What’s the deal with Mother’s Day? We’re on duty all year, and then we’re supposed to be satisfied with a little false spoiling one day out of that long year? Huh. That kind of tokenism leaves me grumpy. Nonetheless, I expect this maternal holiday to be taken seriously if it’s all I’ve got coming to me.

Alright, alright, I’ll fess up. I don’t actually have to wait for a Sunday in May to get treated right. Anthony is a dad to shame other dads. At every reasonable opportunity, the man gives me breaks. He takes the kids on an adventure nearly every weekend (leaving me home alone to do what I want for a few hours and to be filled with envy that they’re having fun without me); he does all manner of household chores (except toilets, as far as I can tell); he’s involved in the ordinary daily activities of our lives.  So he would have to top all that to make Mother’s Day special. Tough task. Last year, he took the kids away all day; I think I didn’t see them for 8 hours. I was thrilled and thankful.

A couple years ago, Anthony came home from a Mother’s Day outing and told me that he had noticed other families out having brunch for mother’s day, moms and dads and kids all together, and it left him kind of sad to be running around without me. I had several reactions to this feeling. One, maybe those moms work, and eating breakfast with their kids is special. Not me. Time alone is a rare treat for me, not breakfast with my kids. Two, Jesse’s egg allergy = brunch bad. Three, I wondered if those children he observed were acting like they’d been raised by monkeys, like mine do. Taking Nick and Jesse out to meals in restaurants isn’t relaxing or celebratory, unless I tranquilize them first.

My Mother’s Day weekend this 2014 was a bit odd. Jesse turned 9 last Tuesday, and as part of her birthday gifts she got a “birthday certificate” sending her on an overnight trip to a waterpark with Dad. She and Anthony were gone Saturday and much of Sunday, so I got to have some alone time with my 4-year-old Nick. He wanted to be the boss, and that seemed okay. We relaxed together Saturday, running a few errands and buying a couple plants for the yard. Nick picked a lovely little shrub for me with wee white flowers. Perfect. Sunday we woke up and lazed about. I brought Nick breakfast in bed so he could do a mini-marathon of Digimon. Next he wanted to go to the zoo. I said yes, because it was sure to be a quiet day at the zoo. After all, what mother in her right mind would go to the zoo on Mother’s Day? It would be Nick and me, riding the little steam engine zoo train over and over again, and visiting quietly with the penguins.

Apparently I still don’t understand Wisconsin, despite 8 years here. I’ve never seen the zoo more busy. The back up of cars to get through the entrance and into the parking lot covered 3 city blocks, a huge cloverleaf off-ramp, and the exit lane on the freeway. I was stunned. It was like family reunion weekend, multiple generations and extended families all gathered together to celebrate Mother’s Day. There was picnicking and barbecuing and lounging about on patches of lawn. At the zoo.

We waited 25 minutes to ride the blasted, stupid train just once. Even Nick was horrified. There were phalanxes of baby-buggies and loads of humanity blocking every path, which means mostly what Nick saw at his eye level, as we wandered about, was adult butt cheeks. It was the first really warm day of the spring, in the upper 70’s, and this apparently called for women to dig deep into their summer wardrobes and pull out their thinnest tube-top mini-dresses, short-shorts and revealing tanks, their pale winter-bleached skin adding to the glare of a warm sunny day. Wisconsin style.

I stood in line for the train and rudely asked a woman standing next to me, why in the world are you here? Why are all these mothers here? She had brought her sons and left her husband at home to do yard work and “clean up [her] closet.” I wasn’t entirely sure what the second part meant, but I didn’t delve further. She seemed happy.

I guess I must be soaking in the Milwaukee gestalt, because despite my puzzlement, there I was at the zoo alongside thousands of other mostly cheerful moms. And after all, I had fun. How could I not, with this little cutie by my side?

When we got home, Jesse and Anthony were waiting for us. Anthony had mowed the lawn and washed my breakfast dishes, and he was ready to grill dinner. He and Jesse had brought me a gift (a new t-shirt, always a treat), and there was a special note from her:

In case you can’t make out the body of the text: “Thanks for being a great Mother and you do a lot more things than a mom does. You are very tolerant, you work hard, you make great food, and you make my lunch delicious! Also that birthday certificate was AW[E]SOME. What I mean is thanks.”

I think it’s what moms dream of, even if they have to go to the zoo on their special day.

Nick wanted to talk about outer space today as we drove to Target to buy sheets for his new bed.

“Mommy, what would you look like if you were in outer space?”

“Since I can’t survive in outer space, I would look like an astronaut because I would be wearing a spacesuit.”

He answered quickly. “No, what would you look like without the suit?”

I played it straight, of course. “I would be dead. That’s why I would wear a suit.”

Nick thought a moment and then giggled sheepishly, shrugging like he was about to let me in on a dirty little secret. “But what if you were dead AND in outer space, what would you look like?”

I took a moment to consider, as I eyed him in the rear view mirror. I’m certain he doesn’t know about vacuums and such yet, so what was he getting at? “What are you thinking about, Nick?”

He looked sly. “What will happen to you when you die? Will you go to heaven? You know, in outer space?”

I couldn’t stop myself from feeling irritable. “Who’s been telling you about heaven? Did someone tell you heaven is in outer space??”

“I don’t know,” he answered, back to keeping his secrets.

So we had a conversation. I apparently started out a bit too metaphysical for a four-year-old kid like Nick. His facial expression told me “confused” when I said that, if heaven exists, I don’t believe it’s a place where our bodies go, but only the feelings and thoughts that happen in our brains and join together to make each of us unique. Conventionally known as our souls. He blank-stared at me for a second and then soldiered on.

He still wanted to know about bodies, but I didn’t want to talk about cremation or burial or other such options. I unsuccessfully tried to deflect the chatter to living on mother Earth in the here and now, but then DING DONG, my mother-earth-calling-Carla bell went off and I finally said the right thing. “Nick. Outer space isn’t heaven.”

“Oooh.” Still pensive.

“Our dead bodies don’t go to outer space when we die.”

“Oh!” Spirits getting brighter.

“There are not a bunch of dead bodies floating around in outer space.”

“Oh! Okay!”

All better.

I’m glad Nick shares his thoughts with me. Airing that stuff out is so much better than getting tangled up inside, in a dark secret place in one’s mind, like I remember doing when I was little and like I know Jesse does. Children have beautiful – and frightening – twisted visions of the way things are. I like hearing all about it.

Jesse turned nine today, and as I sat around wondering at the passage of years, this deep thought occurred to me: I’ve been wiping kids’ poop-stained asses every single day for nearly a decade – more specifically, for exactly 3285 days.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. Sometimes when Jesse was an infant, she went for three or four days between poops, so I guess the off days don’t count, but she made up for it by pooping 14 or 15 times a day for the first few months. Nick is just four, so we probably have a couple years to go; but Anthony often takes the burden so I really shouldn’t complain. I’m not a fan of pushing children too young to self-wipe. There is no way an ordinary 4 or 5 year old would do a decent job of it, and the only thing the would make me grumpier than wiping my kids’ asses is having to deal with their shit-covered hands and wash their sullied undies.

As my friend Erin once said, DAMN I can’t wait for the day when the only ass I have to wipe is my own.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not poop-shy by any stretch, and I always enjoy good, clean scatological humor. Also I do think folks would be well-served by a little less repression on this subject. Did you know there’s a technical term for being poop-shy? “Parcopresis” is what the DSM calls it.

That would be the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a text with which I’m surprisingly familiar thanks to my lawyer days and my daughter. Leaving me alone with the DSM in adulthood is as bad as leaving me alone with the Bible when I was a kid (read my post about vanity if you’re curious). It turns out I am very good at self-diagnosis. I’m definitely suffering from the usual suspects (anxiety, OCD, depression), and I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere on the mild end of the Aspergers spectrum (except it’s all called autism now, right?), and also I think I concluded last year that I have mild oppositional defiance disorder and also a borderline personality. You just have to read the DSM definitions. It’s all there, plain as day. I seem to be high-functioning, at least.

Anyway, back to poop-shy. “Parcopresis” is an odd word that doesn’t give its meaning away easily, and also it’s hard for me to say out loud. I feel all puckered up. Why not just call it “poop-oppressed” and then a person would have a distant chance of guessing what it’s about? The good news is, you can also call it “psychogenic fecal retention.” That’s better.

The only fecal retention problem I’ve ever had is occasional constipation. My dad used to tell me I have diarrhea of the mouth (love ya, Dad). Let me open my literary sphincter and vent a few random poop tales, and then I can feel a little less bloated.

Jesse used to poop so constantly in her early months that every diaper change was high-risk. Once she lay on that changing table and shot high-velocity liquid stools three feet, horizontally, through the air. It splatted on the wall at my eye-level. I remember actually crying out in terror. Cleaning her was like wrestling with a tiny crocodile. She did not cooperate. We frequently ended up holding her in the air by one ankle, upside-down, desperate to stop her from cavorting and smearing poop everywhere. It was carnage.

The next evolution came when Jesse was three and trying to potty train. She was really resistant and kept crapping in her pants, but her no-diapers-allowed nature preschool was starting in a month. Oh no! I really needed my insane daughter to go to school 8 hours a week so I wouldn’t become insane too! It was an emergency. We were on a mini-vacation on Lake Michigan when we were inspired to take her training potty down to the beach with us. It was a popular beach on a warm day, which in Wisconsin means this: the water was probably 60 degrees (balmy by local standards, i.e., warm enough not to make me scream on first contact), the air was in the low 80’s, and there were actually 3 or 4 people within 50 yards of us.

Whenever Jesse wasn’t playing, we encouraged her to pull down her swim bottoms and sit on the potty with a towel over her lap (lest we shock walkers going by), la la la, staring out at peaceful Lake Michigan. Eventually her bowels moved, and then Jesse brought her game on. She leaned over and started grunting and moaning loudly and dramatically, and it went on for at least 5 infinite minutes. She essentially recreated the toilet scene from Austen Powers. Anthony and I rolled on the sand laughing. Peeps walked by with looks that were variously entertained and concerned, but all I really cared about was the fact that Jesse was finally taking a dump on the can.

Nick’s diapers and potty-training were mostly no-brainers, thanks to parental experience and his less-tortured little soul. I didn’t focus on the actual potty as much with Nick. I tended to take him outside and let him squat, because he liked that better. He could pee on a tree and poop on the ground. And anyway it was easier than cleaning up a training potty. One day Nick ran out to the front lawn and decided to poop there. Before I could stop him, he had dropped trou’ and was pushing out one of his massive loads, roadside. A couple cars came by before he was done, but what could I do at that point except wait patiently with a plastic bag?

Here’s my most humiliating personal poop tale. When I was in seventh grade, I cargo-farted during Spanish. I wish I remembered the teacher’s name. She was a tiny little Latin woman with an accent and enormous breasts. She wore bras that made them each look like half a football. I was laughing hard at something that happened in class, and I shot a fart accidentally, and then I smelled something awful. Sure enough, when I went to the bathroom after class, there was a wee smear. I was horrified. I cleaned up best I could and went about the rest of the day. My guess now is that half the schoolboys were wandering around with even better skid marks than mine, but as far as I was concerned, everyone passing near my orbit must have noticed I smelled like shit and held me in contempt forever. It’s a miracle I ever had a friend again.

My grandma was perfectly comfortable with open body talk, including pee and poo news. On the day of her funeral, I ended the day driving back to the hotel with my man Anthony and my brothers Mark and Eric. It was late, we were emotionally spent, the tears were done. I don’t know how we got on the subject of poop, but it was inevitable because Mark and Eric totally get how important pooping is, both as a bodily function and as a source of humor. Eric described a particular impressive dump he had taken. It involved volcano analogies. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I expressed some strongly felt concern that he must have been inspecting his poop closely to be able to describe it in such clear detail. Mark interceded with a vigorous defense of his bro. “Hey! Leave him alone! So he’s fascinated by his poop! What’s wrong with that??” It was a perfect end to the day.

I have officially connected my grandma’s funeral day with my daughter’s birthday via poop talk. I don’t think sweet Grandma would have minded at all. Happy birthday to my sweet little girl.

I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about the way I write (and thus feel) about my mom sometimes. I’ve been thinking it would do me some good to write extensively about my relationship with her, all the emotional twists and curves, because that would be really original for a daughter to do that.

The thing is, blogging about it is so much cheaper than therapy. Jesse’s been using all the time with her shrink on her own issues, so there’s nothing left for me. Grumpy.

Since mom’s stroke a little over 2 years ago, I’ve been grumpy about her. My brothers say she actually seems pretty happy so I shouldn’t worry too much. They live closer and see Mom much more than I do, so I should trust that. But I suffer from the common conceit of daughters, which is that I know (or knew) my mother better than my brothers. Because girl power, right?

Mom had an acute stroke in the thalamic region of her brain, which is right in the middle between the big lobes. It’s like the brain’s switchboard, apparently. She would not wake up one morning. She was taken to the hospital, where she still did not wake up. Her BP was crazy high so they gave her meds for that, and she continued to sleep. She was decidedly not in a coma, but no one could wake her up. I remember speaking with my brothers. Mark told me, “she just looks like she’s sleeping.” Ted told me, “she looks really peaceful.” Everyone was mystified. I was in Wisconsin, taking care of my children and unable to do anything, when I should have been at my mom’s side in California and unable to do anything.

Mom slept for several days and then she woke up. She was goofy from the stroke, of course, but in the weeks that followed she quickly regained her physical skills. Her body suffered no paralysis or lost functioning. She didn’t lose many memories, and she’s not especially confused about basics. She struggles with language and word retrieval a bit but she does okay. By all superficial measures, Mom had a spectacular recovery. But to my eye, the stroke was an energy-sucker that cratered out Mom’s personality.

I can hardly think of anyone who made me as angry as her through the years. Mom was full of rage, bile, and cruel (honest?) insights. She could enter a word fight like a cornered alley cat, mean and clean on the attack, but also crazy. When the siren song of my screaming-banshee-mama routine calls, the voice I hear singing is Mom’s. Mom also had an incredibly silly and witty sense of humor. When I needed to share a gut laugh with someone over something stupid, I knew who to call. Mom had one of the best, raucous gut laughs ever. She could laugh so freely and fully that her eyes cried and her stomach hurt. This is the lady who taught me to bark the command “EAT IT!” after issuing a mighty fart. In Korean it sounds something like, “Moh-goh-rha!” Even better, she would trap her farts under a blanket when she was lazing on the sofa and, giggling like a sneaky little kid, flap them free onto us as we walked by.

So I see what I’m saying now. Boiled down to the essence of things, my mom taught me to scream at my kids and make fart jokes.

I have to admit, I don’t miss her screaming rages and irritable moods. That’s all gone, thanks to the stroke. Mom is easy-going now. A lot of wrinkles in her brow are gone, and she doesn’t make the upside-down-smile grimace of stress and misery anymore. She seems peaceful. I also can’t remember having a good laugh with her since the stroke. I try sometimes to tell her some silly story about the kids. She just doesn’t seem to think anything is especially funny anymore, or else she has trouble following the flow of my words. I can’t figure it out. So I miss that part of her, very much.

Instead of crying about it, like I am now, maybe next time I see her I’ll try farting on her just the way she taught me, and see how that goes.

Those long foam noodles are so much fun in a pool. You can relax on one stuck between your legs or under your pits, tie them around a waist and keep a kid afloat, whack someone over the head without imparting too much pain, drag a kid around on one, and — if you’re not grossed out about germs — put your mouth to the end of a hollow-core noodle and blow a fountain all over someone who’s staying dry poolside.

All that is great unless you’ve got a noodle that’s been at the JCC pool for several months, in which case it’s gross with moldy stuff and heaven knows how much fecal matter has embedded itself in those foamy pores. My OCD meter hits emergency red when I have to deal with public-use pool noodles.

But right now I’m grumpy about noodles because I took a photo. Jesse is in SUCH a good mood today! I’m just thrilled when a peachy day like this comes along. She was having so much fun playing before her swim lesson, so I snapped a shot of her relaxing on a noodle. But instead of collecting a sweet little memory, this is what I got:

I know, I know, it just looks like a little girl floating on a noodle and I need to wash my dirty mind out with soap. And this cup, which I saw at Target a few years ago, is just a princess cup with a built in straw:

I wonder what these princesses think about.

I’m still shedding my end-of-winter blues. I woke up this morning and stretched, and I felt the tired old blues skin crack a little more, and then I felt myself starting to wriggle out. Either that, or I was actually wriggling because Nick was poking my ass energetically and painfully with his toes to try to get me out of bed. Either way, I felt cheerful and grumpy.  Graaaaahwwaaah. I was humming away in the shower —

Yes! I got to take a shower! Nick didn’t even come into the bathroom and give me the creepy four-year-old love-my-naked-mommy ogle. Instead he watched a Dora-la-explorer DVD that he grabbed at the library last week. I hate watching Dora. I feel like I’m trapped in a null void when I’m forced to see that cheap, bad animation.

So I was humming away happily, soaping up my armpits, and without any provocation my mind slowly filled with a bunch of little things that irritate me. This is a good sign! Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be annoyed by other stuff, but here are the random pet peeves I chewed on this morning in the shower:

1. Jessica Smith saying to me during that blasted exercise video that’s kicking my ass, “smiling burns more calories!” Bullshit. But thank you for an excellent workout, which sometimes leaves me unable to lower myself onto the toilet without hanging onto something.

2. The fact that I’m using exercise videos off All Fitness TV (Roku!) at all to get fit. What can I say. I’m 47. It’s been a long winter. This may actually go well past pet peeve into the zone of “total humiliation.”

3. Writers who write about writing, including songwriters who write songs about writing songs.

4. Rock stars singing about the hell of touring, it’s just so awful. Pull-lease.

5.  Artists who make art about making art, including self-portraits that depict the artist arting in the medium of his or her choice.

6. Movies about making or acting in movies.

7. Food Network chefs who smile at the camera while they’re chopping onions, and who say “mmmm” like their food always tastes good. I want to see the out-takes.

8. The music video for that song, something about a jar of hearts, by the lady whose name I can’t remember. The song was an okay pop song, but the video ruined it forever because the video is too embarrassing for words (except these). Just, why?

9. The fact that this is looking like a list, and lists are a serious pet peeve of mine. Shit shit shit.

10. Hypocrisy. It’s really hard to be consistent. I’m moving on.

Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful, sunny, grumpy day, full of much head-shaking and embarrassing self-reflection. Cheers!

I went for a morning jog by myself yesterday and it was really nice. I moved at a surprising pace, for me. When it comes to running, decades of experience indicate that my spirit guide is the tortoise, not the hare.

Anthony and I used to run quite a lot in our 20’s. He’s a foot taller and a whole lot more athletic than me, so it was always an easier row for him to hoe. There was a time when we probably averaged about 25 to 30 miles a week, plus extra stuff when we were training up for something. We ran 10K’s with friends, the Army 10-miler, the cherry blossom half-marathon. We lived near DuPont Circle in DC, so our normal routes were quite nice, encompassing paved and dirt trails in Rock Creek park and a variety of pretty neighborhoods, depending on distance and mood.

When we were first starting to run together, a common route rambled along the creek, through the national zoo, and then up a street called Adams Mill Road, about 4 miles into the run. Adams Mill was San Francisco-steep for a span of a couple blocks. It was a tough patch that I really struggled with, always failing and having to stop and walk up.

One day I made up my mind I would just power it up and keep running. With Anthony by my side, I started the arduous trip up Adams Mill Road, mightily shoving one foot ahead of the other up that blasted hillock. I stared firmly at the ground in front of my feet, sweat pouring into my eyes, sucking air in anaerobic exhaustion. I was focused. I was determined. About halfway up, I heard Anthony’s calm voice beside me. “Carla, stop.”

I stayed in my zone. Eyes focused on ground. Running. I panted through the pain, “no no, I’m good, I’m gonna make it.”

“Carla, just stop.”

“Shut up, I’m fine, I can make it.”

He became insistent. “Carla. Stop.”

I finally looked over at him as I kept moving, ready to do some cussing, because c’mon, he was messing with my hardcore runner mojo. I observed Anthony walking patiently beside me.

No, that’s not right. He was ambling.

It was humiliating. I stopped. Anthony is awesome because he respected my effort and didn’t exactly make fun of me, even though he made fun of me. He mostly felt bad for me. So that’s when he finally taught me how to run hills, and I eventually conquered the very short stretch of Adams Mill hill.

But I also know I’ll always suck at hills.

Yesterday, on my very first jog of the spring, I remembered those days. I carefully selected a short route with no hills to surmount, however diminutive they might be. It felt good.

One of the great joys of parenthood is hanging really awful art on the living room walls. When your four-year-old brings you a family portrait she’s worked hard on, you frame it and put it somewhere special, even if it looks like this:

There are some elements that don’t make sense. Jesse’s and Anthony’s mouths are above their noses, and Nick doesn’t even have a nose. On the other hand, Jesse did draw Nick smaller than the rest of us; I have the biggest round head; and Anthony’s head is long and skinny. So I do think Jesse captured some essential aspect of our physical properties. Not bad.

At around the same age, this is what Nick was drawing:

It was with great pride, which you can see all over his face, that he presented to me this “spiky angry bird,” which he slaved over. He’s got a thing for angry birds. I’ve got a thing for googly eyes, so it was a win win.

It’s really my own fault that the kids aren’t better with a stylus-like instrument. I’ve been told using scissors helps improve pencil grip strength, and early ed peeps have always urged me to let Jesse and Nick practice with scissors at home. But have you ever met my children? I don’t encourage them to use scissors in the house. Ever. They can catch up later on this fine motor skill, at school or some other place where they can’t use tiny cutting devices to trash things like my curtains, my clothing, and my life.

And anyway, if Nick had better pencil skills, he could never have drawn a cute animal like this at his nature preschool:

The teacher added a caption, “still life turkey.” Do you see it? I totally do. It’s a long-legged turkey, native to Wisconsin of course.

Jesse and Nick painted a couple canvases last weekend with the babysitter, while Anthony and I were having a playdate at a local bar.

I have no idea what Nick’s abstract piece is showing us, but I was told he was making footprints or something like that. I like the colors and brush strokes. To my mommy eye, the painting perfectly captures Nick’s current personality — chaotic, fun, wild — and therefore it’s a terrific emotional piece of work. Jesse painted a wild horse, and over the top of it is a “painted mountain,” as she put it. It only took a second for me to realize she was depicting the painted canyons of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where we saw many wild horses last summer. I love the way the pony is prancing. I can almost feel it moving, and it evokes a lot of magic memories from our camping trip — in particular our encounters with the wild horses. As such, it too is a terrific emotional piece of work.

These pieces aren’t especially impressive in any objective sense, and they’ll never hang in a museum, but they’re priceless treasures to me. I hope when I’m a tired old lady, sliding through the end of my days, I’ll look up at a wall near my chair and still find them hanging there.