Digging in the Dirt

My son is digging for buried treasure in our yard. Muttering to himself, “Jewelry, rings, bracelet, something. I’ve got to find something so I can be rich.”

To say he is covered in dirt would be excessive. Dusting is too little. Patchy, mottled, spotted perhaps. It’s running the length of his shin from the one knee he is using to support his efforts. His shorts have a ring around the seat. Dirt is sticking to the green ice cream stain on the front of his shirt. The rims of his nostrils are brown.

“Mom, how come I can’t find any buried treasure?”
“Sometimes you have to switch locations.”
“What? What does that mean?”

“You know, change your spot.”

“Mom, I don’t need this stinkin’ shovel. I’ve got a great idea.”
The boy practically herniates himself trying to lift our broken garage door.

“Need some help?”

“Nope.”
Enter new pogo stick, gift from grandma for Christmas. “What’s he doing?” says my husband, who is bunched up on a short wicker settee. My husband loathes wicker.

Sticking the bottom of the pogo into the hole, my son begins to pump the handle up and down like a jackhammer.

“Well, mom, that flattens nothing out. Well mom, that flattens everything out. Yep, I just need these three things. The shovel, the clippers and the pogo.”
This conversation would go on whether or not I was present to hear it.

I’m tempted to bury some treasure in the hole when he runs inside for dinner. But what effect will that have? Maybe he’ll think there is treasure in every hole, reward from every effort. It will likely end this activity that has gone on successfully for about 1 ½ hours, giving me a chance to write. These are the things you think about as a parent, when you have a moment to think.

Keep digging Will. The digging is reward enough.

NB. I wrote this piece about 4 years ago but I liked thinking about that day. Especially my husband suffering in the wicker. Good times.

NB2: I just found this quote and love it for this story: "There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure." ~ Mark Twain.

Is This All There Is?

The eternal question. Things are not going my way right now and according to my astrological chart, according to my mom reading it, things won't be going my way for several months.

I'm sitting here, Will home again for another bogus school holiday, and his whistling is driving me nuts. I'm waiting for the contractors to show up. Angel with his sad face. Fred with his non-stop talking. Rock, a ginormous human being, who may be called Rock because of his stature or because of his specialty, sheetrock. All the noise, noise, noise, noise as the Grinch says.

I have to break it to Angel that my husband is still not happy with the paint job on the house. And he'll look at me with those sad eyes, wondering when the hell he's going to get paid. I'll have to listen to another story from Fred, in which, in general, he is the saviour of some homeowner like me who's been screwed three ways till Sunday by other contractors. Fred, not even Superman does that much saving.

They're all here, all the time. On ladders in my window, talking to me when I'm on the phone, leaving their crap everywhere. It's like having 10 children or 10 husbands.

One time I was taking a shower and walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I thought they were all gone but Benjamin was still in the house. Thankfully, his back was turned and he's sort of hard of hearing so I don't think he saw me as I scampered away.

I sat down this morning to watch a 20 minute film, Helicopter by Ari Gold. In that short span of time, I was interrupted 6 times, Three phone calls. One I urgently need your help mom, because my video player won't rewind. One my cable modem is jittery and screwing up the video. And finally, Angel, breaking window glass in the backyard.

There was a chance I would go to Ethiopia with a client next week but they couldn't work out the plane tickets. Literally, I thought YES! The sweet release of flying 20 hours to Addis Ababa, landing in a place where no one knows me, without reliable phone or Internet. Just quiet.

There's another chance I can go in February and I am praying the travel gods will grant me permission to fly, fly away.

In this film Helicopter, the director's mother is killed in a helicopter crash. She was 47 years-old.

Follow this link to watch Helicopter: http://vimeo.com/6887916

The Mom Haircut

I'd been thinking of cutting my hair off until about two weeks ago when I got a very cute cut at Chez Shay in Fairfield. Now I'm feeling better and less crazed about doing something dramatic.

I haven't had short hair since I was a kid when I took the scissors to my own head. The results were not great. I was no Meg Ryan in French Kiss. My son said if I cut my hair too short, I'll look like one of those Frankenstein dolls. He means a troll.

Then my husband chimed in and said if I cut off my hair I would look like a nesting doll. Here I am with my new haircut and 5 mini-me's. Frankly I don't care what either of them says. I may just cut it all off.

Maybe I'll remind my husband that it costs about $300 to keep my hair in this style and this color. That's about $1500 annually. I could cut all my hair off and wear a scarf just like these little babushkas.

I'll admit, it's tough to pull off cute short hair. Katie Holmes has cute short hair. Of course, she's married to a megalomaniacal psycho-freak, but her hair is darn cute.
 
It's a slippery slope from Katie Holmes' cute mom hair to WTF was Katie Couric thinking mom hair. Seriously, all those image consultants, one of the highest-profile jobs in news EVER, and this is what they come up with for Katie Couric?

I think that's the #19 at Supercuts next time you go, Katie.

And then there's the long slow slide into grandma hair that you get "done" once a month and then don't touch. That hair that was the reason Spray Net was invented. That hair stays in place through all kinds of weather, kept neatly tucked away in a pointy plastic rain cap. That hair smells like maple syrup and cookie dough which may in fact be trapped underneath all that Spray Net.

Grandma hair says, "I've earned the right to this helmet head and by golly you'd better not touch it." For now, I'll keep my shoulder length, out-of-control, freaky curly hair. I'm enjoying having curly hair after a childhood filled with barrettes that slipped off and waterfalls hanging limply to one side. I may go completely crazy and buy those Bumpits "as seen on TV".

We'll see what my husband thinks about my new beehive.

Independence Day

Yesterday was a really good day for my son Will. He actually turned to me at one point and said, "Mom this is a really great day."

After meeting with Will's middle school teachers and guidance counselors the week before, we all agreed Will's primary issue at school was self-reliance.

To that end, we sent him off to school yesterday with a mission. He had to, on his own, find the after school Homework Club and navigate the late bus home. Mind you, last week I'd given him instructions not to take the bus home--that I would pick him up instead. It turned into a fiasco of epic proportions that ended with both of us crying, lost and finally reunited after about 45 minutes.

I began to get anxious around 3pm, the normal end of the school day. I was anticipating a call from someone along the lines of , "Hey we've got your kid here and you might want to pick him up." Instead, at 4:15 on the money Will came strolling off the bus with a big smile on his face. He'd done it all by himself!

Will is our only child and he's a gosh darn good one. My husband likes to tell the story of the moments right after he was born. Rod put his hand on Will's chest for the first time. He just sat there looking quietly up at his dad. Calm, happy, with thick head of hair that the nurses parted on the side.

I used to think I would have more input into how Will grows up, that my job was to mold him. Now I think Will was born the way he is and my job is to not screw him up.

I heard this interview on NPR last weekend. Michael Feldman's guest on Whad'Ya Know? was screenwriter / essayist Paul Rudnick. Rudnick told some very funny stories about Hollywood and writing the screenplay for the Addams Family. He loved writing for these unconventional children Wednesday and Pugsley. Rudnick says this about parenting:

Also I'm a firm believer in the fact that anyone's personality is basically formed about 6 seconds after birth so parents should stop worrying so much. You know if your child is going to grow up to become a serial killer or Vice President or whatever it is so out of your control.  You know I say just treat'em like time bombs.

While I tend to agree, particularly now in this insane age of helicopter parenting, I think I was molding Will's behavior in a sense. Because I didn't have faith in him, Will was losing faith in himself.

I still believe Will was born the way he is and I should support that. But I can also see that by not supporting him, I was changing his personality. He'd gone from that first 6 seconds of serene happiness to self-doubt and fear.

As we were walking to school this morning, I said to Will, "I'm really proud of how well you did yesterday. I underestimated what you were capable of doing."

He said, "I know. I underestimated myself."

Dooce in Twitter Smackdown

In the PR biz, you know at some point your client is going to take a hit. A product is not well-received, an executive says something stupid or your numbers hit the skids. It's just a fact of life. One thing I've always told clients at this critical juncture is, "Don't worry. Americans love an underdog."

After all, we are a nation that watched Rocky four times. Or was it five?

Right now, as we speak, one of the biggest mommy bloggers out there, Heather Armstrong, is in an all-out war on twitter https://twitter.com/dooce). Beloved for her brutally frank writing about mommyhood and marriage, she has over a million followers. Maytag recently learned their lesson when they tangled with Dooce. After a negative experience with one of their washers, Ms. Armstrong repeatedly twittered DO NOT BUY MAYTAG, revealing she'd been offered machines for free by other vendors.

In this very astute piece about Dooce vs. Maytag, writer Anna asks if this is Brand Bullying. She calls out Dooce's recent change in bahavior from twitter "broadcaster" to conversationalist. Before most of her tweets were just sent out there into the universe or she would occasionally reply to @blurb (her husband) and other close friends. Suddenly she began engaging her audience, using the @twittername convention to give a shout-out to readers and followers.

Tonight, there is something else afoot in twitterland. A few bloggers @lydahl and @namechanged began making negative comments about @dooce. It may not seem like it, but this is either courageous or downright crazy. It's like David messing with Goliath.

Twitter at this point is still primarily populated by people on their best behavior. You get the occasional porn bot (or more than occasional) but for the most part people are using good manners, smiley faces and exclamation points to show their enthusiasm.

Tonight, that went to hell in a handbasket. Dooce instigated a program called "Monetizing the Hate". The idea is to take all the trash talk written about Dooce, put it in one place and then "litter the entire thing with ads". So aside from the mommy blogger swag, speaking engagements, book deal and other revenues enjoyed by Ms. Armstrong, she would also make money off her hate mail. Ingenious really.

In all fairness, Dooce has said she planned to donate all the money from Monetize the Hate. Still, the idea did not sit well with some of Dooce's followers like @lydahl and @namechanged who called Dooce out in a public forum on twitter. Then Dooce's husband @blurb got involved in response to @lydahl calling their behavior #douchebaggy, saying "Stop being insecure."

A few samples of the exchanges going on in the twitterverse:

@apuraja: @blurb @dooce are you guys really so corporate sellouty as it seems? Ducking for cover as poop is thrown my way.

@juliamstewart @blurb @dooce don't worry if you have old fans complaining, you have new ones like me enjoying everything

@sunnyhunt @blurb douchebaggy? No. Do I feel a growing disconnect? Yes. Love reading you and Dooce but growing harder to identify and enjoy lately.

Douchebaggy? Sellouty? Like a twittered down version of cursing. For now, a few little-known bloggers have become the underdog, joined by others if only in our chicken-shit minds. But the tide will likely turn at some point and @dooce will become the underdog. We are a society that can't abide too much love. Every once in awhile, we like to knock our heroes off their pedestals.

NB: @namechanged isn't an actual twitter username. After seeing this post, she sent me a very sweet missive asking me to mind my own (f-word) business. Sending smiley faces to you @namechanged.