Home

Home is available as a print on ETSY.

I don't know if it's because my son weaned himself this week after a nasty cold made it so he couldn't breathe and nurse at the same time. Or because we're nearing our six month milestone in Israel. Or because I'm starting to plan our trip to America in the summer and wondering how on earth we will see everyone we want to see and what it will feel like to be there. Or maybe because I keep fast forwarding ten years and my oldest is entering the army. All of it together has me feeling a little vulnerable.  I keep coming back to the idea of home. Where is it? What is home? What will it be for my kids. Is it worth fighting for? Is it worth dying for? Or is it just a place, like any other.

Mr. Rosen and I have spent a lot of time thinking about where we want to make our home and whether or not there is a perfect place for us and our family. We don't have the answer yet but we're getting closer. We might be over thinking it. It might be exactly where we are now. It might not be a place at all, but a connection we have to each other, tethering us to the present.

Song of Solomon

Behold, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing is come,
and the voice of the turtle dove
is heard throughout the land.

Song of Solomon 2:11-12


ps. the painting to the left of Crawly McHands Off is available now as a print on ETSY.

The New Normal

Five shiny new gas masks hanging off my stroller.

Some nights I'll be sitting on our couch watching reruns of Seinfeld and eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles and it feels like I'm back in California. We live in a nice house. I drive a Mazda 5. My kids have playdates. Organic free range eggs are a fortune. It's all the same as it was. And then I remember that my daughter goes to ballet lessons in a bomb shelter. Someone checks my bag whenever I enter a large building, like the mall. My kids have lice. My housekeeper is a Jewish man. I buy my fruits and vegetables in the West Bank. My seven year old has a cell phone. And I pay $8 a gallon for gas.

Not normal.

Last week I met a friend and her three kids in Ramle, a town outside of Tel Aviv known for its poverty and excellent kabob restaurants, to exchange our old gas masks for new ones. It was the first day of Passover vacation so I packed all the kids in the car and we drove to an elementary school downtown where a squadron of adorable soldiers took my two outdated masks and issued five shiny new ones. Everyone was friendly and professional and efficient. Someone from the BBC even interviewed me. When asked how I felt as a newcomer getting gas masks for my children, I was honest. I told the guy I had no intention of using these things. They will go into a closet until the next recall, a decade from now. And then we hustled our six kids back into our cars, drove to a nearby playground, worked up an appetite and then drove downtown to Halil where we snarfed down two plates of kabobs, a plate of fries, hummus, pita, pickles and malabi for dessert. Mmmmmm.

And so it goes. I shift back and forth between there and here, feeling used to it all and feeling shocked by it all, letting go of what I knew as normal and embracing what is now the new normal.



Gas mask tutorial


Playground in Ramle


My daughter stepped out into this parking lot and asked, are we in India?


Cutest ten month old ever

The Bar on the Mountain

It sounds better in Hebrew. Bar BaHar. It's a beautiful little cafe five minutes drive from our house that overlooks the Judean Hills. They serve delicious coffee and a killer shakshouka. If you follow a path just outside of the cafe you get to a charming wooden play structure. The path continues and is perfect for an after-school bike ride. And since our bikes and everything else we own is arriving tomorrow afternoon (!!!) we may be making Bar BaHar a weekly tradition. Did I mention the free wifi?

School Daze

Israeli kids are really exuberant and they move in swarms which can be completely overwhelming to a couple of sensitive kids from a culture that values personal space and manners above all. My kids didn't have a chance.

My daughter started preschool last Sunday (Sunday is the first day of the week here) and managed pretty well for a few hours. The problem is that prek and kindergarten are managed by a regional council of the Ministry of Education. So you don't actually pick where the kids go, at least when you move to town this late in the year. You get placed. And we got placed in the only place with space which is a kindergarten. Meanwhile my daughter won't be five until February. So she's the youngest by a lot. The idea is that she'll stay there next year too (but her friends will go to first grade). It's not ideal. And I tried to make a stink about it but no one would budge. So on her first day a gaggle of girls with the best intentions attack her wanting to do her hair and dress her up and draw pictures for her. All the while yammering in Hebrew. My poor girl basically curls up fetal-like in a corner and sucks her thumb.

That same Sunday we went to my son's elementary school to register him. He would only start the next day. While there he starts to complain of a stomach ache which I chalk up to nerves. When we get home he crawls onto the futon (our only piece of furniture currently) and stays there moaning for several hours. Then I discover he has a fever. And then he proceeds to throw up for the next four hours. May be more than nerves. He doesn't make it to school on Monday.

Meanwhile, our girl goes back to preschool on Monday and makes it through another day with the help of some puppets - Shmuli the hedgehog and Morris the Fox. Trooper.

On Tuesday my son is finally ready for school. He doesn't have his books yet but he does have his uniform. He wears his red hoody sweatshirt with the school logo and meets his teacher, the one we'd heard good things about and were hoping for, in the front office. Score. Turns out all the kids are supposed to wear green, yellow or red (was it Rasta Day?)* so he would fit in great. He gives me a kiss and walks to class with his teacher. I pick him up a few hours later and he looks worn out and like he is about to burst into tears. They had swarmed him apparently and pulled him in a million directions and wanted to show him their soccer trading cards and invite him to a birthday party after school and be best friends. And all he wanted was for everyone to stop talking. Which he made clear at some point when he couldn't take it anymore. Poor kid. He was hungry too and thought he missed lunch somehow. There is no lunch at school. It ends at 1:30 and the kids eat lunch at home or aftercare. Only snack at school. Aha. He also can't follow along in class because he doesn't have his books yet.

Mr. Rosen runs out to buy his books later that day and comes home $150 poorer with sixty pound of books. That's when Mr. Rosen and I hit a low. Why did we take our son out of his amazing school in California so he could sit in class and do workbooks all day long? And this was supposed to be one of the country's better schools.

The next morning he cries that he doesn't want to go to school. He hates school. Hates school? I had never heard him say such a thing. He once told me he wished he could sleep at school because he loved it so much. My heart breaks for him. I pull out whatever anecdotes I can think of. I remind him that his friends Ido and Leonard and Itzel all spoke other languages at home and had to work extra hard in the beginning of kindergarten to catch up and now in first grade they are all speaking and reading and writing beautifully in English. It takes time. He humors me and agrees to go to school. We don't realize it is his teacher's free day (or that there is even such a thing as a free day) and he has a bunch of other teachers for PE, music, road safety (this is a big focus in school apparently - probably because of the way people drive here). He has no idea what is going on and we are equally in the dark.

His sister, on the other hand, appears to be doing well and is making friends. We are fooled into thinking that she is fully acclimated.

On Thursday I pick up my son after school and he has another fever and a rash on his face and it is clear that he is not going to school on Friday. He's a mess. I'm a mess too. I just didn't think it would be this hard and I have to remind myself that it's only the first week and he's only seven and he is completely out of sorts. His Savta comes to visit and sits down with him when he's feeling better to do some of his workbook exercises to catch up. Turns out he likes working in the workbooks. He learns four letter in one hour. By the next day he's reading in Hebrew. A switch has been flipped.

By Sunday, he's ready for school and he's feeling himself again. I pick him up and he tells us about a friend, Roi, who he's been hanging out with at recess. Progress. His teacher and school counselor let us know that he is ahead of his classmates in math and following along pretty well in Hebrew. And that he is a clever and wise little boy. He has endeared himself to the authority figures, as is his way. This morning he tells me he loves his school. I feel like I won the lottery.

Meanwhile in preschool, our little girl is becoming more and more clingy at drop off. She understands that this is not just a temporary thing and she wants out. On Wednesday I leave her there sobbing. And I spend the whole day wondering if I should just keep her home. Or demand she be placed with kids her age. Or start my own preschool. Of course when I pick her up she's fine. She even has a new friend who asks for her phone number to invite her over. Progress.

This has been the hardest thing so far. Harder than the whole health insurance debacle. It's made us question all of our decisions. Was this move the right thing? Would they have gotten a better education in the States? It's obviously too early to tell but we are encouraged by their progress and by the willingness of their teachers to welcome them and ease their transition.

* I later realized it was national road safety day so the kids dressed in the colors of the stoplight.

I work full time

I used to work full time in an office. I liked work. But I didn't love it. And I was having a hard time rationalizing spending 8-10 hours a day away from my kids for something that I didn't love. There was the money, which we needed. We still need the money. But we realized eventually that while money comes and goes, time only goes. And time with these kids was precious and fleeting and I better start spending more of it with them. So I stopped working in an office and I started working at home a few hours a day painting and selling my work. And my kids spent less time at preschool and a lot more time with me.

And then I realized that what I had really wanted was a way to paint and sell my work and explore what other untapped creative potential lay buried inside me and spend some time with my kids but not a lot of time. And not time in the car or on the way to anywhere. Like gymnastics or Hebrew school. And what I mostly wanted was to spend time with my kids while they were happy and charming and then magically disappear when they started getting annoying or taking so much time to put on their shoes that they eventually needed the next shoe size or insisting to sit on the booster seat next to the window instead of the one in the middle next to the shrieking baby.

The promise of part time work and part time child-rearing was misguided at best. Foolish, more likely. There's nothing part time about what I do. I work around the clock these days. I'm up two to three times a night nursing. Then we're all up getting ready to get out of the house in the morning. I'm driving to school, I'm driving home, I'm driving to the supermarket, I'm making food, I'm picking up, I'm emailing proofs, I'm nursing, I'm straightening the house, I'm printing some orders, I'm playing with the baby, I'm helping with homework, I'm brushing out tangles, I'm weeding out the 4Ts to make room for the 5Ts, I'm reading stories, I'm nursing, I'm calling UPS to track a shipment that went awol, I'm brushing someone's teeth, I'm writing this blog, I'm going to bed and then I'm repeating the whole exercise again. Everyday. Forever. With a smile.

Small talk

I already know why my son will stop talking to me when he's a teenager. It's because for the first twelve years of his life he will have talked to me incessantly about things I am not interested in and I will tell him numerous times, when I have reached capacity, that I don't want to talk anymore and can he please zip it. That I'm not that interested in electricity. Or the settings of my iPhone. Or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is ironic since I'm the one that introduced him to both the book and the movie as they are my favorites. Rather were my favorites until he talked about them so much that I wanted to drown him in a river of chocolate).

I need quiet. I need long periods of time during my day when no one is talking to me. Which is why I thank god every day for my mornings when I'm at home working or writing or whatever I'm doing. And I have these mornings so that by the afternoon I can pay attention to what he's saying and respond and engage and try my best to encourage his curiosity. I want him to ask questions. To think about how it all works and make his own sense of the world.  I just don't want to always answer him. Sometimes I can't answer him.  And why is it that I don't know how the scanner communicates to the printer. I mean I use these two things everyday. Why am I not interested? Because I just want it to work. I don't care how.

But he cares. He cares so much that he makes up stories about it. How the scanner speaks only in English to the computer and the computer has to translate the message into Hebrew because the printer only speaks Hebrew. And the scanner needs the computer to pass along his message to make the image print. I mean it's effing brilliant if you ask me, but hearing about it everyday makes me insane. He once told me about how there's someone else at school who likes to talk even more than he does and he told me about that person for forty-five minutes.

But I know a time will come when the roles will be reversed and I will desperately try to elicit conversation, even just information, from his eye-rolling, pimply head. And when he's silent I'll fill the silence with endless questions and stories and ramblings. But that will make him shrink away further. And there I'll be with no one to help me with my phone settings or my printer. And it will be my own damn fault.

The one where I mention we're moving to Israel

Jerusalem doorway

How's that for a zinger title?
It's been ten wonderful years but we are finally closing up shop in America folks. And moving back to Israel. Holy crap, that's right.  And we're doing it this summer. With an infant. So I'm a little overwhelmed. And a little stressed. But relieved to have made this decision because nothing sucks more than indecision. Except for hemorrhoids.

I'm excited about the move though I have no delusions that this will be easy or comfortable or enjoyable. At least for the first six to twelve twenty-four months in country. I figure if I keep my expectations very low there's a chance I'll be pleasantly surprised.  Or an opportunity for an "I told you it would be a nightmare" open dialogue with Mr. Rosen. That said, the enormity of it all is kind of making me feel like having a third baby is no big deal. When you compare it to selling your home, finding a place to live in another country, a school for your big kid, a preschool for your little kid, a job nearby for your husband, all within an hour drive to your in laws, in a good school district, in a place that's beautiful, and affordable, and not blazing hot in the summer, and move all your stuff there, by boat, and buy a car, and modify your business for international fulfillment, and find new doctors, new dentists, a replacement for Trader Joe's (as if it were possible) and be emotionally available for your distressed children all the while caring for your infant without the benefit of your own mommy nearby as you navigate the social and educational systems being the functional illiterate that you are, yes, having a third child seems like a walk in the park. This without mention of occasional bombings from Gaza. Or Lebanon. Or, even more life-threatening, the maniacal way people drive in Israel.

But here are many things I am looking forward to, in no particular order:

• Having a bigger house. 
• Starting fresh.
• Getting old funky furniture from the south Tel Aviv flea market.
• Connecting with the vibrant art and design community.
• Shoko b'sakit (come visit me and I'll buy you one).
• Fantastic grandparents who are available for babysitting. And sleep-overs.
• Cheap outbound shipping (so say my Israeli ETSY comrades).
• Long weekends in Turkey, Greece, Cypress, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt...
• Not having to take my kids out of school for Jewish holidays.
• Really strong lattes. Stronger than Peets.
• Olives.
• Fresh pita.
• Sabbath.
• School that's six days a week (!!)
• Fully bilingual kids.
• Aunt Dana and Uncle Yaniv.
• Jerusalem.
• The Mediterranean Sea. Despite the jellyfish.
• Grocers calling me sweetie. (Trust me, it's endearing).
• Getting out of traffic tickets just by speaking English. 
• The shoes.

So I hope you won't mind if I dream and rant and process with you as this next part of our life unfolds. And Israeli readers are welcome to send information about your awesome elementary school and community. I'm all ears.

Tustin Lanes

We're here for a visit with Grandma doing the regular stuff. Except it has not stopped raining since I started driving down Interstate 5 on Sunday. So we're doing the regular inside stuff. Which is very limited when your kids don't want to go to the movie theater because they suck. That leaves shopping, an activity that I try to avoid at all cost if I have my children with me, and bowling.

On Tuesday we bowled and it was epic. My daughter developed her own technique - carrying the ball to the lane, setting it down and rolling it as hard as she could. My son would run and then throw the ball with both hands. My parents used to be in a league in the 80s and I used to roam around the bowling alley when I could escape the daycare area, which I almost always could. We'd eat nachos and hot dogs and play video games while grown men and women in silky polyester team shirts flirted, cursed, smoked and bowled their hearts out.  The eighties were so awesome.

We'd go there as teenagers too. And sometimes on college break. So Tustin Lanes holds many vague but happy memories for me. And now maybe it does for them too. My son was especially enamored by the shoes. How many times I contemplated stealing a pair of bowling shoes in high school. I even came a few times with flip flops so I wouldn't miss the shoes left behind. Alas, no hope for this goody two shoes.

Double take

Homemade lion costume: $22.50
Old Navy butterfly costume: $10.00
Realizing I dressed them exactly the same three Halloweens ago: Priceless.

Happy November!

Chicken swinging is way better than confessional

It was Yom Kipur, the Day of Atonement, on Saturday and I repented. Not really. I fasted and that sucked. And I wished I'd had some time while I was fasting to examine my life and talk to God. Or at least take a nap. But parenting duties continue on Yom Kipur so my guess is the next 8-10 Yom Kipurs are going to suck the big winkie. 

Leading up to Yom Kipur I tried to read a few stories and get the kids to understand this whole idea about repentance and forgiveness which I boiled down to feel bad and say sorry.  A little of that might have sunk in. Or not. My daughter was unusually bristly it turns out. She told each member of her family that she didn't like us and that she wasn't our friend anymore. But since she couldn't say Yom Kipur and instead called it Yom Kipod which means Porcupine Day it seemed to make perfect sense.

We did start a new family tradition this year to try and give the kids something to remember for next year. There's custom called Kapparot which literally means atonements. And traditionally you swing a live chicken over your head three times (I'm not making this up), recite a blessing to transfer your transgressions to the dizzy chicken and then you kill the chicken thereby eliminating your sins. You can read all about it here. Apparently only ultra religious communities still do this and under strong opposition by animal rights groups.

We didn't slaughter a live chicken for the obvious reasons. We did take stuffed animal chickens, whispered our sins and secrets to them, tied a shoelace around one wing and flung them around for a while. And then I took my daughter, dressed her up like a chicken, told her I was sorry for all of the yelling and mean things I've said and swung her around too! Meanwhile my husband was making a delicious lentil salad, chocolate banana bread and fresh lemonade to bring to my brother's house where we broke our fast in the most gluttonous way possible. We can atone for that next year.

Looking forward

It's our first week of summer officially. Our schedule is different. I now have three full days (10-3) for work instead of five mornings. My daughter is with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays which is a welcome change. I hardly spend any time at all with either kid by his or herself which, it turns out, is very different than spending time with both. They act differently. And I do too. We move more slowly. We can have conversations. I'm not always running interference. I'll let you in on a secret. I kind of enjoy it.  I tried to patch together a summer with plenty of camps and activities but also at least one week each with only one child. And a week with both together. And a week in southern California and a week in New York and a week in Santa Fe. I'm already exhausted. Cleansing breath...

But this is what I signed up for. And how could I not? I mean look at the little saggy tights on that tush! With all her tippy toeness and fashion forwardness. This was six months ago. Who knows who she'll be six months from now. I'll keep you posted.

Bliss

Sometimes we have afternoons where the kids are focused on each other and their games and the grown ups can pretend we're not as grown up as we are. The sun is warm. No one is in a rush. The evenings are long and lit. And everyone is full.


More bliss over at Jane's.

From where I'm sitting

I see a little boy whose love of trains is second only to his love of electrical wires. He asks to take a train every day after preschool. But his sister needs her nap. Foiled! So if she wakes up at a reasonable time and all are in good spirits and we can still catch the 5:11 southbound or the 5:18 northbound trains, then I indulge this particular obsession. I love trains too. I wish this one could take us to Holland or Thailand or Spain, but San Jose will do. And just in time to catch the 5:31 train back home for dinner.

Fred and Ginger

I'm not one of those moms that does a lot of activities. My kids were in preschool all day until not long ago so I felt that was plenty of stimulation. Plus I was scarred from several attempts when my son was younger. When he was about a year and half I took him to one of those Music Together classes. It was a tryout session. He was a disaster. He was THAT kid. The one who doesn't participate in the conventional way. He was switching the lights on and off (who puts light switches low enough for a toddler to reach?) He was under the piano pressing the pedals. He was shrieking and pointing to the door. Home? Home? And then six months later we tried again. When we turned right to go to the church where it was held instead of left to go home, he started sobbing. Gymboree was out too. He couldn't even stand going there for birthday parties. Neither could I frankly. And then we tried soccer when he was four and it was torture for all involved. Even for his sister, who was desperate to play, but wasn't old enough. The only reason we did swim lessons last summer is that I don't want him to drown and if there was any other way for me to prevent that without him having to learn to swim, short of moving to the Gobi Desert, I would certainly have taken a different route.

But this year has been different. He's the tiniest bit more adaptable. So I put him in gymnastics for an hour after school on Wednesdays. And he loved it. It's right at his school. He met some new friends. Learned some tricks. My daughter and I went to the pool during that hour or the supermarket. It was great. So when I asked him if he wanted to do it again for the next session he said he wanted to do a different class. Tap and ballet. Great. Another activity that requires footwear.

And I knew exactly why he wanted to do tap and ballet. Because he wanted shiny black shoes with heels. He had spotted a pair at Target a few months ago and ever since he's been begging me to take tap and ballet so he can have shoes like that. So I signed him up and now that my daughter's old enough I signed her up too. And I bought him tap shoes. Lucky for me boys tap shoes are just black leather lace ups but they still have a sizable heel and make plenty of noise. So he was happy. And I bought my daughter taps and slippers too (They were having a BOGO at Payless). And both my kids are in heaven. They get home from school and immediately put on their taps. My daughter took her nap wearing her tap shoes yesterday. Today she was naughty and I took away her tap and ballet shoes and she had a tantrum the likes of which I haven't seen since this one.

As far as my son is concerned, it's hard to say at this point if dance will be his thing. How I wish he would have a thing, since until now his thing has been spending quality time with mommy. But one thing is for sure. He marches and taps to the beat of his own drummer.

He is especially interested in electricity

Last night I finally sat down to do my son's kindergarten application. We decided to apply to the Jewish Day School in our neighborhood after we took a tour and the woman assured us there is plenty of financial aid. We never planned to send our son to private school but have you heard about California lately? How we have the lowest debt rating of any state in the country? And the worst education? I think we even beat out Mississippi for last place. Our district has a few great schools actually but ours is not one of them. So we're also applying to a great "choice program" (within our district) which has a lottery admission system. I'm a public school girl myself, straight through graduate school and we always said we'd go that route for our kids. But then it's time to sign up and it's actually your kid and not some hypothetical kid and well you kind of want him or her to have a music and arts education and opportunities to learn, I don't know, science.

But we're only applying to this one private school. I considered the Waldorf school in our area after I went there and just about died when I saw their felting studio. I was ready to repeat kindergarten myself. But then I saw their application and the question asking about my birth experience and I was like, great actually but that's none of your effing business. 

This post had a point (Aimee - you should make that a magnet). Right. So I was filling out the application and had to answer some questions about my son - specifically his academic, social and emotional strengths. Here's what I came up with for the first part:

Our son is a very curious, energetic and imaginative little boy. He loves words and was a conversationalist, even on the phone, from an early age. He has an excellent memory and understands concepts like process of elimination and patterning and he asks a lot of annoying questions that I can't answer because I apparently don't know anything is very interested to know how everything works. He is especially obsessed with interested in electricity. But not in a Unibomber kind of way. 

I like to call his latest installation "Plugged In." He found a power strip and plugged it into itself (thus preventing him from plugging it into the wall and blowing himself up). He then went around the house finding every small appliance connecting it to the power strip. And he found a splitter too so he could add more plugs. I'm freezing my ass off as we speak because my heater is part of his creation.

The last part of the questionnaire, in response to "what do you hope your child will get out of our program" or something like that ended with: We hope that our son continues to develop the kind of self-confidence he’ll need to celebrate his quirky wonderful self every day of his life.

Thankful

Much to be thankful for this year. The list is long. But near the top of the list is New England style foliage at the end of November when it's 67 degrees outside. No joke. This is where I live. It's not paradise by any stretch of the imagination. A block from our house is a street with like forty-five car dealerships and ten big box retailers with a curious mix of Craftsman bungalows and downright ugly apartment complexes. And there's no open space between towns - just one long stretch of suburban sprawl. But sweet surrender, the weather here is unbelievable.

And of course, the three things I'm most thankful for are these characters. This is our annual Thanksgiving Day tradition of raking the leaves and dumping them, along with our kids, into the yardage bin. They appear to enjoy it.

I'm also thankful that my sister-in-law made Thanksgiving dinner this year because she has a special way with a bird. We actually went over there a few hours early for the first of hopefully many family band practices. It's true friends, I have a wonderful husband, two diabolical delicious kids, a newly refinanced home where it's 65 degrees at the end of November, flexible and creative work that I love AND I'm lead singer in Uncle John's Band. Watch for us on You Tube.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

A few things that sucked but didn't ruin my day

1. Trying to adhere my most recent drawing to a piece of Plywerk plywood where it stuck beautifully but one millimeter off on the left side. That sucked. Their adhesive is so good that you can watercolor right on there with no buckling BUT when you miss your mark, you're screwed. But I'm going to see if my husband can't just sand that side or something. Meanwhile I redrew it on a another paper and painted it today taped to my desk. Old school.

2. My son bringing his bowl in from breakfast and dropping it into a basket of toys. Milk + soggy leftover cereal + basket + toys = gross. I clean it up and thank my son for trying to bring his dish into the kitchen.

3. My son (again) trying to get down his sister's bag of leftover Halloween candy because she was whining about it and I'm sure he was hoping to score a piece since he ate all of his and him knocking over a nearly full bottle of canola oil that unfortunately had no cap. Sucked. A half a bottle of canola is actually and mysteriously seventeen gallons of oil when it's spilled onto your counter (and in between the counter and the stove and onto the stove and onto the floor). And it takes a roll of paper towels to absorb.

4. Playing memory on the floor in my studio my son knocking over my cup of coffee on to the carpet. Including the black dregs at the bottom. Seriously? Three spills in one day is a personal best. My carpet cleaning friends will be so pleased to see we switched the mezuzah.

5. Taking the kids to the supermarket after I picked them up from school and getting into the car only to notice that my daughter is missing Julio the rat. I drive back to the front of the store and park in the handicapped parking and run in to see if anyone has seen her rat. I receive many raised eyebrows. But no rat. So I drive around the parking lot three times looking for Julio and then spot him between two cars, jump out of the car, snatch the rat and return him to his rightful owner.

See. I'm learning to control my tantrums too. Shhh. Listen for the applause.

Pause

So it turns out that taking on this little part time temporary contract at my old job is kind of kicking my ass. Not because it's taxing or difficult or unenjoyable. In fact, it's pleasant work in a nice office with lovely people. So far I haven't had to be at a single meeting. It's kind of the best possible scenario. Except that I run out of there at 12:30 to get my kids at 1:00 and then spend the next six hours trying to clean the house, get my daughter down for her nap, play cards with my son, worry about the mounting orders I've yet to fill (or the lack of orders depending on the day), make some prints (this is next to impossible), make dinner, do some half inspired craft with my son and fold some laundry. And then at night I'm filling the orders I can't fill during the day, returning emails, doing some framing, figuring out what the hell my kids will be for Halloween, paying some bills and recovering from the tantrum I had in response to my son's tantrum du jour.

Things that don't get done: No time for the gym. No time for the super market. No time to finish the drawing I started two weeks ago. And no time to blog. Sorry peeps. Nada tiempo.

And somehow I used to do this. Although working full time gives you a little flexibility. When someone else picks up the kids you can, get this, GO TO THE SUPERMARKET. You can also go to the bank. You can even get your eyebrows waxed, in case your daughter got her Frida looks from you. And you can do it all in half an hour. And don't think I haven't done all of these things with kids in tow. Even the eyebrows. They sit on the end of the bed and wonder why the little Vietnamese lady is torturing mommy. But it takes four times as long and by the end someone is crying and it's usually me.

So today, since my son had his five year well-child check up and by the time I got him to school it would have been silly for me to drive to work only to leave an hour later, I went to the post office instead to ship a consignment order I've been sitting on for three weeks. Then I went to two supermarkets. Then I deleted 200 emails. And put away some laundry. BANNER MORNING. And the afternoon went equally well. Baby was down in ten minutes. Son and I played several hands of Go Fish which I won. Then we made a collage. The house was clean and the laundry away so my son received my undivided attention. Then I taught him that if he could figure out how to hold his cards facing him instead of facing up on the carpet he might not lose every time which he did and then we tied. Baby woke up. Met a friend at the park. Came home and made dinner. And by the time darling husband arrived I was able to greet him looking like this minus the flowing hair (my hair is short):

Namaste. Incidentally, this beautiful card arrived a few days ago with two other cards from a wonderful artist named Lori Portka. She just exudes joy and hope, which shines through in her work, right? (and her blog - check that out too).

We'll see what tomorrow holds when I head back for my second week of work. The fridge is full so I have that in my favor. My daughter has a runny nose and we appear to have ants. Two strikes against. It's anybody's game.

Halloween 2009

I have never been a fan of Halloween. I think I've probably mentioned this before. I don't like being in costume unless I'm in a play and it's a really kick ass costume that some professional made for me. I don't like being scared. I don't like horror movies. I don't even like commercials for horror movies. I once had nightmares for about a month when I heard about the Blair Witch Project. I never even saw it. I just heard about it. And in Judaism there's another holiday where you dress up, Purim, and I hate that one too. And I'm convinced there are two kinds of people in this world - the kind who love Halloween/Purim and the ind who hate it. My theory stops there pretty much since I do have friends who are in the love category. We've just come to accept each other.

The holiday has become a little less annoying now that I have kids and get to dress them up. But the lead up to Halloween is stressful. My son went back and forth ten times between wanting to be a broiler and wanting to be a shark. He went as a shark in the end and was quite happy with his costume which my husband sewed for him yesterday. And my daughter. Well even though no one knew who she was except our neighbor Claudia, she looked positively AMAZING as the incomparable Frida Kahlo. The likeness is uncanny. With a little help from an eyebrow pencil...

And where it used to be that the only redeeming quality about Halloween was the candy, it is now that the thing that bugs me the most. True, I could give out pencils or glow bracelets or fruit. But I don't. I give out candy. And I give it to the pre-diabetic 150 pound third graders too. And then I have to deal with my own kids who want to eat a bag full of it until they throw up. So I gave them each a few pieces and put their bags away. This morning they wanted their bags and, based on some good advice from Courtney and Whitney over at Rookie Moms, I made them each pick five pieces to keep and the rest gets traded in for a toy. I have a stock pile of small toys in the attic for precisely this kind of bartering.

And now the Halloween 2009 round up.