Chicken And Cheese

Poop & Jelly Beans

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:44:47 +0000

If I told you what I was doing this evening between the hours of 6 and 7 in the p.m., you wouldn’t believe me.

Or maybe, if you’re a parent, you would.

I had an unexpected day off from my daily writing job, and so I thought The Babyman and I would have a leisurely day of playing and cleaning.

Instead everything went wrong that could, right down to the moment when my husband called to say he was running errands after work and not to bother with dinner.

At last! I thought. Relief from my most dreaded chore was sure to change the course of the day!

Sadly, I was mistaken. By the time I finally wrestled two nude and wiggly kids into the bath, I was done in. Ready for bed, but with hundreds of words still ahead of me. Deadlines are piling up as I push myself to write as much as possible just in case the threatened strike at my husband’s workplace goes through.

Still, I sighed with relief until my daughter called from the bathroom:

Mom! Babyman’s poopin’!

I rushed into the master bath (no, I don’t sit with them, but I sit on my bed 5 feet away, DON’T JUDGE) and checked. No poop.

Or at least I didn’t see any poop, until the second time she called for me.

I can deal with a lot of grossitude, people. Vomit on me, piss on me, drool on me … I can take it. But shit in the tub makes me loose my … well, my shit.

I hustled them out of the tub while fretting about e.coli and got the boy in bed. I gagged while I cleaned the tub and The Poo took a huge shit on the toilet next to me.

Poop poop and more poop. Gag gag and more gagging.

Finally, I got all the toys out and hauled them downstairs to find my husband had arrived home with—literally—2.5 pounds of jelly beans.

This is a man whose taste for jelly beans rivals that of Ronald Regan. Every six months or so, he replenishes his stash at the mall candy store. I watched as he took the two bags of beans and combined them in one Zip-loc bag.

Then, in slow motion, I watched as he turned the bag upside down to achieve the proper mix of colors and flavors for his jelly bean jar … and 1 million jelly beans spilled on to the kitchen floor.

We started at each other for a minute, and I burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny,” Mr. C groused. He looked crestfallen: His jelly beans! All over the floor!

I shooed him upstairs and got down on my hands and knees to rescue the beans from every corner of the kitchen. I dusted them off and put them, one by one, in a green hobnail bowl.

As I sat on my kitchen floor in my PJs, hands freshly washed clean of my son’s shit and now cupping scads of jelly beans, I thought about how my mother told me there would be days like this, and how I didn’t believe her.

The moral of the story? There’s three, actually: One, when your kid says her brother pooped in the tub, believe her the first time. Two, there is such a thing as too many jelly beans.

And three? You know someone really loves you when they clean your shit out of a bathtub and pick up all your jelly beans off the kitchen floor on their hands and knees.

Maybe We’re Doing Something Right

Mrs. Chicken — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:16:22 +0000

We went to our favorite soda fountain this weekend, the one that fits in with my fantasy of what life in a small Midwestern town should be like.

The tin ceiling and gleaming mirrors behind the long marble counter are straight out of set design. The two women who own the shop bustle about delivering meals and smiles on a round platter.

They make all their own ice cream and candy, and that was enough of a promise to quell the momentary rise of rebellion when I announced that we’d be taking a drive to the outlet mall to get The Babyman some new shoes.The restaurant is just a mile or two from the ugly red buildings housing the Jockey outlet store, an Old Navy and the only Stride Rite for 100 miles.

After we ordered The Poo was restless. She was hungry for lunch, she whined for ice cream before her grilled cheese. She pulled on her father’s elbow and looked up at him.

“Dad?” she said.

“Yes,” replied Mr. C, exasperated.

“What’s the secret to the world?” she asked.

We glanced at each other over her head, amused. “What do you think it is?” my husband countered.

The girl muttered something and her father asked her to speak up. She cleared her throat and spoke louder this time.

“I think it is loving each other, saying please and thank you, and picking up litter,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair, awaiting our judgment.

My husband looked away quickly, but before he did I saw the quick tears spring to his eyes. He swallowed hard and stared straight ahead, a fist pressed to his mouth.

Just then, The Babyman reached for me and pulled my face to his, offering for the very first time a kiss. He pressed his lips to mine and I looked at him and laughed, delighted and surprised. My husband looked at us and rubbed at his wet eyes.

This was a hard week for him. Or rather, this has been a hard three years for him. He often feels pulled this way and that, torn between working day and night to finish his degree so we can move on and taking the time to spend with our children and me.

He is struggling. He feels lost.

In that moment, though, I saw my girl shine like a beacon for us both. Her innocent words, delivered with the utmost sincerity, are lessons we try so hard to teach her.

Love each other above all, we tell her. We have to love; we share what we have with others, no matter how humble our gifts, to show our gratitude for the love that is bestowed upon us.

We pay it forward, we open our hearts. It isn’t always easy or comfortable to do that, but we do our very best.

Saturday in a crowded soda fountain in the middle of nowhere, we got a glimpse of our daughter’s heart, and it was the most beautiful sight we’d ever laid eyes on.

NaBloWriMoGoEffYourself

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:28:34 +0000

There once was a time when blogging every day during the month of November filled me the kind of glee and anticipation that children begin to feel on Thanksgiving, when Santa floats down a wide Manhattan boulevard signaling the Christmas season.

Today, the idea of blogging every day during the month of November makes me feel like sticking a flaming hot poker up my own ass.

I will not be participating this year, if you didn’t get the hint in the prior sentence. I do, however, feel like this space is sorely neglected these days, what with the BIG BIG project taking off and my paid gig ramping up. I miss having time to craft essays about my darlings, and I also missing cursing.

Cursing, sadly, is frowned upon in professional writing circles. But not here! Watch:

Motherfuckerdonkeydicksucksassbitemeasskissmyassyoustinkycocksuckingbastard!

Heh. That felt good.

Instead of lashing myself with 30 days of dumb-ass posts like this one, this one or this one, I will instead make an effort to write something worth reading here at least three times a week. And I promise, no more of the I-slapped-up-a-photo-to-meet-my-ad-contract-obligations-hey-look-at-my-cute-kids posts. But they ARE cute, aren’t they? I mean, look at this one:

See? SO. FUCKING. CUTE.

I may be using writing prompts, because YOU try to come up with something creative and witty after spending three hours writing about things like “Weird Kid Sets Fire to Something” or “Naughty Grownup Does Some Whacked-Out Shit to Some Kids.”

To sum up: I’ll be writing more often, and I’ll be trying to meet a goal of three posts a week that aren’t photos, but if I can’t do it I’m not going to self-flagellate.

Now move along, nothing else to see here today.

My Three Loves

Mrs. Chicken — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:16:10 +0000

Mrs. Chicken Loves Her Some Mamma

New Eyes

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:40:53 +0000

She is slight, with curly blond hair and a wide smile. She is soft-spoken and modest and has the air of a girl sheltered from the ugliness of the world.

I show her into the family room. I am embarrassed by the stains on the carpet and damp with perspiration from a frantic, last-minute attempt to tidy up before she arrives.

“Wow,” she says, turning her head slowly this way and that. “You have such a nice house! It is so big!”

I’m taken aback; I mumble my thanks and bid her sit down on the couch, wincing as she pulls a toy out from underneath her. She holds it in her hands, bones as delicate as a bird, and smiles at me.

“You are so organized!” she exclaims. “I would never know that two kids live here.”

I look around the room, puzzled by what she sees. What does she see that I don’t?

***

The streets around our home are lined with overgrown trees. Their trunks are gnarled and bent, and they look irritable, like the elderly men who shuffle out their front doors clad in slippers to fetch the mail.

When we looked for a house during a hectic three-day trip to the Midwest, I winced at the low-slung ranch homes with gravel driveways. The streets, without sidewalks, looked so ugly in comparison to the wide boulevards through which I pushed my daughter in her stroller.

Four autumns later, I walk the same streets that once made me flinch, homesick before I ever left home. My second child, a son, turns his face to catch the breeze on his tongue. My phone is tucked in my pocket, a strange reminder of a new life that requires me to be available at a moment’s notice for a far-away voice in New York City.

We walk, The Babyman and I, when he is restless. The bump-bump-bump of the wheels on the rutted road soothe us both. A man in a faded ballcap waves at us, smiling at the small boy with the blue, blue eyes.

“G’mornin!” he shouts. “Nice day for a walk!”

We smile back, my boy and I, as we take a left down Easy Street. The houses are humble and well-worn, some loved and some neglected. On the corner of Easy Street and Rainbow View, a jaunty white jeep pulls into a driveway.

The screen door creaks open and I catch a glimpse of an elderly woman, her body heavy with age, in a bright pink sweatsuit. She waits patiently as a young woman pulls a covered tray of food from the car.

Tears prick at the back of my eyes as I reach down to adjust the stroller’s canopy. “Babyman,” I murmur. “Mama loves her babyman.”

***

It’s been years since my vision was so clear. I see now, with 20/20 hindsight, how I let the past five years slip through my fingers. I mourned—deeply, legitimately—the death of my father. But the years that followed that first, terrible one are lost to me forever.

Months and days when beauty existed in the world. Months and days when my blessings mounted into great, shining hills and I turned my eyes from the riches. Months and days when my children were tender babies.

I struggled with the decsion—nay, the admission—that depression had mangled my personality to the point where I no longer recognized the woman in the mirror. Her eyes were so angry, so dead. She woke up angry and went to bed with sadness in her heart.

Morning, though it comes early, is welcome. Morning is when my children greet me with flushed cheeks and sleepy eyes. Morning is when I hold them close to my heart and breathe them in. I am in love, fully and completely and with abandon.

***

I wonder about the woman in the pink sweatsuit, the one on the corner of Easy Street. I think about the home of my youth, with its gleaming oak floors and bookcases filled with hard-back novels. I think of the journey from there to here and I hope against hope that when I am that woman, that woman in the pink sweatsuit, that I can look back over my years without regret.

In the distance I hear a siren and watch as an ambulance passes one street over. I cross myself, furtively, and whisper a prayer:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …

I think of my father, speeding through dark streets to meet his final dawn.

We get home, The Babyman and I, and walk to the front porch with sunshine in our eyes. I hold his hand and help him navigate the cement steps to the door, his gleaming, upturned face so open and fearless.

His eyes lock with mine, the love so strong that I almost have to look away.

I don’t.

Instead, I usher him in the front door and drop to my knees. I hold him close to my body and feel my heart open, fully, painfully … finally.

I Know How They Feel

Mrs. Chicken — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:53:53 +0000

I’m Not Sure Who To Feel Sorry For In This Scenario

Fiercely

Mrs. Chicken — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:40:11 +0000

I’m tired, so tired. But she looks at me, crazy quilt pulled up to her chin.

Just one song? Stay for one song, Mama.

I see myself in the kitchen, standing at the laptop, pounding out 300 words of drivel as she twirls around me.

Read to me, Mama?

No.

Sing with me, Mama?

No.

Can we make brownies, Mama?

No.

I’m busy.

I hate that word, Mama.

What word?

Busy.

I see her there in her bed, and I know when she wakes in the morning she will be different. That this moment will be lost. That it cannot be retrieved.

My ambitions are eating me up—my time, my attention, my focus is on the world outside my kitchen window. I peer into the computer screen and see my hopes and dreams there. I see a future made of words and phone calls and successes.

I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want them to remember me tethered to a keyboard. I don’t want them to gently mock me, when they are grown, for being too busy to play with them.

So I get into her bed.

I melt into her, my body relaxing around hers. When did she get so tall? I wasn’t looking. She asks me to rub her head, and so I do.

She sighs, turns her face to mine and fits it underneath my chin. I love you, Mama. Stay with me, Mama.

I miss her. I miss her so much when she is at school. She is the last thought in my head when I finally fall asleep. After all the noise of the day, all of the editors and the business meetings and the legal documents and the contracts.

They fall away, and she is what remains, and she is what I hold into, fiercely.

Little Drummer Boy

Mrs. Chicken — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:50:07 +0000

No related posts. No related posts.

Teeter-Totter

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:00:36 +0000

Tuesday found me in my pajamas at noon—face unwashed, teeth unbrushed, I read an email cross-legged on my unmade bed while The Babyman pulled jewelry and discarded price tags off my bureau.

Why not try to call the guy?

I chewed a finger, looked at the laundry on the floor. The guy in question was a famous clothing designer who said a not-very-nice thing about mothers.

OK.

An hour later, I was on the phone with a hoity-toity high-end fashion house, leaving messages and laughing at the back of my throat even as I said the words.

Ah, if he could call me back, that would be great.

It was 1 p.m. It was time for The Babyman’s nap. I hung up the phone and the boy pointed at the handset in my palm.

“Hello?” he said, eyes bright and hopeful. “Hello? Hello?”

He held out one small hand, beseechingly.

Instead I made him a bottle and carried him to his crib. I placed him in a nest of slightly sour-smelling blankets, the corner of his two most beloved blankies crusty. He chews on them when he falls asleep.

I kissed him, brushed his newly shorn locks from his forehead. The whole day was gone; when he woke, it would be time to fetch his big sister from school and the machinery of dinner and bath time would take over. As I watched him look up at me, I mourned the day we didn’t spend together.

***

Working from home isn’t easy. Minds and wits sharper than my own debate the issue, so I won’t presume to make A Statement about WOHMs, WAHMs or SAHMs.

But what I will say is that, for me, there is no other option. Working writers like me don’t make a lot of money. To practice my trade full-time, at a newspaper, would be just plain silly, financially speaking. My paycheck (and that presumes I could even find such a job) would barely cover daycare costs.

I will also say that I am quite happy, indeed, with the work I am doing right now. It is fun, engaging and, at last, well-paying. My efforts net me a solid chunk of change, money that our family needs.

But then there are days like Tuesday, when I’m late right out of the gate. I woke up late, despite my best intentions. I was late getting The Poo’s lunch together, late getting her ready for school, late getting her out the door.

I was distracted by work emails when I should have been feeding The Babyman. Instead, I set him loose in the family room with a frozen waffle and some OJ.

Laundry moldered in the machine and dirty clothes were strewn all over the house. The floor was sticky. I didn’t get a shower.

And I worked my ass off, writing four stories, several of them updating two or three times in the 20 minutes it took me to write the original drafts.

At one point, I was making phone calls and The Babyman pulled the Forbidden Box of Crayons™ off the kitchen table, where I put it after hastily instructing The Poo to write in her school journal earlier in the morning.

I looked on helplessly, mouth spewing out my name, phone number and affiliation, as the child dumped crayons on the floor. He followed that up with a spray of colored pencils. Gleefully, he scribbled on a board book, knowing that I was busy doing something else and that I wasn’t going to stop him.

***

I knew I wanted to write for a living, and I knew I wanted to do it on my own terms. I don’t like having a boss. I don’t like offices and pant suits, though I do love a nice pair of high-heeled boots.

I knew I wanted to raise my children at home. I knew I wanted to make messes with them, read books on rainy afternoons, bake cookies just because. I wanted to be with them as they were formed, as my mother was with me.

I wanted that, for them—but mostly for me. Their sweet babyness breaks my heart every day, the fleeting moments of their childhood so precious to me that, if pressed, I would give up most anything to have the privilege of being a stay-at-home mom.

But now that I am a work-at-home mom, I find myself losing track of the rainy afternoons, or spending those hours writing while standing up at the kitchen counter, throwing The Babyman a smile, murmuring at The Poo while she spins fanciful tales I only half-hear.

Some days I feel like I’m on a teeter-totter all by myself, frantically sliding from one side to the other to keep the contraption going up and down, up and down.

Some days, like Tuesday, I wonder just how I got here, and exactly where I think I’m going.

My Favorite Season

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:00:34 +0000

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