Fear and Parenting in Las Vegas

It’s the first day of school and NO ONE wants to get up.

Doodle refuses to get dressed….to eat breakfast…to brush his teeth…to get in the car…to pretty much do anything I need him to do.

En route to school, I check my calendar (at a stoplight) and discover that Boo has a half day and there is no after care. I failed to make arrangements with Steve or family to pick her up, so the busy nine hour day I had planned is now an insane three hour blur.)

I check Twitter (again at a stoplight) and see that it’s supposed to be #complaintfreemonday. I sigh and resolve to focus on the good stuff. After all, I get to share in Boo’s first day of school and get 1:1 time with her in the afternoon, right?

First day of school drop off = parking lot madhouse. We barely get to class on time because I have to park in the deepest recesses of the parking lot.

Boo has no interest in standing still for 30 seconds for me to get shots like this….

I discover, on the hike back to the car, that I chose the worst possible shoes to wear for hiking across lawns and parking lots. (I take some solace in knowing that at least I look good and then I remember how ugly and pained women look when they’re hobbling like I am at that very moment. So instead of looking good, I just look like a wobbly jackass.)

I smack the back of my minivan into a light pole, smashing one of the sensors that should have been beeping to warn me that I was going to hit something. The rest of the car is fine. Just the damn sensor.

I pull back into a neighboring space and take a moment to cry. Not because my baby’s growing up, but because I am obviously too inept to function today.

I am so late that I do not have time for coffee.

I am a half hour late for work.

My three-hour blur of speed-work is now a two-and-a-half-hour blur. My boss is patient and understanding of my plight, but is obviously not thrilled with my memory fail.

I rush out of the office at 11 with plans to run two work-errands on the way to get Boo. One gets done. The intended second errand is sucked into the time/space vortex that is random, unexplainable Vegas traffic.

I manage to get to the school’s drive-through pick up line before school lets out. *yea me!* However, teacher’s vague instructions (i.e., “we’ll be under the big tree”) turns into epic panicky fail when I realize the school has been there since the dawn of time immortal and all the trees are “big trees.” I abandon my running car wedged in the pickup line and flag familiar parents to see if they’ve seen Boo.

Curse my shoe choice yet again as I hike to the tree that is the furthest away from my car. I find Boo and assure the confused teacher that, yes I am her mother, and yes, she did meet me yesterday, and no I am not here to kidnap her and leave her rotting corpse in the desert.

Boo and I hike back to vehicle only to be ushered through the lot right in front of the tree where the girl had been waiting. Hiking was unnecessary. Next time, I vow to activate my patience brain chip and deactivate paranoid fear of Boo feeling left and/or forgotten.

Afternoon plan to be productive from home = epic fail. Efforts to teach the girl to entertain herself without the use of television or computers = substantial fail. I gave up and let her watch TV just so I could check my work email and get a few small projects done.

I take a break to research the cost of replacing my parking sensor. Without replacing it, none of the sensors will work. I shake my fist at the sky and curse the automotive industry for adopting Christmas light engineering and technology. The repair will run $400-$600. My deductible is $500.

The freelance project money that had been designated for the vacay fund is now mostly re-designated to vehicle repairs. At least I’ll be able to bank some in the vacay fund.

I console my lack of work productivity by dragging Steve and Boo out on errands before retrieving Doodle from daycare. Steve and I decide to give the dog a shot of uncrated freedom in our absence since all he does is lay on his pillow and sleep all day.

We stop at the bank, Starbucks, Petsmart (to get blockade supplies for Max who somehow thinks there are tootsie rolls in the cat litter), and Home Depot. A happy Doodle is retrieved from his day keepers and we head home.

After our tow-hour excursion, we arrive home. We cannot get into the house through the garage because the door from the kitchen was somehow locked and our keys don’t work in that lock. I blame Boo.

We hike around to the front door and enter to discover the dog had not slept in our absence. Instead, he has shredded the vertical blinds on four windows, scratched the paint on two doors down to the bare wood/metal, and gouged about an inch into a patch of drywall. The sofa is in tact and I count myself lucky.

Massive cleanup begins. Fortunately we are able to relocate blinds from the back of the house to cover most of the damage to the damaged blinds on windows facing the street. We start a shopping list, Vacay fund is about to be at $0.

At least the kids went down with relatively little fuss and, thanks to my late-day Starbucks, I have the energy to clean 10 houses.

The downside of that much caffeine — I was not asleep until nearly 1 a.m. and my wake-up call was 5:30 a.m.

So much for a #complaintfreemonday. At least I waited until Tuesday to bitch about how heinous Monday was. That counts, right?

Boo managed to lose a tooth on her first day of first grade. Fortunately, she managed to lose it before she left for school…just in time to compare notes with her classmates as to what their tooth fairy is delivering under their pillows.

Here’s a rough recap of the conversation this afternoon.

Boo: So, Mommy, what do you think the tooth fairy is going to bring me tonight?

Me: Well, I’m sure she’ll leave you some denomination of money under your pillow. (Crap. I need to hit an ATM and break a twenty before bedtime, or this is gonna get ugly.)

Boo: What’s “DEMONIMATION”?

Me: Sigh. She’ll leave you some money, Boo. I’m sure.

Boo: Well, Daisy told me the tooth fairy left her money AND a coloring book last time.

Me: Well, isn’t that nice for Daisy.

Boo: Are you SURE that the tooth fairy won’t bring me a coloring book AND money?

Me: Boo, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Every family has a designated tooth fairy. My family’s fairy has always left money. She’s never left presents.

Boo: We have a FAMILY fairy?

Me: Yep.

Boo: What’s her name?

Me: Crap, gotta be fast with this one. C’mon brain. I need a fairy name STAT! Petunia! Petunia is our family fairy. She’s been with our family for generations. And she’s a tooth fairy, Boo. She’s not Santa.

Boo: Pouts

Me: She’s can’t carry a bunch of stuff around. Think about it. She doesn’t have a sleigh and she’s tiny. How in the world is she hauling around coloring books and toys, especially if she’s carrying a bag full of money and teeth?

Boo: Well, maybe you could help her.

Nice try, Boo. But the number one rule of being a con artist is to never try to con another con artist – especially if she’s your mom.

Oh Petunia, you're looking a bit on the furry side. Maybe you should cut back on the pillow drop and save up for a wax.

My Southern California childhood memories are filled with moments in a mustard yellow kitchen with a rust-red refrigerator, laminate table and orange vinyl chairs. I spent hours of my youth standing on a flowery hand-painted stepstool next to my mom as she taught me how to measure and mix.

Through homemade cakes and pies to applesauce, she shared her childhood with me – memories of a Canadian farm where she was in charge of the chickens and her only precious porcelain doll that one of my mischievous uncles broke.
In that kitchen, my mother shared her history, taught me the chemistry of salt and soda, and showed me how an oddly shaped cookie could transform into Santa’s sleigh with icing and candy.

She taught me that mistakes were avoidable, but inevitable and usually correctable. She showed me how a spoonful of sugar in a barbeque sauce could counteract a salty mix-up between “teaspoon” and “tablespoon.”

Our countertop was often graced by father’s mother’s cookbook. It was so well loved that the cover was long gone and the ring-bound spine held the remaining pages together.  Starting with the basic recipe, we would taste and sample, strategizing how we could make it different, make it better, make it our own.

Now that my kids are old enough to tip the balance of “kitchen help vs. kitchen hazard, I love to cook with them. Each is given age-appropriate tasks. The six year old learns that two half-cups equal a whole cup and that without salt and soda, our cookies would be chocolate-chip rocks. The three year old is recognizing his numbers as we switch the mixer dial from “2” to stir to “5” to cream.  His focus is on listening and following directions…and not picking his nose before he tastes the dough.

We train our palates to recognize tastes and textures – sweet, salty, crunchy, smooth. I watch their eyes pop with shock as egg whites whip into stiff peaks.  They giggle as they roll pizza dough into funny shapes and see how many pepperoni slices it takes to cover the top.

They’re beginning to understand the joy of sharing food with others that comes from their hands and creative minds instead of a fast-food drive through.

Oh, and I share my stories as we go…the memories of the mustard yellow kitchen that is so near and dear to my heart and the woman who showed me how to cook in it.

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If you like this…go and check out my feature on the National Savvy Source site where I talk about banging my shins on stepstools while cleaning up fallout from flour clouds.