School Daze

Last week I made the annual pilgrimage to Staples to buy school supplies.  I've had the whole summer to do it - the school publishes the supply lists online starting at the end of the previous school year - yet I leave it as long as possible.  

Counting Daniel's year in pre-school, I have been purchasing school supplies for kids for six years.  For the first two years, it was exciting, kind of like lovingly making the kids' lunches.  Now, however, I find it a bit of a chore and, in some cases, mystifying. Last year, for example, every student in kindergarten had to bring a bag of rice as part of their school supplies. There were three kindergarten classes, each with about twelve students.  That means that in kindergarten, there were at least thirty-six bags of rice.  It's not that rice is expensive, or that I mind, but thirty-six bags of rice is, well, a lot of rice, and I don't recall Janet bringing home any rice crafts or recounting stories of field trips involving weddings or fertility ceremonies, so what's with the rice?  Similarly, Janet has to take, as part of her school supplies for grade one, a bag of red kidney beans.  So does every other grade one student.  I can see a teacher using some kidney beans for some activities,  but these quantities are astounding when you do the math. If we assume that there are about 250 individual kidney beans in a 400g bag, and the same 36 students who brought rice in kindergarten are now in grade one, that means that there are some 9000 beans.  Again, it's not that I mind - beans are dirt cheap.  That said, I am mystified by the concept of 9000 beans:  that's one big pot of chili, and a whole lot of gas.

The other one I find confusing is the need for every student in Daniel's grade to bring a box of Band-Aids, which will be placed, presumably, in a sort of communal band-aid fund.  There are about thirty band-aids in a box.  As a family of four, we go through maybe one of those every couple of years, and that includes the ones that Janet uses purely for cosmetic/sympathy purposes. Assuming there are 25 students in Daniel's class, that's 750 band-aids, for, apparently, 750 scabs.  Again, I do not balk at the cost of band-aids, but why so many?  If someone is bleeding that badly, they need more than a band-aid.

Then there are the things every parent learns by trial and error.  After sharpening 72 pencils and pencil-crayons on the eve of a first day of school a couple of years ago, I learned that you can buy pre-sharpened ones.  That was a low point for me and may explain my carpal tunnel syndrome.  Many also learn the hard way that it is best to hide the school supplies immediately upon returning home.  Otherwise you might discover, the night before, and after all of the stores are closed, that your zealous little student decided to play "school" with her friends. Finally, as annoying as it is to shop for school supplies yourself, it is best to not delegate the school supply shopping to your husband. There is a risk that he will return with two sets of kindergarten supplies and you will have to make a trip to Staples anyway, and also figure out how to get rid of those extra sets of fat Crayola markers and, of course, that extra bag of rice.  

  

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Panty Fairy

There is no Santa.  And there isn't a Tooth Fairy, or an Easter Bunny.  All adults know this.  It isn't questioned, but rather, it is accepted as fact.  The nagging doubts start at around seven years of age, or maybe nine or ten for the more naive among us.  Eventually, the evidence becomes overwhelming that these magical beings are, in fact, non-existent and part of a larger charade invented by parents throughout the ages to manipulate children into eating brocolli, brushing their teeth and going to bed without whining too much.     

In some respects, the truth reaches us just in time.  Really little kids embrace the idea of mythical creatures spreading gifts and money and chocolate among us while we are safely nestled in our beds.  Around six or seven, however, many kids (and I was one of them) get sort of "creeped out" by the idea of some stranger coming into the house in the middle of the night and  trading money for teeth or leaving gifts in the family room.  It is especially creepy when the guy supposedly roaming around your house in the middle of the night wearing a furry red suit and high leather boots is the same one who wanted to you sit on his lap and give him a hug in the mall earlier that day.  Still, I had been thinking that it would be nice to have a little bit of magic in our lives as adults. Things can be so serious and even mundane as we get caught up in our daily routines of laundry, groceries, work and family.   Being able to believe in something magical, like the Easter Bunny, would be a perfect pick-me-up in those times when we lose perspective and waste too much time sweating the small stuff, like when we will find time to clean the gerbil crap out of the bathtub, or shop for underwear at Wal-Mart.   It was just as I was thinking about this that the Panty Fairy came into my life.  

In an earlier post, I lamented about having to buy my own underwear, at Wal-Mart.  I had for years been spoiled by my own Panty Fairy, who supplied me with new undies every Christmas without fail for thirty some years.  Then it just stopped and I had to grow up and start buying underwear for myself, instead of having it magically arrive in my stocking at Christmastime or in an Easter basket in the spring.   So, imagine my surprise - and delight - to discover a comment from the Panty Fairy herself, with a URL address, on my blog.  For a small fee, the Pant Fairy will send you a brand new piece of underwear every month for a year or six months, depending on your subscription.  The idea is pretty cool.  It beats the hell out of sending yourself flowers and it's way better than wandering around Wal-Mart looking for "Joe Boxer".  And the best part is that the Panty Fairy assures me that she will never actually enter your house in the middle of the night and eat cookies or look for teeth under your pillow.  

Seriously, I think the Panty Fairy is onto something good.  Check her out at www.pantyfairy.com. 

If Only . . .

If only . . .

If only I hadn't taken the bus that day . . .

If only it hadn't rained . . .

If only I had studied harder in undergrad . . .

If only I hadn't squandered my twenties . . .

If only . . .

You've probably said it to yourself many times.  I have.  Everyone does.  

We wonder aloud, "If only she had been there sooner".

We rant, "If only I hadn't married him".

We repent, "If only I had been nicer to her".  

What is somewhat less common, however, is to hear an "if only" with an "you" instead of an "I".

I had one of those thrown at me the other day, and I am still reeling from it, due largely, I think to the source.

"If only you had married better, you could stay home with me".  

What?

And yes, you guessed it - Janet was the accuser.  Apparently, I have been a failure from the beginning, and her father never really made it past the starting gate, either. 

After I recovered from the initial shock of this, I asked her just what she meant by "marrying better".  She responded that I should have married someone who made enough money so that I didn't have to work. . .  The unspoken second part of that sentence, was, of course,  " . . . and then you could stay home and (choose one): (a) there would not be mountains of laundry in various states of cleanliness in every room of the house; (b) your children would not have to go to the "After School Program" with the unwashed masses; (c) dinner would not come out of the microwave or the slow cooker 5 nights a week; or (d) you would generally be a better mother.  

It was pretty clear.  I wondered fleetingly where she got this notion.  We don't watch any television shows with this theme, and our friends with kids are in two-working-parent situations or single-parent situations.  I asked her what brought this on.  She shrugged and suggested that it was obvious.  

I thought, if only . . .  

If only I had taken a shorter maternity leave . . .

If only I had paid more attention to what she read or watched on television . . .

If only I had insisted that her aunties and uncles NOT buy tiaras for her. . .

If only I wasn't such a failure as a mother . . .

The hardest part, I thought, would be bringing up the whole thing with Arnold.  I didn't want him to question too deeply his decision to study rocks instead of, say, anatomy or obstetrics. When I raised it, though, he seemed surprisingly unsurprised and not offended or hurt in the least. 

"That's our princess," he said with a shrug, and went back to his book.

Yes, that's her.

If only I didn't sort of enjoy being such a failure . . .

  

Fore the Love of the Game

Back in March I broke my wrist.  It happened the day before I was to leave on a holiday to Phoenix to, among other things, play golf.  That in and of itself was heartbreaking, but even more devastating was the news that come May, when most of my buddies start to hit the course here in Name-of-Town-Withheld, I would not be able to play.  Apparently, broken bones take more than six weeks to heal.  I resigned myself to a summer of no real golf, but with the faint hope that I might be able to pitch and putt a few holes now and then towards the end of the summer. Luckily, however,  I got the "all clear" to start golfing in earnest last week.

My relationship with golf has been somewhat sporadic and very much of the "love/hate" variety. I started golfing during my practice marriage and I thought it would be a nice way to spend time with my husband.  Unfortunately, the ex loved to golf with his mother (no, I was not married to Norman Bates, but sometimes it felt awfully close) and they both loved to give free advice, usually during my backswing.   The horror of this experience was surpassed only by that of having to eat tomato aspic and pretend that I liked it for four years - it put me off for awhile.

Then I moved on, and I moved here, to Name-of-Town-Withheld.  Our golf course is, to say the least, unique.  The fairways are sand and it is like walking on a beach.  Golfers carry with thema rectangular mat made of astroturf.  The ball is lifted from where is lies and placed on the mat, and then the golfer takes his or her stroke.  The mats can be used anywhere on the course, although they are not usually used on the putting surface.  It all seemed like a lot of work and when  coupled with biblical-sized swarms of black flies and mosquitos,  and so my interest simply wasn't piqued.

But then, the bug bit me.  It helped that Arnie lived to golf and I had to learn something about it just so we had something to talk about in the summertime.  My friend Sandy asked me to come to Ladies' Night, which she organized at the time and gradually, we started golfing two or three times a week.  We were equally matched (although I have never been able to touch her short game) and it was fun to play together, even though my score on nine holes was typically more than many golfers shot on a full round of eighteen.  

I used to wonder what it was that pulled us back to the course, or kept us going to the end, even after having a particularly crappy round.   It's not like we could play for money, or sit around the club house and brag about our round.  Although it is a bit better now, in the early days I likened my golf game to the one you have with that "guy" you don't want your friends and parents to meet:  the dirty little secret who embarrasses you in public but who, every once in awhile,  and just enough to keep you hangin' around, does something so amazing that your knees get weak.  It's those "knee-weakening" shots that keep us coming back.  They are the 38 foot putts and the 2oo yard drives, the chips into the hole and the second shots that sometimes land on the green.  The more of them we experience, the more we crave, and the more of those shots we have.  It's a vicious cycle.  Indeed, there is only one other thing in the world that, for me, equates to the feeling I get after I smash a ball off the tee box right in the sweet spot, but since my parents sometimes read this, I'll stop there.

If you have a bad game, there is always Hole 19: the club house, where you can indulge in good golf club food and drink.  If it's really bad, you can go to the pro shop and buy stuff, like shoes, hats, gloves and even a new putter, chipper or driver, if the game has been particularly awful.  It's the "flowers and candy" of the athletic world - there's nothing like a new outfit to make you forgive the course and love your game again.

And, when all else fails to motivate me, I think of my golfing pals, who always leave me smiling and feeling like it was all worth it!

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Three Failed Mommies go Camping

Those who know me reasonably well know that I don't camp.  It's not that I can't camp - in fact, I'm  pretty good in the bush.  At a very young age my parents taught me how to build a fire without using lighter fluid or gasoline, how to make a shelter and how to cook bannock on a stick.  Every summer was an incredible adventure of pup tents and fresh fish shore lunches way out in places accessible only on horseback or on foot.  These experiences were truly a gift from my parents and I treasure the memories to this day.  And I firmly believed it when they told me that people who stayed in tent trailers or motor homes in "campgrounds" were not really camping (although I eventually figured out that they were just saying this because we were poor!).

Despite all the fun, I grew to dislike camping as I hit the teenage years.  The only thing worse than being an awkward teenager is being an awkward, unwashed, teenager.  I listened with envy to stories from school mates who had just stayed put for the summer, staying up late, reading trashy magazines and sleeping late in the morning.  Better yet were the tales of going away to summer camps with showers and flush toilets, mess halls and, best of all, no parents.  In any event, as soon as I moved away from home, I quit camping.

Camping is a popular activity in Name-of-Town-Withheld.  There are lakes, campgrounds and wilderness areas to suit those of all camping abilities and it's not hard to understand why people would be attracted to the shores of a lake or the warmth of a campfire, even for just a couple of days.  Still, I have until now politely declined all invitations to do anything that even resembles camping, citing everything from migraines to a burning desire to clean cupboards just to avoid heading to the great outdoors.  Kids, however, can convince you to do many things that you said you never would, and for me, camping is one of those things.

Last year, my friends Deb and Vicky, two founding members of the Failed Mommies Club, and both seasoned field scientists, organized a camping trip, with just mommies and kids.  They invited me and I responded with a diatribe about how much I hate camping.   The reports that came back about the trip were intriguing, however.  They ate and drank like queens, had lots of laughs, and the kids had a blast.  My kids asked my why we didn't go, but I couldn't come up with a good reason.  As I thought more about it, I came to the conclusion that I should be teaching my kids how to build a fire and pitch a tent, and that I need to create the kind of memories for them that my parents gave to me, memories that can come only from spending time together by a bonfire, with no television, DS, DVDs or computers.  This year, when the opportunity came up, I seized it and I am so glad that I did.

I made a trip to Canadian Tire for a new cooler, self-inflating tent mattresses and a new sleeping bag for Daniel.  Between Deb and Vicky, the food and shelter was covered handily and I was put in charge of beverages, which required very little thought or organizational skills beyond how I was going to keep it all cold for two nights.

We had two tents:  The "Princess Palace", for the girls and Deb's new tent, nicknamed "Moon Base Alpha", for the boys and Deb.  

Moon Base Alpha, with its three pods and multiple exits, was the more intriguing of the two, and Janet and Linnea spent the better part of a day, I think, trying to get into what was largely a "Boys Only" zone.  They finally concocted a plan to be the boys' "servants" to gain access to the main Moon Base Alpha pod.  Their duties included fetching things for the boys and providing foot baths (with baby wipes) and foot and neck massages to each of Alex, Daniel and Christian.  Of this, Deb remarked "The feminist in me makes me want to have a talk with Janet and Linnea about why this is so wrong, but the Failed Mommy in me says 'Why bother?'"  As for me, I knew the kids were safe and happy, playing in what I had come to think of as "Failed Mommy Paradise",  so I stomped down my own inner feminist and took the opportunity to indulge in a People magazine. 

Going to bed on our last night, I started thinking that I could really get into the camping thing. The kids said they want to buy equipment and go out for a longer time next year, and perhaps more often.  I was having fun.  Sure, I was very dirty by this point, and I smelled of campfire, pork fat and Chardonnay, but I didn't really care.  I was having fun with my kids and my friends, playing cards, telling stories and making the kind of memories that you just can't get anywhere else.