Dirty Little Secrets

I love my kids. You know I do. It's just that I'm worried that they aren't shaping up to be very...well...nice.

The glances they give each other and the critical stuff that comes out of their mouths leave my mouth agape.

For instance, they are very much into tween fashion right now. Without Molly ever uttering a word, I can tell she feels superior to other little girls who haven't caught the fashion bug yet and who are still sporting Disney princess attire at age 8 or 9. This from the girl who wore the same pair of $2.48 capri pants from Target year round from when they were ankle long until they became shorts!

My kids, who have not yet discovered a love of food, judge their friends when they raid our snack drawer, sneak food from their parents, or take a huge piece of cake. If they were to put this judgment into words, I guess it would be a "lack of self-control" but instead, they just give each other "the look."

I think they have heard a lot about "childhood obesity" and want to avoid it at all costs. They have always been underweight, so this worries me for my kids and their health, but also for the way they react to others who are different. Trust me, fat kids on tv are still the butt of jokes, and my kids have picked up on it. Ask your child if he'd rather be obese or lose a hand in an accident. Just ask.

My kids judge kids for picking noses and eating, which is ironic considering my son once tried to convince us that boogers should be their own food group.

And they love babies and old people, except for when they don't. "Adorable," "sweet," and "kind" can instead be "smelly," "disgusting," and "gross."

What about whiners, tattle-tales and drama queens? Don't get my kids started.

And appearance? Today we were out and about Jake said, "I just don't know what I'd do if I had ugly kids." Molly gave him a sympathetic cluck cluck, looked him up and down and then said, "Well, I know MINE won't be ugly."

Molly is also experiencing a bit of friend drama. If a friend gets jealous or too needy, she feels uncomfortable and wants to write her off and pull away. I want her to like everyone, all the time, and be the all-inclusive (but not coke-sniffing) Julie McCoy of the 4th grade set.

All this Judgy-McJudgment, coupled with some smart alecky behavior toward me and their poor beleaguered dad, makes me wonder if it's time to pull the plug on the Disney channel or YouTube, or even the cafeteria table and recess, where I've heard that a lot of snarky convos take place.

But before I try to blame all of this on the media or someone else, I need to look closely at myself. The same girl drama neediness that drives Molly away? Makes me run for cover and stop answering my phone.

And while I don't (usually) judge kids for taking that too-big piece of cake, I know Tom and I have felt superior when our kids turn down their sweets and Halloween candy, therefore leaving me more to eat.

I have had a hard time empathizing with my friends when I feel some of their trauma and drama is self-inflicted by poor life choices. Sounds a little like I'm judging them for a "lack of self-control," doesn't it?

It's not as if my kids have no sense of charity. Just this week Molly wanted to have a lemonade and brownie sale for the earthquake victims in Japan. If it hadn't been for an accidental squirt of Dawn into the brownie batter, forcing me to eat the entire batch, we would have done it, too.

This morning we stopped by my dear friend's house to see how she's doing after cancer surgery, and the kids were loving and wonderful. And even though it is still spring, they are already planning ahead to next Christmas when they want to fill 20 boxes with toys for children through Samaritan's Purse.

But what about in their own backyard? The admonition to "Love Your Neighbor" comes into play here. The kids have an easier time loving "neighbors" who are a far away ideal or idea than a nitty-gritty in-your-face entity in their own neighborhood, class, or home.

I, too, am quick to raise money for kids in Africa, or spearhead a clothing collection drive,but I'm also the first one to go all Linda Blair on my poor husband for the grievous offenses of turning the light on while I'm trying to sleep or EATING CEREAL within my earshot. Isn't he my neighbor, too?

And the cashier at the grocery store today, with the visible razor stubble on her chin? Who kept repeating "Thank you, come again" the entire time she scanned my stuff? Was doing nothing wrong, but I wanted to brusquely tell her to leave me the heck alone so I could tear through an entire magazine of kitchen re-do's before my purchases were rung up.

I realize I am just as hateful and hypercritical as my kids are, but I have a more adult filter so I can get by without owning up to my critical spirit and doing something about it.

And the booger picking? When I was little I went to our middle-aged neighbors' house, knocked on their door, and self-righteously informed them with disdain: "Lisa (my sister) picks her boogers and eats them!"

Hey apples? Meet your tree.

Take Me Home, Country Roads, Part Deux

Just got back in town!

This is a re-post from January '09 because when it comes to trips to the in-laws, I'm nothing if not predictable, and if there's ever an excuse to include a pre-40 year old photo of myself, I'll take it:

Sorry for the blog silence. I’ve been holed up in a house w/ 7 kids, 6 adults, one dog and a hermit crab for the past 6 days. I’m kind of glad I couldn’t blog at my in-laws, because I would have come off as a raving lunatic, or at least more of one than usual.

I needed to get back home and get a little perspective before filling you in on my week. See how happy I look in my own kitchen?

Trips to the in-laws always seem to go like this: I work myself into a lather packing for the household. Laundry, pack, schlep, laundry, pack, schlep. When we get there, my first strategy is to hide out in a back bedroom reading books 24-7. This is not to protect myself from them, but to protect them from the raging b-rat I become every time I’m there.

I find myself cringing at everything anyone does. I play a little game in my head called “That’s where Tom got that annoying habit.” I feel rebellious. If they are talking politics, I feel like yelling, “I voted for Obama!” If they extol the virtues of health food, I rip open a bag of chocolate and strap on my feed bag.

Underneath my rolling eyes, moaning and groaning, I think what I’m doing is trying to punish them for not being my family of origin. As if to embrace them fully and their way of doing things will somehow negate my experience of “family.” The thing is, ever since my mom died, twenty years ago, my family hasn’t exactly been all sunshine and roses, so why am I comparing, and judging, and punishing these kind, lovely people who have never been anything but good to me?

But still.

By day 2, I feel the need to flee. Unfortunately, I’m 7 hours from home and have never bothered to plot an escape route. The idyllic country setting begins to feel more like a curse than a blessing. I have no idea how to get to a main road. Perhaps if there were a Target nearby, I could indulge in a little retail therapy to make it through. No dice. Snowfall doesn’t help either.

Low thermostat? Annoying. Boring local newspaper? Ugh. Tennis magazines? No thanks. By day 3, I’m lethargic, as if overtaken by carbon monoxide. Everything is in slow mo. I sleep as late as possible, ignoring the chipper “Well, look who is up!” by other members of the household. I keep my Christmas pj’s on as much as possible.

The kids are having a blast with their cousins, and Tom is loving catching up with his parents and siblings. By day 4 Tom is offering me a one-way plane ticket home and out of his hair. The nerve. I rally. Our anniversary is pretty good. We go to a nice dinner and a movie. That night, I roll over in my twin bed uttering a “Night Ricky,” to his “Night Lucy.” Romantic in an old fashioned kind of way.

Day 5 really picks up. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I start to socialize. I drink wine. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier. I ring in the New Year with a smile on my face, even though my night is spent in yet a different house with 10 kids, 6 adults, and I’m on an air mattress mere inches away from a cage containing a dead guinea pig. The people we stayed with were pet sitting for the holidays. Someone had a much worse vacation than I did.

On Day 6 I start to think about whom Jake will marry. Will he bring home a girl so witchy and judgmental that I’ll have to walk on eggshells around her? Will I have to apologize for my mere existence? Will the way I breathe bother her? Will she play the “A-ha!” game inside her head? Will she fail to recognize what a fabulous person I am?

Chastened, I spend my last few hours there being the daughter-in-law I should have been since the beginning. To my in-laws—I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through for the last decade and a half, even though most of it just played out in my mind.

To Tom, I’m glad you come from such a dear family, with kind parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews. I know I’ve said this to many guys in the past, but I think this is the first time I’ve said it to you. And I mean 96% of it: “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.”

"Night, Lucy." "Night, Ricky."

Just got back from a week in captivity with Tom’s family. They are lovely people, and I do believe I behaved pretty well this time. Semi-psycho, but not all-out psycho.

I think my issue comes down to a concept I read about recently that in-laws just aren’t of your tribe. A different tribe doesn’t mean a bad tribe, just different. My own tribe is wracked with tragedy and riddled with dysfunction, but it’s mine so I more or less “get” it.

On a day to day basis, my vacation problems stem from the fact that I’m not in my own home, thus not able to get anything “done,” and the issue of a fundamental magazine-incompatibility. I first heard this phrase from Marinka and I fell in love with it and her fabulous blog.

In-Law’s Magazine List:

Knit Simple
Prevention
Consumer Reports
New Republic
Cooking Light
Tennis

Anna’s Far Superior and More Interesting Magazine List:

Country Living
Better Homes and Gardens
Vanity Fair
Elle Décor
Southern Living
Family Circle
Guideposts

…and the ultimate guilty pleasures: People and US Weekly.

Yes, yes I brought books to read, but I whizzed through them all. No, I couldn’t drive to the store, because after almost 18 years I still don’t know where the heck I am out in the country and how to escape if necessary.

By the end of vacation I was so desperate I was reading the labels on vitamin bottles.

I am not trying to be judge-y here; my own sister and I are magazine incompatible. Hers: Yoga Journal, Self, Health. Ewwww.

But she and I usually manage to stay occupied discussing our differing views of the same childhood incidents or stuffing our faces with jumbo marshmallows straight out of the bag.

Entertainment-wise, we did better than in the magazine department on this trip.

My mother in law has a dvd collection of “I Love Lucy.” We loved introducing the kids to the show.

Reactions:

Molly: “Lucy needs to tell Ricky to go make his own breakfast.”

Jake: “Lucy and her friend always make things worse by lying about stuff.”


And, in a case of "life imitating Lucy," Tom and I were once again assigned the room with twin beds in it.

I was PMS-ing HARD so Tom’s little bed could have been in Alaska for all I cared. The distance probably kept him safe from any vacation-induced stabbing.

In all, it was a very good trip, yet I’m glad to be home. And waiting for me when I got here? 3 crisp new magazines. Aaah.

Wake up in Anger / Delusions in Nude

Do you ever have a dream in which someone you know does something so obnoxious or deplorable that you wake up feeling angry at him or her? This has happened with my husband several times. We’ll have a fight in a dream and I wake up seriously peeved. Of course, as a man, he usually can’t figure out why I’m mad at him even when I have good reason, so a little irrational dream-related anger doesn’t throw him off too much.

The past two nights, I’ve had weird dreams involving friends. In one, a friend went down to our basement, saw brown skinned baby dolls (which, by the way, we don’t have since my kids are too old for dolls) and came upstairs and made a racist remark. I was pissed, and we got in a huge fight. When I see her, will I think she’s a racist? Did I subconsciously already think she was a racist, even though I’ve had no evidence of it whatsoever?

And what about last night’s dream? My husband, who wasn’t my husband but he really was, was standing with me in our bedroom, which wasn’t our bedroom but you know what I mean, when another friend, we’ll call her Jane, pranced into the room wearing nothing but a smile! I found it highly inappropriate. I was impressed with her perfect physique, which I’ve never seen in the altogether before since we usually see each other IN CHURCH, but still.

I awoke annoyed at her for her lack of judgment and self control, and I gave my husband a little kick under the covers for good measure. After all, he had been there, right?

Piles of Blame

I have a habit of playing the blame game. If something went wrong in my younger years, I’d want to pin it on my brother or sister. As a mom, when my kids act up, I often attribute it to the influence of other kids, the time of year, the cycle of the moon, barometric pressure—you get the picture.

So, I’m wondering what you would do if you let your dog out to go to the bathroom at night and she disappears. And after about 10 minutes of surveying the estate you still haven’t found her.

And then you discover she has let herself into the neighbor’s house and is ransacking their walk-in pantry, an orgy of Beggin’ strips, nacho chips and all manner of other food. And you see by her bad example that she’s leading the neighbors’ own puppy into a life of crime.

And when you realize that the neighbors didn’t even notice anything was amiss, you have to fess up and apologize for your dog. And they tell you this is the second time tonight she has helped herself to their kitchen.

And when you take her home, she promptly chucks up 2 huge piles of this on your floor?

I know, you ask yourself, "What’s wrong with those people?! Don’t they know how to lock their doors? "

Friday Confession: Annoyance Allowance

I am easily annoyed. If you know me well, this is not really a confession, because you have witnessed it. If you've read about my psycho behavior at school parties and on field trips, you are getting the idea. Even my kids recognize this, as in, “Look how mommy bites her lips and her eyes get real big when Daddy is annoying her.”

The thing is, I have a bit of a rep for being a generally pleasant person, but sometimes I struggle to be pleasant to the people I know well. I just get annoyed. I don’t think it’s right to be nicer to the super market checker than I am to my own flesh and blood, but that’s how it goes down most days. Sister (and best friend in the universe?) Snippy to her. Husband? Don’t ask.

Now I’m coming off a sleepless night because I was too easily annoyed and curt at a church meeting last night—so I spent the entire night tossing, turning, fretting and regretting. At the meeting I had diarrhea-of-the-mouth, when I should have let others talk. I was controlling. I shut down some people’s comments, and I got snippy. These are people who came out on the coldest night of the year to help me with a huge project.

I could claim that I was “meetinged-out” after a very long day. I could play the hormone card, since I had started my period about 12 minutes before the meeting. But in reality, I think I’m just too easily annoyed. And, to make matters worse, I think the reason I got so testy was that I felt safe doing so because I am very close friends with a lot of the women in the room. Nice, huh? I think it’s the same way you can keep your cool with a tough or aloof teacher, but then you come home and dump all over your mother. Ugh. Been there, done that.

A blog I enjoy which takes about 2 seconds to look at each day, is really just a photo w/ a caption. It is called “Annoyance Allowance.” It’s fun to go back through the archives and see pictures of all of the things that strike people as annoying. Some are strange. Some are universal. The best part about it is the concept that we are allowed ONE annoyance a day. The creators of the blog don't have kids yet, so maybe that allotment is too low, but that's a discussion for another day.

I think days like yesterday, when I let myself sink into the self-centered, “my way or the highway mentality,” I’ve gone way over my annoyance budget. I mean, aren't we always telling our kids that behavior is a choice? We can choose to be annoyed, or we can choose to give people slack and show them grace. I know what I want to choose today, and I hope my poor friends from last night have a little grace left for a very annoying Anna.

Country Roads, Take Me Home

Sorry for the blog silence. I’ve been holed up in a house w/ 7 kids, 6 adults, one dog and a hermit crab for the past 6 days. I’m kind of glad I couldn’t blog at my in-laws, because I would have come off as a raving lunatic, or at least more of one than usual. I needed to get back home and get a little perspective before filling you in on my week. See how happy I look in my own kitchen?

Trips to the in-laws always seem to go like this: I work myself into a lather packing for the household. Laundry, pack, schlep, laundry, pack, schlep. When we get there, my first strategy is to hide out in a back bedroom reading books 24-7. This is not to protect myself from them, but to protect them from the raging b-rat I become every time I’m there.

I find myself cringing at everything anyone does. I play a little game in my head called “That’s where Tom got that annoying habit.” I feel rebellious. If they are talking politics, I feel like yelling, “I voted for Obama!” If they extol the virtues of health food, I rip open a bag of chocolate and strap on my feed bag.

Underneath my rolling eyes, moaning and groaning, I think what I’m doing is trying to punish them for not being my family of origin. As if to embrace them fully and their way of doing things will somehow negate my experience of “family.”

The thing is, ever since my mom died, twenty years ago, my family hasn’t exactly been all sunshine and roses, so why am I comparing, and judging, and punishing these kind, lovely people who have never been anything but good to me? But still.

By day 2, I feel the need to flee. Unfortunately, I’m 7 hours from home and have never bothered to plot an escape route. The idyllic country setting begins to feel more like a curse than a blessing. I have no idea how to get to a main road. Perhaps if there were a Target nearby, I could indulge in a little retail therapy to make it through. No dice. Snowfall doesn’t help either. Low thermostat? Annoying. Boring local newspaper? Ugh. Tennis magazines? No thanks.

By day 3, I’m lethargic, as if overtaken by carbon monoxide. Everything is in slow mo. I sleep as late as possible, ignoring the chipper “Well, look who is up!” by other members of the household. I keep my Christmas pj’s on as much as possible. The kids are having a blast with their cousins, and Tom is loving catching up with his parents and siblings.

By day 4 Tom is offering me a one-way plane ticket home and out of his hair. The nerve. I rally. Our anniversary is pretty good. We go to a nice dinner and a movie. That night, I roll over in my twin bed uttering a “Night Ricky,” to his “Night Lucy.” Romantic in an old fashioned kind of way.

Day 5 really picks up. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I start to socialize. I drink wine. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier. I ring in the New Year with a smile on my face, even though my night is spent in yet a different house with 10 kids, 6 adults, and I’m on an air mattress mere inches away from a cage containing a dead guinea pig. The people we stayed with were pet sitting for the holidays. Someone had a much worse vacation than I did.

On Day 6 I start to think about whom Jake will marry. Will he bring home a girl so witchy and judgmental that I’ll have to walk on eggshells around her? Will I have to apologize for my mere existence? Will the way I breathe bother her? Will she play the “A-ha!” game inside her head? Will she fail to recognize what a fabulous person I am?

Chastened, I spend my last few hours there being the daughter-in-law I should have been since the beginning. To my in-laws—I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through for the last decade and a half, even though most of it just played out in my mind.

To Tom, I’m glad you come from such a dear family, with kind parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews. I know I’ve said this to many guys in the past, but I think this is the first time I’ve said it to you. And I mean 96% of it: “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.”

You Say To-MAH-to, I Say Please Don't

Anyone who has ever been married for any length of time can talk about the ups and downs of marriage. The rhythms. The times when you are in sync, and the times you’re in the weeds.

I can tell it’s overdue for Tom and me to reconnect when everything that comes out of his mouth makes my skin crawl. Anyone else could say the same things, and I’d extend an inch of grace (or more!) but not to him.

Let me give a few examples. We’re looking for a new microwave, and today he suggested we choose “A-MAH-na.” Ugh. Who says Amana like that? A few minutes later he asked me where the “tape measure-er” was, before finding it the drawer where it has lived happily for the past 5 years. I don’t know what bugged me more, that I prefer to say either “tape measure” or “measuring tape,” or the fact that he couldn’t find it all by his lonesome.

Don’t even get me started on how he says “Hyundai.” Think about every possible way to say it in your head. Then screw it up more. Then make a weird shape with your mouth as you utter it. Drag it out over about 7 seconds. Okay. You get the picture.

Now, many things bug him about me, too. But he doesn’t have a blog, so there’s really no need to delve deeply into them here. My sighs and eye rolls would probably make the list, as well as the way I literally bite my lips shut to avoid saying something mean. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but I look like a pointy nosed shrew either way.

I also utter seemingly innocent phrases, which my shy husband thinks sound sexual. I usually do this at parties. You see, I come from a long line of women who are pretty sheltered, perhaps naive about the ways of the world. I remember cringing when my mom dropped off a bunch of “pussy willows” at our neighbor’s house and called them by an embarrassing derivation of that name that I will not type here for fear of unwanted search engine hits.

Sooooooooooo, when I complain at parties of that I’ve “shot my whole wad” at the thrift store lately, my red-faced husband claims that what I am saying is not what I think I am saying. Got it?

I know I am irritating. I even irritate myself sometimes. I just wish certain other irritating people were as self aware.