Animals Past and Present



I'm sitting at my desk, working diligently, when two furry animals suddenly decide to stand on top of my work area, blocking out my screen.

Oh yeah. They're my cats. Our bright idea of about six months ago: adopting sister kittens.

We thought that our kids should have pets before they completely grew up; that it would help them stop being self-centered and care about something smaller than themselves. In that we were right. What I didn't expect was that with their silent, mysterious presence and their baleful glares when their food bowl is empty, how much I have to stand around staring at the cats, trying to read their minds, asking them to lead me to whatever is wrong, like Rin Tin Tin or Lassie.

I finally realize what this all reminds me of. It reminds me of the worst days of being single; in particle, of what it was like being in a relationship with the very Bad Boyfriend I once had.

Like him, the cats don't talk much. I have to sit around trying to guess what they want, what mood they're in, try to read their minds. I never know if they like me so I wait for a little bit of parcelled out affection but end up wounded each time they run from me. They use me for food and shelter. As a matter of fact, I don't remember them ever paying for anything. And sometimes they spend the night cuddled with me and sometimes I just don't know where they are.

Basically, they're using me.

One big difference? Unlike the Bad Boyfriend, who I had delusions of marrying, I actually am married to these cats.

Ever notice human traits in your animal friends? Even bad ones? Cat lover or dog lover?
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I've had difficulties commenting on my own blog and other blogspot blogs for months, as well as other technical difficulties. Bear with me; it appears to be better now!
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Linda Pressman author of Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie
Top Rated on Amazon and available there, on bn.com, local libraries and other retailers. See the tab above to read an excerpt!

A Commercial Break

I'm not proud of the amount of time I've spent watching TV lately. Well, not just lately. I can pinpoint exactly when it started: it was late June, when we went on our first summer vacation to Flagstaff. Our hotel room didn't have HGTV, my favorite TV narcotic at the time, and so I started watching Daughter's favorite, Food Network. And that was it. Cupcake Wars. Iron Chef. Throwdown with Bobby Flay. Chopped.

I'm not going to discuss why I suddenly became fascinated with wasting my time and wasting my life away at that exact moment in time. Let's just say that it was right then that I had gotten very depressed about my writing. Coincidence? Probably not. I'll leave that issue to professionals, or to psychogenic drugs, or to the straitjacket that I'm destined for once the masking tape I've stuck myself together with comes undone.

But here's the idea that's dawned on me in this 3-4 month time period that I've been watching television with my kids: they watch commercials and I don't. And I don't mean just that. I mean, they really watch commercials, like they are rapt with attention for the commercials, paying more attention to them than to the actual show we're watching. And I, the polar opposite, do the exact opposite. I really don't watch commercials. I'm hostile to commercials. Commercials are my break time from television. I read, I run out of the room, I change loads of laundry. 

Is it because I was raised in the 60s and 70s, when commercials consisted of Mr. Clean staring at himself in a see-through floor? Or station identification breaks? Or is it a combination of that and the fact that my kids have been raised in a world of Superbowl Sunday commercials, commercials as art forms, commercials with ongoing plots?

I thought I'd beat them at their own game so one day during the commercials I muted the sound, sure that the kids would join me in talking, mulling things over, or even in getting three minutes of chores done. Instead here's what I had: two zombies staring at the soundless TV and trying to read the lips of the actors. Turns out it wasn't really a problem anyway. They'd memorized the scripts long ago.

Been avoiding anything by vegging out lately? Do you watch commercials? Do your kids? Any Food Network aficionados?

The Second Summer of Yes

I'm anticipating a difficult summer, a repeat of last summer, which I optimistically called The Summer of Yes, though that was before I lived it. 

What a brilliant idea, after all! A summer in which my kids would have to say "Yes" to all my goofball ideas of great activities! Let's go to Taliesin West, kids! Let's go to the Jewish Museum! Let's go to the library, let's go to Arcosanti, let's go antiquing and to romantic comedies with mom! Yes, yes and yes!

This is not exactly what happened. Daughter was onboard if ice skating and Peter Piper Pizza were included. Bar Mitzvahzilla? Apparently he thought it was the Summer of No.

He told me he only wanted to play on his PlayStation. All summer, nonstop. As in, "Mom, can you just drop me off at home?" And then, "Can I go on the PlayStation when we get there?" Well, from time to time we could run out to the gaming store and buy another game for sixty dollars. Wow, that was nice of him, to let us spend time together.

About three years ago, I decided to override my husband's wise counsel and bought Bar Mitzvahzilla a PlayStation 2 game system. He was already twelve and was apparently the last child anywhere in the Western Hemisphere who didn't have a gaming system. He was already a social outcast - there were legions of boys who weren't interested in coming over to our house to hang out because there wasn't anything to do there - despite our basketball hoop and air hockey table. One time a boy came over and expressed astonishment that we had a nice house; the kids at school had all assumed that we were poor because Bar Mitzvahzilla didn't have a gaming system.

So I gave in, buckled. I said yes. I told Husband that we could keep this thing under control. It'd be used when friends were over only. And anyway, seeing my son stick out like such a sore thumb reminded me of myself as a kid, when friends came over with their perfect Barbies with store-bought Barbie clothes, and then I'd pull out what passed for a Barbie in our house: a Barbie body with a freckled Skipper head and one leg. And it was naked. I felt my boy's misery.

After two years had passed, I had to shovel past criss-crossed mounds of wires just to find my son somewhere tangled in the middle, the computer addict needing more, more, more. And just like they say happens with drugs, the purchases didn't stop with the Playstation. Soon there it was yes to the Wii, yes to the XBox, and yes to the iTouch, which I actually thought he'd use for music. Little did I know he could download games.

Sometimes things I don't want to look at closely kind of dance around the edges of my brain and then, when I finally notice them, my brain kicks back on and I can act swiftly. So when Bar Mitzvahzilla tried to opt out of every activity last summer in favor of staying home with his favorite friend in the world, the PlayStation,  well, that was it. It became the "Summer of No" all right, but with me saying No.

So I took it all away. He put up a good fight, asking me hundreds of times after the ban if he could use it anyway, waiting to tire me out, insisting he had nothing to do. And of course he had nothing to do. He had become the most boring child in the world, with no interests except gaming. With it all gone, we just had to wait and find out who existed under there.

But by the middle of the first week he was playing basketball in the driveway and then he put on his Rollerblades and zoomed around the neighborhood. By that Friday he became aware of the existence of other people in the world again, and actually had a conversation with his sister.

Who would have thought that it took saying "no" to get my kid to say "yes?"

Have any gaming troubles in your household? Budding addicts like mine? Have you ever taken it all away? Planning any amazing outings for your kids this summer? Doing any Mommy Day Camp like me? 

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Yesterday was the release day for Aidan Donnelley Rowley's book, Life After Yes. Aidan blogs over at Ivy League Insecurities and has written her debut novel which is getting great reviews! Go to Amazon and buy it now and after you're done reading it participate in the book club discussion on Motherese about it!

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Happy Anyway

In April 2001 I went to see a neurologist about some headaches I'd been having, some with visual distortions. He didn't think much of the headaches. Headaches, apparently, were a dime a dozen and not truly indicative of a more serious condition. But the facial numbness I had? That was important. As a matter of fact, though he didn't tell me this then, the numbness ran right across my third facial nerve. He ordered an MRI.

One moment I was standing in my kitchen trying to get my five-year-old son to eat his breakfast while dodging the cereal my one-year-old daughter was throwing from her highchair tray, and the next moment I answered the phone call from my neurologist. Calling on a Saturday. He told me I had a brain tumor and that it was pressing on the third facial nerve. And then I sat down.

Even though I don't mind talking about this at all, I try not to bring it up. The problem is that it's impossible to mention casually; it stops every conversation dead in its tracks. And how would the topic come up, anyway? When people are talking about back pain, neck pain, am I supposed to mention my brain tumor? Who wants to be this big of an expert in anything?

Here's the deal: when you say you've had a brain tumor, even cancer patients feel sorry for you.

But this is what I realized right after my diagnosis: nothing had really changed. Yes, I had this really scary diagnosis, but not a bad prognosis: the tumor was benign and operable and would be removed in June. So the question was, what was my life supposed to look like between now and then? Was I supposed to moan and wail and be tragically afflicted every day of that two months? Or should I just live my life?

Since Momalom's Five for Ten writing topic for today is "Happiness" I thought I'd write about something inexplicable: I was happy anyway.

For the first time in my life, a life of secrets and privacy, of hugging pain and shame and medical problems close to me, I let people know what was wrong and, by doing so, an amazing thing happened to me. I let people care. Me, the person who had suffered through miscarriages in silence, not even telling my sisters or mother. At forty-one I finally understood that I had to allow myself to be both weak and strong, to be both sick and well, in order to be human.

Yes, there was quite the curiosity factor when I showed up at work again, everyone wondering why I was there when I had a brain tumor, but after the initial shock of seeing me look fine, seeing me laugh, seeing me work, seeing me okay - and sometimes seeing me not quite okay - things got back to normal. They could ask me when the surgery was, how long I'd be off, was I nervous? What could they do to help me and my family?

There was so much to be happy about, after all. I'd finally broken down the wall between me and the world and let people come in. And after the surgery and the, yes, grueling recovery, I went back to work and resumed my life with one addition: I started taking writing classes. Still alive.

Happier.

Do you isolate or accept help and care? Have you ever suffered through something in silence, afraid to reach out? Have you ever been able to see that the situation is temporary but the happiness is permanent?

Roommates of Doom

Did you ever have a roommate who drove you nuts?

When I went to college, I went through seven roommates my freshman year. This wasn't all my fault. In the prison block of my first college dormitory, we were assigned to four-person, two-bunkbedded rooms, one bunkbed on each side of the room, a bank of four closets in the middle, and a strip of four built-in desks on the opposite wall. With that many people in a room the minute I switched rooms once I automatically had six roommates. Then the minute one those subsequent roommates switched I was at seven. It was hard not to take this personally.

After all, I had roommates who bordered on evil, some who were criminal, and some who were just plain loony.  There was one who switched bunks with me while I was away for the weekend, though just to creep me out she placed my artwork upside down next to my new bunk. Eventually, when I went away again, she moved me out into another room. I had a roommate who used to wake up our entire room with blasting Gospel exhortations to accept Jesus or burn. Every night for dinner she ate dry ramen, crunching it silently at her desk. I tried to explain to her that you were supposed to cook it, and offered her the use of my hot pot, but she just looked at me silently and kept crunching. I had a spoiled roommate who was so rich that hundred-dollar bills used to fall out of the Calvin Klein jeans she left strewn all over the floor of the room, all while I was subsisting on knock-off cans of corn. I had trampy roommates, virginal roommates, and, later, I had some roommates who were fascinated by my houseplants and plant light, so much so that they then bought their own plant light and started a pot farm in their room.

So I had some bad roommates. But I'm starting to wonder if these roommates, my children, are the worst roommates I've ever had. 

My husband and I walk in the kitchen one evening. The cabinets are flung open, measuring spoons out, microwave door wide, wrappers on the counter. I think, Where are the kids? Are they okay? Because, of course, based on the condition of the house, I think there's been a burglar in there.

But no. They both simply made some fudgy thing that had to be microwaved and needed a measuring spoon to do it, and they had to unwrap some packaging. And they're just that bad of roommates that they grab what they need and simply drop the rest of the stuff where ever they are. Lift a finger to throw the wrapper in the garbage can? No, of course not. Swing an arm to shut the cabinet door? Lift a hand to put away the measuring spoons? C'mon.

When I look at these roommates of mine - the fourteen-year-old and the ten-year-old - I feel a little hopeless. The fact that they can make a mess and then sit in it - what does this say for their future? The fact that somehow, unlike my other roommates, all their actions not only reflect on me but have to be fixed by me, this is bad.

But so far one thing to be grateful for: no pot farm.

Did you ever have a bad roommate? Did you ever have a really great one? Did you live in a prison cell dorm at college like I did? What kind of "roommates" are your kids?

Fork Over the Forks

I unloaded the dishwasher yesterday and, just to aggravate myself, I counted the forks. Why would I do this, you ask? Well, when you know you had a complete set of twelve place settings of an expensive Oneida set,  painstakingly purchased one place setting a month over an entire year, and then notice that the silverware drawer is becoming increasingly empty over time, it makes a mother suspicious.

So I counted. I'm missing nine forks.  

And what does this mean? It means that my careless, spoiled children have thrown away the forks as they've cleaned off their dishes, or thrown out the paper plates they've used.  

I had this dream of having really nice silverware - probably some Jewish genetic thing, hand in hand with my desire for good china, a gigantic house, and a really big diamond. So far, all I had was the silverware. And the silverware had to be of some heft, not the tinny stuff you find in cafeterias, not the haphazard stuff we had at my house growing up, whatever my mother got from S&H Green Stamps along with whatever people left at our house on the holidays and she purloined. My mother, after all, was coming at this from a different perspective. Any time she wasn't starving in the forest like she did during World War II was good, eating with anything that wasn't her hands was good. Obviously, she didn't have my utensil needs.

So about ten years ago I made a plan. Each month I took $42.00 and bought one place setting and put it away until the end of the year when I had the entire set and we began using them. Of course, what I failed to consider was that by then we also had children. Children who would've been better off eating with their hands. Hence, nine forks gone a missing.

I know I should be a little more optimistic. I mean, knowing our house and the general disorganization and what the kids' bedrooms look like, the missing forks could be anywhere. They might just be stuck under a piece of furniture, maybe welded to the carpeting along with a mass of sticky food or something. They could be lying forgotten inside an old lunchbox, or nine old lunchboxes.

But I don't think so. I think that in my kids' constant juggling of the dual demands of parents wanting washed off plates and cleaned off spots at the kitchen table and their own desire to frantically return to whatever they were doing (TV, gaming, playing outside) they simply dumped the whole thing in the garbage. I'm probably lucky I have any dishes left.

Wait a minute. Should I count the dishes?

How bad is the missing item situation in your household? How about the broken item situation? Are you missing an inordinate amount of one thing that the kids use mostly?

The Snowman Cometh

Up until three days ago, Daughter and Bar Mitzvahzilla had never seen snow.  This is kind of funny because we come from a family with a legacy of snow.  My dad, a Holocaust Survivor, spent the war years living in Siberia. Instead of that making him cautious about the cold, instead that made my dad the opposite, quite flippant. When I was growing up in Chicago, he compared the weather there with the weather in Siberia and found Chicago's weather a heatwave, heading out each day with no hat, no gloves, and a flimsy jacket.

He'd say, "Cold? You think this is cold?" We'd nod because with the wind chill factor it was about twenty below zero. "You should have felt the cold in Siberia! Cold is when you get a bucket of water, throw it in the air and, before it gets to the ground, it freezes!"

My mother, who spent the war living in the Eastern European forest with no coat or shoes, had a different perspective.  She had a terrible fear of being cold. She was the one who'd wrap us in miles of scarves, who crocheted mittens for hours, and who knitted sweaters until all seven of us looked like we were wearing the striped flags of obscure countries, our clothes made out of whichever color yarn she got on sale. 

But Bar Mitzvahzilla and Daughter know nothing of cold.  They are Arizonans - Phoenix, Arizonans. So we decided to do something different for our winter vacation.  Normally we consider only the bottom half of Arizona for a winter vacation because Husband and I shun the cold.  But this year we decided to introduce the kids to snow.

They had a dreamy idea of what it would be like.  Fluffy maybe, like billowing cotton balls? Tiny doilies skittering through the air?  Like pillow stuffing, feathers? Cold doesn't come into any of their descriptions.

We're driving up the Interstate, we get past a certain elevation and there it is - white stuff just laying on the ground.  Other travelers from Phoenix are pulling over in excitement and letting their kids sled down the roadside hills almost into traffic. We pull over somewhere safe and the kids go plummeting into a snow bank. Fluffy? Yes. Pillowy? Uh, okay. Cold and wet? Yeah.

Here's what I find out on this trip.  I find out that I am apparently not too old to make a complete idiot out of myself sledding down hills and capsizing, over and over again.  I find out that Husband, five years older than me, thinks he can head down a hill like a bullet, but then he pulls all his back muscles.  I find out that it's never a good idea to stay in a hotel with "sleep number" beds because the kids will play with the motors over and over again until they break them and they're stuck in a concave position, further putting out Husband's back.

Tonight is our last night away, the last dinner out, the last bundling on of gloves, hats and gigantic coats just to walk to the car and then from the car into a restaurant.

Three days ago the Snowman Cometh but tomorrow the snowman goeth.

A Month of Eating

 

Husband hasn't stopped eating since Halloween.  That's a month.

First it was the Halloween candy.  I had to be the neutral mediator between Husband and the kids in the issue of Who Gets All the Candy?  If the kids weren't willing to give Husband all the Kit Kats and the Peanut M&Ms, he was threatening to take away every bit of candy in the name of healthy parenting.

That candy lasted two weeks.  Then came some kind of pre-Thanksgiving Day sale at his favorite grocery store involving huge quantities of ice cream, again a problem with the kids.  Husband wanted all the ice cream but the kids rightfully believed that the ice cream should maybe involve them.  Again, I interceded.  Although I do think Husband gave in too easily possibly due to a hidden stash in our freezer in the garage. 

Then I baked all the bananas in our house into banana bread.  That was some kind of ape festival around here but there was enough to share. 

Then came Thanksgiving Day itself which, somehow, was all about the desserts.  A little turkey, a lot of desserts.

Through it all, Husband stood next to each food table, a conveyer belt nearly set up next to the food which then ascended directly into his mouth.  There was nothing he wouldn't eat.  He ate and ate and ate and then took a plate home to eat later. 

And then, since there's absolutely no justice in this world, my husband, who should weigh about four hundred pounds, but actually weighs about 155, and should have gained an extra hundred pounds this month alone, noticed his pants - size 32 - were getting a little snug, so he cut back for a couple of days and got back to normal, 152.

And now onto December. 

Here, Kitty

We finally went shopping for a pet. This was pretty amazing for us since Husband and I have Post Traumatic Pet Syndrome. When either of us even think about getting a pet, the first thing on our minds is not my chronic asthma, it's not the kids' springtime allergies and wondering if they'd be allergic to a pet too, and it's not being tied down to an animal just when our lives are getting easier. Instead this is on our minds: our former beloved cat dying an agonizing death from kidney disease when Bar Mitzvahzilla was just a baby.

Since Bar Mitzvahzilla was a dangerously tiny preemie who took ten weeks to come home from the hospital, we certainly had our hands full when he came home in October, 1995. There was an apnea monitor for the baby, an IV for the cat. An oxygen tank for the baby, injections for the cat. Doctor visits for the baby, veterinarian visits for the cat. Carrier for the baby, carrier for the cat.

Unlike the baby, who thrived, busting out of those little unisex preemie outfits like Superman, the cat did not, despite our best efforts to keep her alive. Finally, we had to let her go. We called the mobile vet, laid her down in Husband's arms and the vet gave her the shot to put her to sleep.

So when we see a cute little kitty, we don't just see the kitty. We see the grown up cat, the responsibility, we see the vet visits, and, unfortunately, we see the end. We're not a exactly a barrel of monkeys when it comes to cat shopping.

Based on our checkered past, when we finally went to the Humane Society last Friday to check out the cats, there wasn't much chance of us leaving with one. First there were the four of us and our individual expectations of a cat, then there was the lurking ghost of our dead cat. There was also Husband's list of required attributes for a new cat, which basically meant that the kitty would have to be a reincarnation of our old cat.

Ultimately, none of this came into play. We walked in, we picked out a cat to see. The kids pet the cat, both of them lifting their hands in horror at the cat hair clinging to them and swirling in the air around their heads. Then they began sneezing: six times, seven times. Then they put their cat hair-covered hands to their mouths to cover their sneezes. More sneezes.

We ran for our lives.

Car and Driver

Husband and I fight for several easily categorized reasons.

First we fight because I'm an inept fool in the kitchen and can never figure out anything nutritious to feed Bar Mitzvahzilla and Daughter. Despite this, and bewilderingly, they continue to grow. Husband isn't convinced by this evidence. He'd like to see some changes, like the introduction of the crockpot into my lexicon.

The second reason we fight is because after the kids eat whatever I pop out of the microwave, rather than them driving me nuts all night while I wait for Husband to come home, I park them in the front of the TV. Well, not quite. First homework and two chores, then TV. This allows Inept Mom to write. Of course, Husband thinks there should be no TV. I totally blame it on him that the last TV series I watched on an ongoing basis was Seinfeld.

These disagreements are almost manageable. The one area that can get ugly is when Husband is driving the car and I'm the passenger.

Husband's theory of driving is wound up with the preservation of the household vehicles - he wants them to last one hundred years. He wants us to drive our cars until they fall to pieces beneath us in the roadway and we're left jogging to our destination. To this end, his driving technique - he has a technique -is intended to reduce wear and tear to all car parts. He never wants to pay for repairs for anything that could have been used more tenderly.

To preserve the brakes, Husband will scan the roadway ahead - like ten miles ahead. If he sees the tiniest hint of a red traffic signal anywhere - like even with binoculars - he takes his foot off the gas and starts decelerating. Why speed up to get to a red light?, he asks. This creates quite a problem in the roadway. People start passing us and honking at us; suddenly there's an island around us, a slo-mo island.

He also takes courtesy too far. If we're driving past the entrance of a building, he's a little too meek. He'll scan the store; he'll scan inside the store. Is there anyone at the checkout stand who might be coming towards the parking lot sometime soon? If so, then he'll slam on the brakes, nearly sending me through the windshield.

I was raised in a family in which we never plan to keep our cars. When the payments stop, we get rid of them. We are constantly seduced by shinier, newer models, or we want a different color. If something breaks, that's it. We want that car towed away, never to be seen again, even if it just needs a battery. Since we're not rich people, this can cause some problems.

Husband only has one thing to say about my complaints: he asks me if I'd like to drive.

Perfect Day for the Public Pool

Yes, I promised the kids that we'd go swimming at the public pool today, the one with a high-dive, a low-dive, a fountain, and a waterslide, thousands of kids and parents.

Yes, it's probably the hottest day of the year so far. My car - which is pretty smart - says it's 107.

Yes, I'll admit it, I was a little excited when I left for my exercise class this morning and it was drizzling, thinking, Don't they close pools when it rains? Because then I thought I wouldn't have to go and I'd get to do my favorite Mom camp activity - go see a movie.

But yes, because we live in Arizona, the clouds didn't last long and the sun came out again, a sweltering, suffocating, kind of sun today.

Yes, it's true, I won't swim. This isn't because I hate my body. I've talked about this before, but let's just say that, except for my daily shower, I find the process of being wet excruciating.

Yes, I'm going to try to have an out-of-body experience while I'm sitting there melting on my folding lawn chair, maybe pretending I'm on the beach somewhere with a cool breeze on my face.

Yes, I'll probably faint and have to be revived by paramedics. This has happened before in much cooler places.

Yes, I'm bringing a book to read, my writer's notebook, and a bunch of magazines, but I'll probably just get on my phone and waste all my time yakking to a bunch of people and get nothing done.

Yes, my kids will ask for money for the vending machines which only accept dollars and which will malfunction right after they put their money in. Right then all the pool employees will have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. If I find someone, they'll look at me blankly and say, "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but you have to call the number on the machines to get a refund of your dollar."

Yes, though I've planned this very carefully, going late to coincide with sundown since the pool stays open late, it won't work out like I've planned. The pool will be dirty from being open all day, the day will stay hot, a breeze will never stir, the kids will never want to get out, and the sun will never set.

And Yes, they'll want to do it again.