LA Moms Blog

Cult of Positivity

A few months ago, I was in a situation that required some plain speaking and immediate corrective action. You know what I mean. Some situations just can't be sugar coated. You step in a pile of shit, you have to stop what you're doing, take a moment, and scrape it off your shoe. It's likely that your shoe, if not your day, can be saved.

So this was one of those situations where some shit had to be scraped. A simple clean up operation, a little unpleasant, but in my opinion necessary, to move on. Without a lot of drama. Where I come from, a foot full of refuse is a perfect excuse to kvetch (and possibly laugh) a little. This sort of thing happens to us all from time to time. We commiserate. We deal with it. We move on.

Here's what happens in So Cal: We throw the shoe away. We deny the existence of dog shit, or any shit for that matter. We pretend the shoe that got hit with the shit never existed. It never happened. 

Why Fake and Bake When You can Snow and Grow?

Living in Southern California I thought I'd seen everything. The plastic boobs. The nearly synthetic hair. The folks in their blinged out Hummers showing up at the food bank. The moms passing off organic bakery treats as their own home cooked fare.

But wait for it... there's more.

Last summer my uber planned community started a bit of a social experiment. They launched a "neighborhood garden". A little park that is divided into small plots upon which we may grow our own veggies and flowers. Rent is cheap - about fifty to a hundred bucks for a year. If you are not from So Cal, you are probably wondering why the heck we suburbanites need to plant our gardens in a park, but if you are from here you know that for the most part, our McMansions barely fit on our postage stamp's worth of property. There's no room left for corn.

I'm not sure how this little slice of hippie fun slipped by the HOA. Gardening is a messy and motley business and some people have rusty, quirky, "arty" sculptures that they've smuggled onto their farm plot. These would never be allowed on a front lawn. But frankly I think the HOA saw it as an easy way to make a buck off that useless land under the powerlines. (It was originally slated to be a dog park until someone complained the dogs would get too much radiation.)

21st Century Jill of All Trades

You may not have realized this about me, but I am an expert. At everything.

Well, not EVERYTHING everything, but sometimes it seems like I'm getting pretty damn close. I'm only a few clicks away from the capitalized everything.

I have Google to thank. And Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and my friends and family who know how much easier and more economical it is to "ask Mom" than to hired a trained professional. Although if you were looking to hire a trained professional? I could probably help you with that. I'm an expert at hiring professionals too.

Once upon a time I went to college. Although I had trouble choosing a major (I settled on three, not one) I did eventually narrow down my expertise to three areas. Ah. Those were the days! When I only had to "know" about three things. Prior to Google I got a lot more rest.

The thing (you can call it a problem or you can call it a perk) about all this information and all this connectivity is that we are never done researching. There's no creepy basement full of microfiche that would take the next century to wade through, that makes us call it a day. We can always search with different terms and sit on the couch click click clicking our way through to enlightenment. When we run out of articles we can go to the many people on our social networks. No question is too complex, be it automotive, medical, educational or dietary.

How to Apologize

We've had a lot of together time over the last week of break. Not even ten minutes into winter break and my son announced his tummy felt funny. It was like the distant whirring of Luftwaffe planes. We grabbed our buckets and ran for cover.

The tummy bug blitz started with my five year old and traveled like lightning through the house, hitting another family member every two to three days, just when we had hope of leaving home again before the New Year. Naturally we were cranky.

Arguments ensued. Stuff like whose current TV show was more annoying, who should get a glass of water for who, whose turn it was to make the long long trek upstairs for clean socks, and by the fifth day of our familial confinement... the ever popular debate about who was guilty of breathing on someone else.

"Apologize to your sister!"  is my Holiday Break '09 battle cry.

But even the admonitions to apologize have produced arguments. Perhaps it's all the TV they are watching - laden with snarky sibling banter. My kids have forgotten HOW to apologize.  I've come up with a list of five example phrases for my kids to leave out of any apology and thought I would share it for all. Just for reference, none of the below apologies count as a real apology.

• "I'm sorry if you think that I...."
• "I'm sorry that you made me...."
• "I'm sorry but it wasn't my fault that..."
• "I'm sorry that you're so incredibly (insert insult here) that..."
•  "I'm sorry you were ever born!"

Our Chanukah traditions: It's a wrap!

Note: The follow sequence happens every year.

On the first night of Chanukah, our house is a showpiece. Menorahs are displayed, gifts are piled high on the dining room table, the air is fragrant with the aroma of fresh latkes.  There are dreidels to play with and chocolate gelt to eat. My kids eye the pile of gorgeously wrapped presents with hungry, greedy glee. A virtual feeding frenzy ensues after the candles are lit and they can finally, finally get at those goodies! The bows go flying. It's a full body sport and sometimes there are injuries. Papercut? Shake it off!

Note: Normally my kids treat a papercut like a tragic and possibly fatal wound. But on Chanukah? it's just a well earned battle scar.

After the madness settles and we have located the bolt cutters to extricate the toys from their prison of plastic packaging and shackles of twist ties, the mess is breathtaking. What took hours to package, wrap, label, tie with bows, and stack lovingly on the dining room table took exactly six seconds to dismantle. Faster than frying a latke.

Think we can keep this up for 8 nights in a row? Not a chance. So it's no surprise on the second or third night, that you begin to see less elaborate wrapping jobs. Sometimes you even see a "redo" if, on the first night, some the paper came off in a large swathes without too much tape damage. Like perfectly shelled eggs. Grandparents and other elderly relatives, are great at pouncing on those remnants, knowing we'll want to use them again later. We snort and roll our eyes at their depression era thrift. And then by midweek we scrabble through the recycling bin for those scraps Mema preserved. We like trees. Chanukah wrapping is both hard to find and expensive.

Students can you spare a dime?

On the way out the door this morning, my oldest two kids stopped in their tracks.

"It's Jamba Juice Wednesday! Moooooom can I have two dollars?" (fundraiser #1)

I pointed at the change jar.

"Scrounge what you can, kids."

"Here's my book fair wish list for the book fair today, Mommy!" announced my kindergartener. "Can I get all these books? Pleeeeeeeease?!"  (fundraiser #2).

A cursory glance at the scholastic catalog had me guesstimating the total was between $40-$50.

"Maybe pick one book, buddy," I suggested, knowing full well his two other school age sibs would be presenting me with their own lists before the week was through.

This was a lot of fundraiser before 8 am, but we were just getting rolling.

Time Management Lessons From Terrorists

Yesterday as I lay sick in bed, the laundry undone, dinner uncooked, and kids Thursday folders unexamined, I could not help but lift one feverish eyelid & listen to the news.

It was a spectacular story.

Man's Hands Blown Off in the Inland Empire

In case you were not taken out by the plague as I was, and you missed the news, I will summarize. Some guy, who has a collection of Nazi fan-o-mabilia, accidentally blew his own hands off while cooking up a pretty nasty bomb at home. Also in his home? A daycare. Oh, and a pot farm.

The Smug Ex Soccer Mom

A beautiful thing happened this Saturday. I drove slowly past the soccer park, where parents were circling for the "good" parking, coolers to schlep, chairs to carry and all that... and I kept driving. Straight to the mall.

Once there I had a lovely lunch out with my two daughters and spent the afternoon shopping in a cool air conditioned environment. No one complained that their cleats were too small, that they were sunburned, bruised, chafed, or that their shinguard elastic made them itch. 

Driving home past the crowds once more, I saw some of the same soccer slave parents still stuck on the field, on their second or third game of the day. Sweating profusely under their easy ups, fanning themselves, they looked flushed and (if their kid's team lost) furious. We whizzed by, sipping our iced lattes in the car whilst contemplating a bike ride or picnic at the beach. I fought the urge to stick out my tongue as we passed the crowds. 

Being a soccer mom the last two falls, was my own version of hell on earth. I am not one of those moms who takes pride in team spirit. I'm fine with the solo endeavors but I just don't like team sports. Psychoanalyze me if you will, but know I'd pretty much rather go for a pap smear in a high end doctors office than sit for an hour on a hot, gnatty soccer field, trying to keep my toddler from trying to jump into the game and look interested in who has the ball. Thank goodness for scoreboards or I'd never know who was winning.

Is it not enough that I birthed these children? You want me to jump up and down in the heat and the rain yelling "Go! Get that Ball Girls! Go Go Go!!!" like I actually care deeply about whether Brittney, Mckenna and Ashley score? Because I'm not that good of an actress. 

The Crazy Cat Lady of Too Many Blogs

Hello, my name is Ciaran, and I am crazy.

I'm seriously worried that the authorities are going to show up one day and put a sign on my house warning others that a hazardous condition exists within. Too many blogs under one roof.

Top Ten Signs that you may be a Crazy Cat Lady of Too Many Blogs:

1. You need to get new biz cards printed so you can stop dealing out a deck. You fill up front and back sides of the card with all your links.
2. Your kids skype you to remind you to make them lunch and to pester you to get their blogs up too. They want grilled cheese (like you wrote about on blog x)  and to link their blogs to yours for cross traffic and better SEO. They are under ten.
3. Your friends all say "What's that blog you write called ?" because they have no idea what the hell you do with all your time. They can only remember something about you starting a blog before you went underground and don't want to offend you by calling you crazy.
4. While lunching with pals and swapping in-law stories, you are overcome with a passionate need to start a blog expressly for in-law horror stories. Same thing happens when shoe shopping for back to school, finding a decent pediatrician and interviewing contractors for a home renovation. This is one of many reasons you cannot leave home too often.
5. You sometimes neglect your own health and hygiene to care for your many blogs.
6. You encourage/evangelize others to get a blog as well, telling them that swimming lessons or sandwich creation blogs would be a perfect niche for their family. When they look at you like you are a stark raving lunatic, you go ahead and start that blog yourself.
7. You cannot ever go on vacation because it is too hard to find reliable help to take care of your blogs.
8. You've given all your blogs cute little nicknames that no one but you can remember.
9. Your entire home is filled with blog detritus, including but not limited to: cast off samples, media cards full of seemingly random photos, press releases, multiples laptops, twitter screenshots, conference memorabilia, and half drunk cocktails.
10. Other bloggers who "get it" don't even bother to try to remember all your blogs. Instead they refer to you by your twitter moniker. This is perceived by some as an honor. Like a royal title.

California Star Tests in their Eyes

Last week was a very somber one for my kids and their classmates.  We all woke our kids gently, gave them an extra hug and kiss and packed special snacks to keep their spirits up. Parents who weren't normally friendly with one another exchanged knowing nods in the parking lot, with vaguely haunted eyes. Why? Because last week was our school's California Star Testing.

My children attend an elementary school that has some of the lowest STAR testing scores in the district. We don't have the excuse of being an ESL school or other special facility. We do have a very different curriculum than the other schools in the district, however. We're a Waldorf style charter school. Priorities are not the same. It's not unusual for children to start reading in third grade at a Waldorf School. Pushing a Kindergartener to sound out words, would be sacrilege.