Month: December 2022

One Mom, Every Mom (#349)

My husband did (and still does) a lot of wrestling with Baby D. But our son’s main playmate, when there was no school, sports, or playing with the kids on the block, has always been me.

Baby D loves the water. Swimming is a good way to wear out any kid, even those of the inexhaustible variety. We’d always get to the pool at least a half-hour before lessons and play games. And by games I mean:

Baby D: “Mommy, let’s pretend you are Mommy Whale and I am Baby Whale!”

Me: “Can’t I be Mommy Shark?”

Baby D: “No! Because I am Baby Whale!” (Swims out to middle of pool, proceeds to spin and thrash.) “MOMMY WHALE! MOMMY WHALE! Baby Whale is caught in a whirlpool!”

I would sigh, ignore the sniggering lifeguard and go to “rescue” Baby Whale.

Golden Pond, Town Beach

When Baby D was older, but stuck with only me as a playmate at a New Hampshire lake, the games became more involved. They were inevitably based on whatever he’d read most recently:

Baby D: “Okay, this rock is Momdor and you have to defend it and not let me touch it!” (Baby D charges, freestyling like mad. I scoop him up and throw him a few feet back. Repeatedly. I tire out way before my kid.)

Me (mining blowing a horn): “Momdor calls for aid! Momdor calls for aid! Where are the Riders of Rohan?!”

Baby D (outraged): “Momdor isn’t GONDOR! It’s MORDOR!!”

Me: “Not a chance, Baby Sauron. I’m Gondor AND the Houses of Healing.”

I certainly felt like a besieged nurse on a regular basis. Andy had one of his lemon episodes soon after our beloved rescue dog Woofie was diagnosed with a terminal fibrosarcoma. Then our other rescue, Fey, injured herself shoving Woofie out of the way in order to claim attention from friends and neighbors who came visit Woofie one last time (Woofie had always believed everyone was his friend. Turns out, he wasn’t wrong.)

That month had a lot of trips to human and canine physicians. While sitting in yet another waiting room—don’t ask me which kind—I wrote the following (apologies to Tolkien):

Three X-rays for the denizens
In the house of sturdy brick
A canine with a cancer
And a skull that’s awfully thick
His wussy shar-pei sister
Yelps with compressed discs of three
And the man that ought to walk them
Had surgery on his knee.
One Mom to nurse them all
One Mom to chide them
One Mom to find those pills
Wherever doggies hide them.

I was not, however, the only poet in the family. The following Mother’s Day, Baby D’s class wrote poems about their moms. Baby D’s started off and ended as quite the ode:

My mom is hardworking
She always supports me
She lets me do soccer and
Supports me with glee…

…I love my mother truly
She is the greatest for me
Amazing she can see
What is the best for me!

But the middle? It contained this gem:

When my mother is resentful
I know to hide in my room
Else will come my doom!

Maybe Momdor is Mordor after all.

Or maybe every Gondor has a bit of Mordor in it.

Actual poem & picture. Baby D says it’s tree. Andy says it looks like our dog Fey up on her hind legs. I say words always trump illustration.

If you were hoping for a Christmas Post, here’s my husband’s first New England Christmas. If you want Christmas AND you got every single Tolkien reference in this post, here’s the perfect read for you: The North Polar Bear.

 

The Lemon (#348)

I wouldn’t trade my husband for anything.

I reminded myself of this last weekend when he injured his dominant hand working on the sprinklers. (That’s sprinkler injury #2, for those counting.)

But if Andy had been a car? TOTAL. LEMON. (For younger readers, “lemon” is slang for a car that is constantly breaking, usually due to shitty manufacturing.)

The Spousemobile has had five surgeries on his knees and ankles (two ruptured tendons, two torn menisci, one giant cyst removed). He’s got compressed discs in his back. He’s broken his tailbone (not his fault, the poor Spousemobile got rear-ended by a texting idiot). Andy also has infection-induced asthma; normal winter colds regularly led to bronchitis until he got his CPAP machine (because he also has sleep apnea). He’s got retinas that would like to detach and has had holes in them soldered up by lasers regularly.

Luckily—or perhaps smartly—Andy picked a sturdy wife that can soldier on through pretty much all ailments. Torn quadricep? Watch me scoot around on the floor to clean! 6 months of nausea while pregnant? Let me just take some puke bags with the poop bags when I walk the dogs. Flattened by a dog while walking my dogs? I’ll leave a trail of blood, but I’ll get us all home. Familial vasovagal response that makes me pass out when I donate blood or see someone injured? Don’t worry, I’ve gotten very good at either not passing out or figuring out how to do it with minimal fuss/ bother. (The secret is to make a lot of jokes and talk to nurses to keep your blood pressure up. If that doesn’t work? Lie down ASAP. No matter how dirty, the floor is your friend.)

A man with tools and a bathroom sink
Andy being handy

Despite his issues, there’s no way I’m trading in the Spousemobile. Like most men, Andy tends to automatically put his own needs ahead of his pets and spawn, but when I lose my shit calmly explain that ideally one prioritizes one’s child over reading a newspaper, Andy makes adjustments. He works at a job he doesn’t love in order to keep us fed and medically insured. He cooks 30-50% of the time (he cooked more before child and injuries). He’s handy around the house (despite the demon sprinklers).

He wrestles with Baby D and even grudgingly coached youth sports.

A man and a boy with matching ice packs
Of course, wrestling with Baby D sometimes means ice packs for all.

Meanwhile, no small number of my Gen X mom friends have traded in their undented Chevy Novas (all white models). Some have decided there’s no point in having an extra car that just sits in the driveway with XM Sports Radio blaring while they are madly driving to work, school, the store, practices, the doctor, and the vet. Younger women, seeing all the trade-ins (and crashes) are opting to avoid the marital car altogether. Those that do get married are opting against having children.

I don’t care what the Boomers say: the Millennials are all right.

And Gen Z? They believe in voting, unions, universal healthcare, addressing climate change, and better public transportation.

May they never know what a vehicular lemon is.

Countdown to Christmas 2.0 (#347)

Gift-giving and holidays were huge in my family. Life wasn’t necessarily great the rest of the year, but looking forward to holidays and birthdays got us through.

In Andy’s Chinese-American childhood? There was no emphasis on holidays or gifts. If he was lucky, there was lucky money in a red envelope when he was young. When he was older, if he was lucky, his mom might tell him to stop at Foodland and pick up a random cake for his own birthday.

Andy did a great job with gifts when we were first together. But after Baby D arrived, he slacked off.  He forgot about items such as stocking stuffers, which was no big deal when we were with my family, where stuffing stockings is a competitive sport and I got plenty of items from my dad’s current wife or various siblings. But our first Christmas at home alone?

I got nothing. Which was unfathomable to me, the person who spent hours picking out Andy’s favorite candies and bottles of bourbon (big and small).

Gilded calendar in white and purple decorated with owls , deer, and wintery woodland scene.
Original Advent Calendar from Vosages (with chocolates on the inside).

Andy rallied after that, but he has never spent anywhere near the time I do picking out gifts. Occasionally, though, he hit the jackpot. Like the time he found out how much I love Advent Calendars and got me the ultimate adult one from Vosages. Every year after that, he faithfully ordered a refill and restocked my calendar with high class chocolates.

Probably because Vosages sent him a yearly reminder.

For our last anniversary, I got Andy Whistle Pig bourbon, plus a second bottle for 5 cents, because Bevmo was having a sale. (Andy loves getting a bargain. He’s not truly happy with a gift unless I outline the great deal I got after he opens it. This is an absolute anathema to pretentious white people, but I’ve learned to roll with it.)

Unfortunately, when I was wrapping the bottles, I realized they were WHISKEY, not bourbon! I went back to the store had to argue with an employee about exchanging the unwanted whiskey.

Huffy Bevmo Employee: “Well, you should have known better. Whistle Pig doesn’t make a bourbon.”

Me, whipping out my phone and hitting the Google app: “Yes, they do.”

“I have never seen one!”

Picture of Whistle Pig BOURBON

Me, holding up phone: “Now you have!”

Huffy Bevmo Employee: “Well, still, you shouldn’t have—”

Me, interrupting: “Trusted that Bevmo would only put BOURBON in the one locked BOURBON case?”

I was allowed to make an exchange. (Note: Most other Bevmo employees have always been helpful and not pissy while being flat out wrong about liquor. I got the Dunning-Kruger special that day.) Still, I prided myself, a non-drinker, on knowing more about bourbon than a liquor store employee—even though the only reason I know anything about bourbon is because it’s one of Andy’s favorite things. When gift-giving is important to you, you learn as much as you can about what the recipient likes so you can get them a good gift. And you take it back the minute you realize it’s NOT a good gift.

Many of you are probably insisting, “It’s the thought that counts.”

No.

That’s a lie told by shitty gift-givers to absolve them of guilt.

Gift-giving is all in the execution.

Take Andy’s anniversary gift to me: a package from an international chocolatier. I was pretty excited…until I opened it and found nothing but solid dark chocolate. I’m a milk chocolate fan, unless the dark chocolate surrounds nuts or caramel (or both).

Andy: “You don’t like it?!”

Me, sobbing dramatically: “Solid dark chocolate? 70-80% cacao? We’ve been married for more than a decade and it’s like you don’t even KNOW me!”

Andy: “But I thought it was a milk chocolate arrangement!”

Turns out Andy didn’t actually take the time to read through the product description (although he swears it was a bait and switch, like Bevmo and the bourbon). He immediately ordered some Ghana chocolates and apple cider caramels from Lake Champlain Chocolates and insisted they were my real gift.

Last week, the yearly advent calendar refill arrived.

Or so I thought.

When I opened the box, I discovered an entirely new “Chocolate Calendar for Advent” from Vosages. One I’d seen advertised on social media and adored, but quickly swiped away from, because I already had one.

The new Chocolate Calendar of Advent!

The second Andy and Baby D arrived home, I dragged them straight to the calendar. “Look, look! It’s awesome! When I press this button, it lights up! When I press this button, it plays the ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ from The Nutcracker! And then you open it and there are lights inside and bigger chocolates than previous years and did you know it comes with its own charging cable?!”

Andy, looking somewhat dazed, said, “I did not know that. Wow. It has its own charging cable?!”

“But…you bought it. How did you not know?”

“I couldn’t get refills for your old calendar so I bought the new one. But I didn’t…”

“Read the actual product description? Yet again?

“Uhhhh…”

“So you didn’t actually intend to get me the amazing advent calendar I’ve been coveting?”

Luckily for Andy, Baby D, whose scowl had been deepening during this discussion, burst out with, “Where’s MY advent calendar?!”

“Dad got you a big Lindt one at Costco weeks ago.”

Andy said, “I’ll go get it!” and fled.

He didn’t need to worry. Andy might barely average a “C” grade in Intent.

But I only grade on Execution:
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