Let's pretend it's not all about me

Upon returning to work and recounting for all the sympathizing veteran mothers my daughter's first day of Kindergarten, everyone wanted to know how she liked it. Forget how I felt leaving her there. What did the kid think? Sheesh. You’d think the world didn’t revolve around me or something.

Of course, she likes it. That kid’s up for learning every day of the week and twice on Sunday. New stuff to look at and observe? Deal. Get lost, mother. She’s still in the process of making new friends at the new place. We ask her every night about who she played with and who she talked to. She’s real non descript and would have us believe she is both mute and sitting motionless in her chair all day.

The second day of school we got there a couple minutes early and all the kids were playing on the playground until class started. My daughter who generally runs headlong at any play ground hesitated at the edge unsure of where to go. There were lots and lots of kids already playing and she seemed uncertain who to try to join up with. She wanted to do monkey bars but started crying when I started to leave. I felt for her it being the first week and all. I was going to stay until class started, because I am both soft and weak, but she finally spotted another teacher she seemed to know and agreed to go hold her hand.

The 3rd day was less rough but there was still hesitation. Just as I was about to settle in to wait, a little girl walking over to a group of kids saw my daughter looking at them kicking a soccer ball and put her hand out and said she could come with her if she wanted. She’s not in my daughter’s class either. She was just being sweet at the exact right moment. I think I’m going to buy that kid a new car when she turns 16. In fact, I should’ve just whipped out my check book right there and cut her a check. At minimum, I hope I run into her parents so I can tell them I’m getting her name tattooed on the back of my neck because she is officially awesome.

Even despite these making friends issues, my daughter's still eager to go every morning. One time she even told me to hurry up and finish my toast so we could leave already. She’s full of random stories at the end of the day. My personal favorite was about some kid that told someone else to “shut up.” If my daughter is to be believed, his punishment was getting locked in a dark closet with babies. I'm thinking something must have been lost in that translation. I mean, seriously, I’m sure there were no babies in the dark closet when they locked him in. Kidding. I’m sure the lights were on.

Let's talk Twilight

I felt like a bit of a lemming when I ordered Twilight on Amazon several weeks ago. But my nightstand was running low on books and I was looking for new stuff to try. I’d been tempted to try it several months ago after reading rave reviews but chickened out after discovering it involves vampires. I’m just not in vampires. Some people are. Some people aren't. I’m an aren't.

I’ve also been trying to avoid scary books for a couple years now. Not because I don’t like them but because I noticed that they fed into what appears to be my built in paranoia about personal safety. The same way Law and Order SVU did before I gave that up, too. I know for a fact that I hear less things go bump in the night now. So I think what I’m saying is that even after I ordered Twilight, I still wasn’t completely sold on it. But my husband was going to be in town for most of August so there’d be someone to investigate the bumps if necessary. And the series is categorized as teen literature so how dark could it be.

Turns out I was right. It’s not that dark. And everyone that said it was good is right, too. Because it’s really good. Well written. Creative. Goes quick. Finished it in 2 days. I like Bella in a “I wish we could be friends and hang out” way. She’s smart and likeable but not full of herself. I like Edward in a “Dylan McKay 90210” way. Mysterious and brooding but hot. He even has a cool car like Dylan.

Book 1 is mainly about Bella and Edward meeting. The flirting is fun. For example, I’d be okay with someone saying it was their day and then spending a whole day asking me questions about myself. That’s hot. That’s "you are the center of the universe and here is all my attention to prove it" hot. I’d also be okay if someone hot wanted to pull me on their lap and tell me I’m their whole life now.

There’s a sort of innocent seductiveness to Bella and Edward. Not “sexy” because it’s way more innocent than that but maybe provocative. I don’t know. It’s super innocent stuff but how they’re drawn to each other really sucked me in. I felt really drawn to my husband when I met him so maybe that helps me identify. Sometimes there’s just something that speaks to you about someone. I respect that. And the ending even felt suspenseful. I didn’t think it would since I knew some people needed to live to populate the rest of the series. But it was. Impressive.

Two thumbs up on Twilight. I immediately headed out to buy New Moon and finished it in 2 days, too. It wasn’t as great as book 1. But, seriously, there are few things quite as hot as the initial wooing of a girl. So of course it doesn’t have the benefit of that element. And I have to admit I felt a genuine lag somewhere in the middle of the book where I kept feeling like someone needed to get on with it already. But I still liked it. It’s about how dating a vampire might seem fun and interesting, but we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t create issues. Which it does and then some people decide those issues are a bit much and let’s just say they don’t just live happily ever after.

There’s also a lot of time spent on Bella’s friend Jacob Black. Don’t get me wrong, I like him. He seems sweet and nice in a goofy Michael Phelps boy next door sort of way. Except he’s Indian so they probably look nothing alike and I’ve just been watching too much summer Olympics. But whatever.

My problem was that every time Bella hung out with him all I could think was that she was cold blooded to keep hanging out with him knowing how much he liked her. I don’t care if you need someone to lean on. I don’t care if times are tough. I don’t even care if they claim they know you don’t feel the same way and that it’s okay. I just don’t think it's okay to knowingly let someone get set up to be hurt like that if you care about them as much as you say you do. Because that’s just selfish. And love shouldn’t let you be that selfish. But that’s just me.

One of my favorite parts of book 2 was how the author handled the passage of time near the beginning. Sometimes authors subject you to ad naseum blah blah blah while months past. But if everyone knows what those couple months were going to be like, I say let it go without saying. Nice touch.

My second favorite part of book 2 was the race against time. It was like when you watched Titanic and even though you knew for a fact the boat was going down you were still tense because you didn’t know what would happen. “Run!” was all I could think. And “Drive the car on the shoulder of the road already!” The ending set up book 3 like nobody’s business, too. Lots of issues to resolve. Some lives in danger. Good stuff. My thumbs aren’t up as high on book 2, but I still give it two thumbs up.

I’m dying to discuss specific stuff about the books but I’m completely paranoid about someone that’s read 3 and 4 revealing too much. Much the way I’m dying to discuss specific stuff but I’m paranoid about spoiling stuff for someone else that hasn’t read books 1 and 2 yet. I think I’ll give myself until next Tuesday to finish books 3 and 4. That’s not a state mandated deadline or anything. That’s just when my husband goes out of town next. You know, bumps in the night and all that. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. Ever notice how when a series of books gets popular every successive book in the series gets longer and longer now? Weird. Very Harry Potterish.

Try not to get sucked into the vortex of cuteness

My daughter started Kindergarten this morning. I took her picture. I held her hand as we escorted her to her classroom. And then I cried on the way home. My husband commented that I could've used a Valium. I think he thought I was sad. I think the whole thing was sort of lost on him.

I knew that I would cry. I totally did. But I never thought it would be that rough. My children have both in daycare for years now. I'm not a weepy eyed novice. I've been around the block before.

But when I let her hand go and told her to go find her seat, I really had to make myself stand up and turn around. And in the car, I was genuinely weepy the whole ride home. I pulled it together shortly thereafter but even several hours later when I reflected on the day, I got weepy again. Not sad weepy. Just, wow, this is insane weepy. And holy cow that kid's become her own separate little person weepy. And what if the the rest of the years go this quick and then she'll be gone and what'll I do without her weepy. And she's so awesome today I'll miss her if she changes even one iota weepy. And she doesn't need me the way she used to and I never knew I wanted to be needed so much weepy.

She's my baby. She's the best I've got to offer and everything I never knew I wanted. She's the center of everything.

In her classroom, the teacher had little bear shaped name tag things laid out on a table. She'd take the kid to the table and tell them to find theirs as a little welcoming activity. When we got there I walked over with my daughter and started helping her put it on. That's when it dawned on me that I was being "that" mother. The one that's a little much. The one that needs to back off. That's what made me finally walk her to the door and said goodbye. Because it was time and I knew it.

That's what I'll remember most about today. That and how insanely cute that kid looked in her uniform:

I know. So cute it makes you think you need to curl your entire body around her. Try not to get sucked into the vortex of cuteness.

I'm glad I took today off from work. The only thing worse that feeling weepy is having a parade of people into your office wanting to hear about the status of your weepiness. You know, like the first day back to work after you have a baby and every mother in a three floor radius wants to drop by and ask how you're holding up and commiserate about how they've been there and even though you're barely hanging on by a thread you feel obligated to paste a smile on your face.

Anyway, it was a big day. But it's all good. Now I need to go back to reading the third book in the Twilight series. Finished the second one earlier today. Oh, I didn't mention I'd been reading them? I'll have to remedy that . . .

We're still as cheap and lazy as ever but now our oven can preheat

Meeting. Meeting. Teleconference. Meeting. Training. Meeting. Meeting. Phone calls. Meeting. I think that pretty much summarizes my week so far. Although yesterday, I had to sit through my boss talking about the big award a colleague was getting for something she and I did together. Which was odd, because, I distinctly remember helping and yet my name wasn’t in the award part of the story. Come again?

The only bright side is that I seem to be in a impossibly pleasant mood this week so I didn't really care. For example, I had to have meeting after meeting delivering bad news to various people all day Tuesday and it didn’t phase my pleasant mood one iota. I actually had to stop myself from smiling at one point so I could start the bad news. Because, seriously, don’t you hate people that don’t stop smiling before they give you bad news? We used to have a higher up in my office that cracked jokes and chewed gum while delivering crappy news. Came across flippant every time. Dude was less than popular.

Perhaps my great mood is because I finally loosened up the purse strings over the weekend and announced to my husband that we needed to improve our ugly retro kitchen. Usually I'm cheap and lazy and figure I can hold out until we move to a new house. But then Saturday as I washed dishes in our fugly dirt brown sink, it dawned on me that I spend a lot of my time in that kitchen and that the quality of my life could be better if it didn’t have to be quite so ugly. So I announced on a whim that we needed to buy a new microwave. Just like that.

And the microwave wasn’t even fugly brown. It was just all kinds of retro fugly and sorta ghetto. It only worked at like 50% strength too. In our defense, it was over the range and we didn’t care about replacing it when we moved because we already owned a perfectly good counter top microwave. So like the lazy cheapos that we are, we just slapped our counter top microwave on the counter. Then we discovered that 2 microwaves at dinnertime is sort of awesome when you’re serving leftovers and now it’s been 3 ½ years. But it's just as fugly today as it was 3 ½ year ago and it took up valuable counter space in an otherwise small kitchen. Badaboom. Had to go.

And if you’re going to shop for a new over the range microwave you may as well get a new stove while you're at it. Because nothing points out how retro fugly your stove is like seeing fancy new ones in the store. Don't believe me? Fine:

Wait. You still don't look convinced. How about an up close shot of the top:

On top of the obvious lack of aesthetics, it also had several technical issues worth pointing out. For example, the hideous clock didn’t work and there was no preheat setting. We'd just turn it on, wait a few minutes and hope for the best. But, even better, it was 25 degrees off. Recipe calls for 450. Our oven needed to be set to 475. Sometimes my husband would forget and be confused when stuff wasn't done yet when he'd go to check on it. I swear to you, retro is only charming when someone else owns it.

But it's all good, because here are our new appliances:

I love them. Maybe it’s because these are the first new appliances I’ve ever bought. Maybe it's because I want to take them to lunch and buy them a grande margarita and tell them all my deep dark secrets. Like how sometimes in between meetings I write blog entries about my new appliances. Or like how new appliances don’t mean I’ve given up wanting to move to the new house I secretly shop for on Realtor.com. Because I do and we will. And, in fact, we bought relatively cheap appliances knowing just that. But the new appliances will prevent my head from exploding until we get to a new house. Because when I look at them, I no longer wonder where my life went wrong. As an additional benefit, they may or may not make the house more marketable.

I'm so stoked about the new appliances I even told my husband he can redo the floors in the front room like he’s been wanting to since we moved in. Did I mention there’s carpeting under our dining room table and we have two small children? Gag me. I try not to look at the floor too much when I walk through there. When we moved in, all the bathrooms had carpeting too. That’s like gag me squared. Did the previous owners not have children that liked to flood the bathroom periodically? What were they thinking? Like I'm one to talk. My kitchen had two microwaves in it for 3 ½ years. But let's not dwell on that. Because now it doesn't! Whee!

My kid's school needs an efficiency expert

So I’ve decided to take a mellow approach to the new day care. Mellow as in “let’s reserve judgment until after Kindergarten starts next week.” Not that Kindergarten makes televisions vaporize but I figure you can’t be watching television in Kindergarten. Right? Right. I also think there’s some lingering “I miss the old daycare where everyone adored my kids and everything was familiar and easy.” Changing takes time. I don’t understand how people do it all the time. It makes me profoundly sad. For example, day 2 at the new place my soon to be Kindergartener told me some kid kept telling her she didn’t want to play with her and I seriously felt a wave of sadness wash over me. On the other hand, day 4 at the new place she told me some boy told her she was his girlfriend and tried to kiss her. So who knows.

The next day when I picked her up she claimed they kissed. We haven’t decided if we believe it yet. She’s big on telling us wacky stories and then laughing like a loon at her own little joke. Can’t imagine where she gets that. But I digress.

In other news, I’ve been trying to wrap up school supply shopping in preparation for the Kindergarten open house this Thursday. The Kindergarten open house at which I stand a 97.65% chance of crying. I also stand a 99.37% chance of wondering “what happened to my baby” sometime during that same open house but that’s neither here nor there.

When I think of crying at that open house, perhaps I will just fill my head with thoughts of the idiotic school supply list compiled by her teacher. The list that included crap like 6 small boxes of crayons and pink construction paper in a funkadelic size that only one store stocks except they’re out of stock right now so oh well except no one I talk to seems to think the teacher will be happy with red because even though it seemed like the next best thing to pink the list does not ask for “the next best thing.”

Am I the only one that fails to understand why schools can’t charge us one fee and then just order whatever crap they want in bulk? Wouldn’t that be more efficient? And why are we buying little bitty boxes of crayons. Why can’t we buy giant boxes of them and give everyone a pencil box to hold some in. Seriously. What the hell.

The highlight of my school supply shopping though was crouching down in the marker aisle at Wal-Mart trying to make sure I’ve got the right kind of Crayola markers because sometime in the last 20 years they starting making no less than 57 different kinds of markers and all the boxes seem to look alike. Now they’ve got different kinds of color assortments and various sized tips. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy me some markers as much as the next 33 year old woman. Which is to say, I’m completely indifferent to them. But my kids like them so we own some. But do we need this many kinds? Am I missing out by not jumping on the pastel assortment train? Would my life be more complete if I had the small tipped neons?

Speaking of school related shopping, I’ve also been shopping for school uniforms. A lot of parents seem to rejoice in uniforms. Less shopping and easier to get dressed in the morning. I’m clearly a rookie. Because my kid’s drawers already have clothes in them and this uniform is just more work for me. I’m struggling with the shoes currently. They’re supposed to be black mary janes or white Ked’s style. I’m such an idiot I didn’t even realize anyone was still selling Ked’s style shoes. And if they are who’s wearing them? Because my kids wear Crocs year round. Because socks with Crocs in the winter is only ghetto for adults. For kids, it’s entirely acceptable.

Black mary janes seem destined for scuffing so I ordered two styles of Keds figuring I could bleach the hell out of them to keep ‘em fresh. But then they arrived too small for my kid’s feet. Seven days from the first day of school is a fine time to get shoes that don’t fit in the mail. This may require me to leave my house and enter a mall to shop. Again, annoying. I’d put my husband in charge of this operation except that man is so in the dark he commented that $20 for shoes for a 4 year old seemed like a lot. This from the guy that bought himself a 52 inch television two months ago. Right.

The Switcheroo

My two little baby bears started at a new day care yesterday. The move was in preparation for the newest 4 year old starting kindergarten there in a mere two weeks. It's very exciting that she'll get to start. I never realized how stringent most schools were about their age requirements.

Despite that, changing day cares is rough. Mostly on me. We've only ever gone to one day care. That's over 4 years at the same place. My husband liked to call our daughter the mayor of the place because she'd been there so long she knew everyone. It was like being on parade with that kid walking down the hall saying hello to everyone. Her teacher even told me that whenever there was a new teacher helping out she'd tell the new teacher to ask my kid if she wasn't sure where something was. Can't say that I blame her seeing as how I tell people the same thing when they come to our house to babysit.

The 4 year old did great with the switch. She's excited about starting school and knows the switch is in preparation for that. She also finds new things fun and exciting. For example, her new room contained new toys and new people to pepper with questions. Game on. She was all, see ya. My son, on the other hand, is 2 and found the whole thing confusing. There were tears and his transition will take more time. Much like my own.

I know plenty of people that have switched their kid's day care plenty of times. I'm sure I'm just being a baby about it. I'm a baby about a lot of things. And I'm sure I'll feel more at home and confident with the new place in no time. It just takes time. And that annoys me.

Speaking of things that annoy me, it also annoys me that they let my kids watch television at the new day care. Not all day or anything. There's just some Dora watching during my son's diaper changing time and the 4 year old watched something about a cat. But I'm just one of those annoying hags that doesn't think I should pay someone to babysit my kid with a television. Because turning the television on is so easy. I think I should get a price discount if you're not going to expend more energy than that.

I think my husband thinks I'm just the annoying hag that likes to be difficult and that it's summer and once school starts the 4 year old will be in class and oh, well if the 2 year old watches a few minutes. Although the 2 year old is starting a preschool curriculum in 2 weeks, too. But whatever. Just wait until we have our first parent teacher conference. You think I'm a hag complaining on my blog, try having to sit down and chat with me. Although I'm always very nice about it. So nice you won't even be sure what just happened when we're done.

So anyway, new day care. It's okay. We'll see. I'm difficult. The end.

Books the Imaginary Book Club has read but failed to post about

The Imaginary Book Club that exists only inside my head has been meeting but failing to post for several months now. 6 months. That's crazy. Like sand through the hour glass. I thought I'd prove that I've actually cracked open a few books by quickly recapping my recent reading material:

1. Water for Elephants. I was ready to love this book. I really was. Well written. Well researched. Fast read. But I kinda sorta only ended up liking it instead of loving it. The fact that circuses depress me probably didn't help. I'm also not into clowns. I think it's the makeup.

2. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Interesting. Quick read. So glad I wasn't born in China in the nineteenth century. Two words, for you. Feet binding. Yikes.

3. The Namesake. Didn't think I'd like it but I did. About a kid born in America to Indian parents. He feels caught between the two cultures. Reminded me of one of my best friends from high school. She used to make her parents put up a Christmas tree because she wanted to be like everyone else. Except her parents didn't know what to give her because she wanted American things so they ended up just giving her cash every year. But they were sweet. They used to take her back to India every summer for six weeks and she'd come back complaining about the lack of General Hospital. The horror. So I guess what I'm saying is, if your best friend in high school struggled with this stuff you might like this book. The dad in the book is also sweet. And I wish my parents would have given me a cool name like Gogol with a cool life changing story about my dad to go with it. I'd be snobby about it if people made fun of it. I'd be all, gee, I guess you don't read much, huh? Loser. Take that.

4. Supernanny: How to Get the Best from Your Children. If you've watched the show and thought you'd like to get some how-to guidance for her techniques, this is not the book for you. Skimpy on specifics. Real general. Ho hum.

5. The History of Love. Interesting. "Her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." Um, hello, best quote ever. I should live so long as to have my husband say something so adoring about me. And the index card with the identifying information that he keeps with him in case he dies breaks my heart. Kind of like his friend Bruno. And him getting ready for the funeral. And how he felt so invisible. I've been through invisible phases. It's lonely. How brutal for the phase to last your whole life.

6. My Sister's Keeper. Target stocks every book Jodi Picoult has ever written. It was only a matter of time until I succumbed to her. Why the hell I resisted I'll never understand because I loved it. Sick kid needs a kidney from her sister. Complicated family issues. But not a horrific tear jerker. And this is coming from a girl that gets choked up during the Jon and Kate Plus 8 opening credits when Jon says, "We're a family and we're in this together." I thought the book was lovely. Made me wonder who I'd be if my kid were that sick. Besides medicated, of course. Heavily medicated.

7. The Double Bind. This book took me two months to finish. I got stuck like a hundred pages in and lacked the motivation to go on. Not exactly a rave review and I have no idea what my problem was. It's about a girl looking into some homeless guy's photos except the book has a whole, "The Great Gatsby was real and maybe this guy was Gatsby's kid" thing going on. I got seriously distracted trying to remember The Great Gatsby which I haven't read since 9th grade. I almost stopped in the middle of this book to reread it. That's how distracted I was. I had to make myself finish. Which, I'm glad I did though because the ending was the best part of the book. Although I suspected part of it.

8. Fearless Fourteen. The latest Stephanie Plum book. Joe Morelli was front and center. Less Ranger. Thumbs up. And I seriously wish I could figure out how to get that many people to want to hang out with me.

9. The Tenth Circle. Another Jodi Picoult book. Purchased an hour before we got on the plane for our vacation. Thumbs up. Suspect I may quickly make my way through every book she's ever written.

10. Real Simple magazine. I've read the last three issues. I used to think it seemed snobby and trendy but now I'm thinking about subscribing. I want to not like it but I can't. Everything in there is so clean and clutter free. I crave clean and clutter free. I'm sure that's because my life is so clean and clutter free. Not.