Joys of Single Motherhood

It's the day before Christmas and all through the house, space heaters are placed, to warm even the mice. The stockings are hung, though the mantel's a mess and I'm still at the office doing nothing at all. The nice plumber has called with his holiday tidings At least a new boiler will cost less than siding... The Ex has announced he's without funds for his half And all I can manage is a half-hearted laugh. This eve' the kids and I'll dine on lobsterish fare And I'll be pretending that I don't have a care. The house is all toasty and Santa will visit We'll leave cookies, he'll eat them and all will be right But I'd still rather be somewhere warm and sunny tonight... This says it all for me about the holidays: http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/12/20/alone_on_christmas/ Happy Winter Solstice!

We have mice and it's not nice. It's not only not nice, it's disgusting. It took us way too long to figure it out. We started finding these strange black rice-shaped things in our napkin drawer. I stopped putting napkins in the drawer or anything else and decided to wait and see. Then one day I discovered what looked like the remains of a tiny, haphazardly organized picnic that had been interrupted by a thunder storm--in that same drawer. Suddenly, I realized that those tiny black rice "things" were mouse droppings. My buddy the handy guy, set traps and sealed up all the openings in the kitchen and voila, the problem was solved. I cleaned all the drawers and cabinets and threw out the old utensil containers and replaced them. Then about a week and a half ago, I was dashing around to get ready for a date and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. There in the bathtub was a frantically scared mouse scrabbling to get up the sides of the tub and escape. I turn

I joined Match.com on the advice of a friend who met her truly wonderful husband on the site. I should add that she lives on another coast and that it may be easier to meet someone wonderful on that coast, but I digress. I paid my money, posted a photo and a long, humorous description of myself, my foibles, likes and dislikes, my magazine subscriptions and the books I've read most recently. Then I waited. I am still waiting. So far, I've had two responses from "favorites". Both wrote back to say that they'd already met someone. Years before, I had been a pioneer in the then-relatively new dating phenomenom known as "the personals". In those days, one wrote an earnest and perhaps somewhat clever note, enclosed a photo and sent it off to a post box number. I met a dozen nice guys and dated most of them, at least briefly. I even posted a personal ad that mentioned nude-sunbathing and my love of NBA basketball. I got 125 responses from a slew of men. Going

Alice Waters is full of crap..organic crap I'm sure..but crap still. One of the things that has been rattling around in my brain for the past few weeks is a food piece in the Times Sunday Magazine that ran recently. The author, a frustrated mother calls in Waters to purge her pantry and fridge of "bad, unhealthy" foods. She may also have called her in because she didn't have any other better ideas for a feature but we'll never know. The author is self-indulgent enough and has time enough apparently, to worry about what her peers would think if they saw the type of foods she has been feeding her two teen boys. To me the lowest rung on the processed food chain is "Bagel Bites". She wasn't buying them Bagel Bites so after I'd realized that it all seemed like whining to me. Anyway, she called in Alice Waters who proceeded to purge her kitchen of all processed foods and then replace them all with exotic organic creations. The boys eat it up for the mo

Do you have a philosophy of child-rearing--either your own or one you subscribe to? As an adolescent I read Dr. Spock's books mainly to anticipate and head off any funny strategies that my mother might find. I also read them to piss her off. Were there other child rearing gurus back then? Back then, when raising kids was known as "child rearing" and you either read Spoke or Ilg and Ames. I still read Ilg and Ames sometimes but only the first 10 pages and only online at Amazon. Their advice is a tiny bit illuminating but mostly quaint and outdated. "Invite the same number of party guests as the age of the child". It makes sense but it's totally unrealistic. Keeping a first birthday party under 25 or 50 can be a real chore. I still remember making two cakes in the shape of trains, I think. No idea why I made two cakes when one would have been enough. Hypo-mania probably. (The video from that party is cringe inducing. My voice is too high, too bright and I am W

I went away this weekend, at least for half a weekend. I left on Saturday afternoon and came back after work today. Staying that extra night meant getting up at 0530 and stumbling into the car at 0600, but it was worth it just for a few more hours of freedom. Getting away these days reminds me of when I was a teenager--the quiet thrill of being alone, with no one to direct you or nag you. Nowadays it's more like no one to dictate a trip to the toy store and no one to carp about today's bag lunch. No one to demand "Green Day!!, Green Day", when I want to listen to Maroon 5 instead. And I can watch whatever I want on television. It's hard to admit, but the freedom to sit and flip between baseball and an ancient episode of Mayberry RFD is also a luxury. A small luxury but still. It takes me about two hours to drive those 100 miles. There's a quick zip up a real highway and then town after town on a mostly two lane road. Once I would have called most of these town

Okay, I admit it, I went looking for trouble. I was sitting on the couch with my daughter last week. I was reading and she was downloading songs from iTunes. I was curious so I asked to hear a Beyonce song. I was taken aback--the lyrics were all about um...having sex. The song was about a young woman who wants to have sex but is rebuffed by her boyfriend--or at least some guy. I was appalled and asked her not to download anymore Beyonce songs. She agreed and that was that. Fast forward to my previous meanderings on girls and growing up too fast. I started thinking about the music that tweeners listen to. Like most old fogies, my starting point is always "how does it compare to way back when?" Frankly, popular music was absolutely awful when I was a tweener. It was before the birth of FM radio and AM was a cesspool of mediocrity. A cesspool of mediocrity that is still taking up many memory cells in my corroding brain. We were subjected to stuff like "The Ballad of Billy J

Years ago my friends with daughters and I used to say "I don't want her to grow up too fast." For me, my concern was focused on clothing. No two piece swim suits and no skimpy halter tops, no stretch leggings, and no cutesie tops with sayings like "Daddy's Little Princess". In short, nothing with even a hint of "prosti-tot" fashion would be allowed in the house. Other than that I didn't think about it too much. Now she's a tweener and surprisingly, I'm still not concerned. However, I am concerned about affording college and retirement considering the cost of clothing at tweener shops. We visited two tweener shops at the mall this afternoon and my wallet is still spinning. Two stores: five tops and one head band=$135.00 on Visa (debit card). Watching my son try on head bands and cheesy chunky jewelry? Priceless. His hair is so long now some of the head bands looked good on him. Got the hair out of his eyes too. For some reason--maybe be

Like most of us, I am not at my best on an early Sunday morning--okay, 8:45 isn't that early--when I stumble down the street to the grocery store to pick up the Times and some Diet Coke. This morning I had on my biking stuff, my Raybans and a grungy ball cap that I prize above all others because it came from an old beau. I was sneaking toward the register when I heard a high pitched voice ask plaintively "Sal, oh Sal, is that you?". When I nodded and recognized this fellow school mom, she added "Or, Mrs. Smith, I guess?" I rolled my eyes behind my sun glasses and waited. She introduced herself unnecessarily--our kids were in both kindergarten and first grade together. During those school years, I'd spent several afternoons from 2:50 to 3:05 chatting with her about the kids and other useless stuff. I remember her and even her son's name. Either she didn't think I'd remember her or she wasn't quite sure it was me underneath the glasses and stai

School has started and mothers everywhere are happy and sad. Happy that the kids are now safely away from 9-3 every day and sad because now the daily homework/sports/lessons grind begins for another year. I am mostly happy so far. For two mornings now, I've gotten up at 0700, gotten myself clean and dressed and then chased the kids into their clothes. They leave at 8:15 for their 3 minute walk to school and I pull out of the driveway at 8:30. The system seems to work even with the additional task of putting together some semblance of lunch for both kids. My daughter likes chocolate sandwiches. I'm waiting for some other mother or perhaps some diligent aid to notice that my daughter eats candy for lunch each day. All right, it's not chocolate exactly--it's Nutella, but despite the "cosmopolite" touch I still consider it candy. I first ate Nutella with fresh banana slices on hot -off -the- griddle crepes--in Paris. Now you can buy huge American-sized vats of Nut

One of the oddest things about being a single parent is how different your life is depending on whether you've got the kids that day or not. My kids often sleep at their father's house one or two nights a week--sometimes more. On those days when the kids aren't at my house, I can leave work leisurely, stop to visit a friend and celebrate the fact that I don't have to cook dinner. For anyone. When I come in the door, the only beings demanding attention are the two cats and all they want is food. After that, I sit and read the paper and savor the neatness of my surroundings and the quiet. There are no giant Crocs lying in the main pathway between the front door and the kitchen. "Hannah Montana" and "The Suite Life of Zack and Codey" are not blaring from the television (I know it's the " Gilligan's Island " of today but it still seems so much worse than the Skipper and Maryanne. Gilligan was certainly a tad smarter than Patrick Starfis

"Age is only a number"--at least that's what the Leading Edge Boom ers tell me. This group represents those born from 1945 to 1957. These leading edge types are the cohort now heading toward the "waste handling" end of the boa constrictor that economists use to illustrate how the overall numbers of the Baby Boom move through the decades. The Shadow Boomers are those of us born from 1958 to 1964. We watched the Vietnam War on television and tend to remember more about Arthur Janov's Primal Therapy than we do about the political climate back then. Today, the Leading Edge Boomers are the ones with children in college or even kids who have already graduated and are living and working on their own. The mothers among the LEBs had their kids early and now they can put their feet up--especially if they happened to choose Mr. Right for real back when they were 19 or 20. To say that I have little in common with these folks is a vast understatement. These are the ri

When I was a kid, an invitation to a sleepover was cause for glee accompanied by much jumping up and down and giggling "oh goody, oh goody, I can't wait". It was exciting. A sleepover invited you to experience a friend's house from the ground up. Different smells, different sheets, towels and blankets, different foods and different rules. The change of routine was positively intoxicating. (I do have one bad memory of a sleepover. It was winter and I was having a sleepover with my cousin, who was a close friend. We watched " Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang" and drank lots of hot chocolate. And we sang "Swiss Miss, instant cocoa, instant cocoa for dogs" over and over and over as we watched the movie. I'm not sure why--that part has disappeared from my memory bank. Then suddenly, I didn't feel so good and then I vomited all over the playroom. It was mortifying even at a relative's house.) I do not find the change in routine intoxicating or even

Divorce is a fact of life in our house. I never did any weeping except in the arms of a male friend and only once. I tend to look at the whole thing dispassionately or at least I try. My kids have two houses, about a mile apart. They have two sets of clothes and two sets of computers, video and computer games and various mysterious Ipod accessories. When one of them forgets something, I hop in the car and go over to the house and pick up whatever is missing. Our money issues are not settled but it's an amicable arrangement. It has to be for the kids. Sometimes I think that just like the marriage was only about the kids, so is the divorce. When it comes to the divorce this seems fitting. I find it ironic that in the end one of the main reasons there was nothing left of the marriage is that it had been focused for too long on only the kids. You sow what you reap. Apart from the financial decimation, I look on the dissolution of the marriage as basically a good thing. Marriages end. P

When I was a kid and my room got particularly messy, my mother's favorite edict was "Clean up your room, it looks like a pig sty!!" I remember there were often books and clothes strewn on the floor and I suppose to her '60's POV it did look downright disgraceful. Now, almost 40 years later, my daughter's room does not resemble a pig sty when it's messy--instead it reminds me of a garbage dump...or at least an old-fashioned dump. With admirable self-control (I think), I do not say "your room looks like a pig sty!" The kid has read Charlotte's Web and most likely would describe in excruciating detail just what is in a modern pig sty. She would go on and on and on and while I tried to drown out the endless chatter, I would most likely be picking up shirts, books, Ipod headphones, Ipod cases, stuffed animals, pants, dirty underwear, empty shopping bags, scraps of cloth from a sewing project from 3 weeks ago, candy wrappers and CD cases. I rationa

Next week I start my vacation from my vacation with the kids. I can't wait. I can leave the house each morning with it relatively neat and tidy and when I come home, it'll be the same. No pillows on the floor, or potato chip fragments embedded in the rug. No cat spitballs puddled on the dining-room table and there will be clean glasses whenever I want one. When they come home I will hear all about what Daddy bought and how gigantic the hotel room was, how big the pool was, how my son ate nothing but chicken "fingers" for a week and how my daughter wishes she could be on vacation forever. I will smile and nod but inside I will be thinking "two more days to school, two more days to school". At that point, their attitude toward school runs hot and cold. My daughter is convinced she's in "the leftovers class". In her mind, this is the class comprised of all the kids who the teachers didn't pick to be on their "teams". The kids who can

It's Sunday and even though it has been about forty years since I went to church regularly, I wonder just about every week about whether my kids utter disinterest in religion is good or bad. As a child each week I'd try to listen carefully to the minister's sermon and try to feel something other than boredom. The connections between these abstruse stories and life were always a mystery to me. The hyms however, touched me on a different level and I still remember many obscure lyrics to even more obscure hyms. When my daughter was born she was baptized a Catholic in order to affirm her identity as an Irish American. My then-husband felt it was important as part of the whole Irish thing and I had no objections. The service was held in the same church where his great-grand parents had married right before they sailed back to Ireland. This was before the priest scandals and also before my father-in-law passed away. It was more for him than for anyone else--to celebrate the circl

I am leaving tomorrow for a brief vacation with my little darlings. We are going to the mountains to see friends and to swim, and to make our annual attempt to get up on water skis. (My attempts to water ski resemble those horrifying videos of prisoners at Guantanamo experiencing a form of torture called "water-boarding" but my pal says I'm exaggerating. Maybe.) My kids are fairly excited about our trip to the mountains but as always they are much, much more excited about their upcoming vacation adventure with their father. He's taking them for a week to one of those crowded places on the shore with big waves and wall to wall souvenir shops. They'll play mini-golf, eat lots of fried foods and come home with tacky tee shirts and hundreds of dollars worth of plastic souvenirs. Most of these highly treasured little tributes to capitalism will have sharp edges or come in tiny little collections. The first three days I will hear a constant chorus of "Hey, where

There are homemade brownies in my refrigerator right now and they are calling to me. Fortunately, I am hiding on the third floor so their siren call is faint. Why are there brownies in your refrigerator if they are so tempting you ask? I made them for my ex-husband's birthday. I swore my daughter to secrecy and made her promise to tell everyone at the birthday barbecue that she'd made them all by herself. My ex dislikes homemade anything--just one of his oddities. I often wondered if maybe he thought I had a hidden stash of strychnine that I might sometime use in his food in a particularly manic moment. The brownies were a smash hit and as ordered, the plate came home empty. But I saved some to take as a gift on Tuesday and now I must resist the call. My father is a baker. There must be a baking gene because while I never baked with him or for him, it seems to be in my blood. I find it relaxing and exciting at the same time. How pathetic. I like to cut corners in Julia Child f

For years I never dabbled in the "get the kids" to eat game. It seemed like a sucker's deal to me. I remember clearly staring at a well-done piece of shoe leather steak as a kid and hearing my mother bray "There are children starving in Biafra, now eat your protein!" (Yes, my mother really talked like that. She still does. I'm afraid I say the same thing--"eat your protein") I wasn't smart enough to realize that there was no connection between my lousy cut of steak and starving kids in Biafra, but my kids seem more geographically astute and more advanced in the study of logic. Does Biafra even still exist? Or is it now part of the Sudan? It doesn't matter. Stupidly, I somehow fell into the "eat your dinner" trap. It was a slow tumble into the pit of nonsense. My kids are thin--way thin. My daughter may weigh 55 lbs now and my son tops out at 44.5 lbs. They're fine. In fact they're built the same way their father and I were

Any parent will tell you that there are certain stages in child development that will just about drive any parent up the freakin' wall. Sometimes those all-knowing little parenting books most of which were written back in the Pleistocene era will hint at an upcoming rough patch, but usually either Mom or Dad ends up experiencing these little patches. Recently, I was reminded once more of the often excruciating paradoxical nature of the "tweener". My ten year old daughter is 17 one minute and 3 the next. She's rebellious one minute and then five minutes go by and she's yelling "where is MY BLANKIE??" I wish I was making that up. I'm sure one of the hallmarks of terrible parenting is having a 10 year old child who is still attached to his or her "blankie". I prefer to think of it as my own little experiment in attachment gone awry, however. Can you blame me? One minute she is howling about her iPod headphones and then she reverts back to year