Phone Call Interuptus

It never fails. When I'm on the phone, my kids go batshit.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what this is all about. It's partly about taking advantage of me when I'm at a disadvantage to keep them in line. And, I think it's a safe bet that - like tomcats who mark their territory by spraying all the boundaries of what they deem their territory - my kids consider me their territory not to be shared with faceless callers.

At least they don't spray. But what to do?

My great grandmother has been dead for almost forty years. I have an ever so faint memory of her face and have long since forgotten the sound of her voice. But I have a couple of stories about her from family lore that are indelible.

"Miss Nora" , as she was called (it's a Southern thang... if you live long enough, old broads get to be addressed as if they are young virgins again. It's as much about our twisted love of irony as it is our respect for aging matrons. My mother moved back to NW Florida last year and I couldn't help but notice on my summer visit that she has graduated to "Miss Reba" around town. I'm guessing the polite townfolk of Panama City don't know 'Miss Reba' is an avid Pink Floyd fan and cusses like a rapper when our beloved Texas Longhorns lose anything.)

But i digress... Miss Nora (g-granny) had three children, including my grandmother (Cleo - and that name would require an entire Digressions column). Like most... oh who's kidding who.. Like ALL kids - they were rowdy, especially when their mother was on the phone - even back in the jurasic period when this story took place.

Miss Nora was a take no prisoners type. And, I am so sorry she didn't get around to writing a parenting book. Her method for avoiding phone call interuptus was to keep a pile of various household items by the phone to use as projectiles. Books, shoes, the contents of her purse, a gamey looking hunk of leftover meatloaf, whatever was handy ... and she just pelted the hell out of 'em until they shut up or went out to play.

It's tempting idea, but child abuse laws have changed over the past 80 years - for example, we now have them. So, I'm completely stymied. I've tried timeouts, threats, dirty looks, wagging fingers, "positive" alternatives to avoid making this a negative experience (insert eyeroll).

^%$% me ! None of it works.

Perhaps Nerf projectiles? Just thinking out loud...

Friday Web Candy - The Holiday Edition

In honor of Easter...

Peep Waldorf Salad It involves Peeps and a liqueur. Can you say Mother's little helper?

In honor of Passover...

Peeps For Passover This is in such poor taste. Remember, if you laugh too... then you have no room to complain.

Brad and Tucker's Mother Day Portrait From YouTube, one of my favorite places to waste time. Wrong holiday to post this. Who cares... you'll laugh, trust me.

What a great idea! Burn a lot of CDs? What to do with the plastic blank CD holder when they're all gone.

Have a good Good Friday, and good Saturday, etc. etc. - Renee Elise

The Alpha- Momrade Weighs In

So after relaunching Momrades last month and starting the blog, earlier this week I finally got around to telling my mother (aka the Alpha Momrade - at least for me) and invited her to take a look.

She's my Mom. It's a nice thought that she'd run straight to her computer, click onto the site. read every single word and call me immediately to lavish me with praise and pride.

That's all it was... a nice thought. Three days of radio silence followed.

Maybe she forgot. Maybe she hasn't had time to take a look. Maybe she looked at it and hasn't figured out how to couch her reactions (that would be a bad sign).

This morning I got a call.

Radio silence has broken.

(for those of you who've never heard my mother's voice... imagine any of the characters from Steel Magnolias saying the following....)

Mom: "Well, I read your blog. Whatever a blog is. I'm not sure what makes a blog... and I really don't need to know. Anyway, whatever it is, I read it. The story about the basement made me howl. That was hilarious. (sigh!) But gosh, I didn't realize your basement flooded - again. It must be awful living up there.... (hushed tone) where you have basements. I can't imagine."

Me: "yup.. basement flooded. The guys have come and already ripped up the carpet. I think we'll..."

Mom: "Anyway, I loved the writing. It made me laugh - mostly. Although some of it was also quite touching. (pause) But about the vaginas..."

Me: "Oh, you read tha..."

Mom: "I just didn't need to read about your vagina. I could have done without that. I really don't need to know about your vagina... or the 'hours and hours of intense pleasure' it's given you. That is something a mother just doesn't need to read about... or know about... or think about..."

Me: (cracking up) "But, you clicked on the story. "

Mom: (also cracking up) "Well, I didn't know it was going to be about YOUR vagina! I don't mind reading about vaginas! I just don't want to read about your vagina! Anyway, I love the web site or blog or whatever you're calling such things these days. I loved it. I could just do without all that vagina talk."

Me: "hmmph"

Mom: "hmmph"

(silence)

Mom: "I got my new water heater. $500. Well, actually $532. I can't tell if that was a good deal or not..."

What's in your wallet?

I just found a lollipop stick with the lollipop long gone - only some traces of ick at the tip - in mine!

Speaking of ick, too bad I don't have a fingerprint kit. There was sticky allover the wallet inside and out.

What wasn't in my wallet was my Costco card and my Borders Reward membership. I found those in a trail leading to the sticky wallet - which by the way, was not in my purse, of course.

If you can relate to this story in anyway, then you are definitely a Momrade.

Friday Web Candy

I thought I'd try something new today. Maybe I'll make this a Friday habit. Let me know what you like...

Sarah Maizes: Mother of three, stand up comedy routine from YouTube
Slow in the beginning and a bit of the squirm factor with some jokes, but some great belly laughs that make it well worth it.

Real Mom Truths: There's nothing fake about motherhood
This is great. A blog featuring postings from other mom bloggers with their take on what a "Real Mom" is. I especially got a kick out of "Real Moms... cuss like sailors" and "Real Moms... keep a well-stocked freezer."

Fruitcake Lady: you will piss in your pants. Must see TV!
Streaming video from dorks.com borrowed from Leno. Featuring questions on hairy butts, burping husbands and a goldfish named 'Fluffy'.

Have a good weekend... Renee E.

Spring Fever in CT

Okay, so it snowed last week and it'll probably snow again next week.

But ahhhhhhh.. today it was spring. 70 plus degrees... ahhhhhhh!

It'll be back in the 50s tomorrow. But today... ahhhhh!

My son had a hard day at pre-k. I think he had spring fever too. After school I loaded up the family truckster and we took a little beach break with his sister. It was like medicine.

Until my daughter lost her soccer ball in the surf. Don't ask.

I made a rookie mistake. I hesitated. As it kept drifting away in the wrong direction - towards Long Island, and away from Connecticut. There was that long, long moment of thinking - 'hell with it. I'll buy another. Soccer balls are cheap.' That didn't fly with the five year old. Hysteria broke out. It was like Wilson floating off to Bora Bora in the last 20 minutes of Castaway.

Only Tom Hanks was calmer.

Needless to say - I waded.

Memo to readers: it's takes more than six hours of 70 degree weather to heat up Long Island Sound.

How far out - more importantly, how high up did I have to go? Don't ask.

The good news.. soccer ball and little girl are reunited. How's my hypothermia? Thanks for asking... but, don't ask.

The play is the thing...

... as William Shakespeare would say.

It's not my intention to turn Momrades into a free speech advocacy site for high school students. Forgive me. This involves two of the things I cherish most in this life; kids and the right to speak. (For those of you that read "Digressions", you may recall my recent rant about a group of high schoolers in New York getting censored for performing excerpts from The Vagina Monologues.)

Well, here we go again. Only this time the subject matter is about privates of a different kind - as in the lives of soldiers serving in Iraq.

Apparantly, a group of high school students from Wilton, CT (a neighboring town where I live) have researched, written and produced a very poignant play examining the war in Iraq based on the perspectives of real people who are experiencing it - a local family who lost a loved one in battle, other soldiers who have served, etc.

All involved have noted the enthusiasm and passion sparked in the kids involved. How often do you hear about teenagers getting interested in current events? It's happening in Wilton, CT.

Or at least it was. The school district shut 'em down. Too controversial. Too anti-war. Bottomline: too many uncomfortable phone calls from parents.

Sigh! What a shame!

School administrators hedge the play isn't "balanced" enough. I wonder if they mean that in a Fox News "fair and balanced" sort of way or the real kind of balanced. I wonder what's so balanced about out and out censorship. I wonder if this same commitment to a "balanced message" is applied to the local military recruiter. I wonder...

There are something like 150,000 US troops serving in combat right now. Most of them are very young. That's the way wars work. Countries go to war and use their own children as cannon fodder. Or IED fodder, as the case may be.

Tomorrow's fresh troops are hanging out right now in places like Wilton High. No one has a greater stake or stands to lose more in this war than today's high schoolers. Of all the people who should be allowed to have a voice in this national debate, it's them.

I say let the show go on. Let them speak. And by the way, we should listen.

Read the story

Two a.m. - The Barfing Hour

If midnight is the witching hour, than two a.m. is surely the hurling hour. It never fails when my kids get the earps, it always happens in the wee hours of the morning. Why don't stomach bugs keep banking hours? (yes, I know smart a** - answer: because they aren't bankers. thanks!). But c'mon, must they always strike during the lobster shift?

Why doesn't Dr. Sanjay Gupta tackle this one sometime?

Anyway, as you guessed, our buddy "Ralph" (I'm going to see just how many euphemisms for vomit, I can work into this posting) came a calling early this morning. My five year old fell victim. Poor thing. The good news: she has clearly rebounded back already and is now downstairs enjoying a decadent day of flipping between Nickelodeon and The Cartoon Network in her jammies. I peeked in on her awhile ago and she had the cat swaddled in a comforter and was using her as a pillow. The cat wasn't squealing - much!

The other thing that comes with these two a.m. puke calls (ha, gotta another one in), it's the same time Moms get put on notice that yes, your day will be a total loss. Look forward to being sidelined and drafted into nursing and pampering duty (not so bad, sometimes, I have to admit.. especially since you get to do it in your jammies).

I've really never been sure what is supposed to happen during the witching hour. But as a Mom, I got two a.m. down pat.

My snow blower fantasy

For those of you who know me... well, you know I have a thing for power tools. It's probably an irresponsible expansion of my "carbon footprint", but if there's a way to add horse power, watts, volts - torque (I don't even know what that is, but I get tingly just saying it) - to anything, sign me up. If anyone ever invents a power twist tie for hefty bags, I'm there. Power spatula. Power squeegie. Power jello mold. Bring it on..

So it may shock you to know, a) I live in CT b) I don't own a snow blower. We still shovel or call in my neighbor, Phil, who owns a plowing business. Going on my seventh winter in the Northeast, every year I think this is the year and then I cheap out. I see the prices and think to myself - that's a lot of Phil.

If you've checked the national weather today, yup it's a snow day for most of the Northeast today. It's coming down pretty good as I write this, just starting to stick. Within a few hours, my neighborhood will come alive with the full throated growling of snow blowers. What I'd give to be out there with them... all that lovely, ahem, torque rushing through my body, loud, powerful and overwhelming al l my senses, snow exploding out of the top like a volcanic eruption of cold lava, falling along the sides of my drive and walk in drifts - soft, billowy and spent, the gentle hum of...

okay, okay.. i'm back! I'm back! Yeesh! Let me have a moment... before I grab my shovel.

Grab a tissue. This is what the rest of my day will really look like: shovel, wave to the kids watching me from the window, shovel some more, wave some more, oh s***! where'd they go, go inside and corral them back to the window so I can keep an eye on them, shovel some more, try not to bend over and wheeze too much it scares the kids watching from the window, almost done, shovel, uh, now I gotta sand, uh, now I gotta take off all this wet gear at the back door, clean up, kids are all over me because they missed me while I was outside, business as usual, hours and hours later after everyone's finally gone to bed and ache has set into every single muscle group and joint, a bubble bath? sounds great, but I don't have the energy to turn on the faucet and fish around for grown-up- lets- pretend- we're- at- the- spa bubbles and the watermelon scented sponge bob suds leave me cold, skip that, go straight for the Ibprofin, it expired three years ago, better take four then... okay, okay.. I'm back. I'm back!

But this time not for long, I fear..

What bedtime and the Stockholm Syndrome have in common

It's 9:53pm and my four year old is currently across the room with his hiney in the air singing "Where is thumpkin". Five minutes ago, he threw an empty Poland Springs bottle at me and hit the back of my head. (I'm not making this up. I don't have too. My life gives me a enough material, I don't have to have an imagination.)

I'm in favor of anything that helps the environment and saves energy, but this new daylight savings thing is *&^%ing killing me this week. Needless to say, my kids' circadian rhythms are a bit off right now.

For the most part, I'm a pretty good parent. Quality time, lots of affection, I validate, I listen, I don't spank, I'm getting better at pony tails and I may not be a rocket scientist, but I once pulled a MacGiver and fished a matchbox car out of the bottom of my circa 1953 radiator with nothing more than a jerry-rigged coat hanger and an ABC'ed piece of grape flavored bubble yum (extra sugar, extra sticky.. I stole it out of my daughter's three month old leftover halloween candy. Bubble yum is like the gorilla glue of the chewing gum family. I now keep it around like some people stock club soda for the occassional red wine emergency).

Anyway, despite all that. I know my weaknesses too. When it comes to bedtime, I suck.

Some nights aren't so bad. I actually love that half hour to 45 minutes each night that we lay down together, read stories and then lay in the dark together - the three of us - snuggled up, saying our last "I love you's" of the day and peacefully letting my mind wander and rest while waiting for them to nod off.

But other nights, it's just hell. Can you suffer from Stockholm Syndrome during a very specific time of day only .. oh, for example, between 7:30 - 9:30pm, roughly?

Honestly, I feel like the Patty Hearst of bedtime. Sometimes, I fight them. Sometimes, I'm in love with my captors. It's probably not very maternal of me - comparing my children to the Symbionese Liberation Army. But then again, there are nights I would rather be locked away in a closet and forced to answer to the name Tonya.

When does it get better? All my friends with teenagers say they have the opposite problem: they can't get their kids out of bed. I keep thinking there's got to be a sweet spot between toddlerhood and adolescence when they spend the just right amount of time in their beds.

If that's true, I can't wait. I hope it happens before Grey's Anatomy goes off the air. I hear its a good show.

Vitamins A,B,C,D and, er, uh, Chocolate? If you say so, Harvard!

Harvard researchers are finally catching up with basic women's wisdom. Chocolate isn't just a guilty pleasure, it's a matter of health - and at certain times of the month, perhaps life and death for some of us.

No, I'm not kidding. A new study from Harvard shows there's some sort of flavanol (don't ask me what a flavanol is. Science is finally cutting our way here. That's all that matters.) in not only chocolate, but WINE and tea, as well (this just gets better and better). And, according to the Ivy league crowd, it's directly linked to better cardiovascular health. Go Big Red, I say!

Read the article for yourself. Apparantly, there's an island community off the coast of Panama where the average person drinks up to 40 cups of cocoa a week (Is there a Sandals there? Does American fly direct?). Anyway, folks there apparantly are way more heart healthy than folks on the mainland. Even though the study was executed by Harvard, uh, well, there is the matter it was funded by the Mars Candy people - a little detail I will choose to ignore at least five days a month.

Does this mean Hershey will be moving to the supplement aisle? See you there!

The Article