Dinner, the final frontier.

On April 28, 2015April 28, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Life gets busy with two working parents. Deadlines call and school demands. Bedtime routine is followed by dueling laptops at the dining room table. Regardless of how chaotic things get, one thing never changes at our house. Mommy is in charge of dinner.

Don’t get me wrong, my husband is amazing around the house. He does his laundry. He does my daughter’s laundry. He does towels and sheets. He washes everything but my clothes, and sometimes he even takes those out of the drier and stacks them on chairs and couches in a semi-non-wrinkly way to keep the laundry train going. He does the dishes. He picks up. He does not do dinner. When 6:30 hits and I am not home he will never come up with the independent idea that food needs to be produced to nourish our bodies.

I attribute this to several things.

My husband does not have the genetic tie between hunger and anger that my daughter and I have. If he doesn’t eat there are no repercussions. He just gets skinnier. Oh darn. My daughter and I turn into grouchy demons without food. Somehow the presence of two grouchy demons doesn’t even trigger dinner ideas in my husband’s head.
I like to cook. I’m not a gourmet or even a scratch cooker, but I enjoy preparing meals. Most days I’m happy to perform the little ritual that puts food on the table, but some days I come home after working 5 hours on a Sunday and the lack of dinner smells waiting for me when I walk in makes me crazy.
We don’t pick up food. We cook. Somehow the idea that food can be prepared by others and brought home isn’t a viable option at the Afthead house. Occasionally if I am leaving the office after 7:00 or if volleyball season has started and we can eat at the park I will get sandwiches, but mostly we eat at home. This means we cook at home. This means mommy cooks.

It’s not that I mind our gender roles, but as I was driving home at 6:45 this evening I had a fleeting thought that maybe dinner would be waiting. It wasn’t. Some gender barriers just can’t be overcome. Like dinner. Oh and trash. I’m sure every Wednesday night when Mr. Afthead comes home from guitar lessons, or volleyball, or a night out he thinks that maybe the trash will be out by the curb. It’s not. The trashcans are always still sitting by the house. I don’t do trash.

Okay, two things never change at our house.

Baby Names

On April 10, 2015April 10, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

32 weeks along and the baby girl growing inside me had no name. I was searching everywhere for a sign for what we would call this new life. I went to the bathroom and while negotiating my huge body in the stall something in the toilet bowl caught my eye. It was a tiny slip of paper: pink with green letters. It said “Amanda.” My pregnant bladder couldn’t wait, so I pondered while sitting. “Amanda?” It wasn’t on any list we had.

Was this the name of our little girl? I wiped, dropped the tissue and flushed. Nope. I didn’t like “Amanda.”

What to do with 20 minutes

On April 8, 2015April 8, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Poof! The magic wish granting fairy has just descended down after showing little bunny fofo who is boss and has given me twenty minutes to do whatever I want. It’s an extra bonus 20 minutes outside of the normal space/time continuum and I can use it however I please. The task is daunting. I have so much I want to do with every spare minute.

Option 1a: Write. I always want to write. But I can only use the 20 minutes to write if it’s a quiet time in the house. I can’t write during work hours, because that would be unethical. I can’t write when my daughter is awake, because those hours with her are precious and few. Often I can’t write when she is asleep because other demands pull on me: work, feeding the cats, cleaning the house, laundry, or spending time with my husband. I have to give up all those “shoulds” to give myself twenty minutes of writing. Since we are outside of normal time demands, maybe this time I can write.

Option 1b: Write my book. Oh, but write on the blog or the book? The blog is fresh and new and fun and exciting. The book is another child that needs me and my blood and sweat, but I dream about him. I ponder where he is going and what he is up to when I’ve been away for too long. I’m afraid he’s forgotten me, or worse that I’ve forgotten him in the shiny new blog toy or in the mundane daily life. The story is racing toward the final conflict (if something can race at 4000 words a month) and I need to finish. I want to finish, but somehow I need pristine time for the novel. He can’t be interrupted by familial needs or distractions. He needs a closed door and time to immerse myself in his world. Is twenty minutes enough to give to that hungry offspring, or am I better off spending it with Afthead?

Option 2: Yoga. Oh, I like yoga. It stretches out my shoulders from my ears and releases my arms from their endless keyboard dance. I have found a new yoga website I like, YogaGlo, so I can yoga whenever I want. No more excuses about going somewhere. But I’d have to change my clothes and find a mat and the props and log into the site and oh no. Twenty minutes gone and I didn’t get to do yoga. I only got to prep for yoga.

Option 3: Run! I can run in 20 minutes. I can get dressed and out the door in five minutes tops. I can race up and down the hills of my neighborhood and watch the arrival of spring: beautiful flowers showered with cascading petals from blooming trees. Branches in the sky look fuzzily green with new buds. Running clears my mind and rejuvenates my spirit. Everyone in the family is happier when mom gets to run. Oh, but it’s dark and I’m home alone with my daughter. Running would be like child abuse. One does not leave one’s sleeping 6 year old for a 15 minute run.

Option 4: Knit. I can get a couple of rows done on my sweater that I was going to finish this winter. (Missed that goal.) I can go play with the pretty scarf I started at Mardi Gras. The rainbow colors are so fun and tempting. Maybe I should whip up something for the baby cousin that was just born. I could get a good start on a baby hat in 20 minutes. Oh, the scrap blanket with the stripes of leftover project yarn that makes me so happy as I run my fingers over it’s ridges. I could knit, but I won’t.

Option 5: Read. Reading often takes up my spare 20 minutes. I’m reading “Jennifer Government” which is a cute little book that I’m enjoying. It isn’t the awesome books I’ve read lately: “The Bees,” “The Husband’s Secret,” “The Scorpio Races,” “Big Little Lies,” “The Blue Journal,” and oh the list goes on and on. I am in a book reading streak right now that makes me so happy! There is so much amazing fiction out there and I’m finding it over and over. I should just finish up “Jennifer Government” and move on. I wonder what’s up with her barcode tattoo.

Did I use commas and quotation marks and colons the right way in that last paragraph? Crud. Punctuation is so hard. That and grammar are going to be the downfall of my writing career.

Oh yeah, writing. This was fun. I enjoyed my twenty minutes and covered a lot of things. It’s nice to have my list ready for when that fairy shows up. I wonder if she’ll be little like the tooth fairy, or big like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz. Wait, was Glinda a fairy or a witch? She had a wand, so I’m certain she could grant my wish,so I guess it doesn’t really matter. When the time comes though, I’ll just say, “Hold on a second fairy/witch” and I’ll pull up my blog, look at my list, and evaluate my options. I’ve already done Option 1, so next time I’ll have to move on to something else. Maybe yoga. Ommmmmmm.

My Happy Place

On April 7, 2015January 30, 2016 By aftheadIn stories6 Comments

The log house sits at the end of a long gravel driveway. After four hours of driving I welcome the colorful flags of Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, and Mardi Gras fluttering hello as we drive past. I park between the garage and the bunkhouse and open the car door to breathe in the humid fresh air.

The simple house blocks our view of the lake, as my daughter and I unpack the car, but the mosquitoes and horse flies nibbling our DEET free ankles remind us where we are. We rush in to hello kisses and hugs and then down the stairs to the walkout basement where our bunk bed waits in the middle of the family room. We open our suitcases and strip down to nothing and then shimmy into our stiff clean swimsuits. No matter what time we show up the first thing we must do is jump in the lake. Traditionally it is evening. The setting sun makes long back lit tree shadows stretch up the hill. Minnows dart around our feet and bald eagles soar overhead. Laughing we look for the three loons that inhabit the lake every year. Loons mate for life, so why are there three? Two wives and one husband? One wife and two husbands or something even more exotic? Three husbands?

Every year, and it has been five now, the passage of time is clarified. My two year old daughter with her sand filled diaper has grown to a long lean girl on the edge of bravery. Each year she stretches farther and risks more because at the lake parent worries are leeches and ticks between toes and not the unspecific fears of city life. Wonders await: berries are plump waiting to be picked; frogs are hiding in the twilight waiting to be grabbed; sunfish after sunfish fly out of the lake on shimmering lines waiting to be fried up for dinner by grandpa.

Some traditions are made, Easter brunches, Passover senders, Christmas Eve and Day all have their arbitrary flow. Other traditions just happen when the “if we are going to the lake this year” becomes a foregone conclusion of when. When will we pick berries? When will we picnic on the pontoon boat? When are the turtle races? When are we going to light the bonfire and have s’mores? The magic is new every year as the kids grow and the families change and the tradition morphs to a new fun. Every year we stay a little longer and every year we wish we had just one more day.

I am a good person, and I have written proof!

On April 6, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

As previously mentioned in this space, I can be hard on myself, but this week I got written proof that I’m not all bad.

One of my values is to see people and acknowledge them. The old golden rule stuff. I thank the fast food lady, look her in the eye and smile when I do it. I tell my daughter’s teachers when she loves their lessons. I thank police officers who stop traffic after events so I can cross the road.

It makes my life better. I am happy when the Which Wich guy gives my daughter an extra fruit roll up because we talk to him as he makes our sandwich. I tip the valet before he takes my car and thank him so sees me as a person and takes better care of my car. (I also tip when I get it back safely.)

I tip the cleaning people every day during a hotel stay because my dad taught me that there may be a different person cleaning every day and I want to thank all of them, not just the lucky last one. I know they are individuals, but I don’t really get to relate to them as people because I never see them. This last trip I found a note on my nightstand. She told me her name and said “thanks for the tips.” The note made my heart soar. 17 years I have traveled for work and pleasure and I always leave my daily tip. With this lavendar note they all became people to me and I have written proof that my daily tip effort is worthwhile because this came on day one of a four day stay. Yay me!

Loving People with Mental Illness

On April 2, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Last week was a rough week for mental health. Up the road from where I live a woman cut a fetus out of a pregnant mother. In Europe a pilot with a history of depression crashed a plane. There are many obvious victims here: the mom who never met her baby, her unborn child, the passengers of the plane, and the pilot of the plane. I empathize with other people in the shadow of these stories.

The pilot had a girlfriend and parents. They probably know a bigger story than the one horrible decision he made. They have seen his struggles. They have talked endlessly with him about his fears, his problems and his dreams. They may have wished his suffering would end at times, but they never wanted this ending. If he was a good actor and hid his feelings they are hurt and sad and furious that such a thing could happen to him, and to them. Their lives are forever changed because he is gone, hundreds died, and they are left with the loss and the burden of what he did, and the question about what they could have done to change it.

The woman who cut the baby out had a husband. He took her and the fetus to the hospital. What mentally healthy person would do what she did? He is likely pouring over every detail of his life with her and wondering what he could have done to stop the tragedy, and his life is tainted by the ramifications of what his wife did.

Mental illness runs rampant and there is so little you can do if you love someone who is sick. The stigma of mental illness is real and asking for help is a series of hard choices. Medicate and risk losing the person you love to a haze of drugs. Hospitalize and risk the person’s job, livelihood and reputation. Do nothing and risk your loved one injuring himself or others. While all this is going on you are stuck with a person who resembles your loved one but is hidden behind a cloud of anger, sadness and fear. You can’t get to him/her to ask what they need from you, what they want from you or what you should do. It is a horrible place to be.

I don’t personally know the people involved in either of these news stories, but I have been personally involved in depression, and I cannot fathom what these poor families are going through. It makes my heart sick.

Crying Myself to Sleep

On March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I am a reader. I can state that with certainty and my head held high. (When I say I am a writer I want to whisper it cowering under the table with my face hiding behind my hair.) I don’t ever remember not reading. I sit in line at the grocery store and read on my iPhone. I make dinner turning pages on my Kindle with gloopy fingers. I leave books on the towel rack, driving my husband insane. My bedside is piled with books and my decor can only be described as mid-century modern library eclectic. I am a reader.

When I was young I had a book I loved: Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls. Did you read it? If not, stop now if you don’t want the ending ruined. Still with me? Remember it’s about two dogs and at the end the dogs die. Well, I loved that book. I would hide under the covers with my flashlight and I would read that book over and over, and each time I got to the end the same thing would happen. I would sob loud shuddering snot producing sobs. I’d blow my nose and the words would get blurry through my tears and on I would read. My mom would come into my room and look at me and shake her head when she saw I was “reading that book again.” I love a book that produces unabashed sobbing. That and apocalyptic fiction are my favorite genres.

So this week I found a new favorite sob-inducing book. Have you read A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness? If not, spoiler alert again, although you could see the ending coming from the beginning. It’s about a little boy and his mom has cancer and his dad left them and his grandma is terrible and he’s being bullied at school and he gets visited by a monster. Yeah, sounds amazing right? The perfect beach read. Who wouldn’t want to read such an uplifting tale? Monday night I’m reading in bed and I saw the ending coming. The mom was going to die. The tears started flowing down my cheeks as I leaned forward to get closer to the book propped on my knees. The illustrations were magic and the story was a roller coaster that ended in broken track. I was all set to let forth a torrent of loud gasping sobs, but I held back. See, I share my bed now with this guy who tends to look at me like I’m contagious when I cry. I kept reading and breathing in hitches and the book kept getting better and sadder and then Mr. Afthead turned to look at me and said something. I have no idea what he uttered because as soon as I was caught the dam burst. Oh, and there were still glorious pages left. I cried and read and blew my nose and cried and finished the book while my husband looked at me with my mom’s “that book again” look. The minute I read the last word I wanted to turn to the beginning and start all over.

How do these author’s do it? How do they generate that kind of emotion through words? I don’t like dogs. I tolerate dogs. I have met dogs I like, but dogs as a whole? They are kind of smelly needy garden ruiners. Yet somehow I read Where the Red Fern Grows and I am a wreck. I don’t have a son. I am not a son. I did not have a mom die of cancer when I was young and my dad never left me. I have no frame of reference for A Monster Calls but the author can wring my heart out through my eyes with his story. It is amazing that a writer can have that kind of power over a reader. I love it.

In Stephen King’s On Writing he says that writing is telepathy and I believe it. How else do you take a situation for which a reader has no personal frame of reference and impact their emotions? In my secret dark under the table dreams I hope someday I can become a sender of such messages and not just a receiver.

Tickles my Afthead

On March 24, 2015 By aftheadIn Tickles my aftheadLeave a comment

Oh, guess what made me happy this week? Spring!!! It’s here! I can smell it in the air. I can feel it between my toes. I can see it everywhere! Time to dust off the gardening tools and start digging and planting and growing.

Spring means buying flowers and plants.

Ranunculus. My favorite spring flower to pet. The dense petals are so soft! This guy will live above my sink in the kitchen and I will love it until I kill it. I can make lots of flowers thrive, but not this one.

Spring means big showy displays of color.

Forsythia! This bush lives right outside our front door and I watch for the yellow blossoms to appear each February. Now it is a cacophony of little yellow flowers singing spring, spring, spring!

Spring means tiny greenhouses protecting the summer bounty from spring frost.

Walls of water hide three tomato and two broccoli plants. Grow little veggies and be safe from the frost and cold.

Spring means tiny blossoms of joy.

Tiny Iris. My favorite flowers of spring. First come the crocuses peeking through the snow and mulch. Then the tiny showy iris bloom with their tiger striped petals.

Nightmare of a Working Mom

On March 22, 2015March 22, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized6 Comments

This Thursday it happened. I was walking from my office to my car reveling in my accomplishments of the day. I’d given a great presentation. I was creating a valuable partnership with our CIO. My curling offsite the day before had been a really great team bonding event. Kudos were flowing. Yep, I was pretty awesome. Then my phone rang. It was my husband asking if I had remembered to pick up our daughter. Our daughter who had finished play practice 15 minutes earlier at school, 40 minutes away from where I was. Our daughter who I hadn’t forgotten in 6 and a half years.

My stomach dropped as I realized what I had done. The other line rang. It was a friend of ours who’s daughter was in the same class. (We’ll call our friend E.) I clicked over. E was calling to tell me that another mom, S, had called her because S didn’t have my number. My daughter was with S, and S was willing to take her home, or E offered for my daughter to go to her husband’s classroom to wait for me. (His name is K.) I took her up on the offer of going to the classroom. I called S, thanked her for saving my daughter and asked her to take her up to K’s classroom. S agreed and said she was happy to help. I then called my husband who headed out to get our daughter from school. All this happened in less than 10 minutes, and by the time I was in my car, 30 minutes from school, I knew she was safe.

As I drove home I felt horrified at myself, awfulized what could have been (my own specialty), and then realized that it was all okay: really honestly okay. The village had made sure my kiddo was safe.

This is the schizophrenic life of a working mom. There are a lot of balls in the air. In one half of your life you are a rock star and in the other half you cut corners. Then you flip it. This week I missed my daughter’s weather presentation and forgot to pick her up. The week before that I skipped out of work two days to help take care of my sick brother. Two weeks from now I’m missing spring break for a work trip, but that Friday I’m skipping another work meeting to spend the last day of spring break at home. It’s constant negotiation, and I am so lucky to have a job and a family situation that gives me this kind of flexibility. My mantra is “You can have it all, but you can’t have all of it all the time.” That’s easy to say and hard to live. I make mistakes. I cut corners. Sometimes I totally mess up. I am way too hard on myself, but I’m working on it. Perfection just isn’t a reasonable expectation anymore.

I wouldn’t trade it though. I wouldn’t give up my job to ensure that I never missed a pick up from school. (Because the truth is, I probably would forget her at some point. My mom forgot my brother once and she stayed home with us.) I love my daughter, but I know if I was home all the time I would get sucked into her life. I’d become a helicopter parent because I wouldn’t be able to separate my life from the most important person in my life. I also know that one of the things that helps me be the best mom I can is my mom network and lots of those ladies are in the office. I couldn’t give up my deep, meaningful conversations about our families in the 2 minutes it takes to pee.

Stall 1: “My daughter was diagnosed with a severe learning disability.”
Stall 2: “Oh no, how did you find out?”
Stall 1: “Testing at school” FLUSH
Stall 2: “Do you have someone you can talk to?” FLUSH
Sink 1: “No. This really sucks.”
Sink 2: “I am so sorry. I have a friend who is a child therapist. Do you want her number?”
Sink 1: “That would be great.”
Sink 2: “I’ll send it before my next meeting starts.”
Sink 1: Drying her eyes with the wet paper towel, “Do I look okay.”
Sink 2: “A little red-eyed, but no one will notice.”
Hugs

Being a mom is hard. I have harshly judged others for mistakes I then made. I strive to be patient with myself and all the other parents I know because all the choices are hard. All the decisions have upsides and downsides. We all do our best, and then help others when they aren’t doing their best. A working mom, a stay-at-home mom, another working mom, and two working dads all helped make sure my kid was safe this week. While I don’t EVER plan on doing that again I’ll sleep a little better knowing that my nightmare actually had an okay ending.

Being a Grown-Up

On March 15, 2015August 20, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Remember when all you wanted to be was a grown-up? People would stop telling you what to do, what to wear, and how to act and you would be in charge? Well, I hate being a grown-up. Some weeks I’m okay with the fact that when I’m lying in bed throwing my booger filled tissues on the floor that two days later, as the grown-up, I am going to have to pick up the remainders of my cold. Some weeks I can deal with the fact that I can’t blame anyone else when my sweater shrinks, we run out of diet Dr Pepper, or when the back door is left unlocked. My husband and I use grown-up as the code word to tell our kid she can’t do something she wants to, like sliding down the booth to the floor of the restaurant to enjoy a fine whine. “Be the grown-up,” the one sitting across from her will snark at the one sitting next to her. The grown-up will have to haul her up, lecture her, and be the bad guy for the rest of the day.

This week grown-up went a little too far. Do I go to my friend’s dad’s funeral or go visit my brother in the hospital? Do I keep my cat on dialysis, at the cost of $1000 per day, or do I let the 7 year old feline we adore die a slow painful death? Do I go see our family shrink so she can shed some light on familial turmoil or do I make that critical meeting at work that will build bridges and may set me up for my next promotion? Oh, and the damn dishwasher broke, so I have plenty of time to ponder these decisions while I scrub gross cat food bowls and egg crusted pans. This morning while I was scrubbing I really should have been working on that $700,000 proposal for work, but whatever. The manual labor grown-up task won.

I don’t want to be 18, or 23 or 30 again, but I want one day as not a grown-up. I want to go lay in the hammock because it’s a nice day. I want to go meet my girlfriends for happy hour and not worry about when I need to get home. If I decide I want to get drunk I want to get drunk. I want someone else to pick up my snotty tissues for me if I do the not-grown-up thing and cry about all this crap going on.

Now, I have to stop playing on my blog and go do some dishes, or write a proposal, or call my brother. Ugh! Grown-up sucks.