Another eulogy

I don’t know what it says about my life that I haven’t found time to write a fun post about my ridiculous children in over a year but have had to deliver not one but two eulogies in a span of five months…let’s not think about it too much 😬

Yesterday we bid farewell to my one of a kind father. He was a difficult man to understand in life and I found the task of capturing him here just as challenging, but I was honored to try.

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When talking about my dad, everyone always spoke in superlatives: he wasn’t funny, he was the MOST hilarious person his friends ever met; his family didn’t think he was smart, we knew he was an absolute genius; and everyone from his daughters to the waiters he invariably overtipped knew he wasn’t just a generous soul, he was benevolent to the extreme.

And it’s all true: TJ Ryan wasn’t “a little bit” of anything. From his early days growing up in Montebello amidst his six much-loved siblings and countless friends, he was adored by all and it seemed universally agreed upon that he was destined for big things in life. “I’m a huge TJ fan,” one of his longtime friends once told me, and I was struck by his choice of words: my dad was a person who garnered admiration more than friendship.

He was so smart, charming, and charismatic as a teenager that his father envisioned for him a life in magnanimous politics, picking up the Kennedy mantle and using his power to help the little guy. What’s crazy is that that dream didn’t seem like an overreach to anyone who knew him: my mom says that when she married my dad, she thought perhaps someday she’d wind up in the White House. 

My dad was indeed enormously successful, even if he didn’t turn out to be the heir apparent to JFK. He went to Notre Dame and then to Southwestern Law School, meanwhile welcoming first one and then another daughter with his lovely young bride, never skipping a beat. To simply call him a “hard worker” would be wildly underselling the determination he had to succeed, and that persisted throughout his career as an attorney. He was a valued employee at several corporations before settling in at the water company, where he spent over 3 decades doing…well, I don’t know that any of us ever figured out what he actually DID there. Whatever it was, he was incredibly dedicated, rarely taking a well-deserved day off under even the most dire of circumstances, although he was known to skip out early to make it home for the first pitch of a critical Yankees game.

True to his personality, he always downplayed his achievements and career. He loved to say that he emulated George Costanza’s strategy of always acting annoyed to portray being swamped at work, and just recently told a relative who was surprised to hear he was still working that he was retired…but just hadn’t told them yet.

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He was a man of contradictions. He was the life of the party but more often than not could not be convinced to GO to the party. He felt emotions more deeply than most anyone, but made a near-constant ridiculous effort to be stoic. He undoubtedly cherished his family, but to say he largely let himself recede into the background would be an understatement – this was not a “father-daughter dance” kind of guy. 

There is no denying that he loved nothing more than his family, though – and it’s a good thing, too, because his adult life was dominated by the seemingly endless parade of children and later grandchildren that the universe bestowed upon him. Whenever I tell someone that I am one of 6 girls, the response is inevitable: “Wow, your poor dad!” But he never once made so much as a joke about having only daughters, although upon discovering that my mom’s final pregnancy was in fact TWINS, he did say, “well…one is bound to be a boy, at least!” He was wrong, but that’s the last we ever heard about a desire for a son.

No one loved babies like my dad, and not just his own. He always insisted on holding any baby he could get his hands on and could do so for hours, even if he made every mother in the vicinity go into a mild panic with his baby-holding technique, which consisted of tucking the child under one arm so he could roam about the house; one hand free to drink a Natty Light, queue up another Neil Young CD, or even tend to a barbeque (always keeping the baby turned at least slightly away from the open flames, of course). Once, I overheard him counseling a friend who was fretting about the perhaps too-early pregnancy of his daughter, and he said “friend, a baby is NEVER bad news.” Those simple words of wisdom were so sweet and said so much about my dad’s reverence for children and family that it brought tears to my eyes then and every time I’ve thought about it since. 

One of my dad’s favorite movies was Mr. Mom, and when I was three years old he had the once in a lifetime opportunity to BE Mr. Mom when a layoff at work left him home with 4 kids while my mom adopted the role of breadwinner for a year. He took to the job with gusto, shuttling my older sisters around to school and their activities in the infamous Hippy-Mobile and finding all kinds of ways to occupy himself all week, bringing me along on visits to Montebello to kill some time with my mom’s brothers and occasionally even attempting a household project or two, an undertaking that was decidedly NOT in this otherwise multi-talented individual’s wheelhouse. But in the words of Mr. Mom himself, “220, 221….whatever it takes.”

That year of domestic bliss aside, my memories of my dad revolve much more around him as a person than of him just being a father. He had strong opinions, passionate moral judgments, and could hold a petty grudge like no one else. He loved watching golf but refused to play, all thanks to one off-hand comment a coworker made to him approximately forty years ago. A Yankees pitcher could blow one game and he would forever deem him untrustworthy. I cannot tell you how many times I had to call him to make sure he was aware of a dramatic Yankees victory, because I knew he would rage-quit on a game when it went south and would have turned off the TV in disgust prior to the bottom of the inning! 

He loved certain things so much that they became deeply entwined with his persona. I’m sure none of us can think of Neil Young, The Cranberries, The Doors, Seinfeld, or The Brady Bunch without a vision of TJ Ryan singing or quoting along immediately popping into our heads. The Notre Dame and Yankees schedules were embedded in his brain every season, sometimes requiring careful planning around weddings or other events at which his appearance was required. And every time I watch Jeopardy, I can’t help but think “my dad totally would have known that one” about every question that stumps me.

He loved politics, or loved to hate them, more accurately. He loved Obama, every Kennedy, Rachel Maddow, and Jon Stewart. He was the quintessential liberal, never judging anyone except those he felt were morally in the wrong, always inclined to take the side of the underdog. He was “woke” long before woke was a thing. It’s a quality that permeated every part of his life and was passed down to so many, ensuring his legacy will live on in the form of generous donations and righteous protests for years to come. 

When my dad passed, I wanted some kind of physical memento of his to hold onto. In his closet, I found a ceramic mug I made for him in high school and was thrilled to find it full of vestiges of his life: photos of grandkids, prayer cards from every funeral he attended in the last decade, ticket stubs from Notre Dame games and Pretenders concerts, and even a receipt for a Yankees jacket he purchased years ago. Most endearingly, there was a beautiful photo of my mom from her high school days, the sight of which warmed my heart and seemed to complete a puzzle. Every item in the mug is so indicative of my dad’s life and love that it’s almost as if he placed them there with the express intent of telling a story. For all the frustrating contradictions we may have thought plagued him throughout his life, he was ultimately a person whose values and deep love for his family always found a way to shine through.

He was brilliant, he was infuriating, he was dynamic, he was deep, he was mysterious and hilarious and maddening and charming. We never figured him out, but the joke is on us, because I don’t think he wanted to be figured out. He was loved though, for everything and by everyone.

And it goes without saying, unfortunately, that he would have absolutely hated all of this attention.

A difficult goodbye to a challenging but loved human being

Today we laid to rest my brother in law. Below is what I shared at the funeral: a tribute to a brilliant man who left us all at a loss for words countless times in both life and death.

Don came on the scene in our family when I was just a few months old – I’ve never known a life without him in it. I never thought of him as “Bobbie’s boyfriend” or “Bobbie’s husband”…he was always just Don, as permanent a fixture in my life as any other family member. 

Don could be difficult. He was an enigma in many ways and I think we all felt at some point that we weren’t quite understanding him the way he wanted us to – or vice versa. But that wasn’t all of Don. He was a complete person with talents and passions and personality and strong emotions. 

He was smart, and not just in an academic or engineering way – although we all know about that part of him and I’m sure every one of us makes a point to ride in the Indiana Jones jeep adorned with his initials whenever we’re at Disneyland – but sincerely intellectual, the type of person who enjoyed getting into philosophical debates just for the fun of it, even if it drove the other person nuts. Once, as a teenager, I made the mistake of making some naive and judgmental comment on smoking or drugs, and I had to endure an endless debate about why society had decided that certain things like alcohol were “bad” when something like caffeine has been deemed completely acceptable, despite it surely being a drug itself. And by the way, we all know he loved classic Coca Cola – so he wasn’t even having this argument to stake some kind of moral high ground for himself, he just enjoyed the debate itself!

He was also hilarious in his smart, quiet fashion, and excellent at teasing someone, particularly in a slow burn kind of way. Decades ago I allegedly lost his and Bobbie’s house keys while babysitting Sylvia (although I still maintain the baby hid them somewhere and they are probably buried in a box full of legos in some Goodwill somewhere) and he NEVER let me live it down. For years thereafter, every holiday gift was prefaced with a disclaimer: “I was gonna get you a keychain, but…”

Luckily, his sense of humor extended to jokes directed his way, because when I discovered how much the man loved shopping and especially Banana Republic sweaters, I always made sure I had a zinger locked and loaded any time a turtleneck was on display.

Don really enjoyed helping me and trying to be my friend as I grew older, and I always appreciated it – even when one of our driving lessons, no joke, required us to first stop at Banana Republic to exchange some damn sweaters. It meant a lot to me that he treated me like an adult and that he was interested in my life. He’s the reason I’m at least a semi-competent driver, he got me a summer job during college, he made sure I knew and loved King Taco, and he loved chatting on the phone for hours on end: when I got my first cell phone I’d often spend an entire drive home from LA to San Diego talking to Don about anything from serious personal challenges to one of our infuriating philosophical debates. He even took a call from me one time while I was on a date and walked me through how to make homemade pizza dough, which was one of his many underrated skills!

My favorite memory of Don is a more serious one, and it occurred in the minutes after Sylvia’s birth. It was a long and difficult labor for poor Bobbie and when the baby was finally born, it was whisked away for heart monitoring, Don in tow, while Bobbie recovered separately. Family members were finally allowed in one at a time and I was able to weasel my way to the front of the queue, wanting to be the first to see the new baby. I wasn’t sure how Don would be feeling – would he be overwhelmed? Terrified? Exhausted? Irritated at this little sister of his insisting on intruding on his private moment with his minutes-old child? But the minute I stepped into the room, he looked at me with teary eyes, positively radiating happiness and joy, and the love he had for that baby was palpable. If we had been in the cell phone era I would surely have a photo to show you all right now, but I will never forget the look on his face and what it said about him in that moment. 

I was not lucky enough to score the number one viewing spot when Abby was born, but I saw the same look on his face when he proudly brought her home and showed her off to the whole family. Don loved his children and I know we will all carry that forward for him as they continue to grow and amaze us all with the people they are becoming.

I wish Don’s life could have been different. I wish we weren’t here right now to say goodbye. But I appreciate that we are here remembering him together, and I hope we all think about him the next time we drink any caffeine – because he was, of course, totally right about it being a drug.

Stop and smell the roses (but first organize the seeds, give each one a name, write a story about the flowers’ hopes and dreams…)

Since the day Ryan learned how to propel his fat little baby body forward in some approximation of a crawl, he has been a perpetual motion machine. This is not a child content to sit his ass down and draw a picture or read a book or put together a puzzle, no sir. This is a man of action. In fact, one day when he was four years old I implored him to take a break and play on his iPad — begged! Pleaded! — and he said, appalled: “but Mom, that’s not active!”

From the moment he wakes up til the glorious conclusion of what is always an excruciatingly protracted bedtime routine, he’s got shit to do. He needs to ride his bike. Flips must be performed on the trampoline. There’s a bucket of wiffle balls just begging to be hit over neighbors’ fences. Oooooh wait! He’s going to play with Legos like one of those nice quiet kids I’ve heard about! Hahahaha just kidding, he’s building a giant block with 200 pieces, wrapping it in duct tape, and seeing if it can survive a drop from the second story window¹. 

He is, as the hip youths say, extra. 

Simply preventing him from breaking bones or getting lost in public is a truly daunting task. God bless us all when we leave the house:

He was excited because he saw a pigeon while setting up to take this selfie, and no that is not a joke.

He is an objectively exhausting child to keep up with. I have lost track of him in public at least a dozen times. There are no fewer than three items in my home right now that are broken on account of wayward baseballs. And do you want to know how many times I’ve been asked to record a slow motion video of him hitting a water balloon with a baseball bat? Unfortunately I cannot tell you, because it is not possible for human beings to count that high. 

This is who he is, though, and the truth is that it’s all in good fun; he suffers not from bad behavior or poor impulse control but rather…excessive enthusiasm. I’ve learned to accept my fate and simply not buy too many breakable items. At times I’ve even smugly considered myself to be some kind of paragon of composure in the face of insanity: behold this child and admire my patience and tolerance for his energy and heart attack-inducing antics! I’M INCREDIBLE!

But then Graffin brought me back to earth by developing a personality absolutely nothing like Ryan’s and yet somehow requiring more patience in a single hour than his brother does in a week. 

Graffin is not a tree climber, nor a trampoline flipper, nor a person incapable of resisting the urge to pick up a large stick while on a walk and whack every tree we subsequently pass (ahem). He likes books! And board games! He could spend hours playing video games! He’s creative and independent and never lacks ideas or the ambition to bring them to fruition. He’s amazing. He’s brilliant! He’s…fucking exhausting. 

Nothing with this kid is straightforward or expeditious. There’s no such thing as a “quick game of Candy Land” or a “mindless hour of video games.” Everything is “big picture” with Graffin. You have to organize game pieces into themed teams. Every possible setting and option on a video game must be explored and tested prior to playing. Each and every piece of a Lego construction has a specific purpose and possibly its own personality, and no you cannot simply substitute this brick for that one. Yes, we can play pirates but first we need to don costumes and transform our living room into an authentic 17th century trading vessel!

He may be the only person in history to seek out and read the credits for a video game. I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW VIDEO GAMES HAD CREDITS. 

It’s like he’s operating on a different level than the rest of us idiots – we’re over here pushing checkers around the board, and he’s the only one with access to the real rule book which apparently contains 500 pages of additional instructions that makes the game twice as complicated and way less boring. 

Ryan may forever be running four blocks ahead of me trying to simultaneously chase a bird, pick up an interesting-looking rock, and land a perfect cartwheel, but Graffin’s intensity is unrivaled. It’s not even close. 

Last month we took a red eye to New York² for a little vacation, and when Ryan and I collapsed into bed at the hotel for a desperately needed nap many hours later, Graffin stayed up by himself and built a store. There were toys on display. Price tags (where did he even get paper?!). A snack section. An employee wearing a mask; very conscientious. Shopping bags were even available for your convenience. 

I woke up to a paper “credit card” being shoved into my hand so I could “shop”. NO STONE UNTURNED.

This is what I’m dealing with, and I’d be lying if I claimed to love every second of it. It’s one thing to agree to play a good old fashioned game of Life, quite another to discover you’ve inadvertently committed to a two hour exercise in method acting as all players are now required to really live the game. Think long and hard about which job to pick, and make sure you give your tiny plastic babies great names!³

It’s easy to be impatient in these situations, and I was, for a long time. That hard-won patience I’d honed watching Ryan turn my home into a Ninja Warrior course was no match for this kid. I can’t tell you how many times I encouraged Graffin to “move things along,” with varying degrees of annoyance creeping into my voice, feeling awful as I said it because let’s face it, it’s not like I had anything better to do, it’s just that Graffin’s way of doing things really is a lot of work. 

And then one day, as we reached the twentieth minute of a detailed demonstration of every special ability of every character (of which there were approximately 50) of a video game he was ostensibly teaching me how to play, I said it again: “Bud, can we please move this along?”

To which he replied, justifiably frustrated: “I’m just trying to give you all the information or you won’t have as much fun!”

It was a lightbulb moment for me. All the extra steps, all of the elaborate setup and immersion into everything he does, big and small…he really is operating on a different level. It’s not just that he’s a detail-oriented individual, or that he likes things to be “complete,” although those things may be true as well. He just wants to have the full experience, no matter what he’s doing. There’s all this information available and he’d be selling himself short to ignore it and just mash buttons on a game controller blindly or set up Lego figures with mismatching pants. Why go halfway when you can use the information and maximize your enjoyment?!

So I learned all the moves. And then I spent ten minutes creating an avatar that looked just like me. And then I played in “practice mode” while he gave me tips to improve my skills. And THEN we played the game, and it was pretty goddamn amazing, even though I lost miserably.

I’ve vowed to banish “move this along” from my vocabulary. Just as I have accepted Ryan’s zest for action, I’m embracing Graffin’s unique appreciation for the big picture. Who wouldn’t want to live life with all the information at hand?!

Setting up a stadium audience for a Hot Wheels tournament.
BONUS: please note the missing picture frame on the shelf, a victim of one of the aforementioned wayward baseballs.

Research for a geography-themed game.

Emulating an all-blue character from Just Dance. Yes, we went to the mall like this.

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Footnotes:

¹It survived that as well as 24 other methods of destruction. In other news, I have a lot of smashed legos embedded in my lawn.

²Perhaps don’t come to me for “traveling with kids” tips.

³In fairness, I should confess that my cousin and I played Life like this as kids and it really is a blast. Don’t buy the Victorian house, it’s falling apart!!

Injuries my children have sustained as a direct result of my idiocy (alternate title: “I’m a terrible parent; don’t call CPS pls”)

Listen. All children get injured every now and then, whether due to clumsiness, overestimation of one’s ability to do shit like swing from monkey bars, or just plain bad luck. It doesn’t matter if the kid is Tarzan incarnate or the meekest little rule follower known to man — blood shall be shed. I was the most cautious child on the planet and I still managed to nearly slice my finger off in an ill-fated attempt to microwave a frozen dinner¹, so trust me on this one. 

In most cases, there’s really no one to blame for these injuries. As parents, we may bear a little bit of responsibility in some cases if our lack of diligent oversight contributed to the scrape, bruise, split chin courtesy of a glass coffee table², or broken elbow caused by driving an electric scooter over a pile of slippery leaves³, but in general, we all know this shit happens with kids and it’s nothing to feel guilty about.

Unless, of course, said injury was directly caused by you not just permitting but endorsing, encouraging, and facilitating dangerous activities. In that case, you should definitely feel bad.

For instance, I felt quite bad when I let Ryan, then 6 years old and categorically not qualified for the job at hand, participate in the demolition of our fireplace during a remodel. Was he wielding a giant sledgehammer to smash heavy ceramic tiles? Yes. Was he wearing protective gear, or even, say, shoes? No, he most certainly was not, and the scar that remains visible on his arm to this day tells the tale of what happens when chunks of ceramic go flying through the air at high velocity. 

Do I get any points for making him wear googles, at least?

Then there was the time I decided I was some kind of scientist and procured some dry ice for us to experiment with, an activity I knew was potentially dangerous and thus implemented stringent safety precautions including a “no one but Mom handles the dry ice” rule. Man, I’m smart! Or I was, until I left the open bag of dry ice on the floor and Graffin had the misfortune to slip nearby it and extend his bare hand right onto it in an attempt to break his fall. Or the day I set up a fun “foam painting” activity that utilized an incredibly slippery amalgamation of shaving cream and glue, then watched and laughed heartily as the activity devolved into my children coating themselves and the garage floor with the mixture, in essence creating a filthy pseudo ice rink in which to glide around. Why was I surprised when they inevitably fell…repeatedly…and sustained a number of colorful bruises?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!

Believe it or not, these alarming manifestations of my abject ineptitude probably wouldn’t even rate a mention on a list of my most egregious offenses (sidenote: please don’t actually make a list of my failures). No, the top spots are all reserved for the myriad disasters that have occured in service of these nutcases’ most beloved pastime, Destroying Old Electronics. As the name suggests, this activity involves Destroying Old Electronics: ancient laptops, broken stereos, and obsolete cellphones are no match for my children’s insatiable desire to determine how many horrifying methods of destruction a poor innocent technological relic can withstand. COMPLETELY HARMLESS GOOD TIMES! Just kidding, it’s a disaster waiting to happen every time but they’ll spend literal hours destroying one $5 garage sale piece of junk and so it is my favorite of all of their hobbies. 

Recently, Ryan discovered the joys of eBay shopping and found that for just a few chores’ worth of handouts from ol’ Mom over here, he could afford an outdated but operable smartphone. This is the crown jewel of Shit to Destroy, as the fact that it still works means the kids can validate the effects of their destruction attempts as the melee ensues (this is all very scientific, clearly). The downside, of course, is that working phones contain a little something called a lithium ion battery — ever heard of it? Oh, you have? And I suppose if you were in my position, you totally would have acknowledged the existence of said battery, and perhaps even recalled all those news stories from a couple years back exposing smartphone batteries expanding and catching fire? And there’s NO CHANCE that would have just slipped your mind entirely and you would have signed off on letting small children hack away at said smartphone with the express intent of damaging it as much as possible, with little to no supervision whatsoever?

Get off your high horse. This could happen to anyone: 

He’s fine, guys. Everything’s fine. A couple very minor burns, some PTSD, perhaps an ecological disaster of some kind…no big deal. 

Why do I keep letting these things happen?! Is it because I’m a “Yes Mom,” stubbornly bound by some bizarre internal pledge to say yes to as many requests as humanly possible? Am I just an idiot who lacks foresight? Do I get swept up in the moment and develop selective blindness to danger, seeing only fun and excitement? Am I so desperate to occupy these people that I let all common sense fly out the window? 

Let’s not analyze it. See you in the ER!

(After I finish my dry ice White Claw.)

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Footnotes:

¹Lean Cuisine should be sued for making their cardboard packaging so impenetrable I had to bust out a boxcutter to make any headway. 

²Graffin

³Ryan

Yes Mom

I was on a first date with a dude last year¹ and we were doing the stereotypical “here’s a brief rundown of my life (except for the shitty parts)” song and dance, and when I mentioned something about my kids he said, “wow, it must be really hard to handle everything!”

His reaction surprised me, although I guess it probably shouldn’t have — being a single mom (or a parent at all) is a lot of work, objectively speaking. But as I told this gorgeous tattooed childless gentleman that night, my kids are the easiest and best part of my life. Is my life in general a shitshow? Do I have serious personal issues to wade through? Am I frequently on the edge of existential despair? Possibly. But don’t get it twisted: there is absolutely nothing about my kids or about being a mom that I resent or consider a burden. Not the endless lunch-making², not the fighting over video games, not the interminable baseball games played in the blistering heat at which White Claws are inexplicably not considered acceptable hydration for parents in the stands, not the laundry or the midnight bad dreams or the ceaseless avalanche of toys that cover every square inch of my house and make it nigh on impossible to sweep or mop³, nothing. My kids bring me joy, and I am the kind of sick individual that derives pleasure from things like budgeting and checking items off of a to-do list, so even all of the logistical business of mothering is really right up my alley.

If this all sounds like a bunch of holier-than-thou bragging about how amazing I am for not letting the harder aspects of motherhood drag me down, don’t fret: I’m about to let you in on the secret behind this serenity, and it should bring your opinion of me and my parenting acumen back down where it belongs (i.e. very, very low):

I just say yes to virtually everything they want. 

Like…to truly ridiculous requests, all the damn time. Eat dinner in my bed? Sure, why not. Go to the 99 Cent Store to buy hundreds of balloons for the sole purpose of trying to pop them with various implements found around the house? Absolutely. Melt a bunch of perfectly good crayons into a brick so we can smash it up? Sounds like a perfectly sane thing to do! Basically, if there’s no risk of injury (and honestly, I’m pretty flexible on that) and it doesn’t cost a ton of money, it’s gonna be a yes every time.

Now, obviously I don’t have anything to compare to since I have operated in this fashion for the duration of my mothering career, but I believe that my yes-slingin’ lifestyle has eliminated a considerable chunk of the day-to-day conflicts that arise from having to tell children “no” all the time, not to mention the innumerable hours I’ve saved by not having to personally entertain these children. Do I really want to clean up tiny bits of crushed chalk from every crack and crevice of my garage after some bizarre art/destruction activity? No, not particularly. But do you know what else I don’t want to do? Come up with shit for them to do myself, and they spent all fucking day creating that chalk nightmare and I didn’t have to do a damn thing. 

I believe wholeheartedly that this strategy is the key to me remaining (relatively) sane and am completely committed to saying yes as much as humanly possible, to the point that it has become a defining facet of my personality in my children’s eyes. Ryan once told me, apropos of absolutely nothing, “You know what the best thing is about you? You’re a Yes Mom. Because you say yes to most things…and sometimes even when you say no, you think about it and then you say yes after all!”

And therein lies the problem, of course. I have created monsters who believe that if they ask their mother to buy $40 worth of duct tape so they can make a wall out of it and then destroy said wall with sharp objects, said mother will say yes…and they are right. She will not only say yes, she will say yes again when they want to try another kind of tape, and she will in fact do this four goddamn times in a single month.

(This is sadly not a joke; in related news, for any of you with hot DIY plans in the works, Gorilla Tape is superior to T-Rex Tape and both beat regular duct tape by a mile.)

Worse, they are now old enough to understand that I only deny their requests when there’s a really good reason, which sounds like it would be a good thing but instead just means that I have to have conversations like this whenever I drop a rare “no”:

Ryan, 30 seconds before bed: “Can I sleep in the office?”

Me, simply not in the mood to alter our already protracted bedtime routine : “no, we’re not doing that tonight.”

Ryan, so very sweetly, and genuinely curious: “But Mom…what difference does it make to you where I sleep?”

He was right, it doesn’t make a difference at all. 

He slept in the office.

Wish me luck when they’re teenagers, because I am, as I believe professionals would describe it, fucked.

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Footnotes:

¹Yes, this is a thing I have to do now and it’s as horrifying as it sounds.

²Remember sending kids to school? Ah, good times. 

³Can you tell that I secretly appreciate that I have an excuse not to clean?

The best kind of weirdo

When Graffin was two, he developed an obsession with painting. We’re not talking about your run of the mill “toddler who appreciates the joy of making a mess with finger paints” type of interest, I’m referring to an all-out passion for paint. And to be clear, his interest should not be confused with a devotion to art — Graffin would be better described as a paint-enthusiast than a budding artist. The love was for the paint itself. Lining up the bottles, delicately opening each one, testing each color and proudly announcing its name (“bwue! Yewwow! Umm…..anunner kind of bwue!”), reorganizing them back into the box when done…that’s where the magic was. The “art” he “created” was absolutely secondary to the ceremony. 

The dedication he showed to his chosen vocation was impressive. For months (and think about how long that is in toddler terms, really) he painted every single day, often for HOURS at a time. He’d paint inside, he’d paint outside, on paper, on himself, on the ground, literally anywhere and anytime I could accommodate it. He’d paint until it was time for bed, then wake up in the morning and hightail it straight to the backyard, where the ritual would begin anew. Bottles out, brushes ready, etc etc etc, ad infinitum. 

My patio has still not recovered.

Does that sound strange? Cuz it totally was. My perception may have been skewed by my experience with my firstborn, to whom such a peaceful activity would not have been the least bit attractive at any age for longer than about 57 seconds, but I was sincerely perplexed by the very idea of a small child liking something that much for that long, and the fact that the activity in question involved the repeated setup/test/cleanup process of a $5 box of paints as opposed to something like, say, PLAYING WITH A TOY, ratcheted my confusion up a few further notches. On the other hand, it was obviously harmless (except for paint being goddamn EVERYWHERE), and something about the methodical aspect of it struck me as a potential sign of burgeoning intelligence (or at the very least, extraordinary patience), so I was torn on how to interpret my little compulsive Picasso’s behavior. A friend of mine who witnessed Graffin’s painting predilection in action commented on the, shall we say, uniqueness of the hobby, and I agreed, saying, “maybe there’s something wrong with him. Or maybe he’s a genius!”

To which she replied, “Yeah, or maybe he’s just a weirdo.”

Dead. Fucking. On. 

Time has proven that there is definitely nothing wrong with this kid (not like…diagnosably wrong, anyway), and while he may indeed be a genius, my friend’s assessment of him as just a straight-up weirdo was far and away the most accurate judgment. He is a weirdo — the very best kind. His all-out obsession with painting eventually waned (although to this day, the pleasure this kid gets from cracking open a new box of crayons, markers, paints, or any other color-ific artistic implements and just lining them up and trying them all out is unrivaled), but his determined individualism persists. This is a kid who knows what he likes and how he likes it, and he don’t give a hot damn if that doesn’t align with what the rest of the world might consider “normal.” He is the most punk rock person I know and I want to be like him when I grow up.

Case in point: his daily visions for himself. Since he was about three years old, Graffin has approached getting dressed not as a mundane but necessary task like the rest of us losers, but as a crucial tone-setter for the day ahead. He does not ask himself, “what shall I wear today?” He asks, “who do I want to be today?” He literally says those exact words and it’s approximately the best thing ever. And when he settles on a concept, he sets forth to gear up with gusto, virtually always without any assistance. Much to Ryan’s horror, for the past two years we’ve been confusing and/or terrifying the public by going about our daily business with Graffin proudly showing off such varied identities as:

Mickey Mouse Hulk (one of his earliest creations):

Guy With a Crown who Loves Easter Eggs:

Marshmallow (inspired by some YouTube DJ who may or may not be appropriate for children; I suppose I should have looked into that at some point?):

Cool Pirate:

Video Game Character (no further specifics were provided, just…Video Game Character):

Random Man (some iteration of this gentleman makes an appearance several times a week; any combination of backwards clothes, mismatched socks, face paint, and headwear of any kind are all hallmarks of Random Man’s signature style):

And this dude commits. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to wear inside-out jeans all day?! Also that’s a swimming shirt in the last pic…and only one sandal…on the wrong foot. Commitment.

He thinks ahead, too. He just informed me that I need to put “pants that are all green” on my Target list, because he needs to be a Ninja Turtle and he simply does not have the necessary accoutrements in his arsenal, and you better believe I’m gonna deliver. Because he may be a little weirdo, and perhaps we attract an odd stare or fifty as he strolls through the grocery store in some objectively absurd ensemble, but much like the bizarre delight he once garnered from incessantly organizing bottles of paint, he fucking loves making his fashion visions come to life and I pray to whatever gods or universal forces are out there that he never, ever changes.

PS: he does still enjoy painting. Naked Painting Man confirms: 

The time I didn’t blog for 5 years and then pretended people were clamoring for more

In a fit of lockdown-induced compulsive organization that has now reached the digital realm (I’ve literally run out of closets and drawers and boxes in my home to sort through and have had to resort to truly ludicrous tasks like re-naming files on my computer and removing old contacts from my phone; shit is dire over here, guys), I came across a bunch of files and photos related to this blog and got smacked in the face with a tidal wave of nostalgia. I immediately abandoned my pointless computer clean-up endeavor (what was I thinking?! SO BORING) and indulged in a stroll down memory lane, reading dozens of posts and wishing so badly that I hadn’t stopped writing. This was something I had really enjoyed! And there’s some quality material in here! I don’t know if you’re aware, but I am a goddamn delight. I am not ashamed to admit that I laughed aloud multiple times — heartily! — at my own stupid jokes. My sense of humor has evolved precisely not at all over the past 5 years. 

Even better than my own shameless self-admiration was my kids’ reaction to discovering these gems. I had never shown them the blog before, because they were too little and to be honest I kind of forgot it was a thing, but they’re currently obsessed with these YouTube channels in which young adults draw comics to tell funny stories about their childhoods (it’s not as creepy as it sounds, I swear), so I thought they might be amused to read some tales about their own past. I wasn’t sure if they’d be all that enthused to read poorly-written, inarguably rambling tales about Ryan being an adorable toddler and their mother being insane, but man: these stories slayed. The one about Ryan’s teddy bear jumping out the window was an enormous hit, as was the one about Dream Lites and my inability to conceptualize the existence of dead batteries, and thanks to the PAAAAAANTS tale we shall never again refer to any leg-covering garment as anything but “stinky paaaants.” Reliving these ancient memories and laughing at all my hilarious jokes (ahem) with the subjects about whom I wrote was an indescribable experience; it’s something I couldn’t have ever imagined and I am eternally grateful to Past Mo for taking time out of her busy Forensic Files-watching schedule to write this shit down. 

The only problem, of course, is that my poor second-born child is a wee bit underrepresented. And by that I mean that he appears in, like, 2 posts. MOMMY WAS A LITTLE BUSY, OK?! I always intended to get back in the swing of things at some point; I was certainly not without inspiration — these kids are ridiculous human beings whose antics provide ample blog fodder, and I am, of course, still neurotic AF¹ — but, ya know…life was going on. We moved, I got divorced, lost my mind a little bit² and then spent a bunch of time fixing myself³; there was endless day to day minutia like school and little league and work and I ran some more marathons somewhere in there and truly, it’s been an intense few years. Those are certainly all valid reasons for not carving out time to write a half-assed blog no one cares about, but unfortunately now my kids are aware that I once wrote a billion cute stories about one kid and none about the other and this injustice cannot stand.

And so…here I am. Armed and ready to regale you with tales about Graffin, a child with a personality so different from any child I’ve ever encountered that it almost defies belief, and of course Ryan, who is exactly the 8 year old one would foresee him to be after reading stories about him as a toddler. And me! I have stories about me! Do you have any idea how many embarrassing things have happened to me in the last 5 years and how cringe-worthingly fun it will be for you to read about them?! 

Stay tuned.

The last 5 years in a nutshell.

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹I learned new slang though! That’s still a thing, right? I’m hip AF.

²A lot.

³Still working on this part.

Doctor Show

Before I had children, I had grand plans of protecting my future spawn from the evils of television. I remember babysitting my nieces one time and being disgusted by the crude, seizure-inducing nonsense mascarading as children’s entertainment and thinking, Not for my kids! I wasn’t delusional enough to think I was going to adopt a unilateral no-TV rule (even idealistic pre-kid Maureen had the foresight to know that a little TV time was going to be vital to maintaining my own sanity), but I had every intention of limiting the viewing options to age-appropriate educational programming and enforcing some serious daily screen-time limits to ensure that my children didn’t spend their days zoned out on the couch when they should be playing outside or learning algebra or something.

How cute, right? Bless my little heart.

Three years later, I can tell you that my track record on regulating both the quality and quantity of television consumed by my child is…shaky. At best. You may remember¹ that I screwed up right from the get-go by watching true crime dramas while feeding Bubba as an infant, but I forgive myself for that one since he wasn’t really watching and I did put a stop to it once I saw him start to take a peek at the murder scenes. When he was old enough to actually watch a show himself, I did start out with Sesame Street and Super Why and other pseudo-educational options…but then the kids at daycare started telling him about Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and I felt bad having him be out of the loop, and my husband somehow convinced me that they really needed to watch WWE together for bonding purposes, and at the same time I realized that allowing him to watch TV meant I could have some glorious quiet time, and my smug anti-TV stance began to wane.

Still, though, I had some standards. I tried to avoid Cartoon Network since their shows are the most obnoxious (not to mention the incessant commercials for as-seen-on-tv crap that looks awesome but is doomed to break within moments once in the hands of an actual human child) and always encouraged other more worthy activities ahead of TV watching². I knew I wasn’t doing a great job enforcing TV limits and boundaries, but I let myself slide since at least I wasn’t letting him watch soap operas or something.

Until Baby G was born and a fatal combination of laziness, sleep deprivation, and a desire to give Bubba some alone time with Mama somehow spiraled into the creation of a nightly ritual in which my three year old son and I snuggle up in bed and watch Grey’s Anatomy.

You know, that show about sexy doctors doing surgery on maimed and gravely ill individuals. Pretty much right on par with Sesame Street, right?

I know, guys, I’m THE WORST.

It started innocently enough. I got in the habit of nursing Baby in my bed while Daddy got Bubba ready for bed, and I used those precious few moments of alone time (Baby notwithstanding…sorry, Baby) to binge-watch all the Grey’s Anatomy I had missed out on in my twenties by thinking I was too good for trashy shows³. Bubba came into the room one evening and asked if he could snuggle with me, and while I attempted to turn off the smut like a good parent would, he declared that he WANTED to watch “The Doctor Show.” Furthermore, he demanded to know what kind of injury the dear fellow on screen had sustained, and if, in fact, said injury had been sustained when the guy — and I quote — “was climbing on dangerous stuff and then he came crashing down like POW CAPOW OWWWWW!”

So now every night he asks if he can watch Doctor Show with me, and every night I say yes because I just love him too much and it’s not the same if we watch something else. And I’m not a total monster: I mute the sound and turn on the captions so I can follow the story while Bubba just watches the doctors rush around trying to save people with terrible injuries, the sights of which may or may not scar a three year old for life (TBD). He asks questions about every patient and speculates on how their injury or illness may have come to be (“did he fall like CAPOW? Did he get too much germs in his blood?”) and provides some delightful commentary on the lives of medical professionals (“why are those doctors not wearing their doctor coats at home? Are those doctors friends?”), while we eat snacks and share my blankets and just enjoy each others company. It’s a marvelous way to unwind at the end of the day and I only feel marginally guilty that this wonderful bonding experience is centered around a show that features a character named McDreamy.

And yes, I realize I could probably find a better way to nurse Baby and give Bubba some attention at the same time, but then when would I find out if Cristina and Owen are going to break up or if Bailey’s OCD will get cured or if Arizona will ever shut up about her damn amputated leg?!

OK, I’m the worst.

The 8pm scene in my bedroom. EVERY. NIGHT.

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹That post was from three years ago. If you really did remember it, congratulations on being my biggest (and presumably only) fan!

²OK, not always. Usually would be a more fair assessment. Unless I am really tired. Or need a break. Or….just stop judging me, ok?! Go watch some TV.

³So much wasted time! What else did I miss?!

The Crazy Files, Vol VII: I Probably Ruined Bubba’s Life By Not Breastfeeding

As I imagine is the case with most new mothers, the first months of Bubba’s life were all about survival. It only took a few sleepless nights for me to abandon virtually all of my preconceived notions about parenting and to start making decisions based on only two factors: will my kid survive, and, presuming so, is it the easiest possible option available. Sure, I had assumed that I’d breastfeed with ease and that baby would sleep in his crib and wear cute outfits and I’d probably shower from time to time or something, but within weeks I had that kid sleeping with me, drinking bottles, and both his outfits and mine were perpetually covered in layers of spitup I simply could not be bothered to remedy.

The sleep deprivation hit me hard, and everything about taking care of a newborn was so much more difficult than I had ever imagined — especially breastfeeding. Prior to having Bubba, I barely gave a passing thought to what nursing would be like, so convinced was I that it would be effortless. But when he arrived and I discovered that breastfeeding required endless patience along with every last ounce of my extremely limited energy supply, and that it could be totally uncomfortable, and that the use of what amounts to a torture device just to pump milk for him while I worked would get old real fast, I quickly determined that it was more than I had bargained for. When Daddy offered to give the baby some formula at three weeks so I could get a little sleep, I agreed without a second thought, and by the time Bubba was seven weeks old the ease of formula feeding had won me over and I gave up on the boobs entirely.

Months later, once the haze of the sleepless newborn days had finally worn off and I had some time to reflect on Bubba’s infancy, I felt a twinge of regret about my decision. Was I an awful person for choosing comfort and sleep over nourishing my child? Could I have done more and tried harder? But Bubba was perfectly fine! He was happy and healthy and smart and clearly no worse for the wear, so I let that assuage my guilt and moved on.

Then I had Baby G, and with him came the opportunity to learn from the mistakes I made with Bubba and do things differently. I decided to give breastfeeding another try, and as it turns out, everything is easier the second time around! My body is already used to reduced sleep, and just knowing what to expect makes a world of difference. To my great surprise, the breastfeeding experience this time around has been a breeze — Baby G is a champion eater, my milk supply is stellar, and other than a couple of clogged ducts (TMI? Gross) things really couldn’t be going any smoother.

And I feel so, so terrible about it. 

Not for Baby G, of course. No, I feel horribly guilty that I couldn’t do it for dear Bubba! I was okay with my decision for three years, but now that I’ve had success with Baby G, I am plagued with guilt and regret and am kicking myself daily for not having had just a little bit more patience with my firstborn. How could I have been so selfish?

And of course my brain doesn’t stop with just a little regret. No, I go further off the rails: what if Bubba only seems fine to me because I had nothing to compare him to? What if this kid grows up to be way smarter or more athletic and it’s totally because of the breastfeeding?! And poor Bubba is left watching his little brother thrive while he withers away due to some as of yet unknown deficiency and he never achieves his dreams and then he finds out it’s all because I let him drink FORMULA and then he HATES ME FOREVER and I can’t even blame him for hating me because it’s ALL MY FAULT?!

On the other hand, I’m surely ruining this baby’s life by never being able to offer him my undivided attention because his big brother is always around and by taking selfies while he nurses, so perhaps I can take comfort in the fact that both of my children will grow to hate me in due time.

MOM I’M EATING THIS IS PRIVATE STOP WITH THE CAMERA

Silver linings!

The time I had a baby 20 minutes after getting to the hospital

Until 7 weeks ago, I thought those stories of women giving birth on the side of the road on their way to the hospital were kind of eyeroll-worthy. Come on, ladies: it takes goddamn FOREVER to have a baby. Unless they live a day’s drive away from the hospital, how long did these idiots wait to get into the car to make their way to the land of epidurals and medical professionals that they couldn’t make it?!

And then I came within 20 minutes of that happening to me.

Seriously, guys. I was one minor traffic jam away from giving birth in a dirty Prius on Beverly Boulevard.

And now I can tell you definitively that the problem these poor side-of-the-road mothers faced wasn’t that they were too dumb to get their pregnant asses out the door in a timely fashion, but rather that they simply didn’t understand that some babies have no interest in following protocol. Because no one really expects to go from “hmm, is that a contraction?” to “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD THIS KID IS COMING OUT OF ME LIKE RIGHT NOW” in just a few short hours. No one!

Ironically, I actually spent a great deal of my pregnancy worrying about getting to the hospital, but I was more concerned about enduring too many contractions in the car than actually giving birth on the road. Midway through the pregnancy, I moved from the westside of LA to the suburbs about 25 miles away, and I elected to keep my doctor rather than pick someone new in the middle of the game. Thanks to the horrors of LA traffic, this meant that it would take me anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes to reach the hospital, and with each passing week I got more and more nervous about being subjected to a tortuous hours-long journey to the hospital while I timed contractions and counted down the minutes till I could get an epidural. I vowed early on that I would make sure to leave for the hospital at the first inklings of true labor in order to minimize that issue.

But alas, like those side-of-the-roaders, I made the mistake of assuming that labor takes a long time, even the second time around, and neglected to consider that a “leave for the hospital early on in the labor process” plan is irrelevant when you don’t know how long labor is actually going to take. So when I started feeling contractions around midnight on March 19th, I didn’t immediately leap into action. I told my husband to get a few hours of sleep while he had the chance, called my mom to warn her that we’d be dropping Bubba off sometime in the morning, and took my sweet time getting myself ready. I packed my bag. I took a shower. I made sure to take one last selfie to document my belly at its peak:

The timestamp on that photo is 2:32 am. By that time, the contractions were getting pretty painful and I realized I was inching closer to realizing my fear of having to withstand a bunch of heinous pain on the car ride, so I woke up my husband and told him it was go time. “We’ll have a baby by noon!” I told him psuedo-cheerfully as I tried not to pain-vomit on his face, still naively thinking I had hours of labor ahead of me. At 3:15, we dropped Bubba off at Grandma’s, at which point I further demonstrated my idiotic lack of urgency by spending ten minutes cuddling with Bubba and getting him settled in. Sure, the contractions were getting closer and closer together and I felt like I just might die from the horrendous pain, but I still thought we had plenty of time because LABOR TAKES FOREVER EVEN WHEN IT’S “FAST,” RIGHT?!

Three hours or so after feeling the first contraction, we were on our way to the hospital. Thankfully, since it was the middle of the night and not rush hour, we made it to the hospital in record time and my husband only had to listen to me threaten to smash my face into the dashboard for thirty minutes or so (have I mentioned that labor is painful?). I walked through the hospital doors at 3:57am and immediately told everyone in my path that I wanted an epidural, including several people who I do not think actually worked for the hospital in any capacity whatsoever. I was in a lot of pain and each contraction felt exponentially worse than the last, but as the nurse walked me into a room, I breathed a huge sigh of a relief, knowing I wouldn’t be in pain much longer because surely one of those 100 people I’d begged for an epidural would deliver!

As soon as we arrived in the room, the nurse examined me and announced that I was dilated to 6 centimeters, and this is when things went a bit off the rails. A resident joined the crew and assured me that the doctor was on her way and that she would call the anesthesiologist as soon as I was fully examined and checked in, but not two minutes later, I was screaming — like, bloody murder, no shame, no dignity, all out SCREAMING — that I was in pain and needed drugs. And then two minutes later, the same thing. And one minute after that. And again. And again. And in between each contraction, I was telling the nurse, “it’s so much pressure! SO. MUCH. PRESSURE.”

At the mention of all the pressure, the nurse decided to take another gander at my progress and was surprised to discover that said “pressure” was in fact my baby being born. Like, RIGHT THEN.

Even though I had just been at 6cm 10 minutes prior.

And my doctor hadn’t arrived.

And I hadn’t even filled out the check-in paperwork.

And there was obviously no time for drugs.

And it really did hurt a lot.

I will never forget the look on the poor resident’s face when the nurse told her there would be no time to get me the drugs I was begging for; the sweet women had been making a valiant effort to get the anesthesiologist to hurry up and appeared to be as terrified as I was to learn that not only would she be delivering this baby herself since my doctor still hadn’t arrived, but that she’d be doing it while I screamed in her face about how badly it hurt.

And just like that, with me in denial and screaming for drugs till the very end, I officially became a mom of two. Graffin Thomas Wachter busted out of my loins at 4:17am on March 19, still in the amniotic sac, 6 pounds 2 ounces, 19.5 inches long, and super cute (in a scrunched up smushed-face newborn kind of way):

I had never given so much as a passing thought to the possibility of a drug-free birth, and I truly cannot overstate how painful it was and how I will never, ever, ever do that again. But I must say that I feel pretty bad-ass for having done it, no matter how unintentional. And it goes without saying that it was absolutely worth every second of torture:

But seriously: never again!