A Hair Do And An Elbow Don't

Laura's elbow in a happier time.

Wednesday night at swim practice, Laura had her arm fully extended on a stroke and the kid in the next lane ran into her hand, jamming her outstretched arm. She says she saw her elbow bend way the wrong direction. She says it was sickening, and I can well believe it. It hurt a lot and she got out of the pool. But she was moving it and didn't seem to be too distressed. We just had her ice it and I told her she'd rest it the next day. She skipped swimming last night, but her arm wasn't feeling any better, even with rest and ibuprofen. She took to wearing one of her circle scarves as a sling.

So, like any concerned mother, I went to get my hair done this morning. I told Laura she could sleep in and skip school, but I needed to get in for my foil and cut, because that appointment was hard to get, and with the holidays upon us, the other matrons were gonna be all up in there, taking all the morning time slots and drinking all the cucumber water.

Hurr

So my lady did her thing, which takes about three hours, and then asked if she could hot roll me and take some pics for her Pinterest board, so I was like, okay, so she put a bunch of rollers in my hair and when she was finished, I looked like a Judd cousin. I have some curls, but they're not big blousy curls like she produced. And I resolved that I needed a date night, because that hair needed to be out and about.

Then I went home and Laura's elbow was not really in any better shape than before, so we got Hank and went to the children's urgent care and were seen quickly. They xrayed her and said that nothing is broken, it's probably just sprained, and it's hard to determine the extent of soft tissue damage with xray, but nothing is swollen. They gave her a sling and told her no sports for a week.

As he was ushering us into the first room, the male nurse nodded towards me and said to Laura, "Is this your sister?" I was like, oh please, and Laura explains, "No, she's my mom." And he chuckled and I kind of rolled my eyes, but, you know, appreciatively. It was the power of the hair!

And as we were wrapping up, I got a text from my friend. She was like, "How did Laura turn out? We are heading there because Harrison's cousin hit him in the head with a hoe."

Yikes!

So we go out into the waiting room and there is Hank's buddy Harrison, looking a bit wan and clutching a paper towel to the back of his head. It was clear there had been a lot of blood. My friend looked a bit wan herself. So by then Matt was there and the other dad was there and we had a pleasant little neighborly catch-up around our injured children. The intake nurse was reassuring them that even minor head wounds bleed profusely, and the dad was like, "Yep, it's not our first time at this rodeo."

Harrison got five staples in his head and is okay.

Then we went back home, and Matt went back to work, and I was still planning to go out when he got home tonight. Then something got in my eye that I was super allergic to. I have no idea what it was; I don't really have a lot of problems with allergies. But it itched and then swelled up, and I took a benadryl, which made me feel instantly drowsy.

So Matt came home and I'm like this weepy, puffy-eyed, sleepy Judd cousin with fantastic CMA hair, and I was like, "Let's just eat this pizza you got for the kids and stay home." Done. 

Now I'm stretched out on the couch and this hair is like the desert rose in the poem, born to blush unseen. And that's a Friday for you.

Around here, people are starting their vacations tonight, because the kids are out of school all next week. Y'all?

Edited to add: OMG, remember when I was bald? That was a thing that happened. Anyway.

Saturday Check In

Don't just stand there, bust a move.

Hey. It's Saturday night! I'm blogging every day!

This morning Hank had one of his many graduations in karate. This is our third one since he started in November. I decided it was time for Matt to get a turn taking him to the belt ceremony. They set off for that about 9:30 and I went back to bed for two hours. I was just toting along a sleep deficit all week long. I've gotta do better with that, because when I'm putting all the pieces together--eating well, exercise, enough sleep--I am feeling bulletproof. Like, better bring kryptonite. But when one of those pillars gets shaky, I notice a slight but definite degradation in the state of affairs around here. Okay, so I slept in.

Then in the afternoon, I took Hank to a birthday party in a park in the old town part of Norcross. Living in a homogeneous suburb as we do, I forgot that within easy distance are these places that are still like small-town Georgia. Like with a real little downtown clustered around the rail depot, red brick main street, and beautiful old houses. You just don't see that in the Atlanta burbs. It was refreshing. I definitely want to go back, even though it was twelve miles from my house. It was a great playground too.

Hank had a great time. But he always has a great time. There was some kind of dancing game, which was awesome, and a piñata (awesomer), and a cake that looked like a boombox. The speakers were waffles. The knobs were oreos. We all admired it.

Those Boden shorts are on their third year.

Then we came home, Hank falling asleep on the way. When he does that, I just roll down all the windows in the car and leave him in the garage.

The weather could not have been more gorgeous all day. Just perfect.

Then in the early evening, Matt and I played tennis with the Hamiltons while Laura rode herd on the kids at the playground. They beat us terribly, but when we swapped wives (swingers' tennis!), it was much more competitive. Then we had pizza at our house and talked about the game biz. Then I gave Kelly one of my Tropicana roses in a Red Stripe beer bottle, which makes an excellent bud vase. Then they left, Matt went downstairs to work, and I came in to write to you.

My Tropicana roses are bananas. I don't know what's gotten into that bush. It is just busting out and making all the rest of creation look bad.

Now you are up to speed. Yes, I know you didn't want to know any of this on a Saturday night, but I am serious about this blogging every day thing! Super serious!

Love to you.
b

Other People's Housekeeping

So Laura has only been back to school a few days, but she's made a new friend in her class, and on Friday afternoon, the girl's mom called me to invite Laura over. They're just one subdivision away, so I was over there dropping her off lickety split. The other mother was very friendly, outgoing, great. We chatted on the driveway for a minute and then I drove away.

When I came back for the pick-up, I stepped inside. I was regaling the mom with tales of our basement project (yes I'm talking about it with everyone), and saying hi to the other members of the family. There are three kids in the family and a couple of those tiny dogs that always seem to be wet on some part of their bodies. So while I'm chatting and trying to be all getting-to-know-you, my eyeballs are magnetically drawn to look at the staircase, which is right in front of me, facing the front door. It was a stair with hardwood steps and white painted risers. What I couldn't stop ogling was a black dirt stain in the middle of each riser, as though months (and years?) of feet had kicked the riser on the way up. I thought, this is totally an instance of how you sometimes don't see your own dirt, 'cause there is no way she wouldn't be scrubbing that right this minute if she knew how it looked. I was trying to pay attention to our convo but my neck wanted to swivel around and look at the stairs. I longed for a magic eraser and a moment alone.

Anyway, we said our fond farewells and then I was in the car with Laura. She said what a great time she'd had with her new pal. Then she said, "Their house is really messy though. It was kind of hard to be there." And then I'm all ears, but I'm trying to be all casual and not lead the witness, and I want to say DID YOU NOTICE THE STAIRS?? but I also don't want to be snitty, but I am hoping simultaneously that I'm raising a child who is observant of these things, even though it is not a huge deal, and so on. So what I decided to say was, "Oh?"

And she said, "Yes, we were making cookies in the kitchen, and it was kind of dirty, and Mrs. D was using a dustbuster to catch fruit flies out of the air."

I said, "Wait, she was doing WHAT?" And Laura described how her friend's mom was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a hand-held vacuum, like a butterfly hunter with a net, turning and spinning this way and that, jabbing into the air with her suction wand.

Y'all, I laughed this cleansing laugh that started deep in my belly and bounced off of the sky. It rumbled over the hills and awakened tawny deer nestling in the woods, my laugh did.

Just picturing it, man!

Then we were back home. I told Laura, "Okay, do it again, act out what she was doing." She assumed a half crouch, with the turning in a circle, the crinkled brow, and the semi-fearful jabbing at the air. And she said "Vrrm! Vrrm!" to be the vacuum cleaner noise. Vrrm! Vrrm! Jab jab. Vrrm vrrm!

I wonder if that even works as a way to rid one's living space of fruit flies?

As we say down here, BLESS HER HEART. I want to spend more time with this woman. I think her housekeeping needs work, but I really like her. She has a certain joie de vivre that I want to get next to. Just a hunch.

Vrrm vrrm!

Oh, How Nice for Him

My neighbor Conspiracy Guy's daughters come to my house every day.  They are 6 and 4 and I call them the Foster Children.  They usually show up in the afternoon and stay until I'm ready to feed my children supper.  I am of two minds about this.  On one hand, I like having them around, because Hank loves to play with them and it means less of me sitting on the floor playing Legos.  On the other hand, they do require looking after, and they are not the most charming, lovable children.  I'm sorry but it's the truth, bless their hearts.

Now that their dad is home schooling them, they do not miss a day coming over.  The other afternoon they came in and I said, "Hey girls, what have y'all been up to today?"  The older one said, "Doing school, and waiting for it to be 4 o'clock."

I said, "Why, what happens at 4 o'clock?"

She said, "It's when Daddy says we can come over here. Or sometimes it's 3."

So we're on the official schedule.

Just now, the girls and Hank were playing a loud game in the living room and I said, "Hey, if you want to be that noisy you need to play outside, or, hey, I know!  At the girls' house!"  The older girl said, "We can't because Daddy's on the phone and then he's going to sleep."

How awesome for him. 

Actually, there have been many, many times where they have mentioned their dad being asleep during the day.  Sometimes it's that they need to stay out of the house, but sometimes they're trying to get Hank to go play with them over there while Daddy naps. Uh, no.

So I sort of just want some reciprocity.  In my uncharitable moments (which are many), I think, "Wow, it must be great to have me living so close by."  It must be lovely for him to have a couple of child-free hours every day.  But I wouldn't feel at ease with Hank being in his care for an equivalent amount of time.  Also, it's like these girls are on little rubber bands.  If I send them home and it's not actually dark, they are back in about fifteen minutes.  Or I'll see them just wandering around outside.

It's not that I think anything bad is going on over there, I just don't think there's much of anything at all going on over there.  Conspiracy Guy seems like a sadsack who has never been that into the stay-at-home dad thing.  And why is he so tired during the day?

Odd.  I mean, we are way past the normal limit-setting negotiations that you undertake in normal social life with non-odd people.  It's all complicated by the fact that in other ways, like helping us with our trees, he's a good neighbor.

That is all. I just needed to work through a snitty moment.  Thank you for your attention.

No, How About YOU Come Get The Kids?

When other moms do not obey the secret rules that govern our tribe, it makes me have to send snippy text messages to my sister and then compose blog posts about it.  And then nobody wins.

The other day, Laura had plans to play at a friend's house and then have her for a sleepover at our house.  This girl is new in school this year, having moved down from the north part of the county.  She is very sweet and Laura is in love with her.  New Friend's mom was going to pick Laura up and take her to their place for a couple of hours, then I was going to retrieve both girls in the early evening for the sleepover portion.

That morning, the mom left me a voice mail explaining that she had to go, unexpectedly, and do something at work, so she couldn't come get Laura to play, and that they still wanted to have Laura over, but that her husband "isn't good with directions" and couldn't come get her.  I texted the mom and said I would drop Laura off.

Yes, you're saying, there are too many parts of this plan.  I should have canceled the non-sleepover portion, but Laura really wanted to visit her friend's house, and we got carried away.

So Hank and I drive Laura over to her bud's house and I make polite chit chat with the dad.  He says his wife will be home any minute, and I think, "Great, so she can drive the girls over later."  Because in my mind, my doing the drop-off meant that we would swap places and she would bring them for the sleepover portion of the evening.

You see,  most everyone I know obeys the commandment: Thou Shalt Share the Labor of Child Transportation.  We never talk about it, but everyone spends so much time shuttling kids around, you try and minimize the driving for your fellow moms when you can, and you expect the favor will be returned to you.  You automatically divide up the transportation when organizing playdates that require driving, you rotate collecting kids from after-school activities, etc.  Fine.

The way this works out though, since it's the South, is that we can't be exactly frank about it all the time, in a "You do this and I'll do that" way.  To be in truly top-notch compliance with the unwritten code, you have to volunteer to do all the driving and act like you want to and you don't mind, in fact you would enjoy it.  Then you count on the other woman's good breeding to rescue you, because she will insist that no, she wouldn't dream of your doing that, and she'll just swing by your house on the way to somewhere and it is not a problem at all.  So it gets divided evenly, but only because you both practically begged each other to get to do all the driving yourself.

Yes, it seems indirect and complicated, but I know women who excel at this maneuver and have turned it into a form of beautiful theater.  The mom of Hank's carpool buddy and I once performed an impromptu play entitled, I Beg of You To Inconvenience Me, It Is No Inconvenience, I Promise.  It concerned one trip home from preschool, and it was acted out over two phone calls while we were in separate vehicles on a rainy highway.  Oh my, the protestations! The highs and lows of emotion!  She is a true artist.  When it was over, we both felt the satisfaction of a job well done.

Of course, with close friends, you can dispense with some of the ceremony.  I can call Normal Neighbor or Pretty Neighbor and be like, "I'm lying on my dining room bench and I have no intention of moving.  Can you get Laura from chorus when you get your kid?" But with new friends and acquaintances?  This throwing-yourself-on-the-grenade-of-child-transport is required.

Which brings me back to Laura's new friend.  So Hank and I take Laura over there and then we run our errands and doodle around purchasing pumpkins and when we get back home, I am tired.  The radiation treatment isn't slowing me down much, but it does some.  And I think the daily car trips to go get treatment have made me a little, um, sensitive to driving.  As it rolled towards the time when I'd said the sleepover could begin, I thought, "Surely other mom is going to volunteer to bring the girls over?"  I decided I would text her to jog her into action.  So I said:

I better come get those girls. Are they about ready?

By which I meant, why don't you drive the girls over here?  And to which she was supposed to respond, "I'll run them over there."  But what she actually responded was:

Yes they r playing outside.

Uh oh.  She missed her line.  Now what?  I try a more direct approach:

Okay, Hank and I will saddle up. 

Now, that meant, "Okay, I have a four year-old who I have to load up and bring with me and we haven't been home all that long and I'm tired and also I'm not sure my daughter can be friends with your daughter because it's too hard to turn left into your subdivision and you have no small children so could you please get into the car?"  Could I have been any clearer?  But that message was not clear to her, because she did not respond at all.

Then, Reader, I felt annoyed.  I am not proud because it was not a lovely emotion.  I am breaking the code by confessing it here to you.  But I texted my sister:

I am in a text-message game of chicken with another mom over kid drop off.  She is not getting the hint.  She's breaking a secret rule!

Then I waited about five minutes and then Hank and I really did saddle up and go over there.  I was fuming slightly the whole way.  Hank and I stepped into their foyer to wait while the friend got her stuff, and that's when the mom told me that their son was also having a sleepover, so they would have a child-free night, how wonderful!

Then I was truly annoyed and envious, and feeling like a super, robo King Kamehameha bitch on top of it.

Then I took all the kids and went home and we had a perfectly lovely evening.

I should say that the little girl is a doll and the mom is a nice lady.  I'm sure I will come to like her.  But, you know, the secret rules.  The secret rules!

I Raced Right in To Tell You

Laura just came home from Frenemy Neighbor's daughter's birthday party. Her goody bag contained a full-sized bar of Ivory soap. Discuss.

I'll be back to tell you the whole story of this party later but right now I'm laughing too hard.

Bad Educational Choices

For the moment my BlogHer pictures are still resting comfortably on my camera. So I will clear my throat by telling you this:

OMG. This morning I had a front porch convo with my neighbor Conspiracy Guy. You know, the slightly crazy, slackerish stay-at-home-dad whose daughters, my Foster Children, are at my house all the time?

I do mean all the time. They are here right this second.

So Conspiracy Guy had some news to share. It is this:

He is homeschooling this year. His girls are entering Kindergarten and 1st grade, but he is keeping them home, as he explained, to save the $14,000 in tuition to the Wingnut Academy they attended last year, as well as the gas money he spent in transporting them to and fro.

Let me pause to say that I know there are countless top-notch parochial and private schools in this country that do an awesome job of molding young minds. Wingnut Academy is not one of those.

I also believe there are many homeschooling parents who are doing excellent work and turning out brilliant little omnivores of knowledge. I know some of them. Reader, Conspiracy Guy will not be one of those.

Am I being judgmental? Yes, and totally right. Having interacted with this family for four years, I am pretty sure that he will not put in the time, gumption, and wits required to do a good job at this. It is a bad choice. Is it a worse choice than the Wingnut Academy? Yes, I think it is.

And because I can take a sort of joking tone with him, during this little discush about tuition and money I said, "You know, the local public school is excellent, free, and they pick up on the corner." I wrapped this in a big smile. He acknowledged this but said that, so far, his mother-in-law and I were the only people who took a dim view of his plan. So I think that was his way of telling me to shut up? Which is okay, I know it is not my bidness.

Or is it? I mean, education being the cornerstone of a free society and all. You know, like how Whitney said the children are our future?

So that's what's up in the hood this morning. I carried this bit of intel to Matt and he was like, "Oh dear. No." I gotta tell you, it feels good to be back in the swing of things, "things" being, in this case, bearing witness to the poor life choices of others.

BlogHer reportage in the soon-ness.

A Mommy Dearest Moment

Okay, well yesterday I was feeling the love for Conspiracy Guy, you know, in a neighborly way. But I swear to Pete, his children just almost made me lose my mind. You may have seen me refer to his little girls as the Foster Children because they are under my roof so much, showing up unannounced and staying to be fed, clothed, and educated. Whatever, they are good playmates for Hank, mostly, and I've started letting Hank go to their house too. So we've got some reciprocity going.

But the oldest girl, who is six, has an amazing ability to open the fridge or freezer door and then just stand there doing something else. She does this with our house doors too. Just now she was rooting for a popsicle in the freezer, and then she just abandoned the quest and turned her back to the open door.

I said, "Honey, close the freezer," several times with increasing volume. I used her name. I spoke clearly. She was looking right at me with her usual vacant stare. Finally I said, "Oh my God, close the freezer RIGHT THIS MINUTE." I kind of shouted it actually.

I have already lost the Mother of the Year Award for 2010 so this isn't too big a blow to my standings.

I heard someone say that yelling is the new spanking. Maybe that's right, because when I do it I feel guilty about it, but I will say this: Yelling is there for you when you need it, and when you need it, nothing else quite gets the job done.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that yelling at someone else's child is perhaps a more serious offense than yelling at one's own child. But don't you often find that other people's children so richly need it?

Oh well, I will become a better person, tomorrow probably.

Finally, I Have a Parenting Philosophy

Well hello Friday, here already? I guess you might as well come on in.

It's hot. This is June on drugs. Hank is in the backyard with my two foster daughters from next door. They are playing in a biggish wading pool, and they asked Matt if they could turn on the hose again to fill another tiny pool we have, I guess because two is better than one. Matt told them we didn't want to turn the hose back on, then he gave them three buckets. He suggested they fill the pool by bailing, and they did. Though somehow a fair amount of dirt was introduced into both pools.

I can see this from the sun room window. I'm lying on the couch listening to their voices. I can hear them but I can't tell exactly what they're playing.

This whole summer/backyard/dirt/scene is somewhat chaotic and messy. Laura has this whole area of the yard devoted to something called Indian Camp. Indian Camp is both a place and an activity--she and her friends can spend a long time out there pretending to be pioneers, moving tree branches around, and making up themed nature tours that they then take the littler kids on. As for Hank and his bucket brigade, I know that I could swoop out there and introduce some order, clean things up, and start them in some more organized game. But I figure that this kind of unregulated kid business is an essential part of learning. It's what we used to mean by "playing," before playing became a more highly parent-sponsored and supervised event. When I was a kid, nobody had playdates. But we played all the time.

Our moms weren't running after us trying to optimize our experiences. Maybe they were inside watching "Days of Our Lives?" I just know that right now I'm having some me time, while Hank has some mud time.

There's a new book out that I'm hoping lends support to our laissez-faire child rearing method, it's called The Idle Parent: Why Laid-Back Parents Raise Happier and Healthier Kids. Anybody read this yet? Matt and I are nothing if not laid-back parents, and now we can say that, heck no, this method is not laziness on our part, it's in a book, y'all.

Anyway, all this unstructured, Rousseau-ian, leave-the-kids-alone backyard time means that I have to basically bathe Hank from head to toe every time he comes in the door. There is a lot of foot washing at our house. Mama has her new couches to think of.

Perhaps in a future post I'll explain my method of child conflict resolution, in which I holler "Stop fussing!" from the other room until peace breaks out. Note that you shouldn't attempt this move unless you know how to holler. Simply calling or even yelling will not get it done.

Now, y'all quit your fussing, go rinse your feet off, and have a good weekend.

Conspiracy Guy Mystery Solved

The Foster Children came to my door again Friday afternoon and asked for Hank to come out. I said that he was getting ready to go to the mountains, but that if it was okay with their dad, they could come in and say hi to him for a few minutes. The little one said, "We're not allowed to come in because of we played that video game. Those games are about killing. We don't like killing."

Okay. Well actually we do not like killing either in this house.

A few times I let them play a little xbox game called Castle Crashers, which has cartoon knights who run around chopping an assortment of bad guys. One of the bad guys is a giant ear of corn who spawns killer popcorn kernels. Grisly.

The only thing about the game that offends my sensibilities is that there are cartoon deer in it who poop sometimes. Gratuitous cartoon animal pooping. To Hank, this is the most High-Larious Thing of All Possible Things That Have Ever Happened on Earth. So I turn a blind eye.

Keep in mind that this guy is a person who regularly has no idea where his kids are. But it is easier to forbid the kids to come in my house than to say to me, "Hey, would you not let the girls play that game? It makes them bonkers at home," or something.

Because I am a polluter of children's minds.

We are already in North Carolina, 'til Sunday night. I hope you have a lovely weekend. Keep sweet!

I Think I May Have Offended Conspiracy Guy

My neighbor two houses over is a stay-at-home dad and amateur kook I call Conspiracy Guy. His two little girls, aka My Foster Children, are knocking on our door or roaming in our yard several times a week. I (almost) always welcome them with open arms because they keep Hank entertained. They are mostly past the age where they spill things and wet their pants, so this arrangement works fine, even if they always arrive starving. They also answer my every instruction or correction with, "Why?" Which I do not find charming in a child unless its mine and then it's a sign of burgeoning critical reasoning abilities.

Hank is big enough now that I'll let him run across the yards to their house and knock on their door to see if they want to come out and play. I'll stand on the porch and watch him go and come back. I always tell him, "Don't go into their house, just ask them to come play outside or at your house." Well it isn't that I'm dead set against his being in their house. It's just a combination of a few things: he hasn't been invited over; I have never stepped more than a few feet into their house and don't know that they don't have loaded guns lying around, or stacks of John Birch Society literature; and I just don't know how well he would be supervised over there. He is three and I am territorial over him.

Well, I don't know what he may have said at their doorstep about "I'm not supposed to come inside" or something, but lately the little girls have taken to ringing our doorbell and then refusing to enter. They want Hank to come out, but they protest, loudly, "We're not allowed to come inside!" Or if one of them does enter the dreaded house, her sister calls her back as though she's on the edge of a volcano. They have been coming over since the littlest one was two (yes, a two year-old was allowed to wander around supervised by her four year-old sister and to go to the neighbor's to "play"), so this is a new development. And yesterday their dad kinda gave me the stink eye when I was talking to another neighbor at my front door.

They have been playing outside a lot with one of the Mystery Daughters, which is odd 'cause that girl is nine, and the foster children are 4 and 6.

Oh Conspiracy Guy, how hath I offended thee? I canst not tell, but I shall have to fry thy fish another day.

Anyway, that's what's good in the hood.

Gossip Helps Us Define and Enforce Norms of Group Behavior

When Normal Neighbor came to drop her daughter off for Laura's slumber party on Friday, she stayed for a beer and a chat. The previous Friday, some of these same little girls, Laura included, had been at a slumber party around the corner, hosted by another friend of ours for her daughter. This mom has six kids. (I've never quite come up with a blog name for her but I really like her, and she is a part of the whole scene. Maybe Mellow Mama?) Her little girl and Normal Neighbor's girl and Laura are all good buddies. Anyway.

So Frenemy Neighbor's daughter P was also invited, but the hostess was told she'd be arriving later because her parents were busy and she was at her grandmother's for the evening. Frenemy told Mellow Mama she'd go get P and bring her to the slumber party by 8:00.

Normal Neighbor said that around 10:30, the hostess figured that P wasn't coming, turned off the porch light, and went to bed. At 11:30 the doorbell rang. Mellow Ma had been asleep, as were half of the party guests. It was Frenemy wanting to drop off P at the party. So drop her off she did, and then picked her up again at 9am.

Normal Neighbor and I exchanged grimaces over this episode, and then I told Pretty Neighbor about it too. It's just a typical page from the Frenemy parenting playbook. They take P with them everywhere while they conduct adult business, so she misses out on a lot of things, then they control her time so rigidly that she misses out on some more stuff. She is home schooled, but they aren't the networking type of home schoolers. P seems isolated to me, very isolated.

I just don't think that girl has enough fun or enough kid time.

This afternoon was another characteristic episode. I texted FN at about 2:00:

Me: Hey, Matt is going to take Laura to the climbing wall at the gym, would P like to go?

FN: Yes but we r eating right now. We need to work on the rental house today, P would need to stay whole afternoon with u. What do u think.

Me: Well, the climbing closes at 5 so they would prob be there until then anyway. We are having lunch too but we are almost finished. Y'all?

FN: We are just sitting down, would u be up 2 her staying with u the rest of the day???

Me: We would be great with that part, but it sounds like they might not have enough time if y'all are starting lunch. Maybe a different day? Climbing is open til 8 on the weekdays.

FN: Ok, if you want P for playing we will prob leave in 15 or 20 minutes and back this evening. Thxs.

With that last message, I didn't feel that she had gotten my drift at all, and I also felt that if we didn't take P with us, I was condemning her to spend several hours sitting in her parents' empty rental house. Because I know that, to Frenemy, "the whole afternoon" doesn't mean until 5 or 6, it means until 7 or 8. But I didn't think we were communicating well, so I called her. I learned that they were having lunch at their house, not a restaurant, and P would be available soon. And I learned that I was right about the 7 or 8. Frenemy asked if "7 or 8" was okay, and I, remembering her penchant for lateness, said, "That's fine. 8:00 is when I start getting the kids ready for bed." That must have worked, because they rolled up at 8:20. Improvement. And the girls had a good time climbing, and then P helped Laura clean her room.

Whatever! I guess I'm telling you this because I tell you everything. I am a magpie, and here is another bit of shiny thread.

Girls, Girls, Girls

Here's the secret to the whole slumber party endeavor: have it on Friday night. They will have gotten up at 6 or 6:30 that morning, and by ten o'clock they will be ready to doss down for the night. Or that's what happened here; it didn't work for Sara, who sent me an email about her slumber party at midnight-thirty that said "hoping for quiet by 2am." Hee hee! My girls went up and put on their jammies, completely unprompted by me, at 9:00. Then we turned the living room into a mattresspalooza and they all sprawled out everywhere. It was like a scene from Brokedown Palace minus the drugs or stern Thai matrons.

From about 10-12 they watched Starstruck, a Disney movie about a sissy tween idol who looked barely out of diapers to me, but they were rapt. Pretty Neighbor and I hid in the book room and drank a bottle of wine.

It turned out that we didn't need a lot of activities. Laura did pick out a bracelet-making kit, and we had that set up for them to work on as they arrived. They really liked those. Some of them also decorated their faces.

Then they ran around some, then it was time for pizza, then cake, then presents. Then there was some prolonged squealing, but it was upstairs and I was downstairs so I didn't mind so much, then there was a good bit of flouncing around in jammies, then there was the making of beds, and flopping on them, then there was lots of chatting and some more squealing but did I mention the bottle of wine?

One big event was the opening of goody bags, the inventorying of the Silly Bandz in the bags, and the Silly Bandz trading. (Are Silly Bandz the thing where you guys are? ZOMG they are like oxygen here.) I took a few pictures of the negotiations.

If you've ever seen traders in action on the floor of the stock exchange, you get the picture. Oh, and we only lost one girl, but it was just half an hour after she got dropped off. Her mom brought her in and said that she'd had a palate expander put in the day before, and that it was hurting her. I got the feeling the girl didn't even want to come, but her mom seemed to be pushing her to stay a little while. She sat down with the other girls, but she looked glassy-eyed. After twenty minutes I felt her forehead and she seemed warm to me. She said, "I want to call my mom now," and I said, "Yes, I think that's a good idea." She turned out to be sick on top of the orthodontic pain. I'm surprised her mom brought her at all.

There was no fussing, except one little girl came to me and said, "I need an icepack, Caroline spit in my eye." I was like, why don't we rinse it out instead? And tell everyone there is no spitting allowed. The hecks?

They were asleep by midnight, and I heard them begin stirring again at 7. They got out the bagels and cream cheese, and cold pizza, and helped themselves. I stayed in bed until 8:30. Then they were gone as quickly as they came, leaving only a toxic cloud of some kind of body spray they got into upstairs.

A few more pictures are here. Laura said it was the best birthday ever and nobody cried, so I'm calling this one a success.

13 Bits of Info About My Mystery Neighbors

Some of this is stuff I've observed, and some is rumor. I have never blogged about the Mystery People, because it's hard to figure out how to construct a narrative about them. But a list, I can do. The scene is, the Mystery People are kind of our next-door neighbors--our lots adjoin, and from our driveway, we can look through the trees and see their house, but they face a different street, so we don't them all the time like we do Mindy and Conspiracy Guy. Lately they've been on my mind more because their daughters have started showing up to play with Laura. So, things as I learned them, and events in my dealings with them, in chronological order:

1) Shortly after we moved here in 2006, Matt was doing yard work, and he went around the corner to introduce himself and ask about some plantings along the property line. Matt says that through the window by the door, he could see a man sitting inside, ignoring his doorbell ringing. Just sitting there.

2) The exact same thing happened again some weeks later. Yard work, Matt ringing, dude not answering the door.

3) By this time I was acquainted with Normal Neighbor, and in telling me about the neighborhood, she told me that a man lived there alone. She said his name was Bill, and that in days gone by, she and her husband had been friends with Bill and his wife. Like, they did things together socially. Then the wife left him, because--AND HERE'S THE RUMOR PART--Bill had put the moves on a foreign exchange student who was living with them. Again, this is what Normal Neighbor says. She says she heard--we're at two degrees of rumor now--that this young teenage girl ran out of the house in the middle of the night, went to some people she knew down the street, and said that Bill would not leave her alone and was scaring her. Normal Neighbor heard this from the people who had befriended the girl. Bill and his wife had no children. I have never heard of a childless couple having a foreign exchange student and it seemed weird to me. Also, Normal Neighbor said that Bill now goes by William.

4) Frenemy Neighbor confirmed that there had indeed been a foreign student living with Bill and wife. FN said she was quite young--no more than 15--and that she had babysat Frenemy Neighbor's daughter. FN's only other contribution to the story was that she had been on friendly terms with Bill and wife, and then all communication ceased. FN didn't even know the wife was gone.

5) I had still never laid eyes on this guy, but the house always seemed as quiet as a tomb, and kind of unkempt outside. Not messy, just not cared for. My only thought about the guy was, is he really some kind of a creep, and should I be worried?

6) Then, a year ago in the spring, a woman moved in with him and brought her two little girls. The youngest is Laura's age, and the oldest is in 5th grade now. She also brought her mother, who moved into an apartment in the basement. I first noticed the little girls out riding their bikes. They were friendly and slightly ragamuffin-ish.

7) That spring the neighborhood held its neighborhood-wide garage sale, and I walked around a little chatting with people and browsing. I went up the hill through our side yard and Bill's backyard to meet the new lady of the house, Julie. He introduced himself as William. I stood on their driveway and said hello, and told them where I lived, and I bought a baby's bath chair from them. They were weird. It's hard to say why. They acted pleasant, but it seems like it was an effort. Maybe that they were really giving people the hard sell on their junk. Or, it was the hard sell for a neighborhood garage sale. Like, I paused to look at a framed picture of some ducks or something. Bill said, "Even if you don't like the ducks, that's a good frame." I said something polite, and he said, "I promise you that's a two-hundred dollar frame." Only he said it with an air of disgust that I didn't recognize the quality of his merchandise. Okay dude. That is the only dialogue, except one, that I've had with them.

8) One night the cul-de-sac filled up with ambulances and police cars. Julie's mother, who lived in the basement, had died. Julie and Bill were married by this point, and the family left town for a couple of weeks. Normal Neighbor and I wrote condolence cards and left them in their mailbox.

9) After the girls' grandmother died, Bill and Julie got a foreign exchange student--a girl. She rode the bus to high school with Normal Neighbor's son, but I rarely saw her outside. She seemed to care for the little girls a lot, almost like an au pair. I speculated to Matt that Bill and Julie had gotten a foreign exchange student so they could have a nanny. Normal Neighbor was like, "Does Julie know about the FIRST foreign exchange student?"

10) Fast forward to this past summer. Julie had a baby boy in May. I knew she was pregnant because I see the two little girls everyday on the way home from the bus stop. They told me their mom was expecting, and they told me about the baby when he arrived. One day I was at the pool, and Julie came in with the baby in a carseat carrier, and sat down two deckchairs over. She put the baby seat on the ground next to her and sat reading. I was getting ready to leave, and I approached her and said hi. She didn't really look up from her book. I said how cute the baby was, and I said, "You probably don't remember, but I'm your next-door neighbor." She looked straight at me then, and the look on her face was one of pure suspicion. I don't know what else to call it but that. I started to make goodbye noises then, and she semi-recovered herself enough to mumble something. I don't know what.

11) I went home and told Matt, "I think those people are weird." And he said, "Oh yeah, weird." Then he told me that Julie won't speak or make eye contact with anyone when they are all doing the bus stop drop-off in the morning.

12) There is an actual au pair living there now, a young Asian girl. She takes care of the baby boy while Bill and Julie work. She came there while the baby was a new newborn, because the girls commented that she wasn't allowed to be alone with the baby until he was 3 months old. I see her sometimes, checking the mail, when I'm walking to the bus stop.

13) The girls seem kind of unparented. They look a little unkempt. The littlest one never has a jacket. And she seems needy. For a while, she was latched onto Normal Neighbor and her daughter, and I think she might be about to attach herself to us. She's shown up to play every day for the last four days, announcing, "My stepdad says I can stay for an hour," and last night at about 6:30, she and her big sister came to the door and asked if they could sleep over. I said it wasn't a good night, but that we could plan something. I find it strange that one of their parents wouldn't come down, knock on the door with them, and say, "Hi, the girls want to play with Laura, so let's have a moment of facetime as parents because that is how we do in the civilized world. Thanks neighbor!"

I just wonder what is going on in that house. To me, they're the Mystery People, but I don't know if there really is some mystery, or just some kind of dysfunction, or what exactly. Just a vibe I get. Sometimes I over-analyze things. But I tend to put a lot of stock in my instincts, you know? Especially where my own children are concerned. And it may be that our lives are about to intersect with the Mystery People more and more through those girls. I hope I can be hospitable to them--they may need a friend. But I'm not letting Laura go over there. Reading this, what's your take? They worry me.

For other Monday listing action, if you're into that, check out ABDPBT:

Girlfriend

Laura has a friend over to spend the night. It is 11 pm, and they are going strong, having announced their intention to "stay up until midnight, then lie in bed and read from midnight to 6:00." I told them I was perfectly fine with this plan. Laura's friend, F, is a new girl in the neighborhood. They swam together on the swim team, and F will be starting second grade at L's school.

So L and I have matching mother-daughter crushes. Laura has a crush on F (they are totally in the friend infatuation stage), and mine is on F's mom, because she likes to drink a beer in the afternoon and she is pretty like a doll. And she's smart, y'all, and normal, and nice. I'm smitten and I just hope she feels the same!

When I meet someone new in the neighborhood, and find that I talk with them easily, that we share a basic common language of living in the social world, and that words, facial expressions, and gestures still mean what I always thought they meant, it reaffirms to me that Frenemy Neighbor is perhaps a visitor to our planet, struggling to live among us, and while she needs our help and tolerance, I am not the weird one here. Phew! (Lately, though, I see signs of FN's humanity and vulnerability that are troubling to me. Rest assured, there will be more about that later.)

Anyway, Laura and I are both enjoying getting to know our new ladyfriends. On the Suburban Matron scale of playdates, F would rank as a solid 1 on her own merits, AND would score in category 2 because I like her mom. Pretty Neighbor and I just clicked right away. When she drops her kid off, she doesn't do that SUV-idling-in-the-driveway-waving-out-the-window thing. She turns off the car, comes inside, and honest-to-god sits down when I invite her to. No hovering, no perching, no refusing a chair then sitting on the ottoman. And then we have a conversation. Sometimes we have a beverage. Awesome.

And Laura and F are funny together. Right now they are sharing a blanket and watching Barbie: The Island Princess (it's the least creepy of those Barbie movies--that's my endorsement). It's the scene where the pretty but obscure girl is lamenting the fact that she has nothing to wear to her big night at the castle. The girls are rapt. F just sighed and said, "I bet she's going to look great at that ball."

Let Me Get Right On That

Laura had a friend over to play yesterday afternoon--a child she loooves to play with, the girl who unfortunately has an alien Amwaybot mother. Let's call the child P. L and P spent a good while playing up in L's room and out in the backyard. P had arrived with her cell phone, which she always carries in a little furry phone pouch, and apparently also with a little box of mints. By the way, P is required to always have her phone on her person "so her daddy can get in touch with her at all times." Once, while her mom was dropping her off, she put her phone on my kitchen counter and was rebuked for it. Anyway, when she left yesterday, she had her phone, but the girls couldn't find the candy, and as far as I know, P told her mom this.

Just now I got a text message from the mom asking me, "when you walk up the hill [to get L from the bus], would you bring P's tic tacs and put them in our mailbox?"

Reader, I will not. What I will do is continue to be polite to this woman because Laura adores her daughter, despite the fact that the woman is a classic underminer and a total frenemy. She once asked me, of a painting I had propped on my mantle, "Did someone you really love give you that?" And to Matt, who had just come home from work, where he makes computer games, "Did you program anybody getting shot today?" This is a woman who once asked me to put Laura on the phone to urge her daughter to write birthday thank-you notes in a more timely manner (no). A woman who routinely invites me to "parties" where you have to pay an admission fee in exchange for the pleasure of getting the hardsell on various Amway crap, with invitations couched in terms of "Girls' Night!" and "Makeover!" A woman who, when she saw me wrapping an American Girl doll for L for xmas, asked me if I was aware that the American Girl company "is run by feminists." There is so, so much more.

So what I will do is to continue to forgive this woman for her lapses of taste, manners, and decorum, because I believe that it is not her fault she was raised in a barn. She had a pretty hardscrabble upbringing, from what I can tell. Every bit of middle-class comfort that she has attained, she and her husband got for themselves. And I should say that I do believe somehow that she is a good person. So I will continue to tolerate her eccentricities. But here's what I'm not going to do: go up to Laura's room and look for a half-box of tic tacs.

Playdates

Laura loves to have people over to play, especially now that the weather is so nice, and she is spending hours at a stretch in the backyard. She would prefer to have a playmate every single day for at least some period of time. As she gets older I find that I’m spending daily mental energy helping her with social engineering—scheduling playdates with school friends, welcoming neighborhood friends who don’t need scheduling, and dealing with other kids who tend to show up here, some we’re happy to see coming, some not so much. This is now part of the actual daily work of parenting for me. I don’t mean it takes a LOT of mental energy, but it’s not nothing, especially when you’re as miserly with mental energy as I am. And then there’s the slight additional work of monitoring extra children (though, when she’s with her age mates, they don’t need looking after), and the parent pick-up and drop-off thing means I want to keep an eye on how the house looks, lest they think I’m slatternly or not perfect or something. ‘Cause we can’t have that. This is truer with some parents than others—some get major extra tidying and some get none.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately—what social rules I’m imparting to Laura, and the way adult social relations impact children’s relationships with and access to potential playmates. I know that some things seem mysterious to her—the way I’ll say, “We left a message for so-and-so’s mom yesterday inviting her; we don’t want to call today because that would be pestering.” Meaning, the ball’s in their court, we don’t want to seem desperate. Or, “I think so-and-so is busy on Thursdays, and it’s getting late anyway.” Meaning, I cannot take the assault to normalcy and good sense that having a conversation with that child’s mother would be, so not today, kiddo. And then there are my (occasional) attempts to influence her choice of who to invite over, usually without letting on the reasons behind my suggestions. I wonder about the ethics of this—how far does my right to control who she plays with extend? Is it ethical for me to consult my own preferences? So, in my mind, her playmates are ranked by type. If you’re saying that this is way too much thought to give to this issue, uh, yeah, it is. Nonetheless, I think the scale would go something like this:

1. Top of the list: the kids who she has the most fun with and finds most engaging, regardless of who their parents are. (This is a dilemma because one of her favorite playmates in the neighborhood has THE freakiest, Amway-sellingest mother. This woman is seriously like an alien trying to imitate human behavior, and she will no doubt feature in future blog posts.)

2. Kids whose parents I really enjoy: these are all too few, and it seems like we just don’t see enough of them. Their kids range from great to okay as playdates.


3. Kids who are the easiest to have over, because they live close by, and their parents are easy-going, or both. Some of them don’t set the world on fire as playfellows, but they come over, get their play on, and do it with a minimum of fuss.

4. Kids who I wish would move. We don’t invite them over but they show up anyway, bringing unpleasant behaviors and/or parents with them. I feel sorry for them so we don’t turn them away. More below.

We’ve had a variety of playmate experiences this week—the good, the bad, and the batshit crazy. The best was a child from category 2, who could easily make it into category 1 on her own merits as a great kid, but I really like her mom so I put her under 2. I adore this girl’s mom. She’s got a big personality, she’s Canadian, and she too used to live in Silicon Valley. The playdate occurred one afternoon early this week, after a flurry of advance emailing and calling to establish a time. She’s not a dropper-offer (I think her kid likes her to stay on the premises), so we took gin-and-tonics down to the sandbox and got drunk while the kids ran around the backyard. I am somewhat short on quality social interaction, so this was a great playdate, and it didn’t end until after 8pm. I totally wanted her to stay over so we could spend all night giggling and watching Bravo.

The worst was yesterday, and it was a humdinger. Two little girls, very near neighbors of ours, love to wander over and play with Laura. One is 4 and her sister is 2-and-a-half. (How long would you let your two year-old go “play” at someone’s house, uninvited, without your being there?) Basically they need to be babysat, either by Laura or me. Sometimes Laura is happy to shepherd them around the backyard, but eventually, it grows wearisome, so my usual policy is to let them play for thirty minutes and then we walk them home. They both stay home with their dad all day. He is a sad sack—that’s just how he strikes me—and he told me that they’re “starved for attention,” which is why, he says, they love to come to our place. None of this would be so annoying if he weren’t such a weirdo—he has a giant “Ron Paul Revolution” sign on the back of his SUV, which is the tip of a very tiresome iceberg.

But they are sweet little girls, if a tad whiny. So yesterday, here were the highlights of the visit, in bullet form:

· They wander up the driveway looking hangdog. I saw them standing on the porch and let them in. I didn’t see their dad outside at all.

· They immediately ask for snacks and drinks, which the four year-old spills. A lot.

· The two year-old is only kinda potty trained.

· As we’re all sitting down by the sandbox, the dad appears from around the side of the house, and takes a seat to chat for a while. Ugh.

· He explains to me that the US Air Force crashed planes into those buildings on September 11, as part of a massive government conspiracy. Also flu vaccines are part of a massive government conspiracy. And microwaves alter food to make it toxic to humans, which is why microwaves are illegal in Russia.

· I made that last part sound more interesting than it really was. Plus it took 45 minutes.

· After they were gone, he sent the littlest girl up to the door with two conspiracy nutjob DVDs for me to watch and “tell him what [I] think.”

· And finally, while the dad was sharing his worldview, the four year old was in my sunroom, filling Hank’s toy train with sand that she’d brought up from the sand box. All over my hardwood floors, which I am admittedly a little freakish about. (One of my favorite bloggers—and my BFF though she has never called me—Heather at dooce.com, was once asked what product she used to keep her wood floors looking so great given that she has a kid and a dog. She answered, “It’s a product called I Have a Mental Illness.” I can relate.)

So, that was that totally awful. Awful, like if I were the queen of the world and had my own religion, that guy would be heading straight to HADES. Am I overreacting here? I am sorry I am such a bitch but I was born this way.

Here’s wishing you many double G&T playdates.