Category: Humor

Fairies, Bees, and Hearing Crickets

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Some things that drove me a little buggy this week.

I won’t go into how we found camel crickets in my office, and I am not the type of person who will show pictures of them for shock value, but rest assured they are ugly and the size of a small European automobile. Fortunately, I have both a husband and one child up for the tasks of insect removal and abatement.

Beyond that, bugs of a different sort entered our lives recently.

Fairies. Whatever spectrum fairies are on, my daughter is right there while I’m light years away. My daughter floats about in whimsy while I practice the darker arts of humor and eating kale for my health.

“I lost a bet today, Mama.”

I ran right to my shelf of parenting books and looked in all the tables of contents. Nothing. Not even in What to Expect When Your Chidren Come Home From School and Make Open-Ended Declarations That Give You Ulcers.

I was forced to wing it. “What bet was that?” I asked while thinking Please don’t involve poop, underpants, sassing staff, eating scabs, Texas Holdem, or Bitcoin.

“Well, this girl in my class, F*,  wrote a message to a fairy. We made a bet that if the fairy responded, I would believe in fairies. If there was no response, F. had to stop believing in them.”

Are not most deeply-held belief systems easily tossed aside if wagers are lost?

Lo and behold, F’s fairy DID respond in some fashion. I’m not exactly sure how. I wasn’t paying very close attention. In my defense, it takes my daughter hours to get to the point of a story. Also, I was focused on choking down some kale.

But she did say, eventually, “Now I believe in fairies.”

And I thought that was it. You know, cute story.

But, no, there was an epilogue:

“And now I want to contact a fairy and have them come and visit.”

Look, I’m not one who will yuck someone else’s yum. You wanna wear butterfly wings and sparkly shoes and build gauzy forts for tea parties? Go nuts. But this? An ongoing pen-pal relationship where I’m essentially stomping around in a gleaming world of marshmallows and unfettered joy? This is like the tooth fairy on steroids – and I’m the parent who, when one of my boys lost his second or third tooth (again, I wasn’t paying close attention), I completely forgot until three seconds before he woke up. I had no cash, so I scribbled “Way to lose a tooth! – T.F.” on a Post-it and stuck it on a can of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles, which I put on the kitchen counter because I knew that shoving that under his pillow would completely ruin whatever magic was left in this dismal exchange.

This did not bode well for a penpal relationship. I hoped that she would forget. She often does because she is five and fives can lose interest in things.

Most fives, that is.

Yesterday, she was pretty mopey in the morning, which is unlike her.

“What’s up, Boo?”

“I’ve been waiting for three days for the fairy to show up.”

“Did you leave her a note?” I asked.

“I left her something in a box on my dresser.”

Now, again in my defense, this child is constantly crafting stuff out of things she pulls from the recycling and putting it on her dresser, so I had no idea this was something different. I went to look. There was a Post-It(!) on a bedazzled Band-Aid box that read “To fairy.”

Inside was a cherry tomato.

“She didn’t take the tomato!” My daughter was as dismayed as one can be.

“Well, some fairies prefer sweets, especially with first contact. Let’s try that. And give her a few days. Maybe she’s busy. It’s fairy tax season.”

Parenting achievement level: Three’s Company.

So my daughter unwrapped a mini-Snickers – ok, where did that come from? – and put it in the box/portal to the fairy world.

Like any fair-to-middling mother, I ate the chocolate after she went to school and wrote back, grateful that she has not yet figured out how to do handwriting comparisons.

Not sure what the yellow blobs are there – I’m guessing she was doing some CSI-level work on this.

She was thrilled and wrote back immediately.

Can you guess which line she asked me to write because she was eating cherry tomatoes and didn’t want to mess up the paper.?

 

I’m afraid this will continue for a while. Wish me luck in this strange new territory for me.

On to bees. This past week, my boys participated in the National Geographic Bee, a great activity for these two, the factoid version of hoarders. They really only learned about the competition a few weeks ago, and from what I can tell spent most of their time prepping by memorizing the Yakko’s World song and singing it in slo-mo. For hours on end.

But apparently they’ve been actually prepping and got fairly far along in the school-wide competition, with one making it to the final round. Not bad for some fourth-grade first-timers.

We had the privilege of watching, and I have to say that if their nerves were half as racked as mine, they didn’t show it. They were poised and present. We were proud parents.

They comported themselves with dignity, managed their disappointment, and said their only anger was that they have to wait a year to compete again.

And while I was more than expecting that they would go on to another activity, the very next night they were quizzing each other on world geography facts.

Talk about a bee in your bonnet!

I wish you well and I wish you a dearth of camel crickets.

 

* not her real initial

 

It’s a Pot Roast, Bobby Flay

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Before we start, yes, I know that I should appreciate that the kids want to spend time with me because they won’t always.

And no, I’m not fun at parties.

Shall we begin?

We don’t have a lot of activities that all five of us enjoy. It’s damned near impossible to find a movie we all like. Board games rarely straddle the age gap between the kids, never mind interest both me and my husband. I tolerate am happy sitting and watching them play, but that’s not as interesting (or as good parenting) as actually participating.

Incidentally, they feel this way about swimming, too. I like swimming. I do not like swimming with them. “Swimming” with them means watching them do handstands and/or goofy jumps off the diving board, or getting splashed, or being pulled into never-ending races across the pool. Most often, though, swimming with them means being used as a flotation device. In the base case, swimming is not so much a group activity as it is an unwieldy location in which to perform Stupid Human Tricks while surreptitiously picking bathing suits out of our various crevices. (Each picking one’s own suit out of one’s own crevices, pleaseandthankyou.)

But we do occasionally find ways to spend time together that don’t involve me forcing everyone to do their chores.

Because I’ve announced my impending spontaneous combustion if I had to listen to one more kid show, we’ve all bonded over mini-marathons of various Food Network shows.

Sometimes it’s Chopped. We try to predict who will be victorious while simultaneously trying to determine what we’d do with that accursed mystery basket. (My typical answer: throw it out and order a pizza.)

Sometimes it’s Bobby Flay in some competition or another. That’s pretty much what he does. The man has racked up thousands of hours of competition experience. It’s a real edge.

We talk about that

“He loves competing that much,” my husband said. “Wouldn’t you?”

I would not. That’s why I’m not an Iron Chef. That and I can’t cook geoduck 10 ways.

Heh. Geoduck.

We noted Flay’s ubiquitous presence on Food Network, his confidence, his ability to truly respect his opponents without knocking them down (unless they trashed talked him excessively, in which case he was more sensei than anything else.) It was fun to see how he put his “spin” on things and how he would take a mistake or a miscalculation and make it work.

We turned that into various life lessons, which, as I’m sure you can guess, went over with the kids like a big ol’ plate of geoduck.

But some of the Lessons from Food Network stuck – mostly newly acquired vocabulary. My kids now critique their dinners. Terms like “Flavor profile” and “Balance” and “Presentation” and “Not enough acidity” all bandied about over their plates of chicken nuggets.

But. BUT – the other day, we went out for dinner, and the Son who never met a plate of macaroni he didn’t choose over all other options –

ordered a burger…with a fried egg on top.

Then. THEN, guys…

When we got home, he asked to cook with me – this is tenuous, of course, because when kids ask to “help” that usually means “do something for 3 seconds, make a mess, then leave and take credit.”

He wanted to make pot roast. Pot. Roast.

I purchased the meat. He seasoned it (“More salt!” I insisted. He was stunned, but listened.) He watched me brown the meat. He prepped the vegetables. I taught him how to dice them (“evenly”) using a sharp knife (“carefully!”)

He sautéed the carrots and celery and potatoes. He added the tomatoes.

We didn’t have a dutch oven, so we used our crock pot. I worried about the timing so I gave it an extra 30 minutes which was, it turns out, was 30 minutes too long. I didn’t say anything about how overdone the center was (I swear to God, I am the only person alive who can overcook something in the crockpot.) However, my husband, i.e., Sir Meats-a-Lot, mentioned gave a nice Ted Talk on the proper cooking time and temperature of all meats ever.

As one does.

To celebrate Son’s first real culinary achievement, he asked if we can eat while watching a movie, so we dined a la tv tray.

Arguments about the movie started. Their vocabulary for that is almost as sophisticated as their newly acquired Words That Express How Gross My Cooking Is. “I don’t want to watch that. It’s stupid,” met “I don’t want to watch that, it’s boring.”

It’s like the jury panel for Cannes, n’est-ce pas?

We decided on – wait for it –

The Food Network.

The pot roast was good. Not in the “oh, my child, Precious Be He, made this,” but good on its own. For purposes of humor, it would be funnier if it had been better than anything I cooked. Even funnier if it were awful. It was neither. It was solid. Which means praise had to be carefully meted out because this child is convinced the world blows smoke up kids’ asses. Which it does, right or wrong, all too often. (See: participation trophy.)

He was quiet.  If a person could lurk from a couch behind a tv tray, he would have been. Watching. Tracking how many times we went back for reloads. (A lot, as it were. We like to eat and it was better than a lot of the crap I’d been making the last few weeks because I’m too tired to do much beyond unwrapping things.)

He didn’t look happy.

“You ok?” I asked. That’s my “What’s Wrong” 2.0.  The old version too often glitched and got an automated “Nothing” response no matter how often or gently I input it.

“Yeah.” He always says yeah. It takes a parent of unusual skill to determine the underlying meaning. In this case, his eye roll, sigh, and angry voice were subtle clues that actually was not ok.

I obviously have a participation trophy in parenting.

I waited. I’ve learned any noise from me will startle the confession back into its hidey-hole.

He spoke. “I didn’t do much.”

Sweet boy has been equating cooking, “real” cooking, with panicky, fast-paced, intense, beat-the-clock, chop-til-you-drop movements and unusual ingredients and stress.

He wanted to cook until he was exhausted and sweaty, then have us be his panel of judges.

If only the Food Network had a show “Clean My Room with Bobby Flay!”

I’m putting this here because I did not take a photo of the pot roast, or of us swimming. Or Bobby Flay. I suppose I should call this “food for thought.” No?

Month in Review: July Inside of July

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“My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.”
– Rick Bass

This is my place now.July within July. Lots of soul-searching and reflection while trying to find ways to contribute to society that are fulfilling and whole.

No big whoop.

Of course, all that mid-life reflection is wedged in between summer’s full-frontal parenting. I can dive deeper once the house is a little more quiet and a lot less fun in a few weeks.

July was a month of exploration and the thrilling reminder that spending time with true friends is easy and honest. Don’t you just love it when spending time with people is untangled and so full of laughter that the joy is like another guest? Cheers all around – I am raising a nice glass of harmless, sexy rosé.

Finished the Blanket of Neverending Cussing for my daughter, who is thrilled with it. I started a shawl using this fabulous yarn. I’m using the Boneyard Shawl pattern, which seems appropriate if not a little too on the (rotted) nose.

Other than that, it’s been a lot of staying in the moment except when children or dental pain  act up. Then I try to stay in any other moment but THE moment. More on that another time.

Here are some things I enjoyed in July:

I like the process of cooking much more now that I have time and energy due to some volunteering positions coming to an end. I have a subscription to Cook’s Country, which has led to nothing but clean plates at the table, which is honestly a little surprising considering that I have one child who spent several years only eating beige foods with the occasional not-found-in-nature neon orange food. May I recommend the bacon-wrapped chicken?

I’m likely having some sort of midlife crisis presenting itself as a combination of severe writer’s block (meaning I have no engaging ideas) and the ticking clock that, as Lin-Manuel Miranda put it makes me at least want to write like I’m “running out of time.” I will never be a young writer at this point. In many ways I’m 20 years behind, and my life has been a collection of minutia and silly nonsense and time sucks that I don’t have a lot of great stories to tell at this point. But I do have a good sense of the mundane, a fairly good voice, and am ready for some adventures. All the right ingredients for something. Perhaps bacon-wrapped chicken.

Is it possible that Lin-Manuel Miranda is my patronus? Am I doing that wrong? I’m fascinated by intensity and giftedness and I like how it’s presented as a design feature here.

My heart pounded when I stumbled on this article on creativity and “fitting in.” For me, the urge to create is sometimes in a war with the sense of feeling alien. When I was younger, an author told me that writers often feel like they see the world differently than most people. That kept me writing and kept me from feeling like a complete freak. Now I embrace the complete freak I am and worry very little about fitting in while handling the extra-terrestrial bass line of my days.

I had the privilege of reading books written by acquaintances this past month. There’s something about reading pieces by writers I know that reminds me of the sheer act of bravery it takes to put out one’s writing out into the hands of others – especially fiction, the genre I believe renders the author most naked and vulnerable. To Christy and Helen, so much applause and thank you for the words you both put out into the world. Beautiful work!

Speaking of beautiful work, there’s this poem. I want to rip it open and crawl into it and zip it back up so that it cradles me against a cold night.

Then, on a somewhat lighter note, if you have 10 seconds, you may like this blackout poem by Austin Kleon.

I’m on a poetry kick these days. They are watercolor and they are anchors and they are glorious economy.

Glorious and terrifying and not poetry was Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Hits a little too close to home these days.

I finished the second season of Liz Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast. I particularly loved Michael Ian Black taking no bullshit from an improv artist and producer. It seemed reasonable to try out Black’s How to Be Amazing and now, just like that, I have new favorite podcast. M.I.B. is charming, bright, and four episodes in I’m finding him to be an excellent interviewer.

Game of Thrones returned and we actually sprung for HBO because I got tired of waiting months and then binge watching. Doing it that way feels like scarfing down an entire bag of Doritos. By the end of it, you’re a little queasy and yet you feel like you’re still missing something (in the case of Doritos, it’s probably your sense self-worth.)

HBO also gives John Oliver (thank goodness) and The Defiant Ones. Fascinating stories, with a hefty dose of misogeny in Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s life stories. People aren’t all one thing or the other, are they? Yet, sometimes we want them to be all one thing — John Oliver.

@Midnight is going off the air this week. This is one show that almost always makes me giggle in that “ooh, that’s naughty” kind of way. It’s the same sort of giddiness that all 13-year-olds feel when they hear their first silly parody song. So I thank @Midnight for being the Weird Al of late night television. And I mean that in the best way possible.