The On Again Off Again Romance

The first hint that Husband and I might actually be able to get away together - for one whole day and a half - was when I got a memo from Daughter's school about her upcoming fifth grade trip. Daughter, who won't sleep out ever, no matter what, will also not miss a class trip, no matter how much she can't stand letting me out of her sight.

So, being a shameless opportunist, I thought, Maybe we can go out of town while she's gone! But then I thought, But what will we do with Bar Mitzvahzilla?

The next four weeks were a wild, rocky roller coaster, not knowing from one day to the next if our trip was on or off.

We couldn't go. After all, Bar Mitzvahzilla had to go to school each day. And football practice. And Hebrew High.

We could go. Bar Mitzvahzilla, it turned out, was on Fall Break the very same week as Daughter's trip. No school and we'd wiggle out of football practice and one session of Hebrew High.

We couldn't go. Who would keep him overnight?

We could go. My sister.

We couldn't go. My sister was moving and, just our luck, had moved forty miles from our house the day before we were leaving.

We could go. She'd meet us half way to get Bar Mitzvahzilla.

We couldn't go. Daughter started worrying about the trip. Her stomach started acting up.

We could go. Psychosomatic illness.

We couldn't go. Daughter, now crazed with separation anxiety, kept herself up half the night before her trip worrying about missing me. (Somehow she never worries about missing Husband.)

We could go. Planted her on a bunch of pillows on the floor next to my bed and let her watch me all night.

And we did go. We both saw her off at school, carefully, like delicate china, since by then we had non-refundable reservations at a hotel. Then Husband drove Bar Mitzvahzilla to the drop off point, dropped him off, and we took off like a flash.

The next day, rejuvenated, newly back in love, back in our halcyon days of honeymoon and romance, we drove back into town and met Daughter after her return from her trip. Within seconds our romance fled out the windows of the car. We became The Parents once again. Then we picked up Bar Mitzvahzilla so the two of them could bicker at each other. And then we were complete: one bickering couple in the front seat and another bickering in the back.

But there's still that memory. I can live on that for awhile.

Do you ever get away without kids? Do you have to plot and sneak to do it? Does getting away rejuvenate your relationship? What do you do about fighting kids? Any nervious children?  

Mom vs. The Remote

I discovered something alarming on our recent vacation. My kids' idea of fun TV shows to watch are basically all on the Food Network.

Seriously. Checking the TV guide, setting up our lives around the next episode of Chopped, of Ace of Cakes, of Iron Chef, of Cupcake Wars.  When forced by Husband to watch something educational, they'll turn on Discovery's Man vs. Wild. On that one the guy roasts bugs for dinner. Do I detect a common theme of eating?

Now I readily admit that I've spent about five years watching HGTV drone on and on with Househunters and Design on a Dime, Curb Appeal and Spice Up Your Kitchen, and I know those shows don't exactly have any suspense, but why are my kids so fascinated with food preparation?

Since we were spending a lot of time together and since it was vacation, I had to watch some of these shows myself. At first I was concerned. After all, I used to weigh considerably more than I do now. In the circles in which I run, the Food Network is routinely referred to as "Food Porn." Was this a good idea?

Turns out there was no problem at all. The stuff that the chefs prepare on most of those shows is totally unrecognizable to me as food. One day on Chopped the chefs had to use some fish called Aho in every dish, and they used it - as fish ribs, dried and grinded, and in other torturous preparations. And then they threw in some other stuff, like pork rinds, shaved this or that and then, I swear, jellied blech. Because of these unrecognizable ingredients, I've actually never wanted to eat anything on these shows (okay, except the cupcakes). Most of the time I wonder how the judges can stand it.

I wonder at my poor, hungry children, watching Food Network to just see something being cooked, instead of their own mother who stands in the kitchen blankly, never able to actually think of What's For Dinner? I think of Bar Mitzvahzilla, happily reading the food ads that Husband places before him as he reads the paper, Bar Mitzvahzilla's eyes growing luminous at the glossy photographs of the grocery store ads.

But the kids and I had to reach a compromise somehow. Somewhere in the vast space between HGTV and the Food Network. Finally I found it, my new favorite show: Say Yes to the Dress on TLC. Oy.

What do you get stuck watching on TV in your house? Does anyone else have kids who watch Food Network, like mine do? Are you a fan or is some of this stuff just way too complex? HGTV?

Putting the A in Awkward

The other day we were all walking down one of the quaint downtown streets of Flagstaff on our vacation - me, Husband, Daughter and Bar Mitzvahzilla. We were all pretty normal looking. That is, with the exception of Bar Mitzvahzilla. We'd made the mistake of buying him some sunglasses earlier that day and were paying the price right then. He loped along, supercool. Shades blocking his baby blues. His body built up from a summer of football training. A swagger in his step. My boy, somehow a tough cool guy. The kind of guy I would have hated in high school.

Yet one day earlier - same vacation - we were at the hotel swimming pool and he was ready to go swimming with Daughter. He sat there next to me wracked with indecision. Should he take off his shirt? Swim with his chest showing? What about those teenage girls who were frolicking in the hot tub? Was anybody watching him? I glared at him. Aren't girls supposed to be the ones who drive you nuts? My boy, somehow as insecure as a, well,  teenage girl. The kind of guy I would have liked in high school.

Then another night we all went down for an evening dip in the Jacuzzi and there I ran into my third Bar Mitzvahzilla of the vacation.

First he frolicked with Daughter in the Jacuzzi and then in the swimming pool, playing like a seal or a porpoise, I don't know. I swear he would've balanced a ball on his nose if we'd had one. He was doing acrobatics, swim racing, and then, when we got back to the room, they staged a "death by arrow" video using the arrow Daughter had bought on the reservation nearby. The kind of boy I would have liked -  in grade school.

My three sons, all contained in one fourteen-year-old boy, for one last fleeting moment before they all disappear or coalesce into one. Into the man he'll turn out to be.

Did you ever catch your kids just on the cusp between one age and another? Kid to tween, adolescent to teen? Teen to adult? Where there are flashes of the kid he or she was and the person he or she will be at the same time?
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This post is part of the Bigger Picture series hosted this week by Corinne at Trains, Tutus and Teatime, where bloggers write about events which tie into the bigger themes of our lives. Please visit Corinne's blog to participate and to link up your blog!

Lazy Family on Vacation

Okay, I'll admit it: we've been on vacation. I hesitate to call it that, though, because not only have we stayed in Arizona (I've previously whined about ending up in Flagstaff for this vacation) but, of course, the kids are with us. Ever feel like you need a vacation from your vacation? Ever feel like the vacation isn't that different from the rest of the summer?

Well, it hasn't been that bad. We decided to act like tourists and so went to Lowell Observatory one day, took the ski lift to the top of Mt. Humphrey another, and today we went to the Grand Canyon. For our family, this is a jaw-dropping level of activity while on vacation. Normally we're more the sleep-till-noon, too late to get our hotel room cleaned type of vacationers. And then we get to listen to our kids nag us about how we never do anything exciting on vacation. Well, we showed them.

Right after we were married, after my first miscarriage, Husband and I came up to Flagstaff, right when I thought I'd really never have children. We stayed at my mom's cabin and I moped around feeling the inadequacy of a family made up of just us two. At one point we took that same ski lift up to the top of Mt. Humphrey. It was quiet. I could hear the wind rustling in the Aspens. I remember thinking that I wasn't prepared to deal with these things that were bigger than me, or bigger than my ability. Husband comforted me, telling me that it would all work out.

And there we were on Monday, going up that same mountain in those same ski lift cars, me and Daughter in one, Husband and Bar Mitzvahzilla in another - and then going down the mountain, switching kids - me and Bar Mitzvahzilla in one car and Husband and Daughter in another. It was an experience of the differences in my kids. My daughter waiting for the lift to break into a million pieces, nearly laying down on top of me, and then my son sitting there, the stoic teen, making me think of the little boy who once pointed at all the sights he saw  - "Look, Mom! The clouds!" None of that this time.

And Husband and I, in separate cars because of the rules of the ski lift, and temporarily divided by the same children we longed for.

Do you have a history of going to a particular place, over and over again, so that your history's played out there? Are you a lazy vacationer or an active one? Ever vacation in your home state?

Human Garbage Can

Bar Mitzvahzilla is leaving for his eighth grade trip on Monday - a week in Washington, D.C. with his classmates. Gosh, a week without a teenager in the household. No talking back intended to wound our very souls. No slammed doors. No hovering, sullen teen, now taller than me, arguing with me in a voice that sounds like Barry White. What will husband and I do?

Um, celebrate?

So, to celebrate, we let Bar Mitzvahzilla pick a restaurant for dinner tonight. He picks Mexican food. We sit down at the table, the busser brings a basket of chips and, almost before anyone else can get one, Bar Mitzvahzilla has eaten all of them. Same with the second basket.

Because he's spent years coveting anything I eat and I've the fajita salad at this place, Bar Mitzvahzilla next orders this salad, though I've already given him a dire warning that he's probably ruined his appetite with so many chips. He scoffs at me. (Note: I also will not miss scoffing for one week.) Of course, he's right. There is actually no such thing as "ruining his appetite." He just continually stuffs food down his mullet before his brain has a chance to register that his stomach is full, then suddenly a distress signal is sent up from the stomach to the brain - while his mouth is still full - and he'll just stop chewing. He's done. That's it.

So he makes his way through the salad. Then he starts trolling for excess food around the table. Is Husband going to finish his burrito? Am I going to finish my taco? My Pico de Gallo? My garnish? Is there any refuse on the table he can perhaps lick up? It's like sitting at a table with a vulture. We hover protectively over our plates so he can't swoop in and grab our food.

While Husband and I are sitting across from Bar Mitzvahzilla tonight we both realize with rising horror that we're about to set our son loose on his unsuspecting classmates and they'll all soon be witnessing his table manners. The clutching of the fork like it's a spade. The overloading of the fork with too much food. The mouth opened wide like a bird, his braces glinting in there. The general multi-napkin mess that is his face after all this has transpired.

We begin some belated instruction: Smaller bites! Cut your food! Don't eat like you're starving! Slow down! Then we give up, exasperated. It's Washington, D.C.'s problem for one week, not ours.

Any ravenous children over at your place? How is the table manner-training going? Have you ever sent a kid off on one of these really big "field trips?"

Ship to Shore

There's this book I used to read my kids called "Are You My Mother?" In it a squawky-looking bird falls out of his nest and goes looking for his mother so he can find his home. It's the kind of book young children love and parents find a little repetitive since the bird has to find the wrong thing over and over before he finds the right thing, saying, is this his mother? Is that his mother? Is the steam shovel his mother? The kids love it because most of the things the bird questions are very obviously not his mother so they get to yell out a resounding, "No!" each time.

Fun, I guess, unless you happened to have misplaced your mother, as I have.

February 6th she went gallivanting off with Stepfather, bound for South America on a Holland America cruise. That day sister number one got a phone call. They were on the ship resting and they would be sailing shortly. After that? No word.

So I'm like that squawky bird, faintly irritable, looking for my mother.

I get somewhere early and am waiting in my car so I think, hmmm, I've got a bit of a wait; should I call my mom? Or I gather up tidbits of news and I think, I need to tell my mom about this. I think I'll give her a call. Or I get home, plop on my bed, the phone nearby, and I think, okay, time to give mom her daily call.

But maybe it's about time I faced the fact that it's not really her daily call at all - it's my daily call. Because I end up calling everyone else - just like the bird in the book - is this sister my mother? Is Husband my mother? Who will fill in during the cruise month? Who wants to hear all my stupid crap, the odds and ends, the accumulated junk that only a mother could be interest in?

I'm not the only one feeling vaguely disoriented. First there were some inquiry-type emails going back and forth among the other members of our seven sister litter. Then we started getting alarmed. I had a vague concern about the boatload of senior citizens marooned in South America, perhaps all completely computer illiterate, all arriving in the ship's "Internet Cafe" and wondering how they could order some Folger's.

Finally, at sixteen dollars a minute, one of the twins got a message to her, attached as the greeting to the  manicure she had to purchase just to communicate at all. Then our mother called. She left a message. They're having a great time. They're rounding the tip of Peru. Don't call back.

How annoying is it when you miss someone and they don't miss you? Or you are missed but you're having too much fun to think? Do you save up conversational odds and ends for certain people? Have you read this book to your kids?

Destination - South America

My mom called me a few weeks ago and asked me if she could borrow one of my suitcases. Because I'm the daughter who lives closest to her, I'm the one she calls first for everything. If I can't help her, then and only then, will she move back onto her daughter list, calling everyone else.

But a suitcase? Sure. Husband and I are virtually leg-shackled to Phoenix since we own a store, so we can never get out of town, leaving our suitcases unused in our closet. 

I said, "Sure, when do you need it?"

She said, "Right away."

"Where are you going?" I knew she was leaving in a month for a cruise to South America, but where was she going right then?

"Linda! We're going on the cruise!"

"Wait a minute. Are you telling me you need the suitcase a month ahead of time for your cruise in February?"

Silence. Busted.

"We need to start packing."

"A month ahead of time?"

"I'm going to wash all my clothes and then fold them and see if they fit in the suitcase. Then I'll decide what I'm taking. If they don't fit, then I'll see what I can fit, wash it, fold it and fit it again. Then I'll try it all on right before the cruise to make sure it fits, wash it, fold it and pack it one final time. Then Bob will take the suitcases down to a place and have them weighed full so we'll know if we have to pay the airline."

What did I ask her again?

But now it's February. Her trip is days away. She sits in her house, strangely immobile. I call her to check on her, to see if she feels okay. She says she does but she's not leaving the house. I hesitate before asking why. Do I really want to know why? Do I really have to ask why? Why do I get hoodwinked into these conversations over and over again? But I can't help myself. We're attached like twins, this mother and me.

And of course, the answer is that she packed all of her clothes and now has nothing to wear. Also, she doesn't want to risk getting sick in the cold January Arizona air by going outside.

I say, "Ma, today it was 72 degrees."

She says, "To you that's nice. To me, it's cold."

I nod my head. What'd I expect? I tell her I'll come by this week to say goodbye. She says, "Hurry already. We're busy!"

And I do it again. I ask her, "Busy with what?"

And she says, "Final packing." 

Are you a last-minute packer or more the girl scout type? Am I the only one who gets sucked into conversational quagmires? Are you attached at the hip to your mother?

No-Tell Hotel

                                                      

When we were away this past week, we had a problem with the first hotel we stayed in, necessitating an immediate switch. 

We didn't know this ahead of time so, in the interest of being comfortable, we got to the hotel and unpacked completely.  And I mean completely. We divided up the dresser drawers, then we filled up the drawers and emptied our suitcases. Daughter lined up her stuffed animals on her bed. I created a makeshift kitchen, even though there was only a refrigerator.

Then, suddenly, because of a heating unit that sounded like an airplane was taking off from our room and Sleep Number beds that left us sleeping in a large, concave hole, we wanted out. So we packed. And we forgot something. My hair shine spray.

I have problematic hair, a big ball of tangled Jewish hair. This hair requires a lot of products to actually look human each day. Since product purchasing or figuring out is actually beyond my capabilities, I've enlisted professionals to help me with this: my hair stylist and my six sisters.  So each day, to transform my hair from what it is - an Interesting Jewish Fur Ball into what I want it to be - Human Hair - I use about ten products, including my shine spray.

So, of course, I go back to the first hotel from the second hotel to see if they found my shine spray. The Interesting Jewish Fur Ball might have been tamed into looking like hair because I have the other nine products but, hey, it's still not shiny. The front desk clerk, who checked us in a few days before, and could best be described previously as possessing lank, dull hair, looks different. She has suspiciously shiny hair. The other front desk clerk also has shiny hair.  I see some Housekeeping staff wheeling a cart by. Shiny hair too.

She asks me for details and disappears for a long time, allegedly looking for my hair spray. Is she going to try to palm me off with some Aqua Net? She comes back empty handed, accompanied by a bustling manager with, of course, shiny hair.

I leave with nothing, the doors to the hotel full of shiny-haired employees swishing shut behind me.

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.

Shopping Till Midnight

Even though I'm Jewish and Hanukah's over, I've got to admit it:  I'm still shopping. I love shopping in the days leading up to Christmas.

Here's the truth:  It's the only time of the year when the entire world shops the way I do all year long.  And, even better, the stores are along for the ride - coupon specials every day!  Stores open till midnight!  Extra store clerks everywhere you look!  It's a shopaholics paradise.

I used to work in downtown Phoenix and got stuck in huge traffic jams driving on my way to work every day.  What amazed me was that right when all of us downtown workers were heading to our jobs every morning during rush hour, there'd be all these people who had no business being on the road - like tourists or retired people - during rush hour too, just clogging the place up.  That's how I feel sometimes, being a Jew shopping after Hanukkah's over with the Christmas shoppers.  Shouldn't I really stay home and stay out of their way?  Why am I enjoying the ambience of the frenzied shoppers when I really have no business being out there?

Here's the secret about this midnight pre-Christmas shopping:  there's actually no one in the stores.  Well, there's me and the store clerks all restocking for the shopping bonanzas of the next day.  At least in Phoenix - and I've tested this quite a few times now - the idea that the stores are staying open for throngs of shoppers to stay in there is a misconception.  There's only me, really.

I can always find a legitimate reason to be in there.  This week it's kind of important:  snow gear for the family to head up to Flagstaff for our annual jaunt out of town when Husband closes our store. So I need to be shopping, really.  And, other than the midnight shopping, I really need to be out there with everyone running amuck, with all my awesome coupons clutched in my hand, all the lines stretched out before me. 

And, no, I don't need a gift receipt.  Or a box.

Just the Fax, Ma'am

My mother and Stepfather are going on a month-long cruise to China.  Ignoring the question of how they will live in a windowless cabin -  they never pay for windows - the size of a closet for a month without killing each other, this trip requires some modern technology that my mother doesn't have.  It seems that nowadays, booking major travel requires two things:  a credit card and email.

So she calls me up in a panic to tell me that she and Stepfather need my help.  My mind courses through the type of help they normally need from me:  house-watching, mail-getting, pill-sorting, doctor-arguing?

But no, it's something much more insurmountable for my mother.  She tells me that Holland America wants to send her a fax.

"A fax, Ma?  Are you sure they said a fax?"  My mom stopped learning about technology after fax machines were invented.  After all, the fax machine was the world's perfect office machine.  Imagine being able to transmit documents over a phone line by pressing a button!  There was a time in the early 80's when that fax machine of hers was screeching day and night in her busiest days in real estate.  How could anything ever supplant that?

But there have been a few inventions since then.  Like the Internet.  I figure out that she needs me to get an email from the cruise line.

I say, "Sure, is that it?"

"You'll print everything they send?"

"Yes.  We have a printer, Mom.  And paper in it."

The next day I call her.  I tell her I still haven't gotten the email.

She says, "Well, they probably haven't gotten my payment."

"How long could it take to get your payment?  Didn't you pay with a credit card?"

"Oh no.  I sent a check."  What, by carrier pigeon?  "Bob and I don't use any credit cards." 

Well at least she's not going nuts out there with her consumer debt.

"Okay, Ma. After they cash your check I'm sure they'll send the information."

"And then you'll give me the fax?"

"Right.  Then I'll give you the fax."

Beached

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly the outdoorsy type. I'm more the indoor, bookish type who considers nothing more fun than sitting at a bookstore searching through stacks of books. Arizona suits me perfectly with its completely hostile climate. But sometimes I have to leave Arizona and go on vacation. Then we drive west, to Southern California. And when we're there, I'm suddenly supposed to be a different person - I'm supposed to love being outside.

There are a few problems with this reasoning. First of all, from the minute I get out of our car, I'm freezing. After all, I just survived a 45 degree drop in temperature - from 115 degrees to 70. I'm wearing my winter coat. My teeth are chattering. Daughter is wearing mittens. I don't suddenly think, Hey, I think I'll throw my clothes off and go swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

Unfortunately, just when I'm finally comfortable again, bundled up in our hotel room, my husband and children appear before me in swimsuits, holding boogie boards. I feign a grave misunderstanding.

I say, "I thought we just came here to look at the beach."

But they're determined to actually go there and, for some reason, they seem to want me with them. I'd like to think this is because I'm essential to their existence but, after this trip, I know that I'm just their pack mule to haul their stuff down there and their guard dog to watch it all while they frolic in the waves.

My history of beach-going isn't so great. I grew up in Chicago during the era when Lake Michigan was clogged with dead birds and the shoreline dotted with broken glass. Despite all these drawbacks, my mother and aunts would schlep us down there so we could all "get some color," which, apparently, was any color other than our own. My cousins and I would play in the hot sand, watch the oil-slicked water, the dead birds floating, and slowly burn to a crisp. We ended up a different color: red.

I was going to outsmart the beach this time. If it was overcast, I'd bring along yoga pants and a jacket so I could sit comfortably and read. If it was sunny with a cool breeze, I would sit in a bathing suit with my new secret weapon: SPF 85 sunscreen. That strategy worked on the cool days but, finally, there was one day of gleaming sunshine, the kind of day that always makes me think that the pretty, nice sun is my friend. Of course, it's not. I sat in my bathing suit with my sunscreen on, my book in hand, guarding my family's possessions. I was cautiously optimistic. Maybe the outside world wasn't so bad after all.

Three hours of sand and seaweed later, of Frisbees thrown at my head, of every person on the beach shaking out their sandy towel onto me, like I was a still-life, and it was time to load me back up and head back to our place, all of us burned to crisps. Red.

Road to Nowhere

With the kids are away at camp Husband and I headed out of town and out of the heat up to the cool pine country.

I've lived in Arizona since I was 13-years-old and the odd thing is that there are still some things around here that still haven't changed since I was 13-years-old. Like there are grizzled cowboys running around with bolo ties and ten-gallon cowboy hats and who don't know that Jews still exist. They say, "Like in the Bible?" And I say, "Yes, like in the Bible." There are still pick-up trucks on the road that belong in museums, and we still just have one main Interstate going up north, I-17.

You know how sometimes you hear about some horrible thing that happens on a highway that backs traffic up for hours? I always think about the people in the cars, like what did they do out there? Did they have water? What if they had to go to the bathroom?

Well, now I know, because this happened to Husband and I as we were heading up to Flagstaff for a romantic three-day sojourn. When we were passing through one of the carved out mountains - half a mountain on one side, half on the other and a roadway in between - traffic suddenly stopped. It stayed stopped for two hours with no notice from anyone - no Highway Patrol coming by to talk to us, no Red Cross bringing us bottles or, something we could have used more, Porta-Potties. This is all we knew: there was black billowing smoke up ahead; there was a helicopter with a long swinging bucket pouring water on that black billowing smoke up ahead; and behind us, there was a 50-mile back-up of cars. Oh, and a bad sign: there were news helicopters in the air above us.

Here's what people do when this happens. First they stayed in their cars with their air conditioning on, after all, we weren't very far from Phoenix and it was 100 degrees. Then, after a while, people started getting out of their cars, walking around and talking to each other. A few cars up ahead, some cowboys started having an impromptu hoe-down with the occupants of another vehicle nearby. Women and men started making for the hilly roadside for some kind of brush cover for necessities. People got out of their cars to smoke and Husband and I watched their lit cigarettes nervously, waiting for one of them to ignite another brush fire on the side of the road.

Husband was busy mulling over in his mind exactly whose fault it was that we got stuck in this. Had I taken too long to get ready, as usual? Did I just have to go exercise that morning? Should he have filled the car with gas the night before? Had he armed too many fake sirens for our empty house or had he hooked up too many vacation plugs for our lamps so our lights would go on and off while we were gone? Maybe it was overkill to go inside the house and then lock the garage from the inside and come out a side door?

I'm not a pessimist, but I figured we'd be spending the whole three days of our trip right there, at mile marker 249. I magnanimously agreed to save Husband's life by sharing my water bottles with him when I saw that he had brought only Diet Dr. Pepper for himself. I was about to call the hotel in Flagstaff to cancel our reservation when my mother called. She lives in Flagstaff each summer so she was waiting for us at her cabin. I told her what happened. Did she give me soothing words of comfort? Ideas of how to fill my time? No. She said, "You should have left the house earlier!" Thanks mom.

Finally Husband chased down a highway employee who told us it would be a few more hours. Of course, right after that we began to move. The people who were out of their cars began running to get back to them. We slowly rounded the curve by the fire and saw the ground scorched on both sides of the roadway with the firefighters standing by the roadside in their gear.

I waved as we drove past.

Pint-Sized Tyrant

My husband and I knew we were in trouble. We had just booked a second hotel reservation for our vacation in August. He was just sick of going to the same California city over and over again. Why can't we break free? Why do we all have to answer to her?

I said, "We'd better ask her in the morning. We'll see if she'll go for it."

He said, "She's nine-years-old. She'll just have to get used to it."

And I thought, Oh yeah. She's nine.

How did I end up with a child who appears to be a child in all things except for her indomitable will? A child in size only, she is a fully-formed human being of such concentrated purpose that nothing can ever deter her from her vacation goals: in December we will go on a vacation to the same tired hotel we always go to in Tucson, and in August we will go on a vacation to Oceanside. This year she sat me down at the computer until I found a hotel in Oceanside identical to the one in Tucson, and then made me book it.

No matter how bored we get once there, she is excited and thrilled every second. She unpacks completely. She sets up her stuff on the desk in the loft bedroom. She arranges all of her stuffed animals. She is different than she is at home - she is neat. If it's the December trip and we've taken Hanukkah on the road, she's ready with everything: the menorah, the candles, the lighter; she's organized gifts with labels for each day.

Every morning of every trip she is up at the crack of dawn ready to go eat the free breakfast with the Husband and Bar Mitzvahzilla. It's only served till 9:30 so she really has to crack the whip to get Dad out of bed. Since the rest of us tend towards a type of laziness and lethargy, she follows us around with the laptop or the newspaper until we look up movie times, then she lassos us into the car to drive to see them. She is a whirlwind of activity and sheer will born into a family who would easily sleep away their vacation. She'll make something of us yet.

My daughter, the Pint-Sized Tyrant. How do I tell her we're going to La Jolla?

Back from Vacation, plunged into Bar Mitzvah hell

Okay, so now we've found out that we're officially not a cruising family. How did we find this out? By Bar Mitzvahzilla and I spending the first day of our Mexican Cruise vacation at sea nauseous in our beds while the ship rose and fell, rose and fell. Husband and daughter, of course, got their sea legs the instant they got on board. There were other reasons: the lack of freedom to decide what to do each day; the fact that the shipboard activities didn't meet our interests; the kids hanging around all the time when it turned out they hated the Kid's club; the constant nickel and diming of everything the cruiseline could get us to buy, from drinks to photos, to Tanzanite Tanzanite Tanzanite!, to duty free liquor and shore excursions. There was the fact that in both Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan, Husband was too cheap to buy shore excursions so we ended up on van rides from hell with drivers who took us like hostages to the jewelry stores which were sponsoring them, there to stand around with the commissioned store clerks looking at overpriced gold and diamonds, sweating in the humid jungle air.

And, although I would never want to incur the wrath of cruising fanatics, I don't quite get the attraction of basically eating at the same restaurant every day for an entire vacation. One of the things I enjoy about vacations is eating interesting new foods, not the same buffet over and over again, or the same stilted, formal dining room meal, with the same rolls, and the same tropical fruit plate, over and over again.

But Cabo San Lucas was unbelievably beautiful. So here's the plan: go to Cabo with husband alone on long weekend getaway for snorkeling and jacuzzi-ing and shopping.

Now that we're back the good news is that the Bar Mitzvah preparation is all moving along at a nice clip. The room arrangement is good. I met with my sister/chocolatier/party planner today and finalized a bunch of stuff, and I received about fifteen more response cards.

The only thing lagging behind is Bar Mitzvahzilla, who cannot write his Bar Mitzvah speech. Tomorrow he spends an hour with his Hebrew Tutor and an hour with the Rabbi. Thursday he spends a half hour with the Cantor; Sunday another hour with the Hebrew Tutor. On Tuesday he spends another half hour with the Cantor, and next Wednesday another hour with the Rabbi. Is this enough support to get this thing written?

I guess what's really disappointing to me is how uninteresting he finds this, the relating of his Torah portion to his life, to his Mitzvah project, to what it means to him to have arrived at this point. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I'd be really excited to write this. Maybe not if I was thirteen but I like the topic. But this is what I get from him: feet dragging and whining, blank looks and sudden disappearances during which I catch him playing with the light sabers he's dragged out from under his bed and is swishing in the air of his bedroom, or long, suspicious absences in the bathroom reading Star Wars books. No Bar Mitzvah speech.

And I guess what really drives me crazy is that with all that support, all that help, we're still just going to end up with a typical speech where he talks about how archaic the Jewish laws seem instead of saying the unexpected, that they are not archaic, that they apply to his life in a real and practical way, that he just had to look beyond the surface of the words, into the deeper meaning, just as we all have to look beyond the surfaces to the deeper meaning to find how things illuminate our lives.

But unless I write that for him, I'm not going to see it. And if I write it, even if he's never thought those thoughts before, he'll recite those words in front of the congregation, even if he doesn't mean them.