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I am absolutely convinced that I married the ideal man. Smart, hard-working, loving, and handsome, I know I got a great catch. I am constantly reminded, however, that the ideal man is still a man.
As most girls realize by the time they’re in grade school, boys are dumb.
If a boy or man says or does something wrong (doesn’t call for three days, yanks your pigtails, remarks at the end of the night that wow, your panty lines are really noticeable in that maternity dress, etc.) you can usually chalk it up to their gender. It’s like their Y chromosome is an really X that lacks its fourth leg — the one that houses emotional sensitivity and common sense.
We were headed to Lake Anna for an overnight trip last weekend, so we asked four-year-old Colin to pack his things.
Here is what we discovered in his suitcase:
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The entire contents of his shirt drawer
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Eight pairs of underwear
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A baseball bat
Typhoid Bennett
My kid is a walking Petri dish. I swear he’s been sickish — not enough to stay home, but sick enough to be slightly out of sorts and clingy — for the last two months.
The best part is that I’m catching everything that he brings home, but in exponentially magnified form.
Like any normal three year old, my daughter Serena is obsessed with her birthday. Although she just had her birthday in November, she’s already planning her next one, and talks about it all the time. At this point she’s planning two parties: first an Ariel party and then a Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer party the next day.
Her birthday obsession recently spawned an interesting conversation.
I was waiting for Serena to finish her business on the potty one day when she announced that she would be getting a penis on her next birthday. She pointed to her side, back near her right kidney, to indicate where her new appendage would be.
My hometown is a smallish city in Michigan, population 41,555 at last count. There are no big cities close by; the whole county only has 84,000 people in it.
My town is the world headquarters of a large multinational company, so it isn’t a suburb but it feels like one: the crime rate is remarkably low, people are well-educated, and there are great amenities like parks and a cultural center. In short, it’s a nice, safe place to live and raise a family.
We were at my parents’ house for a week over Christmas, and the town was abuzz with news of three recent armed robberies. Three times in December a woman in a headscarf and sunglasses had robbed various local banks.
The night before we left town someone stopped by with news that the case had been solved. Turns out that the bank robber was a sixty-year-old former librarian and grandmother.
She is also my good friend’s mom.
Baby Bennett (ok, he’s fifteen months old, but he’s still MY baby) and almost-five-year-old Colin had allergy tests this week. The news was good and bad.
I tried the Deceptively Delicious turkey meatloaf last night to mixed reviews. The husband and I liked it, the baby asked for thirds, and the three and four-year-olds only ate one bite each under threat of no TV. At least now they say “I don’t care for it” instead of “Yuck, this is disGUSTing!” so I’m counting it as a victory.
The meatloaf tastes like a “wanna-be” – an ill-advised threesome combining your mom’s meatloaf, a carrot, and four slices of turkey bacon. I’m all for vegan meals and substitutions, but this didn’t quite pass for authentic.
The worst part about the recipe is not Seinfeld’s fault, but I’m willing to blame her all the same. It turns out that cooking bacon in the oven for an hour permeates the whole house with a disgusting, oily pork stink that I fear will take days to pass.
One of my mottoes in life is that “cooking isn’t worth it.”
Some people love to cook. They enjoy the considerable effort it takes to plan, shop for, cook, and clean up after their meals.
I am not one of these people; I lack both the talent and inclination for cooking. Baking is a different story; you throw flour, sugar, butter, and vanilla together and you can pretty much count on it to taste good. Not so with cooking.
Given the choice, I would skip the whole thing, but seeing as how live-in help isn’t a feasible option (Is it bad that I occasionally fantasize about Alice from the Brady Bunch in a G-rated, but disturbingly intense way?) my family is stuck with my limited repertoire of easy-to-prepare old standards — including my famous “Mama’s Crazy Cereal Night™” — that isn’t very exciting or as healthy as I’d like it to be.
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