Week 12

Mac doesn’t feel well and wants to stay home from school this morning. Given the fact that my left eye is plastered shut with the same goo that ran thru the kids’ eyes a week ago, I am not hard to convince. Besides, after what seems like hours of fidgeting, Sailor finally settles down and falls asleep moments after I slap the 6:35a.m. alarm clock. So we stay in bed til 7:30. And then we dress in clothes I deem inappropriate for the outside world. A.k.a. sweats. Or as my kids like to call them, soft clothes.

I serve breakfast packed with whole grains and vitamin C. Mac works at finishing off his short vowels workbook. Sailor writes a very nice capital T and an accompanying lower case t, after a perfectly lovely P.

We clean up the kitchen, take out the garbage, mop, vacuum until the vacuum cleaner konks out (listen! I have scrounged to find enuf cash to put Mac in new car seat so that Sailor may have Mac’s, given the fact that Sailor is about 1/4” away from being too tall for his, and it expired this year anyway; enough money to replace my barely 4 ½-year-old printer; possibly put a new digital camera in my own stocking from Santa, and still buy everyone their Christmas gifts. What I do NOT have money for at this time is a new vacuum cleaner! So I clean out the filter, shaking concentrated house dust into my smooth pink lungs. I saw away at the long hairs wrapped around the roller and brushes. And I leave the vacuum cleaner in the playroom to rest. Maybe it will feel more like cleaning up my whole house in a few hours.), bring all the discarded debris up from our stairs, do an art project, make the stove shine, and at 10:45 after much deliberation and discussion, I let the boys fall onto the couch and watch a bit of TV. Educational TV, of course.

“Can we watch Rescue Heroes?”
“No.”“Can we watch Curious George?”“No. That’s not educational.”
“Yes it is. We learned one lesson from Curious George.”“What’s that?”“Never bring a monkey into your home.”

They watch some old Barney videos and Free to Be You and Me. After this I will propose a nap. Which I know won’t go over well at all. But still, if we are home on a sick day, I have to try!

Ok, I am going to call this next section “Did you know?”
Did you know…
That if you charge things on your Visa card and then return them, you have to pay for them anyway if you returned them after your statement was printed? And don’t ask me what “printed” really means because I do my Visa cards online to save paper.
Did you know… that if you buy a jog stroller from Baby Trend the front wheel is supposed to be in the locked position when you walk outside? Otherwise the stroller wiggles and wobbles and shakes and shimmies and gives your child a very rough ride, not to mention it becomes impossible to push. And if you do lock that front wheel there is no way you can push without having to lift the front of the stroller every time you so much as want to move an inch to the side!

Mac says to me tonight, “Mommy, even when you are mean to me, I love you.” WHAT?!! MEAN????!!!!! I wait a few minutes before explaining to him that while I think he is trying to say something nice he didn’t and I want to know what he meant by “mean.” “Spanking,” he says. I have not had reason to spank him in quite some time. I then explain the concept of discipline. It’s crazy when he says stuff like this becuz a day ago he told me I was the nicest mommy in the world.

Tomorrow Mac will be 6 ½. Today he opens his mouth and I find his 2nd new tooth, hanging out behind his lower left front tooth, soon to be his 2nd loose tooth. Speaking of which, he told me yesterday that he lost his tooth fairy money in the wash. I’ll have to check with my mom on that one.

We spend nearly $30 at Whole Foods gathering Half-Birthday dinner and cake supplies on Wednesday evening. It’s a cold, rainy evening, and the kids are tired and hungry. I am disoriented, as we are not in our usual store and since I am still wearing my glasses waiting for my eye infection to completely clear up, I am having trouble seeing the broad picture of everything around me. It’s like some sort of weird sensory overload. Nonetheless we make it out and back to the art studio to drive my sister home and get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so getting to bed on time is not a major issue.

Thanksgiving day we bake and cook things to bring down to dinner at 3:00. We stay in our pj’s all day until noon or so when it’s time to get washed and dressed up. Before we are out of bed it starts to snow. “Look!” Sailor shouts. “It’s snowing!” I can’t see because I haven’t put on my glasses yet. Sailor hands them to me. “See those white balls?!” Indeed it is snowing, but Sailor is disappointed because our first snow of the season is not sticking to the ground yet. Mid-morning the back porch begins to hold a light dusting of white. I call the kids over to the kitchen window, (which reminds me that I have yet to put away all our summer things from the porch – the wicker couch cushions, the bubbles and bubble wands, the kid-sized chairs and tables). They are amazed, especially Sailor, who is still little enough for these yearly experiences to seem if not brand new then still excitingly unfamiliar. “That’s so ‘mazing!” Sailor says with a tone of awe in his voice. I just LOVE his innocence. Mac doesn’t understand why the snow is sticking to the back porch and not the front. I try to explain how some places are just colder than others and that the front sidewalk is wet and still has leaves all over. “So only our back porch has snow?!” I guess I didn’t explain that well. Thanksgiving with my family goes well. It’s nice. I fill up on cauliflower and avoid the turkey. Late in the evening the boys are playing nicely in my parents’ den. Mac has already been warned about behaviour and he has decided to listen to me and behave. My mother gets a great idea and sends them to the living room and commands my dad’s magician friend to perform for the boys. Which gets them all excited. Next thing we know there is much laughter, squealing even. And my dad is shooting me looks. Then the magician starts in with a very loud voice. “What’s he doing?” I ask my sister. We are perusing the newspaper circulars doing some pre-day-after-Thanksgiving shopping. I check in the living room a few times but see no jumping from furniture or climbing on old folks so I decline to intervene. Until my father tells me to control my children. “What are they doing?” I ask. He gets flustered and doesn’t answer, as if I should know. I repeat the question and he repeats the fluster. I tell my sister her prediction that we will leave in a huff was right and we split.

Later my dad comes up to talk to the children and I again ask what it is they were doing. This time the answer contradicts what I saw going on. The magician riled them up, I say. But then he stopped, my dad counters. They are children, I say. And the more I think about all of this the more unfair I think it has been on my kids. They did nothing wrong and yet they are blamed. All they were doing was playing in the den. It was not their idea to command a magic show from the musician!

It’s Sunday night. Mac is in bed. Sailor is lying in his bed beside me here. He is talking to himself. Or maybe to me. But I have ceased to listen because it is 8:30 and I wanted these kids in bed by 7pm. Mac has been home with us for 5 days. And he has not stopped talking the whole time. Chatter, chatter, chatter. And funny little noises. Like all little boys make. Shooting sounds, and car sounds, and whatever. I remember these sounds from the boys in my 7th grade class. How many more years will I have to endure this here at home? And then I feel a sense of guilt for being annoyed. I have just finished reading the book Laci Peterson’s mother wrote about her daughter, who was murdered by her own husband. And I am not stupid enough to think that it could not happen to me one day that I am sitting here wishing with every fibre of my being to hear my child’s voice, even if it’s just to hear his noisy chatter.

My dilemma this evening is the boys’ playroom. Which started out clean when we started our day 13 hours ago. And then Sailor cut some paper. And then Mac wanted me to make him an office. And then I pointed out how messy their office was and that they would never get any work done in a sloppy business. And then I take a look at my own workspace, which is in such a bad state that I have my laptop on the dining room table and have set up my new printer on a dining chair. I challenge them to clean their office space while I clean mine. Mac says we’d get more done if we work together. Except I don’t want help. Sailor explains that this is true and that this is the way they clean up at school: together. I am being challenged with reasonable challenges by a 4- and 6-1/2-year-old. What to do! I don’t give in.

But I do find on my desk a bill that is due today. So I make the call to pay by phone and am told that the bill cannot post today, as it is the weekend. Then don’t give me a bill with an invalid due date! I was supposed to have paid it on Friday, I am told by the quickly irate woman on the customer dis-service end of the phone. But the bill doesn’t say “Due Date 11/25/07 but we really mean 11/23/07.” I rant and rave and call my sister who recommends I call back and so I do. I ask for the guy in charge and am told by the Account Manager that he can help. So I tell my story and then ask for the guy in charge again. He offers a supervisor. No, I tell him, I want the president of the bank. The Account Manager says he is just in a call center and doesn’t know where the big cheese is. So I talk. And talk. And talk. And then I talk some more. I talk until I wear the man down and he finally gives me exactly what I want because he feels sorry for me, a broke single mom with two little boys running around and making a lot of noise in the background. I tell him he is the only person from his entire company who has ever been nice to me. You rock! I say. He asks if I want to tell his supervisor who he puts on the phone in record speed. I think she is in the call center somewhere in India.

And when I am done with all of this? The playroom is a mess still, Mac is reading a book in his room and Sailor has gone to take a snooze in his bed. So now it is past bedtime and I am tired. I don’t know why other than I think I may be tired in anticipation of the 6:30am alarm. After all, I went to bed after midnight for the past few nights and have not been tired on either the falling asleep end or the waking up end. But here it is, Sunday night, and I am like the guy who has to get up for work on Monday morning for the job he hates, and I am tired! I want to go to bed. But I promised the boys their playroom would be devoid of all the toys left on the floor if they didn’t pick them up. All day, from 10am until we left for dinner at 4:30 we argued about the toys. But now I not only don’t have the energy to clean up the playroom, I don’t have anywhere to put the confiscated toys. All my spare hiding spots are filled with Christmas gifts.

Right. Today is November 25th. One month til Christmas and I am not only practically done with my Christmas shopping but I am already bagging up things to return to stores so that I can get some money back. I have no idea how much money I spent (ok, that’s not true, I do have an idea – but it’s not an idea I am comfortable with) and I am even less clear of an idea where I am going to get enough money to pay the bills when they come in. Christmas shopping should be fun. But it has really stressed me. Oh, except the shopping at Target part. Walking into Target is like Nirvana and I suddenly feel as if anything were possible when I see so many people milling around in search of electronics, clothes, toothpaste, cheese, toys, slippers, strollers. It’s all there to be had. And it’s like a drug! As is, “I’m checking into rehab to try to conquer my Target habit.”

The hardest part about shopping this weekend was the fact that due to the eye infection I have had to wear my glasses. I can’t see quite as well wearing my glasses as I can with my contacts. So I am challenged by a strange sensory issue. We are in the bathroom at Kohl’s on Friday morning after Thanksgiving and I look in the mirror and see not just the glasses (which take me back to my so many years as a geek in jumbo frames) but some seriously bad hair that needs to be cut, styled and quenched. I sigh and exit the bathroom with the boys. And am greeted just moments later by our local new team. Do I want to tell all of Chicago what I am shopping for this year? I would love to.

During the year, as I approach my 40th birthday (still more than 2 months away) I have lost my prettiness. I am no longer pretty, sexy, or a hot mom. I am a tired, mousy-haired, glasses-wearing (for the moment), wrinkly, acne spotted, baggy-eyed, almost-40-year-old mom. I am no longer fit to smile and flirt with cute guys – er, men. There is nothing for them to see in me. My sister politely – albeit slowly­ – says she disagrees. But I see it. I see my own face. I see that I don’t get the make-up right anymore and that what make-up I do get to stick doesn’t last long or create a youthful effect.

Sailor, my little love, also disagrees. He tells me, “You are pretty, Mommy.” And he doesn’t stop there. “Your eyes are pretty. Your lips are pretty. Your hair is pretty. Your nose is pretty.” It is early morning when he is telling me this. We are still in my bed and my hair is tousled and my infected eye is crusty. “Your hands are pretty.” Ok, now I know he is full of hooey. My hands are not now nor never have been pretty, having been inherited directly from my paternal grandmother (the irony of which is that my father has the most beautiful hands). Or maybe my little son is just full of love for his crabby, wrinkly mama.

Mac is not happy to be going back to school tomorrow. I am happy only because it will give him something to do. I have run out of money so I cannot take the kids to go do anything. They were stir-crazy today. It is much too cold to go outside to play. But he says he hates school. I want to give in and tell him he doesn’t have to go. No matter that I love doing his homework with him and helping him with his spelling words and making his lunch… I just want him to be happy.

This morning Mac wanted to see all his Christmas books, so I brought them down from the high shelf in the cabinet for him. “Oh!” he exclaims, the pile of books in his lap in the living room (or the “liv-room” as Sailor calls it), “This is a funny one, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies!” Sailor, not understanding that this is the book’s title replies in part statement, mostly question, “You will get in trouble?”