ad hoc MOM

Sep22And Out of The Ashes Will Rise A Clean Towel?
Paula

There are about 100 things that I would rather be doing than finishing my taxes. I’d rather be on a flight to Tahiti for one. But if running off to a South Pacific Paradise isn’t reasonable, I’d settle for a colonoscopy or even a root canal. The drugs! Quicken has made it clear we are not to be friends. We’ve spent many late nights together, and Quicken is determined to make these next few days tough for me. I realized if I was to survive the next week in tact, I was going to have to ease up on a few things. My daughter would be aloud to watch 9 billion hours a day of the “Fresh Beat Band”. No harm there, other than my guilt of course. What mom hasn’t been there and done that? Take out was a given. But then there was the issue of housekeeping. Now I have never been one to brag about my housekeeping. I’d give myself maybe a B-. There is no visible mold growing anywhere (okay, maybe in the fridge), the dust bunnies are dealt with somewhat regularly, and I do try to keep a handle on the clutter. I don’t wash my floors enough, but if your kid ate a goldfish cracker off of it I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t end up in the ER with a freakish disease. You get it, we’re not perfect, but we’re not going to be locked up by the department of health. We have a kid, our place gets destroyed on a daily basis, but we put it back together. But I have found that since Quicken and the beast that is tax year 2009 (um, yes, I did file for an extension) has been kicking my ass, I just can’t find the energy to keep putting it all back together. Normally just the site of a stray Lego is enough to send my mind wandering. I have to stop whatever it is I’m doing to PICK UP THE MESS. How can one be expected to concentrate when Elmo is lying prostrate across your living room? But time is ticking, and I have to ignore the toys, the crumbs, the sippy cups and the pile of laundry, or I will be completely derailed. I know it’s there – it’s like I can feel the squished cereal bar calling to me from the other side of the room. I AM STICKY. COME GET ME. But life is full of annoying tasks, messes can wait, and surely we’ll survive one more day without clean towels right?

Just the thought of Legos such as these lying around is enough to drive me completely mad.

Filed Under: Cleanliness, Motherhood: The Job, Worries
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4 Comments

 
Sep9Are the Snacks Always Greener on the Other Side?
Paula

I’m getting over something.  I thought it was a cold, but it morphed into something much more evil, so I’ve been on the couch for the last two days.  This meant that my husband did the first day of pre-school, and I sent him off with our daughter and instructed him to come back with a detailed report.  I wanted to know EVERYTHING.  What was the teacher like?  What exactly is “circle time?”  Is she the cutest one there?  And if she wasn’t he was instructed TO LIE.  June has been going to daycare part-time since she was eighteen months old, so I was feeling confident (read cocky) that she would jump in and do just fine on her first day.  I figured she walk in, introduce herself to everyone and immediately stake out her favorite toy.  But I also made the mistake of assuming she would know how to act like a human being by now – or the two year old version of a human at the very least.  The report came back like this:  All went great. . . until snack time, because apparently it was a mistake for me to pack her all time favorite snack in the world, “veggie bootie” which I only bust out for extreme circumstances such as plane trips, long subway rides and THE FIRST DAY AT A NEW SCHOOL.  Upon seeing that a classmate had a “miniature bagel with cream cheese” June immediately demanded that the child hand over her snack.  This kid wasn’t having it (smart girl) and June went CRAZY.  Never mind that she hates miniature bagels when I buy them.  Never mind that she positively begs me for veggie bootie every time we pass it in the damn grocery store.  She had a snack melt down.  So is this how it’s going to be?  Are the snacks always going to be greener on the other side?  Because that’s certainly how I remember it.  Unless I had a dangerous metal Snack Pack pudding in my lunchbox, everyone else’s lunch looked far superior.  This snack snafu has, oddly enough, made me feel like a mom (can’t do anything right!) – but I’m also glad I remember how it feels to desperately want your neighbors Little Debbie.  Sorry June.  But I suspect the snack is just greener on the other side.

The most coveted snack of my youth. Pudding in a deadly metal container.

Filed Under: Food, Motherhood: The Job
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7 Comments

 
Sep8Do Pre-Schools Have Truant Officers?
Paula

My daughter is about to start pre-school tomorrow.  I’ve been excited/dreading this change all summer.  I’m so glad that my daughter is going to have this opportunity.  She’ll get to do yoga, take art and music classes, and well, learn stuff. Some of her friends are going to the same school which makes it even better (how cute is that?).  And since I basically didn’t meet another child until I set foot in my kindergarten class, and I had never ever heard of a downward facing dog until I was in my mid-twenties, I feel pretty confident that my husband and I are giving our daughter a pretty good start in life.  But here’s the thing, I’ve basically accepted that our chances of getting her there on time are 0%.  Her school requires a bit of travel.  A fifteen-minute walk followed by a bus ride.  I know, I realize there are some people who walk six days on their hands to vote, this isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things, but this is my family we’re talking about.  We couldn’t seem to manage getting her to our local daycare on time just a few blocks away.  Add mass transit into the mix and our mornings are likely to consist of mismatched shoes, forgotten lunches and strings of curse words.  I really don’t want my daughter to be the kid who shoes up at the tail end of the “hello song” every single day.  Nor do I want her to start saying “dammit” – which is bound to happen if I’m running for the bus every morning realizing her lunch is sitting on the kitchen counter.  What do you do in that situation?  Give her ten bucks and tell her to order Chinese?  Change is good.  Change is good with kids, it means milestones – stretching limits, enjoying more together as a family.  But right now, I’m just not convinced that change involving a bus is going to be so good.  We’ll see how it goes.  Please wish us luck.

What do you do if you forget your kids lunch? Give them ten bucks and tell them to order Chinese?

Filed Under: Disorganization, Milestones, Worries
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7 Comments

 
Aug27A Major Hillary Swank Moment
Tonya

You know how Hillary totally forgot to thank her husband in her Academy award speech and then later he was all “wtf?’ and she was all “sorry, oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m the worst human being, like, ever” and then they got a divorce? And also, Chad Lowe probably spent most nights dreaming about whacking his wife in the head with a frying pan and putting arsenic in her drink but he didn’t cuz he’s a nice forgiving dude.

Well, hold on to your pants people, I’ve totally had a Hillary Swank moment! Recently Ad Hoc MOM was covered in Ladies Home Journal online (yay!) BUT they only covered 2 of us, NOT all 3. I have to acknowledge this before Carrie has a wtf? moment and then totally, with all good reason, tries to put arsenic in my ice tea (or maybe because my husband paid her but either way it’s something I want to avoid).

So, here it is: we suck! Ad Hoc MOM wouldn’t be here or awesome without her! I mean take a look at our Ad Hoc CHIC section: It’s totally all Carrie!

In all seriousness people, I was reading our interview when I realized that there was this incredible wrongness about it (I’m a regular Sherlock Holmes) and then it came to me: Holy Crap! Where is Carrie??? Sure she was on leave doing way more important stuff, like giving birth to an amazing, beautiful little boy, but she should have at least gotten a HUGE “THANK YOU!” and a shout out and her picture included and, if we were truly nice people, some beer poured on the ground, am I right?

So, Carrie, I’m sure you’ve noticed but you’re obviously way too gracious to acknowledge the super terrific awesomeness that you contribute to the site, and for all that you do and for being an integral part of this triumvirate, I have to say: I’m so terribly sorry. And also, a HUGE: THANK YOU!!!

Also, next week is “YAY, Carrie is Back, Bitches!” week, meaning all posts will be hers and they will be rockingly hilarious! Like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on a unicorn.

Filed Under: Apologies
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5 Comments

 
Aug24I’m Getting the Word “Wednesday” Tattooed On My Forehead
Paula

I don’t have any tattoos, but I think that’s about to change.  June starts pre-school in just a couple of weeks, and I was super excited that the pre-school gods had smiled upon me and my friends and had blessedly arranged it so all of us were at home with our kids on the same day.  A mom’s group miracle!  Play dates for everyone!  Perhaps a trip or two to a museum!  The possibilities were endless!  Or so I thought.

Maybe Morticia Adams named her daughter “Wednesday” so she would remember what day to pick her up from daycare.

June is going to pre-school in a very part-time fashion, so I’m supplementing with one day of daycare, and some quality mom time too – (I’m still very much an ad hoc MOM), so I carefully mapped out which days she went where on my calendar with different colored ink to avoid any possible confusion.  So imagine my surprise when I got a confirmation email from June’s daycare confirming a completely different day than I had inked out in bright fuchsia ink.  Not only was I sad about play dates lost – but seriously, how could I not know which day my kid goes where?  Am I one step away from being the mom who forgets to pick up their kid at school?  The very next day, my husband asked me what time our flight left for a trip we were taking later this Fall.  I realized I had no idea, so I checked my calendar like any organized super mom.  Nothing but a big fat blank page started back at me.  So it seems I bought some plane tickets, failed to write down the date and time of our trip, didn’t bother to write down any confirmation number, nor did I note which airline we were taking.  I was pretty sure I bought tickets – or did I?  I mean, I don’t know which days I take care of my own kid.  And by the way, what exactly was wrong with ACTUAL PLANE TICKETS?  I can’t help but think receiving a real plane ticket would have saved me a) one near heart attack b) one hour spent trying to convince myself I don’t have super early onset Alzheimer’s and c) another hour digging through credit card statements for proof that I did in fact book our damn trip.

What’s next. . . leaving the house in my underwear?  Picking up the wrong kid at daycare?  Forgetting where I live?  I better get to the tattoo parlor right quick – lest I forget, once again, exactly what it was I needed to do on Wednesday to begin with.

P.S. It’s 8:40 p.m. and my family has just finished a dinner of takeout pizza (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but guess who got to the grocery store, did her shopping, only to discover SHE LEFT HER WALLET AT HOME IN THE DAMN DIAPER BAG?  Yeah, that would be me.  Aces!

Filed Under: Milestones, Motherhood: The Job, Rants
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6 Comments

 
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