Sanity: You got it, or you don’t ?

I hate 93% of winter. Let me just get that out of the way, okay? And I consider winter, not from December 21st till the first day of Spring, but any day, at any time of the year when the temperature drops below 50F.

I don’t care if it’s still technically Fall in October and November when it’s 32, or 45, or 49 degrees. It’s technically fucking cold. So therefore, it is Winter.

There are about two weeks in which I enjoy Winter, and it is when all of you who celebrate Christmas, put lights on your houses and actually seem jovial about getting frostbite in order to do so. It’s when you dare hypothermia to invade your bodies in order to do all of that outdoorsy stuff, in the name of the Season. I don’t get it but I like those weeks, I like to vicariously enjoy those things, through you.

So thanks!

But by the 2nd of January? I feel like, by then we’re all in the same boat. All of us collectively shooting Winter, snow, the sad tree with the falling pine needles, the pot holes in the roads and the weatherman (especially the weatherman), the death stare.

By February, of which it is now, I start questioning my sanity, and most of yours. So I thought we could just have a little chat, in which I tell you some things that have recently happened to me, and you can either rest assured that I am in fact, losing it, and you aren’t, or join me when the men in white suits carts me off to Happy Acres. Okay? Great!

Why is it, that in the early of November, when the temperature dips into those dreaded below 50F I feel the undeniable urge to jam my children into All The Layers of clothes? Gloves, hats, face masks, scarves, sweaters, coats, snow boots, all of it. But by February, when the wind is actually raw? When it’s not less then 50F but less than 10F? When thirty degrees feels like a heat wave?  They are leaving the house with unzipped jackets and one glove and I couldn’t give less of a shit. “It will build up your immune system!” I call after them as they leave the house.  

I have winter burn-out.

In December my children are like little sardines in their winter gear, like A Christmas Story reincarnation in which neither of them can put their arms down, buckle themselves into their car seats or do anything with even a modicum of helpfulness. But not in February, in February I am throwing them to the wolves, urging them to will it to be Spring by their jacket-neglect.

Winter makes me lazy, you guys. During the rest of the year I am craft mom. Marilyn comes home nearly every day and sits on the little ottoman tucked under our living room desk and crafts to her hearts content. That little artist inside of her just blossoms under my gifted craft-store finds and scores, but I hate leaving the house in winter, so our supplies have dwindled to the lamest of lame.

Marilyn is four and doesn’t understand that craft supplies don’t just magically appear in our craft closet. So when she asks me ‘Mommy, can we do cool art today?’ I know I am in trouble. Cool art you see, requires cool crafts. Of which I am fresh out. What she is really asking me is ‘Mommy, can you stop letting me down and disappointing my fragile girl heart and go to the G.D craft store already?!’.

So. Normal parents might tell their sweetest Angel ‘Mommy is so sorry, but she didn’t have time today. Maybe tomorrow.’ or maybe ‘Mommy hates winter, so you’ll get new crafts come Spring, here, have a marker.’ or something similar, right? Can I get an Amen? But not me. No. I shifted the blame to the craft store. (Sorry Michael’s…) and told her “They ran out of cool crafts. As a matter of fact, they ran out of all the crafts.”

Now Marilyn hates Michael’s. But doesn’t hate me. Crisis averted.

Marilyn has no idea what is actually in our craft closet anymore, in the basement, because of another choice I made in my winter burn-out state of mind. I made Marilyn afraid of the basement. And I kind of did it accidentally on purpose.

We’ve talked about it before, we’re Jewish. Ta-da and Surprise!
So the holiday season of Christmas is this magical light filled fun-fest that my kids don’t get to exactly participate it. (I know, so sad, pray for them.) But they know who Santa is, and Marilyn was down right obsessed with him this past year.

We do celebrate this other holiday, you might know it as the ugly step sister to Christmas, it’s called Hanukkah, and there are presents! You might identify with this problem: How do we hide presents for birthdays or holidays without giving away the place we are hiding them, so our children don’t poke their dirty little noses in and spoil it all? Well that’s right! We scare the shit out of them. Oops!

The only proper place for me to hide presents is in the boiler room in our basement. But the door doesn’t lock. So since my kids don’t really need the basement for much, I just made it off limits for the time I needed it.

Unfortunately off limits doesn’t compute for Marilyn and in her head actually becomes must go down to basement. (Funny! Right? How those things happen?). I don’t have a Santa or an Elf on the Shelf to warn (re: threaten) Marilyn with (kudos to whoever created that creepy fellow), but Santa happens to have an evil brother by the name of The Krampas. In one of my deliriously under slept days (thanks to my one year old) when Marilyn wanted to do the dreaded cool art, which is all located (or not located, since I hate winter and haven’t gone to the craft store) in the basement, I told her that Santa’s brother Krampas lived down there.

I might have twisted the story, just a bit, to tell her that while Santa delivered toys to good boys and girls who celebrated Christmas, that the Krampas instead, watched over Jewish children who didn’t listen to their parents around Hanukkah, and ate them, and by the way, he lives in our basement.

It’s February, and she still won’t go into the basement without me. What was I thinking?

Sanity it’s such a funny thing, right? I never imagined it could ebb and flow so fluidly. I thought it was just something you either had, or lacked. There are days when we get dinner timed right, and stories read, and snuggles in, and all the kids are clean, fresh and in bed on time, leaving my husband and I enough time to both fall asleep while watching tv before 10:30pm. On those days, I figure; I have sanity. Then there are days when I go down to where the Krampas lives/the basement to do a load of laundry and my sewer has backed poop water into my laundry room, and then I find a huge hairy centipede in one of my kids’ closets, and I  envision burning the house down to ensure it is dead. On those days, I figure I don’t have it.

I swear I am a decent mother. But one day Sam is going to be asked how he became such a wonderful roller blader, and ice skater and he’s going to tell whomever asks that he taught himself. Because his mother refused to come out of the house during winter and play with him. I know, there is a special seat in Hell just roasting with my name on it, and hopefully, you’ve identified with some of this, and maybe you’ll come sit next to me.

Is Grandpa Dead?

“Is Grandpa Dead?”

This is what I hear while I am in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher. Two of the three Wildlings are huddled in the living room conspiring. I tiptoe around the corner of the kitchen to eavesdrop.

“I don’t know.” I hear Sam telling Marilyn. She is looking at him, searching his eyes. He bends over to pick up a My Little Pony and gives it to her. “Brush her hair next.” he says.

“But is he dead?” she asks again. Sam spots me. My cover is blown. He gives me his typical I-will-fold-under-questioning-please-don’t-question-me smile and says

“Hi, mama. We are playing with the ponies.” (He isn’t lying, he is omitting truth. Well played, sir.)

“Is Grandpa dead?” Marilyn says with the same tone she inquires about Mac and cheese. She will stand toe to toe with me, ‘Is it Kraft?’ she will ask with one golden eyebrow raised in scrutiny. ‘I wont eat it if it’s not Kraft.’

Pause Scene

After years of abuse which ended in an epic explosion of family feuds (details withheld to protect my mom, who will undoubtedly pick this blog post to read even though she has never read another) my parents divorced.

My father left one late summer night, never having said good-bye, and didn’t return for a year. (And that was for a visit, and then he vanished again, but that’s another blog post.) Even though I tried to keep some semblance of a relationship with him. Hoping at some point he would turn into a human worth salvaging, but by then I already hated him.

Highlights of why I severed my relationship with my father:

• He missed nearly every birthday party, concert, event of my life. choosing not to participate in any graduation, father daughter dance or even keep a consistent address so I could send fathers day cards.
• He failed to think child support was necessary and as of this day stands tens of thousands in the red.
• He once told me on the phone, amidst what I would now identify as a psychotic break, that he had killed the kitten he had purchased for me. (I never met the cat, or substantiated the truth of the story)
• When I was mauled by a German Shepard at eleven years old, I spent a week in the hospital, received 400+ stitches in my leg, and spent a month in a wheelchair. He didn’t visit because it was ‘too painful’ for him.
• He wrote me a letter at 13 telling me he wished he had drowned when he was a child visiting the ocean.
• The same letter told me I was excrement. (No I mean it, that was his word choice).
• By age 15, in the deepest trenches of teenage angst and self preservation masked as self pity, I severed ties. When I told him I couldn’t do this anymore he said ‘If you push me, I will disappear’ and guess what? He did. I guess parenthood was more than he could handle. Lucky for him, he has five other kids to try to get it right with!

But back to the story at hand. My children have never asked about my father, until now. They have three other living grandparents and two great grandparents. My husbands parents are Amma and Zayde, my mother is MomMom, and they have never lacked for interaction with any of them.

Re-Start Scene

I stare evenly at Sam, and then at Marilyn. Sam has his head tilted to the side. “She’s kidding” he tells me. Sam is one of the most empathetic human beings I have ever encountered. He picks up on what people are feeling nearly before they themselves know. Right now I am feeling like this is a cruel joke, where is my husband when these questions happen? Sam takes a step towards Marilyn and forcefully pushes another pony into a hand which already houses one. “Brush this ones hair, Nan-Nan” he says.

I feel back on familiar ground. Normally when they are conspiring it is about one of these issues:

• Who they are going to blame the latest fart on
• Who is in charge of the situation (that’s the one I was witnessing currently)
• Who is going to get to tattle on the other person first
• How they are going to beg for a popsicle/candy item
• How they are going to beg to go outside.
• How they are going to get out of bath time.

It’s never, are we or aren’t we going to ask about Dead Grandpa?

“Who is grandpa?” I ask carefully.

“Your dad” Marilyn says icily. She is the cold hearted assassin in this household. She will ask any question, make any statement, to anyone, at anytime. Remind me some time to tell you how she announced to an entire Target ‘My mommy has a bagina and my daddy has a PEEEEEENNNNNNIIIIISSSSSS.’ and the lack of hilarity that ensued.

“I see. Well. To answer your question… kind of.” I am stuttering, pausing for breath. Being a parent is hard. While all you expecting idiots go to breathing classes and tour your hospital (which you’ll never even see, outside of your room), take a minute and think about this. You need to be taking classes on how to clamp your hand over your daughters mouth while she sing-songs all the names for genitals while also holding the baby and pushing the cart and retaining some sense of dignity. You need to take a class on how to answer Earth shattering questions. You need to take a class on how to gracefully exit shit-on and vomit covered clothing without getting any (more) on your face, in a public restroom, while balancing a toddler on your knee. This is the baptism by fire kind of experience that parents don’t tell non-parents about for fear of decimating the future population.

“Kind of dead?” Marilyn presses me. “Like the kind of dead Fathead and Dada Cat are?” Now Sam is interested, and he asks about two cats that have gone over ‘The Rainbow Bridge’.

“Well.” I am suddenly very tired. I would like nothing better than a nap. I don’t know how to tell them that no, he’s not dead, he just chose not to want children after he had them. He’s not dead, but he’s mentally ill on a severe level, combining a serious mean streak with mental illness and adding alcoholism into the mix. No, he’s not dead, but he’s a bonafide asshole with a capital A-S-S-H-O-L-E.

‘It’s not exactly lying.’ I tell myself. ‘He could very well be dead, after all.’

I don’t know how to explain that sometimes families break up, and the parents who were supposed to guide your life, secure you to the Earth, be your tethers to morality suddenly decide to just Not. I don’t know how to explain that kind of a thing without inflicting sudden terror on my children. I can imagine them clinging to Joe’s pant legs when he wants to go to the post office. “Nooooo…” they will sob “You might decide to never come back!” or the nights lined up in a never ending domino set-up before me. One or both of them will be in our bed. “Just checking that you are still here.” they will whisper like little prison guards before going back to sleep, a vice-like grip secured to an extremity.

“Yes.” I tell them. “Unfortunately, Grandpa is dead.”

“Okay” they say in unison, and then,  “I already brushed Apple Jack’s hair.” Sam bends down, searching amongst the ponies.

“I think you brushed all of them.”
“Okay.” Marilyn tells him. “We can play now.”

And that’s it. They are over it. There is no monumental shift in the dynamic of our life. They aren’t devastated, I didn’t ruin them. They don’t even seem to register that I am in the same room any longer.

So you’re asking yourself, ‘What’s the point of this? Is there a moral?’ and there is. The moral of this story is Don’t be an asshole or my kids will think you’re dead.

You’re welcome.

Bitchin’ Books- a fight against the brain melt.

If you haven’t been here for long then maybe you don’t know that I have three children Wildlings. Sam-7, Marilyn-4 and Judah-7 months. If you don’t have your own Wildlings, work in a child-geared job/career or step inside any kind of box store (think grocery, Target) with regularity then maybe you don’t know that children cause Brain Rot. But they do. *

Brain Rot is a pretty severe diagnosis and often onset is subtle. You might not even realize you’ve become a statistic of significant damage until one day you are driving in your minivan having dropped your cannibals sweet angels off at day camp, you’re halfway into the 30 minute drive home when it occurs to you. You are still listening to their DVD play despite being the only person in the car.

You, my friend, are in the moderate stages of Brain Rot. Get help quickly. Stage an intervention for yourself, schedule a night out, buy an outfit that makes you look like a spring-breaker, drink a glass of wine before 5pm, forget to pick your kids up from camp. Do something dangerous.

If you sit back right now and realize you have neither showered nor peed alone in the last two months, that you don’t remember what hot coffee tastes like, or what the adult world is doing after 830pm then you, sorry sucker that you are, like me, are in the advanced stages of Brain Rot.

In an attempt to reverse the systematic degradation of my brain cells I decided to start reading books. (Shock and Horror! All those big words! Could I even manage?)

To give myself a quick boost of both

• Do something dangerous AND
• Read books

I decided to start with a book that had the word FUCK in the title (which; BONUS! I have a seven year old who can read so all book time also resulted in Leave Mommy Alone time!)

I’m cheap also. (I know, I sound like a real winner, invitations to dinner and proposals for marriage can be left with my husband.) So most of my books come from the free Kindle section or my Free Books app. (www.bookbub.com is a favorite).

So- I read this book.

Andersen Prunty has a decent selection of books, none of which I’d ever heard of, and all of which are quietly waiting on my queue now. He is a bizarre guy, with weirder story lines, and I love them. Sometimes depressing and often a little haunting, but you’re never going to guess the endings and I promise, you’ll feel a lot better about your own life after reading about his characters.

Here’s a little bit about Fuckness

The narrator gets beat up after trading a green sucker for a guilty feel at the popular girl’s crotch, when he goes home the abuse continues. His alcoholic mother and angry gimp of a father become so enraged at his continued failure of the 8th grade that they make him wear a pair of horns. He has no idea where they have come from, but they’ve always been in the house, and they bestow a power nobody anticipated.

How could this be a bad book?

Test it out for yourself and fight the good fight against Brain Rot!

*It should be noted that Children are not the only cause of Brain Rot. Unhappy jobs, trafficky commutes, hateful in laws and long lines at public restrooms are just a few of the Brain Rots favorite ways for getting a hold of your precious grey matter.

Viva La Brain Cells!