especially if I’ve successfully extricated myself from the hypnosis of 3-6am coma-sleep) my children will be awake with the birds and already bored before breakfast. If we successfully get dressed before breakfast, Carter won’t be in the mood to eat anything. Even strawberry muffins with zero nutritional value whatsoever. Even if I tell her it is “cake.” If we successfully get dressed and eat breakfast in time to leave, Carter will poop the milisecond before I put her in the carseat. And if we are dressed, fed, changed, and out the door on time, likely I have mixed up Tuesday and Wednesday in my head and the empty parking lot which I am for the first time early to arrive to gives away the fact that I should have slept in that day. And, if everything is right in the world of Carter and my days are not mixed up, Eliott will be having what I like to call pre-school PMS.

I cannot win.

Eliott is enrolled in 9:15 am swim lessons at the YMCA. They are only a half an hour long for 2 weeks. We need to not be late. We need to not miss a day. And, we all really need to poop before we leave the house. Can I say, for the record, how debilitating it is to revolve a large majority of my schedule around my children’s digestive tracts? And this has nothing to do with potty training and accidents and diapers and all that. It simply has to do with the availability of a bathroom when it is time. There’s no such thing as telling a four-year-old to “hold it.” And because the diaper baby does not hold it, there is no such thing as, “Here, change your own diaper real quick while I parallel park.”

So my YMCA time today was spent on a couch in the lobby with my iced coffee and my iPhone (which I never got rid of by the way), emailing my husband in a rage after I spent the majority of the morning fighting with both children, ants in my kitchen, and the garbage (because it is Tuesday). It hit me at about 10:15 that all I ate for breakfast was half of Carter’s strawberry cake.

If personalities were measured like cup sizes in bras, then my husband would be an unpadded type-32-double-A. His sense of organization, adherence to rules, and inability to function without the use of or ability to deviate from a list goes so far beyond the confines of Type-A that it needs a category all to itself. I personally know many women who would murder me with a butter knife to know how often this personality actually frustrates me. With a man who will do anything, as long as it is written down, why am I complaining? Why aren’t I bottling him up and selling him as a remedy for their blobs of ESPN couch goo?

Maybe I’m a little spoiled.

But excerpts from my email went something like this:

…the thing is, if I have to come up with the list, organize it, and figure out by when it needs to get done, I’ve already tackled more than half the battle and I might as well just do the thing myself. Need I remind you that I get 90 whole minutes to myself every day?

…I’m sorry that the garbage set me off this morning. But really, it was the garbage, the blankets, the ants, Carter not eating (you know I’m still spoon feeding our 2 year old three meals a day), getting out the door on time, thinking about what kind of picnic dinner I can pack for your soccer game (which we will probably skip by the way), thinking about when Carter will poop and how many diapers I need to bring with us today… I didn’t even eat breakfast. So now I’m also trying to figure out what is easy to grab and eat on the road…and all because I forgot to write bananas on the grocery list for you…

…I know that you are stressed out by work. I know you have a lot to do and not enough hours in the day to do it all. I also know that I am selfishly holding you back from working until 9 every night, which, I KNOW, you could easily do. But I am tired. All the time. And the thought of sitting in an office on a computer for 8 hours a day, dealing with adults who all want to sue the police, defending child delinquents, looking up case law, writing angry demand letters, fighting with AT&T over yet another screwed up bill on the phone, setting up new office furniture, organizing paperwork, driving to and sitting through court in three counties, and creating a system for an intern to start doing half my work actually sounds like a relief to me right now. I know. The grass is always greener. No, I don’t want to go back to work. I just want someone to understand the difficulty of my existence despite what the numbers may say.

I’m not actually going to re-type my entire personal list of “What Do I Do All Day” (which was Part B of the above email). At least not today. And I admit, if I would just embrace John’s system, things would be more than fine on my end. But we don’t have any bananas because I forgot to write it down. So maybe in addition to everything else he does all day, I want want him to read my mind. Without a list. That I create. Read my mind IN my head. Read the mind that I am often unable to consciously express.

I really don’t think that I’m asking too much here.