Hazel on the beach in Half Moon Bay, Fall 2009

I began trying to get pregnant shortly after getting married in 1999.  I assumed it would be easy; it was not. After two years of failed fertility treatments, my then husband and I decided on one last IVF cycle.  This time we would go to St. Barnabas in New Jersey, home to a well known fertility clinic.  I was, to put it mildly, desperate to be pregnant.  The culmination of failed attempts, of squandered savings, of the hope/failure roller coaster, had left me exhausted.  My husband at the time, was traveling two weeks out of the month.  I needed to be at the clinic for close to two weeks while they monitored my blood work and waited for everything to align before they took my eggs.  My sister Bridget came with me for support.  We holed up in a musty long stay hotel in Morris Plains, New Jersey. It was the end of October – cold, piles of leaves on the ground.  In the mornings, my sister and I would drive to the clinic where they’d take blood and scan me via ultrasound, to see the progress of my eggs.  There were always dead deer on the road I remember.  My sister gave me the injections at night.  It was a process of icing and warming and then injecting and wincing.  She got good at giving the injections and I got good at tolerating them.   In fact, soon enough I was doing my own injections.  When we returned from New Jersey the injections had to continue and so I did them myself.  Once I injected Progesterone in a cramped batroom stall in San Francisco State, where I was getting my master’s degree.  My teacher saw me emerge from the bathroom with my needle and vial, and I remember wondering if I should explain to her that I was not a junkie.

Oh 22 gauge, 1.5 inch needles, how I hated you.

At the long stay hotel in New Jersey, there was a video rental libaray in the lobby, full of dated 80s and 90s movies that I’d never bothered to see in the theatres.  I don’t remember what we watched anymore, but they were all romantic comedies.  There was one with Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro I think.  I remember one night there was an argument in the next room, one sided, with a man on a phone shouting at whoever was on the other end of the line.  Another time Bridget and I watched from our window as a man berated his wife in the car down below.  She sat in the passenger seat looking ahead.  He was shouting so loudly we could hear some of it even from way up on the 4th floor.  I don’t know why I still remember that, but I do.

I had been to an acupuncturist before we left for New Jersey.  Desperation and hope made me cast a wide net for solutions:  I looked to acupuncture, diet, standing on my head after sex, yoga, herbal remedies, vitamins.  I had been diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” which meant simply I should be able to have a baby and they just didn’t know why it wasn’t happening.  The acupuncturist had put me on a special diet.  I could have no sugar, which was torture for someone with a sweet tooth.  At night she had instructed me to submerge my feet in a very hot bucket of water, up to my calves.  It had something to do with circulation.  It made only partial sense, but every night I did it anyway, as Bridget and I sat in front of the television.

When it was finally was time for the eggs to be harvested, my husband flew to New Jersey.  A day later the eggs were fertilized.  There were eight total.   They put two back and froze the remainders.  These are the two in the picture below. They are both eight celled, day three embryos.  Though they put back two, only one implanted.  There’s a common misconception, bolstered by media reporting, that you can implant embryos. You can’t.  You can simply transfer them to a uterous.  After that, the implanting that does or does not happen is a crap shoot, one not even doctors fully understand.  I don’t know which embryo is Hazel.  But one of these is her first baby picture.  The doctor showed them to me, under a higly magnified camera in the operating room where they did the embryo transfer.  They looked just like the picture – blobish, like amoebas and nothing like a baby.   I remember she said to me “There they are.  Aren’t they cute?”  Though it was a ludicrous thing to say, I cried.  They were cute.

The bottom embryo shows less fragmentation which generally means better quality. I suspect this is Hazel. The other one did not implant.

We retuned to the Bay Area.  Two weeks of agonizing wait went by.  I took a pregnancy test.  It was positive and I immediately assumed it was broken, or expired or otherwise part of a cruel trick.  I called my sister and said: “Something weird has happened.  Come over.” We went to get more pregnancy tests.  On the radio, Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir was playing.  The lyrics I heard when we backed out of the driveway were “I am a traveller of both time and space.” Bridget looked at me and said “This is a good sign.  Your traveller of time and space has arrived.  You have a baby in there.” Eleven more pregnancy tests agreed and when the doctor’s office called confirming my postitve blood work, I almost felt myself levitating with joy.  I have not known happiness like that before or since.  Sometimes I think that I willed her into existance, by sheer force of wishing on stars and candles and eyelashes.  She came to me through medicine and the manipulations of science and (if you believe) God too.  But I can’t help thinking that force of will, love and blind, rampant hope, played a part as well.

The 20 week ultrasound. I took this from her baby book. I'd kept that fortune in my wallet for years.

Hazel was born on a Tuesday night at the close of July in 2002.  I’d been laboring since the evening before – back labor it was called, which meant I mostly felt the contractions in my lower back.  I’d heard that first time mothers are often sent home from the hospital because they come in too soon, but by the time I went in, I was nearly hobbling with pain.  They wheeled me into a delivery room and asked what took so long.  She was born at 9:37 pm.  She came out laughing – a small, stiffled giggle.  It was not a cry.  I told this to my sister and she said it was because of all those comedies we watched in that hotel room in Morris Plains, New Jersey.  Hazel had been holding that giggle for months.

Hazel’s first word was “woof woof,” for dog.  Her second was “cock,” which was for cars.  This was awkward when we were in public and she’d shriek “COCK!” when a car drove by.  If people were around I’d say loudly “Yes that’s right Hazel, it’s a CAR.”  After a while it seemed kind of pointless.  All my correcting her did no good and she continued shouting the obscenity gleefully, sometimes accompanied by frantic pointing, any time a car went by, which was a lot.  So I stopped correcting her and would instead say “That’s right sweetie, good job, it’s a cock.”

She is not like me.  She is not socially awkward or even remotely shy.  She is outgoing and likes to sing and dance.  For an entire year when she was 3, she wore princess dresses and high heeled slip-on dress-up shoes.  When we had her first parent-teacher conference in nursery school, the first thing the teacher said to me when I sat down in one of those tiny chairs was: “I have never seen a child climb trees so well in high heels.  So now we just let her.” Clappy shoes, Hazel called them, shoes that made a clap-clap noise to announce her presence, to make people turn and look.

She has a temper.  She is small for her age.  She makes a clicking sound with her tongue when she is in a deep sleep.  She is a night owl and even as a baby, stayed up late and slept until nine or ten o’clock in the morning.  No one believed a baby would sleep so late, but she did.  On her cheek are three freckles, that’s it, just three.  If you connected them it would make a perfect triangle.  Hazel was going to be called Simone, because I thought she’d be darker, more earthy looking, with black eyes like her father.  But she arrived a redhead, with pale mottled skin.  And so we switched it.  Her favorite song when she was little, was Modest Mouse’s “Float On.” She called this song “Cop Car” for the line: “I backed my car into a cop car the other day.  Well he just drove off, sometime life’s ok.”  She’d request the song again and again in the car.

I wonder if Hazel herself will ever read these words.  If, when she is older and turning eight is a distant memory and she is 18 or 28 or 38 or 78, she will read these words and know the full force of my love for her.  If you find yourself reading this one day Hazel, then this is for you:  My sweet Hazel, no one loves you more than me.  Whatever you have done, whatever you do in your life, I will love you the same amount.  You used to ask me how much I loved you and I’d say: so much.  But what you wanted was something measurable. “Do you love me to the moon and back?” you’d press me.  Yes “And all around the world?”  Yes. Hazel, wherever you are when you are reading this, you should know that I am desperately glad you are mine.  I am sorry your father and I are not together.  I will likely never get over the idea that I gave you a home with parents who can’t be together.  Your sweetness, your cutting remarks, your temper, your heartfelt expressions of love, your need to still be cuddled at times, your anxieties, your distaste for sensible shoes, your laughter, your unadulterated joy upon seeing me after being with your dad – all of it slays me.

I love you to the moon and back.  And all around the world.

I’ve neglected Cinderella (Episode 1 is here, Episode 2 is here) and her saga because I have a very short attention span.  Also because I can’t think of what happens to Cinderella next.  I’ve got some pictures of her naked on a Costa Rican beach but don’t know what to do with them.  My plan was to have her run into the cross dressing Legos that Jenny the Bloggess gave me.  And they did run into one another, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.  Ideas? Anyone?

The cross dressers run into Cinderella. And no one knows what to say.

So I’ve been writing about other stuff, like slow shitters and attempted murder and so on.  This week, relatives came to town.  My parents are both British.  I’m first generation American, which means my bad English teeth were fixed by good American orthodontics.  This also means I have no family here in the United States other than my parents and my sister.  My aunt and my cousins are visiting.  My cousins are a lot younger than me, but seem to tolerate me just the same.  One of my cousins is gay which is fantastic news for all of us, because he’s the first gay man in our family tree and it’s about effing time.  Anyway, what this means is that he did not mope about in Target when we went for our Target fieldtrip.  Nor did he scoff at my purchases.  Not only that but he led a group trip to Ikea and declared all the knitted throws lush, which is my new favorite word.  He also noticed my highlights, whereas my husband said: “I like your haircut!” even though I hadn’t had one.  And I had to explain there’s a difference between a haircut and a hair color and I did not have to do that with the gay cousin.  The sad part is that all my relatives, (his sister and his mom who I love dearly as well) live six thousand miles away which is annoying when you love them so much.  I keep waiting for the flying cars we were promised, like ages ago.

I know what you’re thinking right about now:  You promised a penis! I’m getting there.  Keep your undies on.

I went on a hike today and at coffee afterwards, my friend asked what I was doing with the rest of the day and I told her I was behind on blogging.  She asked what I would write about and I explained that I’d bought some flesh colored earplugs from Target before the Yosemite trip and had had an epiphany: I was going to fix Ken’s hint of penis problem with an earplug. “A regular sized earplug?” she asked. “But won’t he have Coke dick?  And I asked what that was and she told me a long story about a legendary guy in college who had a dick as wide as a Coke can.  But Barbie/Cinderella has a waist as big as her neck and a rack that should actually prevent her from walking, let alone being an astrronaut or a nurse or a computer engineer.  Forget “math is hard” Barbie.  Walking is hard.  So Coke can dick is completely called for.

Side note:  My dear friend is my friend because she just smiles and says, “Oh that sounds like a fun day!” even though I’ve just revealed that I’m going to go home and stick an earplug on an inanimate object with Super Glue.  You know who you are and I love you for it.

Anyway .  Heeere we go…

But yeah, great solution right?  I mean Barbie/Cinderella/GI Joe might be walking funny for a week but like my granny always said, lots of penis is better than no penis.  Call me Mattel, we can do these in all the skin tones, even Twilight Edward.

We went to Yosemite for July 4th, something we’d done last year and vowed never to do again. But delusion and denial are my BFFs so we packed up the car and went for a do over. All the conditions were right for someone to get stabbed…Clyde was sick, Hazel was in a bad mood, Ivy was Ivy, and we went with my parents and the kids’ surrogate uncle, Uncle Trent, whose life lessons include “Only cough in the faces of people you don’t know.”

Uncle Trent teaches the kids how to burp the alphabet. And he tolerates us. So we like him.

I’ve often thought family vacations are in fact relationship cruicibles. Take all the hangups, dysfunction, old wounds, irritating habits, and put them in a vacation setting and something like the apocalyspe happens.  Disneyland is a prime example.  Disneyland should change their slogan from The Happiest Place on Earth to The Place Where You Discover Your Marriage is Over for Good.  You could do some kind of bar graph or pie chart that shows the likelihood that a marriage will crumble after standing in line with three children at The Pirates of the Caribbean.  Watch couples the next time you’re there; listen to the conversations you overhear.  Under the glockenspiel notes of “It’s A Small World,” you’ll be able to discern the death rattle of a hundred marriages and relationships.  This is true of camping too.  Case in point, in the next campsite a woman and her mother were not getting along and finally the daughter shouted: “YOU’VE BEEN SAYING THAT ABOUT MY BODY SINCE I WAS LITTLE AND IT REALLY HURTS MY FEELINGS.”

Strangely, the trip all went pretty awesomely.

I had my doubts. When we arrived, we found we were adjacent to the bathroom and next to a group of campers who had packed 18 people into a campsite with a 6 person limit. Plus, they were Raiders fans, and if you know anything about Raiders fans, you know they like to project their voices. Also: Wu-Tang Clan stickers on all the cars. I’ve got nothing against the Wu-Tang Clan, and in fact when the VW Routan minivan came out I was very excited for the sole reason I could get a vanity plate that read RTANCLN but then it didn’t work out because RTANCLN doesn’t really look like Routan Clan and also apparently Routan is pronounced Rowtan which is just lame. But they were mostly very quiet. In fact they seemed to get more and more quiet as the day progressed, which was odd. Drunkish Wu-Tang Clan Raiders fans who use their inside voices? Yes. I saw it with my own eyes.

What else? Clyde told his first knock knock joke. And told it so often that my mom started delivering the punchline because she just wanted the joke to be over already. The joke? Knock knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo who? Don’t cry! It’s only a joke.

Who has two thumbs, one knock knock joke and and a need to tell it to you until your ears bleed? This guy!

Hazel played the role of irritated I-hate-my-parents-for-bringing-me-here teenager about seven years too soon.

Ah yes, the "I hate my life" expression, seen often on vacation with parents. I know it well Hazel, I know it well.

My dad, who had open heart surgery for a leaking valve a couple years back and has a pig valve now, got up at 5:30 AM, hiked to the top of Vernal Falls and back again before any of us had eaten breakfast. Then when I was cooking bacon, my mom said: “Oh we don’t eat pork anymore in deference to the pig that saved your father’s life.” Then we all had a moment of silence for the pig who died for my dad and then someone said “So if he ate pork and he has a pig valve would that make him a cannibal?” We all thought about this for a while and as we were standing there I totally saw my mom eat a piece of bacon! I looked at her, and she was like, well it’s just one piece.

Our big outing was a walk to the base of Yosemite Falls. Except I only got to see them from a distance. Ivy decided halfway there that she had to do a poo right NOW which meant I had to abandon the others and find the nearest bathroom which was not at all near and had a line of about fifty people. Ivy poos like an old man – it takes 45 minutes and she reads the paper. I’m not kidding. We’ll be in Chuck E. Cheese and she’ll shout, I NEEDAGOPOOP and so I’ll hurry her in there and she’ll sit on the john while I hold the door shut and listen to her rambling about her day at school or the dog or what she wants to be for Halloween. When this happens at a crowded fairground, inevitably someone bangs on the door, like Are you alive?! Or just a really slow shitter? At the bathroom at Yosemite Falls, we took our place in line and the line kept growing for the one stall and I started thinking about the Donner Party and why they never made it over the pass.  And then it came to me: I bet the Donner Party had a slow shitter in their family. A kid who announced to the whole wagon travelling lot of them: “I NEEDAGOPOOP!” and they were all “Oh lord in heaven, we’re never going to beat that storm! Zebidiah, pull the wagon over!” And the kid crouched in the bushes with her mom and was like “Mom remember that time when the …”  And the mom was like “PLEASE JUST DO IT ALREADY, CAN’T YOU SEE THE STORM COMING?”

So I started coaching Ivy. “Okay listen, see all these people, they all have to go to the bathroom after us. So you’re going to have to be fast and push it out. Okay? Show me you can push it out fast.” Ivy made a face. “Good good,” I said. And you know what? Fastest time ever.

Ivy at the river. "Don't kill the ducks Ivy." "Okay Mama, I won't."

On a totally unrelated note, I have solved the Ken hint of penis problem.  So stay tuned for that.  Next post:  Ken gets hung.  In the good way, not the rope around the neck way.

Well it’s Wednesday on a week I don’t have the kids; consistently the worst day of the week for me.  On the weekend I am fine.  Monday I am full of hope about all the things I will get done while the kids are with their dad.  Tuesdays I do all the laundry and cook something good and stay productive.  And then Wednesday arrives and with it comes a toxic soup of sadness and all my hope for the week is dashed and I stay in bed until noon.

What is currently raining on my already sad parade?  These bucket lists on blogs by people who are still young and optimistic about what life can bring.  The world is their oyster as it were, their sexy aphrodesiac.  Their pearl having oyster.  I read these bucket lists and think Jesus, where did I go wrong?  Their lists read like a joyous and optimistic smorgasbord of awesome:  Get a black belt in Karate!  See the Grand Canyon! Have sex on an airplane! Climb Everest!  Cure cancer! So I did one and it was not a good exercise for me..

1. College, degree.  College, another degree.
2. Get married.
3. Discover I am infertile.
4. Inject myself nine million times with assorted drugs to fix the above.
5. Have children.
6. Divorce.
7. Go to court over custody of children.
8. Lose.
9. Fall into a deep and lasting depression.
10. Learn to cook something other than tacos.
11. Stop buying lipgloss
12. Perfect the art of shower crying.
13. Find the best antidepressant!
14. Date again.  Find someone awesome enough to put up with me.
15. Marry the above person.
16. Stop reading the comments on news sites.
17. Get a black belt!  That reverses to brown.
18. Learn to love cilantro.

Really when you look at the list, I’m doing okay in the crossing off department.   I’m not aiming all that high though, so there’s that.  There are no Everest trips in my future and I barely want to pee in an airplane bathroom let alone do anything sexy in there, so that’s out too.  Maybe I could manage the Grand Canyon.  Or a new language.  I might already be on my way because today I walked to the tiny hole in the wall taco place near me and had lunch and tried to read this magazine that was in Spanish.  Then I walked out and a man held the door for me and I said “gracias” and he followed me out and asked me “Are you Mexican?” And I know it’s because I said gracias so well.  Maybe I have a natural affinity for language or at least saying thank you.  I should put that on my bucket list.  Or maybe just scrawl “learn spanish” on the back of a Happy Donuts receipt – that might be more realistic. So someone please get me started, how do you say: “Hurry up Thursday, because this is bullshit.”

Remember how I said I was taking a three month break from shopping, especially Target? And I named this experiment The Coven because as someone pointed out witches are the new zombies.  And most of you said, ha ha ha, good luck moron! Quit Target? That’s like trying to quit water!  And I said, no really, I am.  I really really am.

Here is the one month update:

The first couple hours were really pretty okay.  There was a little sweating and some pacing. Then I started doing lists in my head of all the things I would buy at Target when I was out of no shopping jail.  Then I bought a lot of underwear at Target because The Coven allows for underwear and food and medicine and anything used.  (No bonus points for used underwear.  Negative points for that actually and maybe a visit to the doctor’s office for crotch medicine (allowed), which you may need for the used underwear thing.)  Then our Costa Rica trip was coming up and I only had five bikinis one old bikini and I can’t very well be expected to buy a used bikini for my trip.  So I got a bikini, telling myself that I was merely having a sip from the fountain of joy that is Target.  It’s not like I was face down in the fountain guzzling, right?  I’m still in control.  Then I remembered that used clothes were allowed, so I started going to the Goodwill and when that wasn’t enough, the fancy consignment stores.  This is all completely fine, I muttered to myself as I pawed through the jeans rack.  Then we went to Costa Rica and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get used souvenirs for my kids, so I didn’t. But a few people said, it’s okay.  You should get a pass for Costa Rica.  So I told myself that the universe gave me a hall pass for vacation and it would be like throwing it back in the face of the universe if I said no and that’s just rude.

Then I got back from Costa Rica and Hazel needed new shoes and so I said, well I’m in The Coven, they’re not so that’s okay right?  Then I bought two used pairs of shoes and a dress from eBay for myself, reasoning that I was buying used so I was not only not breaking any rules, but I was recycling and recycling is the right thing to do and you should do it for yourself and your kids and America.  Then it was a friend’s birthday and I thought oh I’ll make her something!  A heartfelt gift that shows how much I care and laughs in the face of consumerism!  But I remembered I have no crafty skills whatsoever and besides, I fight the good fight against laziness daily.  So I went out and got her a present and while looking at the presents I thought, OH NO I think I forgot to get myself something for MY birthday which was in March!  And it’s like Whitney Houston sang before she learned to love cocaine – learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. So true Whit, so true.  I better make it up to myself; I’ll take that cuff bracelet too.

Then on Sunday, I decided we needed a lounger for the backyard because I was tired of lying on the patio on a free towel my dad got at some nerdville physics conference. I went to Cost Plus and wandered around looking for a lounger and all they had was this lounger that transformed into a coffee table when the need arose, which irritated me because why would I need a coffee table outdoors? Then I got the transformers theme song stuck in my head. Transformers more than meets the eye. Transformers robots in disguise and I decided it was a robotic lounge chair and I’d get my hands caught which is not at all unlikely because when I was in Costa Rica the lounge chairs didn’t go all the way back and my friend told me it was because someone lost a finger once at that same resort trying to put the chair down all the way! Then I was thinking about severed fingers and when that’s in your head, the only thing that will make things better is British candy. I got some of that and started eating it before I was even out of the British candy aisle of Cost Plus. Then I saw this Jesus bracelet which I’ll explain later and I thought, maybe it’ll help me stay strong and not shop anymore! I got that and then a necklace and a set of pint glasses and a set of plastic glasses and a pair of earrings and a pair of sandals and a C-3P0 Pez dispenser for the sole reason it was the last one left and you know what that means right?  It’s a collectible and I’ll keep it in the attic and it’ll pay for the kids college education in 10 years.  Except that I don’t really have an attic and what will happen is Ivy will find it, break C-3P0s neck, eat all his pez tabs and I’ll be like, you little jerk!  You didn’t save me any.

So as you can see I need a sponsor I can call daily it’s going really well!  Here for your enjoyment are all the things I have bought while I have been practicing The Coven.  I might need one of those SCRAM ankle bracelets that Linsey Lopants wears, so it’ll go off every time I pull my credit card out; I bet they have them at Target.

I think I'm on Step 5 of the Twelve Steps: "Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." So to be exact, a shit ton of bikinis. And other stuff.

A) These are bikini shorts.  Well, swimming shorts for wearing over your swimsuit.  Not allowed unless you stretch the definition of underwear. Fail.

B) Used Miss Sixty platform sandals off eBay.  Used, so totally legit!  Take that doubters!

C) Sandals from Cost Plus.  New.  Fail.

D) Hoop earrings from Cost Plus.  Fail.

E) Jesus bracelet.  It has a pictures of the Catholic saints going all the way around.  And three pictures of Jesus.  Baby Jesus, regular Jesus and Jesus in the T position.  No Patron Saint of Target Addiction though.  Also not used.  Fail.

F) Cuff bracelet for my retroactive birthday present back in March.  New.  Fail.

G) Gold chain necklace from Cost Plus.  New. Fail.

H) True Religion jeans from consignment store.  Too small.  Used.  So bad and good.

I) My triumph.  Cynthia Steffe sundress.  Goodwill!  Used!

J – M) Underwear for the pool from Target.  Step off.  Legit.

N) T-shirt from The National concert.  Arun bought it for me.  Gifts are allowed.  Even when you say: “Buy me that.”

(Not pictured: C-3P0 Pez dispenser, a shirt and pair of black cargo capris both second-hand – they’re in the wash.  Also all the undies and the souvenirs for the kids).  Also a Juicy Couture dress like this one below that I just forgot about. Used though, off eBay.  Also these Miss Sixty boots that haven’t come in the mail.  Also used.  eBay.)

It doesn't look this good on me. But you get the idea. Also, used and a fourth of the price. So it's like I MADE money.

Last but not least (not arrived – hurry up boots!)

Used. eBay. Coven-approved!

Not satisfied with the goldfish murder of last month, Ivy raised the stakes on Wednesday and tossed Claudia the dog over the stair railing treating her to a two story fall onto hardwood floor.  If you are an animal lover and you’re like, no way am I reading this if the dog dies, I’ll just tell you now: Miraculously, she is still with us.

The FBI says serial killers abused animals as children, which has me wondering.  Do you think Jim Jones, the Kool-Aid guy, had pets?  How about The Unabomber?  Or Jack the Ripper?  There is speculation that Jack the Ripper was a member of the royal family, who you know had pets because the royal family is into pets in a major way.  Those corgi dogs with their ground-skimming bellies are the Queen’s children. Prince Charles said recently the reason he was so miserable is that he only spent one hour a day with his mother as a child, whereas those dogs were co-sleeping with Queen E. for decades.  She probably went to their doggie piano recitals and gushed over their report cards and volunteered in their computer lab at school.  All the while Prince Charles is in boarding school getting his knuckles rapped for getting caught reading the sexy parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  (Side note: no one every suspected Prince Charles of being Jack the Ripper.  Just one of his inbred relatives.  I think.  I’m not sure.  This was in Victorian times.  I wasn’t there.)

Where was I going with this?  Right.  Ivy.

So on Wednesday afternoon, we get home from preschool pick-up and Ivy says her skirt is wet.  This is a ploy.  Her skirt is not wet she just wants to change her outfit.  She goes upstairs and Clyde takes my phone and calls my mom. He likes to talk on the phone a lot.  He is good at it.  Except for the sign-off when he’ll cut you off mid-sentence and say: “I’m going to hang up on you now.” Ivy is useless on the phone.  She presses it to her eyeball as if it’s a camera and then yells: “I can’t hear anything!” So Clyde’s on the phone, I’m upstairs with Ivy and then I go to my bedroom to get my computer and I hear this thud.  It is very clearly the sound of something hitting the ground from a far distance.  There is a pause and then the worst kind of screaming/howling you have ever heard.  I run towards the noise and see Ivy peering down from the top of the stairs.  I look down to the first floor and there is the dog, on her side, shivering and howling and looking like the brand new owner of a broken back.  It’s obvious what’s happened.  I turn on Ivy. “You killed the dog!” I shout.  Then I grab her by the arm and haul her into her bedroom and shout: “Don’t come out!  I’ll deal with you later!” Ivy is by now sobbing but I can’t tell if it’s from my yelling or because she’s sorry.  Then I run downstairs and crouch by Claudia who is now making a growling sound dogs make when they’re about to peel your face off with their teeth.  I grab the phone from Clyde and tell my mom to come over and watch the kids so I can go to the vet.  And though she lives 20 minutes away, she gets there in 10 and the first thing she says to me is: “I think Ivy needs therapy.  That girl has no empathy.” Looking at the dog curled up on the floor in a kind of fetal position, it’s a little hard to argue.  I scoop up the dog and speed to the vet.  The vet orders all kinds of x-rays, takes Claudia from me and then meets me in an exam room about a half hour later. “Your dog is very lucky, no permanent damage,” she says. “That’ll be $400.” She doesn’t say that last part.  The front desk lady says that.

As I’m driving home, I wonder if this is going to escalate.  Did Jack the Ripper have a goldfish or a hermit crab or perhaps a guinea pig? Do you think Mrs. Ripper took little Jack to Petco and he clasped his murderous hands together and said “Oh mummy, please can I have the brown and white guinea pig? I shall name her Chesnut!  Oh mummy please can I?” Then he took her home and put her in a Habitat cage and when his mom went to bed, he yanked Chesnut out of her cage and tortured her with a Victorian crimping iron.

This image came up when I searched for "Victorian guinea pig" so I'm pretty sure this was Jack the Ripper's ACTUAL guinea pig.

Or maybe just bad outfits?

Look at the crown! Proof Jack the Ripper was actually a member of the royal family!

Surely Ivy’s not the only child who has been mean to animals and turned out not to be the Green River killer.  Right?  I mean I myself have indulged in a bit of this.  As a child, my sister and I put Hammie the hamster on the record player and watched her go around and around.  We did it on the slow speed, but that doesn’t make it right.  The hamster survived with nary a dry heave or dizzy spell, but soon after this incident, she gave birth, which was surprising since we thought we’d bought a boy hamster.  Just a few hours after giving birth to her tiny fur-less babies, she picked them up one by one from the nest and as casually as eating an ice cream cone, bit. their. heads. off.  Every last one.  Are you doing that creeped out full body wiggle at your desk right now?   Because I am, and I knew it was coming.  You didn’t.  (Side note: if you’re NOT doing that creeped out full body wiggle, you might be a serial killer too.  Just saying.)  I believe that this single act of tortured merry-go-rounding addled her brain and caused the hamster massacre.  Had those little baby hamsters lived to tell and had I asked them to raise their hands if they thought their decapitation was brought on by their mother being subjected to a ride on the turntable, there would have been a bunch of headless hamsters with their hands up.  But I didn’t turn into a serial killer.  Not that you know about anyway.

Anyway.  When I got home from the vet, there was Ivy, still a little weepy. “What do you have to say to Claudia?” my mother prompted Ivy. “I love you.  I won’t do it again,” she said to Claudia, who visibly flinched.  Ivy looked sorry and  I’d like to think that she’s just a little slow on the whole you can’t take fish out of water and you can’t toss dogs over banisters thing and that it’s not malice after all. A friend of mine told me I should channel this apparent “gift” she has.  “With what, jousting classes?” I asked. “Women’s cage fighting,” she said.  So I’m looking for a Cage Fighting for Tots class.  Maybe they offer it through the rec center? I may already have a costume she can wear, so that’s a start.

The song playing when Ivy enters the cage for a bout? "Stop! In the Name of Love" (Before I Break Your Face. Think it Oh Oh-ver.)

The zombie and the robot in Costa Rica.

The thing about vacation is that though it is wonderful in lots of ways, there are some things you can’t escape no matter how far you travel.  On Wednesdays on the weeks I don’t have the kids, I get sad.  This happens predictably, routinely and irrationally.  It doesn’t matter that two days later I will get the kids back, Wednesdays are always soaked in melancholy. They have swim up bars in Costa Rica and lovely tropical rainstorms and white sand and warm ocean.  But they also have Wednesdays.  So on Wednesday, I started to get sad about the kids not being with me.  And when I get sad I like to revisit all the things that make me sad about not being with the kids – divorce, custody issues, ex husband baggage, ad nauseum.  The solution to this is to stay busy.  Normally I obsessively sort sock drawers or go to Target for paper towels, spend an hour testing lip glosses on the back of my hand and then leave without the paper towels.  But the only stores around were the Super Mega Ultra Mercado or something like that and the Grupo Do It, which was the Costa Rican Home Depot, not (as it sounds) a place for groups of people to do it.  I needed a plan. “Let’s kayak tomorrow,” I told Arun. Kayaking was sponsored by the hotel and the next morning we met the rest of the participants and the hotel guide down at the beach.  We were to paddle over to the nearby beach, which was adjacent to a some kind of private nature reserve.  We kayaked over and when we pulled the kayaks up the shore a little ways, I saw a dog running towards the group of us, wagging his tail.  He was incredibly skinny.  Every rib was visible, every nub of his spine protruded painfully from his back.  His pelvic bones jutted out from near his tail.  It was, quite honestly, hard to look at.  But he kept wagging his tail.

Up the beach a ways, I saw there were a few more dogs in this little shelter where two men sat with rakes.  The other dogs did not seem nearly as thin as the one dog.  I watched them and after a while, the men got up and started to amble away from the beach, along a dirt path, into the trees and the dogs followed.  It bothered me.  Couldn’t they see how bad that dog was?  Didn’t they feed it?   Of course this was a westerner’s criticism.  Likely these men had no money for extra food and stray animals were a part of life.  I’d seen whole families living in tin shacks, alarmingly close to the road.  Hungry dogs were the least of their problems.

We paddled back to the hotel beach and Arun and I lay down on loungers.  I kept thinking about the dog.  I was sad to begin with – missing the kids made me feel listless and unmoored.  The swim up bar wasn’t even doing it for me anymore.  Arun (TBZE) fell asleep on the lounger.  I went to get some breakfast.  I knew then I’d be heading back to the other beach where the dog was.  I went to the bathroom and got paper towels.  I filled my buffet plate with breakfast fajitas and bacon then surreptitiously transferred it to the paper towels, then wrapped it all up in a little package.  Though the other beach was easily accessible by kayak, it wasn’t easy to get to on foot.  A long walk separated the two beaches and what looked and felt like lava rock underfoot skirted the shoreline.  It was a tricky journey in flip flops, trickier still while carrying a paper towel stuffed with fajitas.  I had no plan.  I just thought I’d find the dog and give him the fajitas and go.   When I got there, just one of them men was there raking sand and picking up little bits of trash.  No dogs.  He waved to me and I waved back and then pretended to be admiring the sand and the shells.  Eventually I sat down in the sand and put the fajitas in my lap and waited.  But the dogs didn’t come and as I often do on misguided missions like these, I started to feel ridiculous.  Usually this vague feeling of ridiculousness is then confirmed by something going terribly wrong.  Case in point, I used to work with home-bound seniors for the United Way.   One of them was too frail to do her laundry.  She lived in a trailer park and I would go there and pick up her laundry and take it to the trailer park laundromat and wash it all for her.  Once I forgot quarters and so I thought I’d just take it back to my house and do it.  Only I had a really shitty washing machine and an even shittier dryer and everything took forever.  Plus, my house was probably a good half hour from the trailer par  k.I took so long doing her laundry, she called United Way, concerned that it was all a scam and I was a scam artist and that my good deed was actually a ploy to steal her polyester nightgowns, her ancient stained towels and her sexy underpants.  As I was in the middle of doing her laundry at my house, United Way called me and were like, hey what are you doing with her laundry? and I stammered through my explanation all the while feeling like I was being accused of being weird and pervy, which might be true, but not in the way they were insinuating.

Where was I going with this.  Right, stray dogs.

A lot of my attempts to help are simply not helpful. As I sat there on the beach with the fajitas soaking through the paper towel and the sun beating down, I thought: okay now you’re just being stupid.  So I emptied the fajitas out of the paper towel onto a little stretch of scrubby grass near the beach and tossed the paper towel in a trash bin.  Of course as soon as I did this the skinny dog showed up, trotting towards me on the dirt path leading to the beach.  I whistled to him, but he ignored me and instead headed for the shelter area.  I went back to the spot where I’d left the fajitas and scooped them up with my bare hands, which turned out to be a terrible mistake because in the roughly 90 seconds they’d been on the grass, they’d been colonized by stinging ants, which then swarmed all over my wrist.  Sting, sting, sting! Here are three hundred bites for your hand so you remember how ridiculous you are! There was no way at that point I was going to drop the fajitas though.  I started walking towards the shelter and now a man had shown up and was sitting on a chair listening to a radio.  Still, the dog ignored me.  What was I going to say if the man asked me what I was doing?  How lame did I look holding a fist full of fajitas, with ants crawling up my arm?  What if I started swelling up because of the ants and I collapsed on this beach that was only visited once a week when the kayakers came.  I’d die here.  And then, ha ha ha, the dogs would eat me, which was good because they’d get a meal but bad for all the obvious reasons.  I continued my lame attempts at getting the dog’s attention, which mostly consisted of me standing awkwardly whispering “I have fajitas.”  After a while I realized it simply wasn’t going to happen.  I dropped the fajitas in the same spot, washed my stinging hand in the ocean and headed back over the rocks.

That night, I reminded myself that by now Arun already knew I was slightly crazy and so it was okay to say what I said next: “Tomorrow I want to go to the supermarket and get dog food for those dogs we saw today.” Bless his heart, Arun said, “Alright.”  The next morning we got up early and we drove the 30 minutes to the Super Mega Ultra Ultima Mercado or whatever and went to the dog food aisle and picked out two big bags of dog food and a Red Label bottle of Johnnie Walker because I wanted to bring something for the men who’d been with the dogs too.  Arun reasoned that bringing actual food for the men might be insulting and would insinuate they were too poor for groceries.  Much better to insinuate they were heavy drinkers instead.  We drove back and Arun carried the two bags of dog food in plastic bags, one in each hand and I stuffed the bottle of Johnnie Walker in my tote bag and we walked through the hotel like it was all perfectly normal.  It was by this time blisteringly hot, Arun was carrying massive bags of dog food, was wearing flip flops and we had no idea what we were going to say to the men in the beach shelter about our bizarre gifts

Lucky for me, Arun speaks Spanish, which is super helpful when you need to explain to a confused Costa Rican man that your wife is a bit unbalanced and a lot crazy and she wants you to have this dog food and to please take it so you don’t have to deal with her weepiness for the rest of the day.  I don’t know what he actually said once we got there, but I’m guessing it was something similar.  I asked him later and he said “I just said my wife likes dogs and she wanted to buy them some food.  And also here is some alcohol.” Whatever he’d said must have been the magic words though because the man stood up from his chair extended his hand to Arun to shake it and thanked him profusely with a big smile.  And that was before he’d even seen the Johnnie Walker, so the thanks was for the dog food.

I wanted to write a Happy Stepfather’s Day post but never got around to it.  But I will say this: As we were walking towards the man on the beach that morning, I could see the bags were digging into Arun’s hands and one of his flip flops was falling apart and the back of his shirt was soaked with sweat.  All because he wanted to make me happy and because he wanted to help, however foolish the mission was.  He knew I was sad and he knew why and he knew that a cocktail wasn’t going to fix it.

So in lieu of a Happy Stepfather’s Day post, I’d just like to say that very clearly I have married the right man this time. A lot of times it’s hard to articulate why you love someone and you speak in generalities.  But I think affirmation comes in moments like these that are stashed away in your brain as images.  The image of him walking in front of me will stay with me for a long time – the pattern on the shirt he was wearing, the red plastic bags holding the dog food and how once he got to the beach, he kicked off his flip flops and walked straight towards the man, with no hesitation and no doubt.

The Cross Dressers wait for the sunset

I’ll just get right to it.  Here’s my best vacation tip: All inclusive.  I highly recommend it.  It’s more money up front, but you know that feeling you have when you travel and you’re looking at prices on the menu, and they’re like: “Fruit plate with tropical medley, price:  $85 USD plus your first born and the deed to your house,” and you sort of think what a shame I need to eat while on vacation? Well that’s gone.  That feeling is also gone when you swim up to the swim-up bar and there are no less than 25 different tropical drink concoctions called things like “Ativan Amaretto” and “Topless Tequila Sunrise” and “Latin Fireman Lover” and you pass the menu back to the bartender and say “Yes, to all of that.”

If I am ever crazy rich, I will have a swim up bar.  And I’ll make TBZE wear a uniform and serve me cocktails.

I should rewind a bit.  Because it didn’t start out this great.  We took a red eye flight and my restless leg syndrome chose that moment to come back and suggest to my legs that a marathon would be awesome right now.  So my legs slapped a race number on my back and started their usual twitching and buzzing feeling and all I could do was sit in my seat and flex my calves to try and trick them into thinking we were in fact out running a marathon, not stuck in the middle seat.  And then TBZE and I were both crabby when we arrived because he hadn’t slept thanks to all his sleeping issues and I hadn’t slept because I was running a marathon and you can’t sleep and run at the same time.

Oh and here’s a bombshell for you, my ex-husband came with us on vacation too.  What?!  Let me explain.  So on Friday we thought we were leaving at 11 AM.  Correction, I thought I was leaving at 11 AM.  Everyone else, especially the airline thought I was leaving at 11 PM.  What this meant is that I’d done all my packing the night before and when the news came to me that I had to spend the full Friday waiting for my flight, it was like that feeling of suddenly getting off a moving walkway – you’re gliding along, and then the walkway ends, and you realize how badly regular walking sucks.  So we had the whole day in front of us, at home.  That’s when things started to go south.  TBZE took Clyde and Ivy to school, I took Hazel to school.  Then TBZE texted me that the twins were having a really hard time knowing they were going to their dad’s house, and that the preschool teacher suggested I meet the preschool class at the park to say goodbye to spend some time with them.  I went down to the park and stayed with them until it was time to go.  Then Ivy started melting down saying she wanted to go with me, and said that she didn’t want her step mom to pick her up from school, she wanted her dad to.  I knew this wasn’t going to happen, or at least would be highly unlikely, but Ivy made me promise to call her dad and ask.  I said goodbye to them and Ivy kept asking, You promise to call dad? Yes, I told her. I got back in the car, looked at the time and knew there was probably no chance he’d make it, but I texted anyway because I’d promised.  I thought there was an off chance he’d be working from home and could go and get her.  Then I texted their step mom to say that Ivy had been hoping to see her dad today and that she might be a little weepy at pick up.

I went and saw a friend, came back home and started cleaning up the backyard also known as the plastic graveyard (where toys go to die).  During the clean up, I heard my phone make the text message jingle. It was a text from my ex-husband, who never responds to texts, emails or phone calls.  Period.  I generally just hope he gets them.  But respond he did.  I kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and the text was so long it made Homer’s The Odyssey look like the Cliff’s Notes for Goodnight Moon.  If that’s a weird analogy, I’ll just spell it out:  really effing long. I generally believe text messages are for things like “Hey baby, can you pick up some taco shells?” or “Did you know babies are born without kneecaps?” or “I ate two donuts really fast and I have to go lie down.” Not a scathing diatribe about how he can NEVER pick up his children because he WORKS and why can’t I get it through my thick head to ALWAYS coordinate with step mom and how dare I hurt her feelings and on and on and on an on it went.  No one can ruin my day like he can; it’s a gift.  Though I was tempted to write him back: “Did you know babies are born without kneecaps?” I took a deep breath, went upstairs and with shaking hands took the cap off my ativan.  Then I waited for that to kick in and decided I would call him to try and talk him down.  Of course he didn’t pick up so I left a calm, ativan-induced message saying that I had only been trying to help and pass along some info about Ivy and though I knew it was unlikely he’d be available, I thought I’d give it a shot.  And I said, these nasty grams of yours are not helpful.

What I always fail to realize is that an apology from him will never come and that I am in fact left with the residue of his rage, and not the good kind you can smoke.  Once we checked into the hotel in Costa Rica we found our room wasn’t ready because we were early so we sat on a patio overlooking the bay and TBZE promptly fell asleep.  And ex-husband took that opportunity to show up in my head like a menace.  I went over and over that stupid text until I couldn’t really pay attention to the lush soft air and the gentle breeze and the turquoise ocean, I could only hear his nasty words.  I realized that what I’d done was take my ex-husband with me on vacation.  Yikes, I thought.  You need to send him back.

I changed into my bikini and found the bar and picked out the most ridiculous mixed drink I could find. Then a guy came and sat next to me and asked for a shot of the best rum they had and it turned out Stan was a psychiatrist which confims my suspicions that even mental professionals need alcohol.

I had three mixed drinks that looked mostly like Slurpees with parasols and then everything was fine.

Anyway.  I like all the wildlife here and the big bugs and the ants that snake down to the beach carrying bits of leaves above their heads like umbrellas.  It’s as though all the bugs here are magnified and so you can see every move they make in detail.  They move like they are computer animated, like robot bugs, which is I suppose why I am so fond of them.  On the beach, lemon yellow butterflies gather by the shore and when you pass them they fly up like confetti.  The sand has a layer of glinting black over the whiter sand and when the water comes up, it takes the layer of black with it and what’s left is a marble pattern.  There is a sweet marmalade cat here, lean and hungry who hangs around the outdoor dinner area at buffet time.  She is friendly because she has figured out being friendly will get her cut up steak fed to her surreptitiously (by me) and fish (by TBZE).  I like her a lot and she has a narrow face and a slinky way of weaving through the table legs and a meow that is almost a pur.  This means it’s a good job we got the all inclusive package so I can have dinner there every night and feed her a steak dinner.

I think we’ll go down to the beach and maybe I’ll bring The Cross Dressers sent to me by The Bloggess.   I’ll bring sunscreen and trashy magazines and my sunglasses and of course TBZE.  But not the ex – I put him in a cab already.  He’s going back on the red eye.  In cargo.

A tree in the front yard fell down on Monday.  This happened in the half hour I wasn’t home (between getting Clyde and Ivy from school, then leaving again to get Hazel).  It would have demolished my car in the driveway, and anything/one else who’d been standing there.

Just after it fell, I took a photo, posted it on Twitter and attributed the calamity to the arrival of the ghost camera from The Bloggess.  To fill you in, Jenny, The Bloggess, auctioned off a possibly haunted camera on eBay and I bought it.  Obviously the tree trying to murder my family and the ghost camera’s presence in my house are not connected.  No, I’m kidding.  They are.  Here’s how I know: When I looked more closely at the photo I saw there was something strange and dark in the middle of it.  At first I thought it was cat, impaled on a branch.  It would make sense, Ivy’s standing very nearby and let’s face it, her track record with pets isn’t fantastic.  When I went out to the tree and looked, there was nothing there.   Have a guess what it is? Because I really haven’t the faintest.

Ivy stands surveying the damage. And the hairless impaled cat? The airplane black box? The...no really, what is that?

On Friday I am going to Costa Rica with TBZE and I am going to pack a suitcase full of bikinis and flip flops and sunscreen.  That’s it.  Oh, and Cinderella and The Cross Dressing Legos given to me by Jenny, which when written out like that really looks like an indie band.  They’ll come too.  I’m going to take pictures of them all in the sand, on the beach and perhaps drinking by the pool, like the crazy lady I am.  It’s all for you guys, if you care.  If you’ve been one of my five longtime readers, you know Cinderella and her ex-boyfriend were going to run into one another at Target.  But I’m not allowed to go to Target because of The Coven.  Instead I have spent a bunch of money at Savers, a thrift store in my town.  Plus, I found a shitastic pair of Miss Sixty heels on eBay that were slightly used, which is slightly awesome, because I don’t even have to slightly ruin The Coven which doesn’t allow for anything new.  Since my Target plan has been foiled and since I can’t buy the brooding Edward from Twilight or the Ken doll with a hint of penis, I have to assign ex-boyfriend duties to one of Legos. So Cinderella and one of the Legos will have to run into one another on the beach in Costa Rica, because let’s face it, we’ve all run into an ex in some random far away place and thought aww, mother fuck.  Why should Cinderella be any different.  Are you confused?  It’s okay.  So am I.

Last but not least?  I made a new friend because of Viagra spam.  That actually deserves an exclamation point.  Let me try again:  I made a new friend because of Viagra spam!  Better.

Let me explain in the present tense to make it more exciting.

On Tuesday I get an email from someone I don’t know that reads: “Remove me from your list, you keep sending me Viagra spam.” I sit there looking at my phone (which is now shattered, thanks to me tripping over the downed tree – again, ghost camera) thinking what is this person talking about? As I’m rereading it, five more emails come in.  Ding ding ding, goes my phone.  Everyone is requesting the same thing – to be removed from some list.  I look more closely and see that we are all part of an email list put together by Meridian magazine, a literary magazine that sponsors a contest I entered.  Every time someone hits “reply” to this list, it goes to everyone again.  Each email that comes in is increasingly irate about the spam, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Viagra and is now 100% generated by people spamming each other about spam.  All this confirms my suspicions about people who enter literary contests, (I include myself here) which is that we are all complete bozos.  Finally someone sends an email that says: “I kind of like it. Please don’t remove me! It makes me feel…important.” And I think, oh hello new friend! because honestly, it’s such a relief after the 9,000 emails that say, REMOVE ME FROM YOUR LIST OR I WILL EAT YOUR BABIES.  I email him directly to say thanks for the laugh, you’re awesome and he finds me on facebook and sends me an email that says your whole family is adorable and I write on his wall isn’t it great we became friends because of Viagra? And then he writes me to say he read my blog and I write him back and something about where I put the comma, makes it sound like his name is Viagra and he’s like, oh yes!  I’ve always wanted a new name! And presto chango, new friend, Viagra.

Anyway, I’m off to Costa Rica in about 24 hours.  I will be gone for a week.  Don’t forget about me or I will eat your babies.

P.S.  If you’re not on already, get yourself on the blogroll.  When I get back I’ll do a real one on the homepage.  Do it now, because in a couple weeks I’m going to make it harder to qualify.  No more lobbing you a question about pineapple on pizza.  I’ll be requesting that you have served actual jail time.  Or at least probation.

P.P.S  Additional photo! A few commenters were like, hey MORON, it’s not an airplane black box or an impaled hairless cat…it’s your SON.  Tell me I’m not the only one who thought it was a cat?  Someone thought it was a french rooster, so I’m not the only one who needs their eyes checked.

Yeah, nevermind.

I’ve been thinking a lot about divorce lately, because I was sad last week and the sadness tends to bring everything up.  Specifically, I’ve been wondering about my children and how they make sense of being one of the few kids at school in a divorced home.  Clyde and Ivy were nine months old when their dad and I split, barely crawling, one of them in constant physical therapy for a host of issues.  It seems a lifetime ago.  I have few pictures from that time, no video.  The picture on my About Bedbugs page is actually the only photo from that time I have of us together.  That year and the one prior is a blur of depression and anger and exhaustion.  There is a drawing on a door upstairs in the house, that Hazel did in Sharpie when I was tending to the twins one night.  I was furious with her when I saw it.  But a few weeks later, I wrote the date above it using the same Sharpie.  I knew that there would come a time when I would treasure that drawing.  It is now proof.  Proof I survived that time.  Proof we all did.

11/18/06, by Hazel

Clyde and Ivy will not remember their dad and I living in the same house.  Hazel will because she was four.  Sometimes she mentions it. “Do you remember when dad used to live here?” she’ll ask.  For Clyde and Ivy they will eventually learn that what they have going on – stepparents and moving back and forth from house to house is not the norm.  I wonder when that first knowledge will come. If someone will say something to them on the playground or at the lunch table.  Perhaps another child, when Clyde and Ivy explain they are going to their dad’s house for the weekend because their parents are divorced, will ask: “What is divorce?”  This happened to Hazel once, and she said simply it was when your mom and dad live apart.  I was glad we had never fought in front of the kids, and that she didn’t need to answer, “Divorce is when moms and dads hate each other” or “Divorce is when they fight all the time.”

Recently Clyde and Ivy’s babysitter split up with her husband.  She has two children.  Clyde and Ivy asked after her husband, because they hadn’t seen him in a while.  She struggled with her response. “We won’t see him for a while,” she finally said.  They have been talking about astronauts and space and the moon and stars lately.  They have a fact book that focuses on space. Clyde asked: “Has he gone to space in a rocket ship?”  She said yes.  She apologized to me later for lying to them, but how could I be angry about that? It makes about as much sense as any other explanation about divorce.  I felt sad for her and sad for my kids, who likely won’t see him again. Sometimes they look out their bedroom window at the moon and ask if he’s up there.

Hazel had a couple play dates last week.  Two of them were with children either from divorced homes or currently going through a divorce.  It was strangely nice to hear the chatter in the back of the car about stepparents and when they’d be with mom and when they’d be with dad.  They didn’t have to explain to one another about divorce and how they have two houses and two beds.  One of these kids is in the thick of it; her parents have just split, and lately I’ve been making a point to try and get Hazel and her together.  I worry about the divorced kids more I guess.  I think they get passed over for play dates, because maybe it’s too complicated with the two houses and other parents not knowing where the divorced kids are on any particular day.  I’ve been fortunate; other parents are so good about asking when I’ve got the kids.  I wonder about other kids though, maybe the kids of single parents who, (because the parents are working hard to survive,) spend long hours in after-school care.  Those kids will be fine too; I am not at all saying after-school care is a bad place.  But those are the kids I want to look out for a bit more.

When I was little, we lived next to a family who had two girls about me and my sister’s age.  We were all close friends. Their parents both worked long hours and their grandparents lived with them too.  In the summer, my mom, who didn’t work, would take us to the beach and we’d always take our neighbors.  It was a given.  Four kids must have been harder than two for my mom.  And looking back, I sort of wonder why she did it.  But I think I know.  I think it was because she knew they would love a trip to the beach and that maybe the only way they’d get there would be by my mom going out of her way a bit.  She was okay with that.  I think it was better than knowing her kids were at the beach while the neighbor’s kids were at home.

In that case, their parents were still together, so it wasn’t really the same. But this weekend when we had one of Hazel’s friends with us (whose parents divorced about the same time I did) it reminded me of those beach days with my mom.  This weekend, we took Hazel and her friend with us everywhere.  We went swimming.  We went to the movies.  We went out to lunch and to the beach.  I felt happy when I dropped her off at her mom’s house, almost like I’d accomplished something. Her mom has two jobs now, both involve 12 hour shifts at two different hospitals.  I’m lucky I don’t have to work those kinds of hours and that between child support and TBZE supporting us I can be home with them while they’re little. I feel insanely lucky actually.  So this summer I’m going to spread that luck around, both for the kids whose parents are already divorced and the kids going through it.  I want those kids to have a good summer too.  More than that, I want them to know that it’ll be okay and that they’re not freaks, and that if we all stick together, we’ll see that we’re not alone.