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Quiet house: Be careful what you wish for…

09/08/2011 By JennyT 3 Comments

I have four kids.  Three teens, one tween.  Therefore, my house is rarely quiet, and even rarer still, clean.

I’m also divorced, so having the house devoid of children happens on a semi-regular basis.  Getting used to that took some time, and I’ll be honest with you:  it was hard.  It still stings from time to time.  Holidays, birthdays…without the kids they almost seem hollow, like a dress rehearsal vs. opening night.

But, life goes on.  Wounds heal, what is strange and unfamiliar becomes routine.  You adapt, you accept, you grow, you change.  The empty weekends slowly fill up with friends, projects, books and sometimes, if the planets are all in perfect alignment…romance.  And by romance I could mean a real date with a human being, or I could mean a pile of Colin Firth movies stacked up on the nightstand.  It’s all relative.

Anyway, I was talking about quiet houses, wasn’t I?  Oh yes.  So, I’ve gotten used to the quiet house on those every-other weekends.  But starting today, my two youngest will be gone for two weeks.  One week at a grandparent’s cabin, then one week at camp.  I know, I know, that’s only two kids, Jenny, you still have another set at home.  But these are the younger ones, the ones who still chase each other, who yell, who play catch with each other in the living room.  The ones who still build forts out of couch cushions and whip the dog into a foamy-mouthed frenzy at 9:00 p.m.

The loud ones.

As I type this, it’s well past noon and the two “big” kids, ages 15 and 17, are still sleeping.

My house is quiet.  And I don’t like it.

My internal clock, the one that goes by the calendar and the weekends marked with a big “K” for when the kids are with me, has been thrown off.  It’s almost as if I can feel the cogs and gears slowing down, trying to figure out this new and unusual burp in the schedule.

Even the dog looks confused.

I’ve already done the laundry, I’ve marinated the flank steak we’ll have for dinner, I’ve picked up the socks and shoes and Gogurt wrappers the boys left for me.  I’ve played my turn on the half-dozen Scrabble games I’ve got going on facebook, I’ve answered a few emails.  I’ve made the beds, made my lunch, cleaned the kitchen.

I reserved a couple of R rated movies at my local Redbox.  Won’t have to wait until the younger two are sleeping to watch them.

I’ve bleached the toilet seats, upstairs and down.  Won’t have to check before sitting for a while now.

Just last night, they were bickering back and forth about something extremely relevant like “I know it was you who took the last green popsicle” or “Mom he keeps standing in front of the t.v.  Can I hit him?”.  I can still hear my words, bouncing off the living room walls:  “I CANNOT WAIT TO HAVE SOME PEACE AND QUIET!!!”.

It’s only been a couple of hours, now.  I’ve had my peace and quiet.

I want the noise back, please.

Find some noise at Jenny’s blog, The Happy Hausfrau, here

Photo from author’s personal collection

Filed Under: Humor, Parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Will work for food

03/23/2011 By JennyT 17 Comments

They started showing up just a few months ago. Sitting on overturned utility buckets, or standing there, facing oncoming traffic. Handmade signs, black ink on cardboard scraps:

WILL WORK FOR FOOD or

LAID OFF, CAN’T FEED MY KIDS, PLEASE HELP or

HOMELESS VETERAN, NEED WORK

There they are, when the busy suburbanites like myself exit the main highway that leads from Downtown to the cities we come from. The cities we live in. There they are, in the bitter cold, the snow, and now the rain.

I see them as I make my way home after work. As I turn right, headed to Costco or PetSmart or OfficeMax. I see them, and yet I don’t.

Some days I make eye contact, try to communicate with these sign holding strangers. “I’m sorry” I want to say.

Other days I feel resentment and yes, even anger. Are you really homeless, are you really a veteran, are you really willing to work? I ask them, silently. Or are you one of those “professional panhandlers”, the guys who are supposedly making a nice living on these corners? Do you kiss your wife and kids goodbye every morning, leaving your comfortable home with your bucket and sign?

“Please help?”  Who helps me, I wonder as I sit there, waiting for the light to turn green. I work two jobs, I pinch pennies til they bleed, I live without so many things. I found myself divorced and broke…and yet I’ve managed to keep a roof over my head and my children are fed and clothed and warm. Help you? Why don’t you help yourselves, like I have?

Then I feel the guilt.  I look at the man standing there in his dirty coat and slipshod boots. I am ashamed by how easy it is for me to judge him.

And then I remember the help I’ve had. The mom who slips me some cash now and then, the friends who just happen to have a gift card they aren’t going to use, the anonymous souls who gave my kids Christmas this past year.

Oh, I’ve had plenty of help.

We aren’t so different, the bucket men and me. All it would take is a big illness, a lost job, a major car repair and maybe I’d find myself without any options other than to stand on a corner with a sign and an oddly dignified detachment from the souls in the cars speeding by.

A few weeks ago, my 10 year old son and I were coming home from Target or the grocery store or wherever. We pulled up at the stoplight, chatting about school and the summer and all of the random stuff you find yourself discussing with boys of that age.

There, to our left, was a man with a sign. He looked younger than me, but it was hard to tell with his neck and chin wrapped up in a scarf and the hood of his coat pulled tight around his face. His sign said:

LOST MY JOB. KIDS TO FEED. PLEASE HELP.

My son, my sweet William, who wears hand-me-downs and eats reduced price lunches at school, who has never flown on an airplane and most likely won’t see Disney World as a child, who plays sports and goes to camp on scholarships…this boy, my boy…

He looked at the man.  He looked at me and said, “Mom.  Give him some money.  Please.”

By some miracle I happened to have some cash on me that day.  Not much, just a few singles, but I rolled down my window and handed them to the man with the sign.

“God bless you, ma’am.” he said.

He already has, sir.  He already has.

Photo used with permission from stock.XCHNG

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Filed Under: MISC Tagged With: , , , ,

Five years

02/09/2011 By JennyT 9 Comments

This year will mark my fifth year as a divorcee. I remember back when the wounds were still fresh, when I used to scour bookstores and online articles for some beacon of hope that one day I would walk amongst the human race again, I stumbled upon a little website.

It was a website for women who had recently divorced. I’ve long since forgotten 99% of the content, most of which gave financial advice, but retained one tiny morsel. It was a quote that said: “It takes the average woman approximately five years to get over a divorce.”

For the first few years post-divorce, I clung to those words like a life preserver. “Five years. You can do it” I’d say to myself on the most arduous of days. “Five years? Ha!” I’d say to myself on my confident days.

As the half-decade mark approaches, I ask myself: Am I over it?

Yes.

And no.

Five years ago I could still look at my ex, still talk to him and maintain some semblance of a “relationship”. A choppy and somewhat chilly one, but a relationship nevertheless. That was before I learned of the affair. Before he tied the knot mere months after the divorce was final. Before he stopped paying child support.

Now, almost five years in, the very sight of his car in my driveway causes a cold dagger to run down my spine. I feel my cheeks get hot and forget to breathe. I am torn between wanting to plead with him to have some compassion, to help support his kids; and wanting to run out to his car like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, blue paint on my face and a flaming medieval weapon in hand. Our communication has devolved into terse, punctuation-free texts and emails. It’s hard to believe we’re the same two people who used to sit on the same side of a restaurant booth and draw pictures of our dream house on napkins.

Five years ago I was a shy, fat stay at home mom with few friends. My world had been my husband and my kids. When I got divorced, I was forced to reach out. The loneliness you feel after the divorce dust settles can be stifling, so you find yourself making friends. Find yourself overcoming the fear of rejection and eventually, basking in the gorgeous warm glow of friendship. I have a support system now that the pre-divorce me could have never fathomed.

Five years ago, I wanted nothing to do with men. The thought of getting married again, hell…the thought of even dating again made me cringe. Since then, I’ve been wavering in and out of the dating scene, even had one serious relationship. That one ended because I wasn’t ready to commit. This year, I’m feeling like committing wouldn’t be so bad.

Five years ago, not a day passed that I didn’t spend at least a few furtive moments dissecting my marriage and its ultimate demise. I used to lay in bed at night and wonder what happened, what I could have done. What I shouldn’t have done. Now, when I manage to stay awake for more than five seconds after falling into bed, I think of things like my future. Things like how proud I am of my kids, all four of them, for how they’ve thrived and grown and survived. I think of what I’m going to do the next weekend. I think about my job working with special education kids and how I might have never found it or them if I hadn’t gone through the divorce.

Am I over it?

I think I’m over it enough for now.

Find more from Jenny here.

Filed Under: Motivate, Nostalgia Tagged With: , , , ,

You call it a blizzard. I call it a break.

12/29/2010 By JennyT 5 Comments

A few weeks ago my lovely city of Minneapolis was smacked upside the head with a big old blizzard. Our weather men, who I’m pretty sure have wet dreams about systems like this, were blathering about it almost a week in advance. “BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES” they screamed, their giant, smooth heads bobbing to and fro with barely contained ecstasy.

And batten down, we did. In true Minnesotan fashion, we all clucked and tittered about the impending Snowmaggedon. As the Big Day approached, the grocery store parking lots were crammed, carts were hard to find and supplies flew off the shelves. The lines were long but chummy. Nothing brings out Minnesota Nice like a natural disaster.

My kids were gone that weekend, off for a few days with their dad. It was just me and my dog and my Netflix (and a couple bottles of three-buck-Chuck merlot). Walter (the dog) and I hunkered down and watched as those first few timid flakes slowly gained confidence and turned into a true white-out.

We watched as the driveway gradually disappeared, as the furniture on the deck was swallowed up in a fluffy white embrace.

People on the news were wringing their hands, worried about driving and cancellations and closures. The weather guys’ friends, AnchorMen and Women, cautioned everyone to stay put, not to drive. The unlucky junior members of the news teams were dispatched to particularly drifty and blowy areas to tell us that, duh…it’s snowing.

The buses were delayed, and then stopped.  Stores closed early, the Holidazzle parade was canceled.  The airport closed.  Minneapolis was snowbound.

Aside from occasional forays outside to shovel a path for Walter to go do his business, I stayed inside. Really, I had no choice, as my front door was soon blocked by a 5′ drift of the white stuff. You know what?

I didn’t mind.

It was quiet and from inside a warm house, it was beautiful. Our hustle and bustle city was a silent, sparkly white landscape. We had been sealed up in a snowglobe and shaken with great vigor by a huge, unseen hand.

For the first time in ages, I sat without guilt. I made popcorn and drank some wine and watched movies without looking at the clock or wondering who had homework or needed to practice an instrument or how much laundry there was to be done.

The blizzard gave me a break.

Of course, when all was said and done and I’d spent a good four hours shoveling and another two days trying to get my truck unstuck, the break revealed a price tag.

But it was a break nonetheless. In a few months this cold, wet kiss from Mother Nature will be a memory and the only breaks we’ll get will be during the random Severe Thunderstorm watches and Tornado Warnings. Those won’t be as quiet, however, they won’t last as long.

And they certainly won’t be as sparklingly beautiful.

Read more of Jenny’s musings here.

photo property of Whitney Hanson, used with permission.

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Of mice and (no) men

12/01/2010 By JennyT 17 Comments

Divorce changes things.

Holidays. Living arrangements. Finances.

Other changes are more subtle. Changes such as the division of household “jobs”. Man work vs. woman work.

Of course, once you are no longer part of a twosome, there really is no division. Suddenly single men must tackle the laundry and bath time and grocery shopping. Women who have been cut loose must figure out things like storm windows, tax time and oil changes.

I thought I was doing pretty well as far as navigating this brave new solo world was considered. I learned how to properly clean drains, how to change fuses, how to winterize a home. I was all “hear me roar, bitches” if you know what I mean.

Until the mice arrived.

At first I was able to deny that there was anything surreptitious going on inside the walls or under the kitchen sink. I’d found a few little telltale droppings but figured that some furry interloper had made a wrong turn and just decided to cop a squat under my sink while figuring out how to get back on their merry way.

But then the signs became too obvious to ignore. More evidence of mice appeared, as if someone had spilled a container of chocolate sprinkles in the cupboards and drawers. My hands were raw from the bleaching and Lysol-ing that were becoming a daily ritual.

And then one night, as we sat in the basement watching a movie, we saw one. A dark, fast-as-greased-lighting little blob running from behind the entertainment center. The kids had mixed reactions: one screamed, one shrieked, the ten year old looked at me and said, “If I catch it, can we keep it?”. My dog, who has the word “Retriever” in his very breed, jumped up on the couch and looked at me with terrified eyes. Add to this scenario the thick-waisted middle aged woman hopping around, arms flapping, yelling “Ewwww! Ewwww!” and the picture is painted.

I couldn’t deny it any longer. We had mice. And as much as I love all creatures great and small, I wasn’t about to share my house with these soiling, copulating, gnawing creatures.

I researched like a madwoman. I was hoping to find humane options, at first, but soon realized that wasn’t going to work in this situation.

Not-so-humane options: Glue traps…I don’t even want to know what sick mind came up with this one. I mean, I want them gone but cruel is cruel, you know? Traditional traps…don’t know if I could deal with hearing random “SMACK” sounds and then having to be the mouse Medical Examiner all winter long. Electric traps…I can hardly pay my utilities as it is.

For the first time in ages, I found myself wishing I had a He-Man to lean on. A partner to handle this icky situation. Someone to look at and say, “Take care of it, honey.” I wanted to be the weaker sex.

But there was a mouse in the house. There would be time for daydreaming and wishing upon far-away stars later. It was time to do some mousin’.

In the end, I had to quite literally pick my poison. Which I did, with a surprising amount of guilt. Apparently all those years of Stuart Little and The Rescuers really did affect me. But when all was said and done, I had been the one who took care of it. I did the dirty work, all by myself.

Even with the shroud of shame over being the Jim Jones of Mousetown around me, I felt ok.

Better than ok. I was proud of myself.

Hear me roar, indeed.

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Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , ,

Thank you, John Hughes.

11/18/2010 By JennyT 12 Comments

The other night, I sat down with my 16 year old son and we watched the iconic 80′s movie “Sixteen Candles”. Although I’m sure he was horrified that his 44 year old mother knew literally every word in the script, he found the movie to be just as I had promised: hilarious. We sat there, on the old leather couch that resides in the room we call the mancave, ate Halloween candy and laughed at Farmer Ted, Long Duc Dong and Samantha’s sister doped up with muscle relaxants on the day of her wedding.

I had made a status update on facebook about it, nothing notable or funny…just “watching 16 Candles with my 16 year old. Best.Movie.Ever” or something along those lines. I was blown away when I logged on the next morning and saw that it had received over 50 replies.

This movie, like so many of the tales that John Hughes wove for us, strikes a chord.

For the folks of my generation, it was like a spokesmovie (pretend there is such a word) for our lives at the time. Sixteen Candles came out in 1984, when I was a junior in high school. Watching it with my son the other night, I felt as though that old couch I was sitting on was actually a time machine transporting us back to the 80′s. My son asked if we all really wore clothes like that, if the music was accurate, if we talked like they were talking. “Yes, yes and yes!” I assured him.

I remembered sitting in a darkened theater, a box of Dots in my hand and my three best girlfriends sitting in the seats next to me. We laughed til we cried and on the way home decided that yes indeed, Jake Ryan was the hottest guy in the world. We claimed Molly Ringwald was the “it” girl of our young generation and tried to decide whom among our real life friends was the most like her Sam, and like Jake’s sexy, mature girlfriend Caroline. We all groaned at how accurately the younger brother had been portrayed and the grandparents? Everyone had at least one set of grandparents just like Samantha’s.

John Hughes gave us so many more movies during the 80′s:  Weird Science.  Breakfast Club.  Pretty In Pink (I’m still searching for my own Duckie, by the way).  Uncle Buck (which contains my single favorite movie quote of all time).  Some Kind of Wonderful.  Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  He finished the decade with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Reading all of the responses to my facebook post, I realized that this one man had made a huge impact on so many lives. From the music that we listened to, to the names we gave our children (I am totally upfront about the fact that my daughter Molly is named after my favorite teen actress), to the actors we still watch today, John Hughes was indeed the storyteller of a generation. My generation.

John Hughes passed away in August of 2009. I remember hearing about it, and feeling as though a favorite teacher had passed away. He hadn’t given us as many gems after the early 90′s, but the gems that he did leave us with are precious indeed. The man who gave us the line, “I’m Buck Melanoma, Moley Russell’s wart” is no longer here, but he left us with characters and scripts and music that remind us of a long ago time in our lives. What a gift.

Thank you, Mr. Hughes.

You can read more from Jenny here.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Humor, Nostalgia Tagged With: , , , , ,

To date or not to date: that is the question

09/13/2010 By JennyT 4 Comments

I’m at that little lull in the divorced woman’s timeline. I’ve been “one of them” for almost four years now, and according to all of the experts I should be just about healed from the anesthesia-free (unless you count merlot as an anesthetic) evisceration that is divorce.

There are a few things which are pretty typical after you pack up the marriage and send it on it’s merry way. In fact, what most people feel during and after a divorce can mirror the Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief almost to a T.

You deny.  “Surely this is a bad dream. I will wake up in a minute and my husband will step out of the shower just like Patrick Duffy did on Dallas. This can’t be real.”

You get mad.   “I worked two jobs so you could finish your master’s degree and we could live the high life and NOW you’re leaving? I don’t think so, buddy.”

You bargain.  “Hey, how about I get back into my gym routine and tighten up my flabby bingo-wing upper arms. Then will you stay?”

You get depressed.  “Well, that was fun. Where did I leave my copy of ‘The Bell Jar’??”

Finally, you accept. And once you accept, you begin to think about life after divorce. Which, if you still have a pulse, means you eventually start to crave the company of the opposite sex. Sometimes you make this step on your own, sometimes you’re pushed, very gently, into it by friends who want you to be happy again.

I did the online dating thing, and despite the beautifully lit, mellow commercials we see from eHarmony and Match.com telling us that they can and will find our missing soul mates, I didn’t like it. In fact I have declared that internet dating is the modern day equivalent to that old fashioned fly tape you’d see dangling from the ceilings of grandma and grandpa’s house. “Put it up there and we’ll catch whatever we can that happens to fly by.” And yes, I know. I know that there truly are people who have met Mr. and Ms. Right on these sites. But I found myself dreading the whole song and dance of online dating. You nudge. You wink. You email. You psych yourself up for the first meeting. Sometimes you like what you see, sometimes you don’t.

I did eventually meet someone, and dated him for a few months. Until he told me he wasn’t “officially” divorced. Oh, and he’d spent a year behind bars.  For domestic assault.  That’s when I decided perhaps I wasn’t quite ready for dating. Besides, I have sole custody of four kids, which leaves me approximately 4 days per month I could devote to manhunting. I opted to get Showtime and put dating on the back burner.

But..I don’t know if it’s the impending Minnesota winter, or the fact that this season of Weeds is not so great. Wouldn’t you know, I’ve been thinking about giving that dating thing another try.

The little tell-tale signs are there…I’m putting lipstick on again.  Wearing something other than my tired black yoga pants when I leave the house. Actually looking at the male gender without feeling disdain and defensiveness.

And maybe most telling of all: I’m getting rid of Showtime.

Wish me luck.

You can read more of Jenny’s blatherings here

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , ,

Judge me not

08/18/2010 By JennyT 15 Comments

The other day, I overheard a conversation about how some mortgage companies may be forgiving past due debt for folks who have found themselves struggling to pay for their homes.

Those involved in this conversation were alternately angry, and then giggling. Angry about their taxes being used to bail out losers who had made poor choices. And then laughing as they joked, “Hey, let’s quit paying our mortgages! We can take trips instead!”. Then they patted themselves on the back for being such good, responsible people. Righteous people.

Their words stung. You see, I lost my house this year. It’s the house that my ex-husband and I bought from my dad fifteen years ago, the house my dad and mom bought when they first moved to Minnesota in the late 60′s. It’s the only my home my children knew.

How did I go from being a content, stay at home suburban mom to being a desperate, single mom of four facing foreclosure? I had a little help.

When my husband left me for a sweet young thing at his office, he was pulling down a pretty decent salary. The divorce was devastating, but thanks to a generous alimony and child-support arrangement it looked like I’d be able to pick myself up, dust myself off and make a decent new life for myself and my kids.

I got the house in our divorce. The house and the three loans on it (original mortgage, HELOC and a refinance, all incurred during the marriage). The house was worth almost $150,000 less than what was owed, but I had a 5 year plan. I was going to pay the loans down and be debt free. I had started looking at the future with optimism instead of worry.

And then the poo hit the fan.

My ex quit his job. The sweet young thing was now his wife, and while he was occupied with the dismemberment and disposal of our marriage, she was busy finishing college and snagging a well-paying job. A job that apparently paid well enough to keep things afloat on their end. So he announced, out of the blue, that his payments might be smaller, and later. Smaller and later evolved into non-existent, and never. Boom. Just like that.

My plans to go back to school were shelved while I scrambled to make ends meet. I watched my near-perfect credit rating plummet as I had to pick and choose which bills to pay. It was the proverbial rock/hard place situation: do I feed my kids, or pay the mortgage? With my “upside down” situation (house worth less than the debt), there was no equity, no wiggle room for modification or refinancing. It was basically hopeless.

After almost a year of negotiating, floundering, pleading…I admitted defeat. Waved the white flag.

My friends and family rallied around me as I mourned the loss of the house and the life that was lived in it. They helped me find a house to rent, one that’s big and comfy and mere blocks away from the “old” one.  It’s been the perfect place for us to start rebuilding our lives.

The past year has been brutal, but it’s also been humbling and filled with hidden blessings. I am not ashamed about what has happened. It doesn’t define me. I went down swinging, and for that I am proud.

So when I happened to overhear that conversation, it hurt. There are thousands of people with stories similar to mine. None of us woke up one day and said, “By golly, I think I’d like to be financially ruined!”. Life can turn on you in a heartbeat.

Don’t judge.

Filed Under: MISC, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Oh, the humanity

08/10/2010 By JennyT 10 Comments

Costco combines two of my least favorite things in the world: throngs of people and said throngs shoving sample-sized bites of food into their gaping pie-holes as they stumble around; with my favorite thing in the world: food. Strangely enough, this is also the same combination of things that make up one of my happiest places, The Minnesota State Fair (aka “The Great Minnesota Sweat Get Together”) but the fair doesn’t make me Hulk out. Not at all.

When I leave Costco, I mean really leave it, like when I’m out of the parking lot that could be called Satan’s Driving School, my blood pressure is sky-high and I have a horrible urge to kick someone. Hard.

And yet I go back. I dutifully renew my membership year after year, even during the lean times when I should probably save my money for therapy co-pays or boxes of wine. I justify it by telling myself that the milk is so cheap! The dog food is so cheap! And the pineapples, where else can you get a pineapple for $2.99!?!? Indeed, where else can I get a tub of hummus the size of a utility bucket and a package of kettle corn with the same dimensions as a twin mattress? No place else on earth, that’s where. Ay, there’s the rub.

I have four kids. Three of whom are teens. We go through at least 7 gallons of milk a week, 2 dozen eggs for sure, more produce than I can even begin to describe. For a single mom with no child support, it’s kind of a no-brainer to expose my fragile nerves to this warehouse of mayhem every week or so. It makes economic sense. I even get my prescriptions filled there (my own “Costco Cocktail” is one Ritalin before going, and one Xanax after. Patent pending.). It’s worth the worn down molars I get from gritting my teeth through the meat aisles.

Yesterday, on my way home from Costco, as I was shaking my head to make sure I got the last of the spanakopita out of my hair (if you’re a Costco virgin, this is the sample given out which has the highest propensity to be sprayed out of the mouths of the meandering, chewing masses) something hit me. No, not a wayward shopping cart, it was a thought. A very sobering thought.

I was thinking about how every person in that store seemed to be hand-picked by some mystery casting director….from the dressed-to-the-nines, deeply tanned senior citizen couple who have decided that yes, right here, smack dab in the middle aisle is the perfect spot to finish our samples, to the bumbling dad trying to maneuver his yacht-sized cart filled with squirming kids through the candy section as fast as humanly possible. It’s like a perfectly-cast film, along the lines of Best in Show or Spinal Tap or any other movie starring Christopher Guest.

I am one of those characters. For all of my bitching and moaning about Costco and it’s shoppers, I’m part of it. Somewhere, someone was unloading their car and laughing to their friend or husband or kids about the slightly crazed looking chubby middle-aged woman who barrels through the store, thin lips pursed, muttering to herself and desperately avoiding eye contact with anyone.

That’s me. I’m one of “them”, aren’t I?

So, just like we face family dysfunction every holiday season, I will face my Costco family again, week after week.  Life wouldn’t be the same without them. I will embrace my Costco-ness.

Maybe next week I’ll even try the spanakopita.

Visit Jenny’s personal site here.

Filed Under: Humor, MISC

The great washcloth debate

07/31/2010 By JennyT 16 Comments

So I was sitting around at my friend’s house, with a couple of my bestest girlfriends.

With my particular group of friends, you never know where the conversations will go. We can start out talking about paper towels and end up in a make-shift group therapy session, tears streaming down our cheeks as we talk about how our moms just don’t get us. This time the topic du jour was the first time you realize that one of your babies has a raging case of b.o., and from that exciting conversational tidbit we somehow ended up discussing washcloths and showers.

I think it started when we discussed how when you first smell that horrible “onion gone bad” odor emanating from one of your prepubescent children, the main thing you need to do (besides offer up some deodorant) is make sure that they know how to bathe properly. Because all moms know, the 30 second shower that most kids take most likely entails them standing under the water, working up a small pouf of lather in their hair and maybe getting the bar of soap wet. So it’s your duty, as someone with a nose, to ensure that they get soap in all of their now-ripe nooks and crannies.

At this point in the conversation, one of my friends turned to me and said, “And I have no idea how you get clean without washcloths, Jenny.”

You know, the fact that my friend knows that I am not a washcloth-in-the-shower person didn’t strike me as odd, as some of you may think. My friendships are kind of a black or white thing in my life. If we are friends, we are FRIENDS. I have very few people in my life whom I would consider mere acquaintances, once we have spent a fair amount of time together we will walk away knowing more than we probably should about one another.

So, when Friend brought up my washcloth issue, suddenly I felt the eyes of the women all alighting upon me. I stammered, “What do you mean? I use soap.” Another friend said, “Seriously, Jenny? No washcloths?” like she just found out that in my spare time I eat babies. I felt instant shame and wondered if perhaps I had dark tendrils of stinky fumes rising from me, ala’ Pig Pen.

I don’t use washcloths in the shower. Maybe at one time I did. I know that when my angels were still in the “bath time” era, we used washcloths with them, I still have the stringy, faded Spiderman and Hello Kitty terry cloth squares as proof of that. It’s not a big deal in my hygienic life, I don’t have some fabric-phobia or some scary Howie Mandelish germ issues. I just don’t use ‘em. I lather up, rinse off.  As far as I know I don’t stink, but believe me, as I walked home from this little Inquisition I felt filthy and dirty. I felt like a RenFest performer, minus the stained green tights.

And worse than that, I started to feel guilt…you see, my children have evolved from Washcloth in the Tub People to No Washcloth in the Shower people. I started to fret that I had passed some disgusting hobo-habit onto my brood. Were they the smelly kids at school?  Were kids secretly whispering about those reeking Jenny bastards?

I’m the first to admit that there are times when one of my darling offspring will settle next to me on a couch and the smell of ass hits me in the nose like a boxing glove. That’s when you employ the “Hey, maybe it’s a good night for a shower” talk. After that, though, no more ass smell. As far as I knew, our washcloth-free zone had the olfactory seal of approval. But then I started to wonder, maybe it’s because we are all used to our stench…maybe it’s like the person who lives in a den of cat urine and can’t smell it anymore…maybe we did, indeed, smell.

So, I did what any rational, insecure, fraught-with-self doubt person would do. I started a poll on facebook. I didn’t get thousands of replies (ok, I got about 20) but the overwhelming majority answered, loud and clear, “NO WASHCLOTH”. There was one person who just answered “Ewww”, which I don’t know was “ewww” to no washcloths or “ewww” in regards to washcloths, so I took that as a check in my favor. Vindication. I felt good.

I felt squeaky clean, dammit. Washcloth or not.

Filed Under: Humor, MISC, Opinion, Parenting

Grab that pendulum, baby. And don’t let go.

07/20/2010 By JennyT 6 Comments

Sometimes I stop and think about my life. This happens most often when I’m trying desperately to put off whatever adult responsibility is screaming my name at the time…oh, what is that you’re saying, Mr. Pile of Laundry? Come clean me? Pffffft. Hold your horses. I have thoughts, dammit.

Anyway. Today I was pondering the funny (funny as in HA HA JUST KEEP LAUGHING AND IT WILL ALL BE OK) way my life has gone from one end of the spectrum to the other, back and forth, side to side, like a metronome perched atop a piano. Tick. Happy. Tock. Sad. Tick. Rich (ok, not rich, how about comfortable?). Tock. Poor. Tick. Married. Tock. Divorced. And so on.

And as I thought about it, I heard that little woe is me song starting up again. Thinking, oh how nice it would be if that pendulum, just once, would stop in the middle. Just to be gray instead of black or white. Let me have that suburban, white picket fence life that we’re all supposed to work towards. Let me catch my breath, and wallow in an average, mediocre, run-of-the-mill life for the rest of my days.

But then I thought: No. No way. I remembered how just about every defining moment of my life has happened when I was immersed in one extreme or the other. I can’t think of a single experience or emotion I have gone through when life was on auto-pilot that has made me who I am.

During the highs, I have made love, made babies, made friends… made decisions that resulted in some of the best things I have in my life.

In the lows I have confronted my demons and I have seen things that made me fight for my life and the lives of my kids. I have firsthand knowledge of how bad things can get, and that is what motivates me to strive for a better existence every single day.

You know what I did in the middle? Transplanted hostas and lilies. Made dinner menus. Folded laundry. No doubt, these things are the potatoes in the stew of life, they provide filler and without them you’d have less substance. But they don’t add the flavor. They aren’t the meat.

My favorite people are those with stories to tell. The ones who, on the surface, look like Average Joe or Mimi, the Stepford Mom. But sit a while with some of them, dig below the surface, and you will find tales of epic proportions. Stuff that will blow your mind. You learn things about these people that leave you wanting to hug them, walk with them, buy them a drink. These people are the ones who stick in your mind and in your heart. These are the people who have spent a good chunk of their lives swinging to and fro. I want to be one of these people.

Of course I will still hang out in the middle sometimes. Because it’s hard to catch up on my t.v. and use my Ped Egg when things are a-swingin’. But with any luck, these visits to blissfully boring will remain brief. And the next time I feel that pendulum starting to lurch one way or the other, I won’t dig my heels in quite so hard. I will grab it, and see where it takes me.

I may even keep my eyes open this time.

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