The bikini experiment, two years later

Since the bikini experiment of summer 2011, I have only worn bikinis to swim.  Every swimsuit I have bought or worn for two years has been a bikini.  Wearing a bikini has become a few things for me:  A symbol of my continuing commitment to unconditional self-love, a touchstone for my self-image, and my own little revolutionary act.  I want to be a living example that body love, confidence, and beauty don’t have a weight limit.  Be the change and all of that.  I have a “Be the change you wish to see in the world” window cling on my driver-side minivan door as a daily reminder that we are part of making the world we live in.  I wear a bikini because I want women who worry about their bodies to see me, and worry a little bit less.  I want curvy, large-busted, and plus-size women to see that they have options (Fantasie bra-sized bikinis!)  And, more selfishly, I want to make sure I don’t slide back down into blending in and trying to hide. 

I actually thought I was done.  I thought I had climbed the self-love mountain.  I thought I had arrived somewhere.  Turns out, there’s more to this journey. 

Here’s what happened.  My kids were invited to a swim party. 

To set the scene for this story, let me tell you a little bit about the area where I live.  It’s in suburban Maryland, one of the best school districts in the country, and typically listed as the top 10 “affluent” places to live.  We chose our house because we fell in love with the openness of it and the schools were amazing.  Our immediate neighborhood is racially diverse, which was important to me, and the houses were all built at different times by different builders, carved with restraint out of the woods a plot at a time without strip-mining the place to build a development.  I saw that our income and home price fell well below the median for our school district, and my thought was, “Awesome.  Let their property taxes pay for my kids to go to a kick-ass school.” 

And now my kids go to that school.  And the school rocks.  No lie, it’s awesome. And there are some people like me there.  But there are way more people not-like-me.  Diamonds are big.  Countertops are granite.  Hair is blonde and smooth.  Sometimes brown.  Not blue.  People aren’t fat here.  It’s not allowed.  If you’re fat, you run half marathons or go to “boot camps” until you’re not fat anymore.  You post your exercise on facebook using an app on your phone, and eat lots of skinless chicken and salads. 

So into this weird world, my kids were invited to a swim party.

It was their second one actually.  After much deliberation and gnashing of teeth, I wore my bikini under a dress to the first swim party earlier this summer, but no parents swam at that party, so my jiggling, winter-white, abundant self was kept under wraps.  No other parents swam at this last party either.  Except for me. 

We arrived at the pool, and the parents were all standing around, fully dressed.  I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing I wouldn’t have to expose the bikini to them at this party either.  Or expose what the bikini doesn’t cover.  My daughter immediately started begging me to swim with them.  I showed her that none of the mommies were swimming, and encouraged her to go play.  She did.  But she kept asking.  And the only reason I said no was body shame.  Shit.

What would they think?  Would they think that I thought I looked good?  Would they gossip about me later? 

(I do know that no, of course they wouldn’t gossip about me later.  I know with my brain that this isn’t about them at all.  This is my stuff.  Social anxiety is such a narcissistic asshole.)

Anyway, a bunch of the kids moved to an indoor heated pool, one with a fairly steep drop-off with water over my kids’ heads.  My daughter can swim.  My son can’t really.  Both begged me to come in with them. 

So I did. 

I took off my skirt and seriously considered leaving my tank top on.  But I didn’t.  I took it off and I swam with my kids, while all of the other moms stood around fully dressed with their coiffed ponytails.  When I put my hair in a ponytail, it doesn’t look like that.  I think maybe you have to blow dry or hot roller your hair first to have it look like that in a ponytail, and if you’re going to go to all that trouble, why wouldn’t you just wear it down?  It’s all a mystery to me.  But my kids asked me to swim with them, and my son kind of needed me to swim with them.  So I swam.  In a black bikini.  At 220 pounds.  My son practiced his back float.  My daughter practiced her freestyle side breathing, backstroke, and flip turns. 

I didn’t die.

Not too long after, they moved the party inside to a party room.  I put on my clothes, gratefully, even though my wet bathing suit left two wet spots under my boobs and I couldn’t sit down for fear of also having a wet ass.  I said something to two of the moms about the bikini thing.  I explained about the blog and how I am a body-love advocate.  I explained because, if they gossiped about me later, I wanted at least a couple of people to be able to explain why on earth I was wearing a bikini.  At my size.  One mom nodded politely.  Kill me.  The other mom looked thoughtful and gave me a smile and a high five.  Gratitude.

Be the change be the change be the change.  Fuck.  It’s so hard sometimes.

I’ve gotten to the top of one mountain.  I look in the mirror and I’m happy most of the time.  I wear bikinis.  I am the change inside myself.  I love my body.  I think I’m beautiful. 

But there’s a new mountain.  One made of class distinction and baggage from high school and fear that a weird mom with blue hair who wears bikinis at 220 pounds will somehow stigmatize or marginalize my kids.  The change I wish for is happening in the world too, but slowly.  For that change to come, people like me need to stand up and be seen.  Even when it's hard.  Especially when it's hard. That thoughtful high five, that's the change.  I stand for something, something I believe in very deeply.  I hope that one day, that will be a good thing in my kids’ lives.  I hope that I am one voice among many working to change the world they will inherit.  I accept that one day, probably sooner than I can imagine, they will want me to blend in.

I hope I don’t cave.

From takeout to truffle oil

Lately, I have been feeling that my cooking efforts have become a little bit crazy.  In some ways, I am extremely proud of the fact that I cook.  When we moved to Maryland from the San Francisco bay area, I had no clue how dinner was supposed to happen.  In California, meal planning looked like this: 

“Thai?  Sushi?  Indian?  The kebab place?”

“We’ve been getting takeout a lot.  Maybe we should cook tonight.”

“OK, frozen pizza or omelets?”

And, scene.

We moved to Maryland, where takeout was less abundant, less delicious, farther away, and cost an arm and a leg, and I was taken completely by surprise by the reality that we had to cook.  Like, cook food.  Every single day.  How was that supposed to happen?  It was a complete mystery.

Pre-kids, every few months, hubs and I would take a cursory look at our expenses, and have the “Wow, we really spend too much on takeout” conversation.  We would make lists of meals that we knew how to cook, and promise each other that we would cook twice a week.  Just twice a week!  Every few months we had that talk, because that twice a week vow generally lasted approximately… yeah, about a week.

We were both working full time then, so I cut myself a lot of slack. But when the kids arrived and I became a stay-at-home mom, I transformed magically into Susie Homemaker. 

Not. 

If anything, it was worse.  The convenience store at the gas station around the corner sold us an awful lot of fried chicken.  The pizza guy accurately predicted our order in a bored tone when he heard my husband’s voice over the phone.  Thank goodness for breastfeeding twins is all I can say, or I would have gained 50 pounds in that first year.

But our income had been cut substantially, and those pesky child-people are expensive, so (horrific lack of nutrition aside) takeout really wasn't a viable option in the long term.  Once the kids hit a year old, things started to change.  They went from two naps to one, and that one nap was 2-3 hours long.  I had time to cook if I could do it in advance.  I would chop and prep things for fast meals like stir fry.  I got a casserole cookbook, and did turn a little bit into the scary version of Susie Homemaker for a while there.  See, here’s the awesome thing about casseroles.  You can make three of them, cook one and freeze two so that some other night when you’re feeling lazy, you have an instant meal.  We got a big freezer in the garage that I still count among one of the best investment purchases I have ever made.  I also used my crock pot A LOT.  Put stuff in as soon as the kids go down to nap, and by 5:30, you have dinner.

But casseroles and crock pot food… I mean, it’s OK.  I still make a few recipes from that time, especially in the winter when stews and braises taste so good.  But remember the girl who liked Indian and Thai and actual food?  Yeah, I missed that stuff.  I really, really missed delicious food, and we couldn’t afford to go out and have that very often.  So I started getting fancy.

Shaved asparagus flatbread.  Beef Wellington with mushrooms and gorgonzola.  I started exploring making my own Indian food, buying stuff like garam masala and green cardamom pods, and making naan from scratch.  I read food blogs and the food magazines I get from my mother-in-law.  And then came Pinterest, a treasure trove of food inspiration.  I resumed my fabulous dinner parties with my foodie friend Cheryl, for which the two of us would cook like fiends and then present a feast to friends and family lucky enough to get a “golden ticket.” I reverse engineered the crème brulee with ganache I had had at an upscale restaurant (and mine is better, just for the record).  I discovered the magic of things like vanilla beans and truffle oil.  

I started thinking like a cook, not wanting to waste food.  I froze veggie ends and chicken bones to make my own broth.  I used leftover chicken to make chicken pot pie with pie crust made from scratch.  Prompted by my son, I bought the most fabulous apron.

Me in my fabulous apron, with my silicone
rolling pin, even though I use the non-stick
one more often.  But the red looked cuter.

Now I meal plan every week, like a real live grown up.  I write down what we’ll have each week and shop accordingly.  But if awesome ingredients like fresh shiitake mushrooms are on sale, I can mix it up on the fly.  I buy meat on sale, freeze it, and work it into the plan for the upcoming weeks.  I am kicking ass at this cooking every night thing.  Kicking total ass.

So back to the initial sentence of this blog.  Why do I think this is crazy? 

Well, here’s why.  The other day I made a chicken pot pie because I had some leftover chicken that I had pulled into pieces and put in the freezer for later use.  Because I am a frugal non-food-wasting MACHINE!  Sometimes I do a fun curry-spiced chicken pot pie with cauliflower, but it was rainy and icky out, so I went with comfort food classic.  Carrots.  Peas.  Corn.  Crust from scratch.  Thick delicious sauce made with the frozen broth I made from scratch the week before.  Fresh organic herbs from my garden, which I braved the rain in my PJs to cut. 

And then I realized.  I simmered chicken bones and veggie ends all day long, strained the resulting broth, poured it into one-cup servings and froze it that way.  I used a food processor and a rolling pin to make crust, starting hours before dinner so the butter in the crust would have time to get cold again in the fridge, which is what makes the flaky goodness.  I generated a sink full of dishes and spent a lot of time cooking, and you know what this is going to taste like?  It’s going to taste like pot pie.  Not for nothing, but Marie Callender makes a pretty darn good frozen chicken pot pie.  Mine is healthier, and yes, mine does taste better.  But… better enough?  I mean, come on.  A rolling pin?  Broth from scratch?  For chicken pot pie?  It’s all starting to feel a little ridiculous.  At what point would I have been better served using that time for something else and just throwing a frozen pot pie in the oven?

I think this same thing every time I make my foodie version of tuna noodle casserole, for which I make my own mushroom soup with an assortment of wild mushrooms.  As I dirty dish after dish just on the soup phase, I start thinking, “Is Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup really that bad?”  (But then when I eat this casserole, I remember why I go to the trouble.  It makes my mouth so very, very happy.)

I come by my food snobbery honestly.  My mom didn’t believe in cakes from a box.  Only from scratch.  Usually with egg whites folded gently into something at some point.  In fact, she wouldn't even EAT cake from a box.  I grew up having what I now think of as real brownies.  Box brownies still taste weird to me.  I do sometimes make cakes from a box, and I’ll make box brownies for the kids (or for my husband, who prefers them over my amazing from-scratch brownies, because he is a weirdo), but it always feels a bit like cheating and not like actual food.  So whether it’s nature or nurture, I got the food thing from my mom.  But at some point, I think I may have crossed over into Bree Van De Kamp crazy land.

Crazy land, exhibit A: That day of the chicken pot pie, I had used a rolling pin and pastry board the last two days in a row. (For the pot pie crust and for Indian vegetarian samosas from scratch the day before.)  Who does that?  Most of my friends don’t even own a rolling pin and pastry board.  This was the girl who couldn’t manage to cook twice a week a few years ago.  I’m proud of the transition that I’ve made, but I’m starting to think I have gone too far. 

Maybe twice a week, hubs and I should commit to eating takeout or a frozen pizza, or at the very least having breakfast for dinner.  OK, that’s it, I’m writing pancakes and bacon on the meal plan list for next week.  And spaghetti.  Ordinary spaghetti with Prego sauce from a jar, because my kids requested it. 

I won’t even doctor the Prego with fresh basil from my garden.

OK… yes, I probably will. Shut up.

The Blitz

Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you can go to bed with dishes in the sink, and toys all over the house. Maybe you can relax with a glass of wine on the couch even though every surface in your visual field is covered in Cars the Movie cars and Polly Pocket Disney Princesses.

If so, you’re lucky. I wish I could. But no. Call it sub-clinical OCD or sensory processing disorder, call it what you like, but I can’t sit down and watch True Blood until there is some semblance of order imposed on the chaos. I can’t relax when there is just STUFF everywhere. So most nights, I do a tidying blitz. Here are some helpful tips if you want to try it:

1) Blitz while the kids are in bed. Sure, I know, we should be teaching them to clean up their own crap. And I do that. During the day, we have teachable moments and whatnot about picking up our toys. But you can’t blitz with “help” from the small ones. They keep pulling things out as you are putting them away. And they’re just IN THE WAY! This is a blitz, people. You need to move fast. No tripping hazards a.k.a. children allowed.

2) Look at the clock when you start. A proper blitz should take about 15 minutes. If it is taking longer, you are not blitzing, you are cleaning. That’s fine. If blitzing sends you into some sort of insanity involving wiping down baseboards or cleaning under the oven, it’s OK. It happens sometimes. But you can’t do that every night or blitzing will seem too daunting. When you’re done, you want it to have felt easy.

3) Do the big stuff first. Train tracks all over your foyer? They all go into the same basket! Easy! Two-hundred foam blocks dumped in the middle of the floor? Quick to pick up but makes a big visual dent in the insanity. It’s like an instant reward to keep you motivated.

4) Don’t try to use just your two hands. You can’t carry enough. You’ll be spending all of your time walking from place to place. For a super quick blitz, I have been known to use my shirt or skirt held up like a hammock to pile toys into. You can cram an awful lot of Mario characters and Cars the Movie cars into a shirt-hammock and then take them all at once to where they belong. But if you would have to make more than two or three shirt-hammock trips, grab a laundry basket. Pile the stuff into it and then take the whole thing into the playroom for sorting.

5) Put the stuff away. As tempting as it is to just leave it all in the laundry basket, don’t. It makes the house look clean. It’s tempting. But the first thing the kids will do in the morning is dump the laundry basket onto the floor. If stuff is put away, you won’t have to blitz the same items again tomorrow unless they actually play with them.

6) No piles. I’m not saying I NEVER wind up with a pile of preschool artwork, but the goal should be to put stuff away (see tip #5), not to relocate the mess. Do you have a place where you put preschool artwork? (And if you don’t, you should.) Either hang it on the wall or fridge, or throw a name and date on the back and put it away. Do you have a place to put bills that need to be paid? (Again, if you don’t, you should.) Put bills and to-do items there. Same with coupons, catalogs, etc. Whatever you find that you tend to form piles of, make a place for it. I found that we always had a pile of shoes by the back door. Now we have a beautiful fair trade African basket there for them, so when I find shoes around the house, I can just throw them into the basket.

7) Make liberal use of the cordless stick vac and hand vac. What’s that you say? You don’t have a cordless stick vac or hand vac? Well, you need them. They are awesome. I have written before about my undying love for my stick vac. I will now add to that my love for my cordless hand vac. We’re not talking about proper vacuuming here. For that, you’re better off with the real thing. But for blitzing, you just want to get rid of the major dust bunnies, dead stink bugs, crushed Cheerios and whatnot. Light, cordless, quick, perfect. Make your house less disgusting without actually cleaning. Stick vac for under the dining room and kitchen tables. Hand vac for corners so you can suck up the cat hair tumbleweeds without having to move stuff. Some stick vacs have a removable hand vac built in. Genius. Some stick vacs work on carpets too. Swoon. Be still my heart, you sexy stick vac, you.

8) Hang a bag by the stairs. I’m lucky. We live in a one-story rancher. I have always liked ranchers because (a) I grew up in one, and (b) I tend to fall down the stairs a lot when I am around stairs. I don’t know why I fall down so much, but I am definitely stair-challenged. Maybe it’s because I am always focusing on 10 things and am perpetually 5 steps ahead of myself, and that doesn’t work so well when I should be focusing on not falling down the stairs. But anyway, most of our stuff lives on one level of our house, and for that my stair-bruised butt and I are very grateful. But for stuff that needs to go into the basement, I can easily put it in the bag at the top of the stairs and then take it all down when I’m done (or not… In my case, the stairs to the basement are behind a closed door, so that stuff just lives there for months until the bag is full or I am cleaning for company.)

9) If you feel tired and annoyed before the 15 minutes are up, it’s OK to stop. A good blitz is energizing. You are a wildly efficient tidying machine! You accomplish in 15 minutes what it takes lesser humans hours to do! After all, the kids don’t care if the house is a mess. Hopefully your partner doesn’t care, or if they do, they had better be blitzing with you. If you’ve read this far, chances are YOU are the one who cares whether or not your house looks like a toy store threw up in it. So if you don’t feel like blitzing, don’t. Your kids will be just as happy and well-adjusted living in squalor. Maybe even happier and better adjusted, if you are more well-rested and relaxed. You’re blitzing for you. If it sucks, you can totally stop.

10) Have a post-blitz plan. Blitzing can easily turn into a martyr-producing hour-long cleaning slog if you don’t have a solid plan in place for what happens when your 15 minutes are up. A bath. A glass of wine with TV. A little treat. Five blessed minutes of silence in a room all by yourself. Whatever helps you to exhale and recharge. You just did something other than sit on the couch while your kids were asleep. That’s a Big Deal! Now take some time for you. You deserve it. And it will feel nice to take that time for yourself in a slightly less disgusting house.

Happy blitzing!!

Memo to my husband

Hi honey,

You may or may not notice that I tidied up today. Not noticing would not reflect poorly on your powers of observation, because the kids have already created enough new clutter to mask my Sisyphean efforts. But I did tidy, so some stuff might not be where you might expect.

I know it’s weird, but Wingo and Snot Rod (the “naughty cars” from Cars the movie) are not under our son’s bed in a monkey bowl. They are in the car basket in the playroom. The baby dolls are not in the laundry basket pretending to nap. They are in the perfectly scaled bed we have for them in which they apparently never sleep. That cubby in the playroom is once more home to all of the Sunny Patch and Wonder Pets stuffed animals rather than serving as an echoing, empty cave for Mario characters.

When in doubt, for today only, if you can’t find something, try looking where it actually belongs. Weird, I know. I would never have looked there either.

Love and kisses,
Your wife

P.S. Your socks, if you need them, are in the hamper.

Clothing, pajamas, or workout-wear? A flow chart

Since becoming a stay-at-home mom, I have found that the distinction between clothing, workout-wear, and pajamas has blurred. And by blurred, I mean that it is pretty much completely gone. Ninety percent of the garments I own are made of stretch knit cotton, with the exception of a few cocktail and formal dresses, some jeans, and a very small number of “business casual” items. I have a few cashmere sweaters and some stretchy poly-Lycra items that I include in the “stretch knit” category. And that’s pretty much it. Most of my clothing is comfortable and breathable enough that it can serve as clothing, workout-wear, or pajamas.

I actually sleep au naturel, so I don’t own true pajamas. I own one Christmas PJ for Christmas morning photos—a pair of Old Navy flannel pants with ornaments on them and a top that says, “I’ve been naughty.” Other than that, on occasions that call for PJs, like late-night TV snuggles with the man, I wear the same garments I wear everywhere else. The same dress I wore out to a posh wine bar on a Saturday night will probably become the pajamas that I lounge around in all day on Sunday.

So how do you know? If you come to my door at, say, 2pm on a Sunday, how can you tell if I am dressed or still in my PJs? (Hint, if you come to my door without warning at 2pm on a Sunday and I am home, I am probably in my PJs.)

For all other times of the week, here is a helpful flow chart:


So basically if I am wearing a bra OR shoes OR jewelry OR any non-stretchy item, I consider myself dressed and good to go! Yoga pants and a tank top, no bra, but wearing shoes. Dressed! Yoga pants, tank top, no bra, barefoot, fabulous earrings? Totally effing dressed! Only when I have cast off the shackles of bra, shoes, jewelry, and all items of a non-stretchy nature do we call it PJs. And only when I am in a bra with no rings do we call it workout wear (because since the weight loss, when I sweat, my rings slip off).

If I am wearing a bra AND shoes AND jewelry AND something non-stretchy, I’m really trying to impress you. If my hair is styled too, I am pretty much ready for the red carpet.

Sad. So sad. But true.

A taxonomy of toys

Mommy’s least favorite toys

Train tracks. They take up my entire foyer, because to have a satisfying track with lots of bridges and tunnels and forks would only fit on a train table if the train table were the size of my entire foyer. The kids can now mostly reassemble the track when it breaks, but for a long time, they couldn’t. Bonus: When you step on a wooden train track on a tile or hardwood floor in the dark, it slides. And you fall. And you break pieces. The first pieces to break are usually the expensive ones. But the kids play super sweetly together on it, so I don’t put it away. So upon entering my house, the VERY FIRST thing you will probably see is an elaborate wooden train track universe.

Polly Pockets. Can any child young enough to enjoy Polly Pockets actually change Polly’s outfit herself? No? I didn’t think so. I can barely do it without ripping the clothes and swearing a bit. And the tiny tiny shoes. Ugh. But the shoes are the best parts of some of the outfits, so I can’t bring myself to throw them away. Much as I can’t bring myself to get rid of unnecessary shoes in my own closet. I have shoe issues.

Slot cars. These are awesome. For 5 seconds until the car runs off the track and the kid can’t line it back up properly.

Anything requiring cables that hook to your TV set. Not only does Mommy not really know where to hook that stuff, but my kids are in an “I do it myself” stage. No good will come of this.

Megabloks road/ramp toys. Marketed with all of their favorite characters (Dora roller coaster, Thomas the train ramp universe), these are from the devil. They’re not compatible with Legos or Duplos, and they are inferior structurally. Of course, the ramps and roller coasters only work when assembled, and they have to be assembled in very specific ways. There never seem to be quite enough pieces. You need a manual to know how the thing is supposed to go together. Oh, and they fall apart easily. This is a bad combination. Tragically, children love them, so if you buy them, do yourself a favor and memorize the instructions, because you’ll be assembling it over and over.

Pick-up sticks. I got my kids some Disney “game packs” as one of their rewards for filling up their marble jars (our behavior modification system-du-jour). Disney Princess and Cars the Movie. Awesome. The dominoes are fantastic. Much higher quality than I would expect from a <$10 item. It also came with card games (Go Fish, Crazy 8’s, etc.) that I thought would be too advanced for them, but they’re perfect. But pick-up sticks? Really? I can barely play this game. These are basically just annoying plastic detritus that I have to pick up. Hence the name, I guess.

Any toy that makes noise and does not turn itself off.

Any toy that makes noise.

Kids’ least favorite toys

Sock monkeys. They played with these for 5 minutes when they first got them and have not touched them since. But I love sock monkeys, so I have not been able to get rid of them yet.

Any Polly Pocket outfit that is not a princess ball gown. If I’m going to be dressing and undressing that little plastic ho, I want to put her in the 70’s retro bell-bottomed cat suit, or the 60’s mod mini-dress. Come on, look how awesome that is. Oh, it’s not pink, sparkly, and floor length. Right. My bad.

Any toy that I bring to occupy them in restaurants or waiting rooms.

Any similar or even identical toy I offer to help with a toy dispute. That toy, even if identical to the toy being disputed, is wrong in every way.


Kids’ favorite toys

Cars the Movie cars. They’re always a little more expensive than you want them to be, but for $5-6, my son can be made happy beyond compare. I should be dreading the new movie merch, but I’m not. Those little cars bring him so much joy, and at least I won’t be scouring ebay and paying too much for the discontinued cars from the first movie anymore.

Princess Polly Pockets. These are the only ones that get any real play in my house. Save yourself the trouble and just get the Disney Princess pack.

Teeny-tiny Mario characters. Teeny-tiny squinkies. Teeny-tiny Toy Story characters. You get the idea. The smaller, the better. My kids are not quite four, and I have lost about a year of my life searching my house for items that are less than an inch long.

Any toy I have put away to sell at a yard sale or give to my nephew. If found, these will go suddenly and immediately into daily circulation.

A small cord lock that fell off the drawstring on a pair of Daddy’s shorts. A scrap of old dry cleaning receipt with a Tinkerbell sticker on it. Throw away nothing.

Mommy’s favorite toys

Hullabaloo. This is seriously the least annoying kids’ game ever. Many a Candyland request has been circumvented by suggesting we play Hullabaloo instead.

Aquadoodle and magnadoodle. Art without mess=happy mommy.

Matchbox car environments. The princess palace that folds down from full-sized play house to small suitcase. Pretty much any large pleasing toy that folds small enough to fit in the 15X15” Ikea Expedit shelf system cubbies.

Sock monkeys. I know. There’s something wrong with me. Why do I love sock monkeys so much? I don’t know.

A math mystery

Those who are coming here in hopes of an actual math problem, you can go. There will be no Taylor series, no integrals, no eigenvectors. I will probably throw a few math words in because I’m nerdy like that, but I may or may not be using them correctly after all these years. So, no real math. I’m talking about parent math here. And I have a mystery on my hands.

It happened the last time John went away. The house got cleaner. Let’s say that p equals one parent working his/her butt off. So when we are both here, we are 2p. 2p equals 1 house that looks like a tornado deposited all belongings completely at random. Actually 2p + 2k = tornado house, where k = cherubic three-year-old demolition expert. OK, this is getting too mathy. I’m losing 74% of my audience. I feel it. (95% confidence interval .62-.86) OK, OK! No more math, I promise. Come on, don’t go, you guys. I’ll stop.

OK, here it is in words. Last time John went away, the house got cleaner. I thought it was a fluke, but he has been gone less than 24 hours (at time of writing), and the house is cleaner again. Getting cleaner by the hour. WTF?? We took away one parent working his butt off, kept the two cherubic destructors, and somehow more is getting done. It’s not a fluke. It’s twice. It’s a pattern. Here are some theories:

Less TV. Because hubs is not here, I am watching less TV and using that time to clean. This is a totally plausible theory. But it’s also WRONG. I did watch less TV, but I spent the evening talking on the phone with friends, drinking wine, and reading. Not (scoff) cleaning. I did my usual 20-30 minute blitz before bed, but no more.

More activities. We’re home less when he’s gone because I try to fill the days to keep myself from losing the rest of my mind. Maybe. But I would think that any tidiness advantage conferred by the 90 minutes we spent strawberry picking at the farm yesterday morning would have been more than counterbalanced by having two extra three-year-olds come over for a mini play date afterwards.

I spend more time than I realize cleaning up after the man. He won’t like this theory. I don’t really believe this is true, but I am including it for the sake of completeness. Do I clean up after him? Sure, sometimes. A dish here, an empty beer bottle there. But mostly what I consider cleaning up after him is cleaning up after his caring for the kids. I put away the pancake-nuking plate he leaves in the microwave. I put away the (slightly thawed) box of frozen pancakes left on the counter. I wash the pan and spatula he left on the stove after making their eggs. But when I’m here alone, I still have to clean up those things, and I also have to make the pancakes and the eggs, so that can’t really account for this whole effect. It might contribute slightly.

No dance classes. This is potentially a biggie. On a regular basis, I am running out the door immediately following dinner to a dance or exercise class. Without the man here to make sure the kiddos don’t set the house on fire, my exercise comes to a grinding halt. So between dinner and bedtime, what have I been doing? I feel like I am just alternating between fetching Mario characters for the kids and playing Scrabble on my phone, but probably I am also putting dinner dishes away. And maybe any other crap I come across that is easy to just grab and bring with me to the next room where it belongs. Hmmm, this might be a huge component. The semi-unconscious tidying that happens while waiting for my friends to take their turn in Scrabble.

Meal slacking. Making food for just me is way easier than making food for both of us. I’ll eat random leftovers plus a bowl of strawberries and half a green pepper. Basically, I am eating what the kids are eating, which is easier and healthier than what we usually eat. But I don’t feel like I can throw some scrambled eggs, an apple, and a raw broccoli crown on my husband’s plate and proudly announce, “Dinner!” I kind of wish I could though, because it’s yummy and easy and healthy and it generates very few dishes. I would miss risotto and enchiladas and from-scratch tuna-noodle casserole (the kind where you make your own cream of mushroom soup first—OMG, it is the best thing ever), but I don’t miss the mess generated by the making of those meals.

I am a diva princess. This is the theory I don’t like, and I don’t want to be true, but I fear might be just a teeny tiny bit true. When the man is here, I wait for him to do crap. When he’s not here, I just do it myself. Trash needs emptying. I just empty it. Recycling container under the sink is 3/4 full, I empty it while it’s still easy rather than filling it to overflowing and then resentfully tossing cans and bottles back into the depths of the cabinet because recycle emptying is his job. Maybe when he’s not here, I just sit on my butt less. I don’t want to talk about this theory any more. Moving on.

Bunnies. Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes. What’s with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway? Bunnies. It must be bunnies. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sad for you, but we can still be friends.)

I don’t have any more theories. I think it must be that hour between dinner and bedtime when I am normally shaking my booty in either a Latin way or a Middle Eastern way or a “drop it like it’s hot” way. Hmm, all of my exercise classes involve somehow shaking my butt. Concerning? Or awesome? Not sure. Could my exercise addiction really be the reason my house is usually a mess? That’s crazy. But we’ve taken away one parent working his butt off, and more is getting done. Do the math. Or screw the math, and just watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the movie) from the beginning if you didn’t get the bunnies reference.

How the mighty…

I was never popular or cool or a hipster. I was neither a queen bee nor a wanna-be. I was kind of bee-irrelevant. But looking back on my teens and twenties, I was cool enough that my young self would be completely horrified by some of the things that now completely f-ing make my day. I’m not talking about my kid telling me he loves me in pidgin sign language (point to self, make heart with fingers, point to mommy). Even my edgy(ish) twenty-something self would understand how that would cause my middle-aged heart to melt into a sopping puddle of goo. I’m talking about the truly pathetic things that make me happy. Like these:

My minivan. The doors open and close by magic. I can fold down the seats in the back and have enough space for furniture, boxes upon boxes of yard sale crap, or a week’s worth of groceries. It can fit 4 car seats plus 4 adults. It smells vaguely of sour milk and the carpet is coated in mystery crumbs. Bonus: if we are ever trapped in a blizzard, we could assemble an entire carton of slightly dessicated but probably still edible McDonald’s French fries from beneath the seats. I am so in love with my minivan that when I told my sister that minivans are sexy, I was not even being facetious.

Brown rice sushi from the grocery store. Gone are the days of west coast sushi snobbery. To get west coast quality sushi here costs more than I am willing to spend. But my grocery store has brown rice sushi. Brown rice unagi roll. With toasted sesame seeds and “eel sauce.” Bliss.

Speaking of the grocery store, grocery shopping alone. Grocery shopping alone while Daddy watches the kids feels like a trip to a favorite bistro for brunch followed by a calming walk on the beach. I get to choose the perfect apples rather than just throwing the closest ones into my kids’ miniature shopping carts and then watching the carts overturn, bruising all of the apples anyway. I get to peruse meats on sale to stock up the sad empty freezer. I get to sample the pumpernickel bread with fancy imported Irish butter. I often get mildly flirted with by at least one random stranger (or the dude behind the deli counter) when shopping alone, which is a little disturbing given my shopping cart full of multiple gallons of milk, Cheerios, and miniature frozen pancakes. But hey, I’ll take it. P.S. The rumor that we are soon getting a Wegmans in Columbia has me in a gourmet grocery tizzy. It would be tragic how happy this makes me if it weren’t just so exciting.

A new dishwasher. Our dishwasher has been on the fritz for more than a year. It was disgusting. We switched to detergent with bleach in it because there was some sort of mold problem developing in there. Dishes were coming out dirtier than when they went in. You would think I would consider hand-washing instead, but I have OCD an aversion to having dirty dishes in the sink. They have to go straight from table to dishwasher. Finally, this past weekend, we took advantage of the Memorial Day sales to replace that piece of crap (a piece of crap that is only 6-7 years old, by the way. It was new when we moved in. Had 2-star ratings on the Sears website for all of the same reasons I have always hated it.) We now have a brand new 5-star-rated dishwasher. It’s stainless on the inside. Why this brings me so much happiness, I have no idea, but looking at that shiny silver non-moldy interior brings joy to my heart. Also, it doesn’t have hard water stains down the front of it, and it WILL NOT get any, because now we have a water conditioning system for our well water. Best of all, it is nearly silent when running, so it will not force me to turn up the TV while watching The Bachelorette.

“Indigo” by Clarks. Clarks’ cuter, trendier line of shoes. They are not as comfortable as Clarks proper, but they are more comfortable than the non-Clarks version of the same shoe. In my 20’s, I didn’t even know what Clarks shoes were. I would not have been caught dead in any “comfort” line of shoes. Now I am pretty much just waiting for Dansko sandals to get a titsch cuter, and am considering the sparkly sequined version of the FitFlop. (If you go to Zappos or wherever and look up Indigo shoes, no, I have absolutely never spent that for them. Clarks outlet... clearance section. That’s how I roll.)

Box wine. Gentle readers, I truly never thought I would see the day. I was never a hipster, or cool, or whatever. But I WAS a wine snob. I am still kind of a wine snob. I have the palette potential of a sommelier. I sniff and swirl and suck air and pretty much do every pretentious thing that one can do with a glass of wine. (Although when servers give me the cork, I am always a bit at a loss. What am I supposed to do with that? I don’t give a rat’s patootie about the cork. I sniff it and nod so they will stop looking at me and just pour some wine into my glass already, but the cork tells me nothing. If I’m wrong about this, please, someone tell me what I am supposed to be doing with that thing.) Aaaaaaanyway, all that is to say that I love wine. But finances being what they are, we have sunk to the lowest of the low... box wine. It’s shameful. But it’s $18 for 4 bottles, less when it’s on sale (10% off every Tuesday at King’s Contrivance Liquor and Smoke Shop). And it is totally drinkable. Especially the Bota Malbec and the Big House “Naked” (i.e. un-oaked) Chardonnay. It’s probably just a matter of time until I am drinking Franzia White Zin with ice cubes in it ($12 for 5L, compared to the $18 for 3L I am spending on my snooty elitist box wine.)

Last, but certainly not least, my cordless stick vacuum. Light, maneuverable, with floor and carpet settings. Cordless stick vac, you complete me.

The pros and cons of cleaning my own home

So, as you all probably know, we recently let go of our monthly cleaning service. The cleanliness of my house has taken a major hit. But there are some unexpected up-sides. Here are some of the pros and cons of cleaning one’s own home.

Pro: The money. We are saving $120 or so a month by dropping the cleaning service. This is the only pro we considered when deciding to make the switch.

Con: The house is never clean all at once. If the bathrooms are clean, the kitchen is dirty. If the living room is clean, the laundry didn’t get done. Something always has to give. I miss the evening after the cleaning service had been there, when the whole house was clean for a few blessed hours.

Pro: When something is dirty and bugging me, I just clean it right away rather than waiting for the cleaning people and having to look at it for a week or whatever.

Con: When something is dirty and bugging me, I have to clean it myself.

Pro: No late-night scramble to tidy the night before. No fighting with the kids to keep the house tidy all day.

Con: The house is never tidy.

Pro: Things that I thought were permanently stained are now clean. (e.g., curry stains in the kitchen sink, and that rusty ring in the toilets from the time, a couple of years ago, when we replaced our well pump and it pumped iron sludge through the house). It turns out that Comet and arm-aching, finger-bleeding scrubbing will actually get those things clean.

Con: Cracked hands and completely wasted cuticles. Note to self: Buy some of those housewifey glove thingies. They make them for a reason. Put on a garter belt and some heels and pretend it’s a fetish thing if you must to maintain your street cred, but for the love of God, woman, protect your hands next time you’re Comet-scrubbing something for 45 minutes.

Pro: Now that cleaning is part of my job description, I clean things like the inside of the fridge and inside the light fixtures, tasks no one was doing before.

Con: Having to know and see just how many dead stinkbugs have been slowly mummifying in the light fixtures. Holy f-ing crap.

Pro: Not having to keep the kids from walking across freshly mopped floors.

Con: The kids’ room will never be clean again, because I clean when they are asleep.

Pro: Our crap is not randomly moved around, placed in random piles, or hidden tidied away in drawers.

Con: We still can't find our crap, because it is buried under yet more of our crap.

Pro: When friends talk about people with money who have nannies and house cleaners, I no longer have to hold my tongue. Now I can join in the chorus of, “Yeah, THOSE people! What do they do all day? Eat bon-bons?”

Con: I would love to be one of those people and eat more bon-bons.

Ode to an Unscheduled Day

I wake to birds and stay pajama clad,
No buzzing clock my late repose destroys.
The children play so sweetly with their dad;
I wander, caffeine-bound, through scads of toys.
The laundry pile beckons—darks, whites, reds,
Into the crock-pot dinner makes its way,
My hooters bounce, unhinder’d, bra-less, free,
As I shake out clean sheets to make the beds.
I sort detritus from the children’s play
And let them watch a bit too much TV.

No ballet class, nor preschool, nor play date
Demands I shower or leg hair remove.
Exploring facebook, I luxuriate,
I click each link, and “Like” if I approve.
The vacuum, wow, apparently still works.
Old projects, long on hold, see light of day.
I keep the Clorox wipes people in jobs
And cat hair tumbleweeds no longer lurk.
Eternal piles of crap are put away
Removing proof that we oft live like slobs.

It’s time for bubbles now, in back yard green.
My children’s laughter disallows ennui.
A mother hen, I spray them with sunscreen
And photograph them peeing on a tree.
My toenails once more gleam an unchipp’d red
And eyebrows too are pluck’d to tidy lines
It’s nice cold beer while on my face sun shines
With red box wine and TV before bed.
The morrow brings return to schedule hell,
But when I’ve space to breathe... ahh... all is well.

© Pam Desmond 2011

Want more poetry of the mundane? Check out my friend Amy’s Valentines to my Life, including “Haiku for Indoor Plumbing,” “Shakespearean Sonnet for Arlington Trash Pick-Up,” and “Prayer to Normal.”

A game of chance

Short entry today because someone (perhaps small fingers in search of ice cream?) left my garage freezer open a crack last night, so I spent my morning writing time sorting through food and deciding what could be salvaged. Fun fun. The next few days of dinners are gonna feel a bit like Russian Roulette around here. Spin the cylinder! Feel alive! Wheeeee!

I learned some important lessons last time this happened. If you ever find yourself with a freezer left open and hundreds of dollars of food ruined, here are some lessons from me to you.

Number One. Numero Uno. This is the only one that really matters!! Do not throw the thawed meats out right away. Leave them in the freezer until trash day and then toss them. I read a lot of fantasy novels, and many have tried to describe the smell of rotting meat. (Seriously, what is it about fantasy novelists and rotting-meat-smell? They also seem to like to describe the smell of funeral pyres. Yuck.) Anyway, nothing, my friends, can adequately describe the smell of truly rotting meat. Not the dead fish smell at an un-maintained beach. Not even roadkill, which is usually cleaned up before reaching the point we’re talking about here. It. Is. Horrible. And if your trash bags leak, I won’t say the word, but they’re small and they grow up to be flies and nothing is more gross in all the land.

Here’s a minor tip, but potentially useful. Clean up any liquids at the bottom of the freezer while it is still in its non-freezy state, because once it re-freezes, it is nigh impossible to get it out.

Even though it’s ice, and doesn’t go bad, pull the ice bags out before they re-freeze and become permanently adhered to the freezer shelf.

When in doubt, throw it out. Or at least don’t feed it to the children.

If you have food that is only partially thawed, and you decide it can be salvaged, do not let it re-freeze. Put it in the fridge and then cook it. If you have more than you can eat, invite brave friends over. Or cook it (well) and then re-freeze the cooked food. Make sure you label it as freezer-thaw food so you only serve it to people you don’t like that much, and don’t accidentally take it to some pregnant woman on bedrest.

OK, off to throw some still-mostly-frozen shrimp into a marinade. Spin the cylinder. Safety off. Wish me luck.

I'll show you mine...

So, it has been two-and-a-half weeks since I cleaned the house for that dinner party. The cleaning service hasn’t been here in over 5 weeks. And while it is lovely to be saving that money, here’s what happens when I know that I will never again have to straighten up the house so that someone else can clean it. It degenerates rapidly, shockingly rapidly, into its natural state of complete chaos and filth. Don’t believe me? I took pictures.

In my defense, I have been sick, and so have the kids (including the man-sized-kid). Also, nearly a month ago I started this blog thingie, and it has slightly cut into my prime 11pm-1am house cleaning time. Oh, and that whole exercise addiction is kind of messing with my crap-picking-up mojo. But yeah, there’s no excuse for what you are about to see.

We'll start small. Here is the "to be filed" pile... stacked up on an old cat bed... and reflected in the mirror my kids like to use to make out with their own reflections. Nice.



Here is my dresser. It houses a lovely glass-top humidor for my cigars, a beautifully carved box for my Tarot cards, an engagement photo and a photo of some amazing women in my life... ALL TOPPED WITH MASSIVE PILES OF CRAP!



This next one is not exactly my fault. Except inasmuch as it's my house, so everything is my fault. We asked the cleaning service not to clean our desks in the office, because they were moving our very important and organized papers and whatnot. (More on that in a moment). They took that to mean not to clean anything at desk level and above. So now we have cobwebs festooning the top half of the room.



And, um, speaking of our desks. This one might be the most embarrassing of all, because truthfully, this is not temporary. My desk actually always looks like this. I am generally a neat person, but... yeah... no... this is my work process. Wait, I can't post this picture. OK, I'm posting it. This is where the magic happens, my friends. This is where the words are born. This is what I'm looking at right now.



Apparently this clutter problem is genetic. Here is the kiddos' bathtub. I have a couple of plastic frog thingamahoozits on the wall for storing their bath toys. They prefer them like this.



Speaking of my twin chaos-monsters, I bought a lovely Ikea wall unit with lots of bins, and made (with my own two hands) three benches with storage baskets underneath to neatly contain all of their toys in a civilized fashion. Yeah, again, they apparently prefer the playroom to look like this. (P.S. The snake, while realistic, is not real.)



Finally, my friends, I will leave you with a view under my sofa table. This sofa table is the first thing you see upon walking into my house. It is from one of my favorite furniture stores, Room and Board, and is a token example of real furniture (that is to say, the back is made of actual wood, not cardboard - whoa). When the sun comes in through our full-lite double front doors in the late afternoon, it perfectly illuminates... the utterly disgusting dust and filth underneath this sofa table. Et voila.



So everyone... all of you wonderful people who have only seen my house in relative neat mode... I mean, yeah, sometimes I still apologize for the mess, but I let you come over, so you know I at least wiped the cat hair tumbleweeds out of the corners and made sure you could actually cut a path to the bathroom... next time I tell you I can't host playgroup because my house is a disaster area, now maybe you'll believe me. Everyone else, the few of you who have seen my house looking like this, all I can say is that I must really love you.

The ten conversations

One of the things I miss most about the San Francisco area, besides the stunning weather, lack of mosquitoes, fantastic food, amazing friends, plentiful spiritual workshops, abundant and amazing dance classes… OK I miss everything. Sob. I belong there. But that’s not my point. What was my point? Oh right. One of the things I miss is the sheer variety and richness of the conversations. You’ll meet someone for the first time at a party and find yourself discussing Communism, or the fundamental basis of comedy, or the best place to take a month-long meditation retreat. As a housewife in suburban Maryland, I am struck by the surface and repetitive nature of the vast majority of our interactions with one another.

Here in the suburbs, we seem to have the same ten conversations over and over.

1. Kids: anecdotes cute or irritating, worries, questions and calls for advice

2. Spouse: “How is [husband/wife’s name]” is always a good go-to when the conversation is flagging. Complaining about one’s spouse is also always an excellent way to bond with friends. Chances are their husband is irritating in exactly the same way that yours is.

3. Weather: Oooh, a tornado in Maryland this week. We won’t have to suffer through any awkward silences for a while. Plus it’s been so rainy. Oh, and doesn’t it suck to have the kids (see conversation #1) home for spring break all week and stuck in the house? Yeah.

4. Work: I don’t work outside the home, so I am mostly spared this one. But really, who wants to talk about work when they are not at work? I do get asked about my novel pretty frequently. The answer is, it is stalled again for now. I don’t want to talk about why.

5. Sports: Who gives a rat’s… um… who gives ANY anatomical region of a rat? Not me. I am usually impressed if I know what sport is being discussed. People at the grocery store have tried to draw me into some sort of community psychosis over various sporting endeavors. Nope, I just don’t care.

6. Movies & TV: “Have you seen any good movies lately?” Always a sign of a conversation on the verge of an awkward pause. “Do you watch American Idol/The Bachelor/[insert bad reality TV show here]?” Always a sign of a conversation about to become extremely animated, with a healthy tinge of TV shame and disclaimers about how one hates most reality TV or only watches it because their husband or wife is into it.

7. Personal appearance: New haircuts or color, compliments on clothes or shoes, weight loss, dieting, facial skin care, exercise [Technically exercise should probably be its own category, but in my experience, most people only exercise to lose weight and look better. Talk about runner’s high all you like, but would anyone run if it made us fatter?]

8. Current events: Where by current events I don’t mean politics or natural disasters. I mean the big stuff. Like what the hell is wrong with Charlie Sheen.

9. Vacation plans: For the last time people, I am not going anywhere this summer. Because we have debt to pay off. I don’t have a beach house in Delaware, a vacation home at Deep Creek, or a rental lined up in the Outer Banks. So this summer I will be blissfully floating on a raft in our kiddie pool while the kids pour water on my legs and practice putting their faces under without getting water up their noses. My parents will visit a lot. I will probably sleep over my friend’s house a couple of times and drink to excess after all of our kids go to bed, since no one will have to drive home. We will watch bad reality TV together and laugh our faces off. But, no, by your standards, I don’t have any summer plans.

10. Petty irritations: Leaky roofs, car repairs, computer glitches, exploded pull-ups in the washing machine… you get the idea.

That’s it. You can get pretty far with those ten conversations. You can have an entire friendship speaking of nothing else. No, you really can. It’s crazy. You certainly won’t need any more than that at a social event with casual acquaintances. Line up your questions for when the conversation fades, polish up two well-crafted anecdotes for each item, and you’re golden.

But, can we all decide to move past these? Please? Can we talk about sex and politics and religion? Can we talk about what moves us? What we are trying to achieve, and what we need to do to get there from here? What we believe? What we wish for? Can we stop talking and listen? Really listen, rather than just waiting for our turn to talk again because something you just said triggered one of our perfectly polished anecdotes.

I’m not saying we should never talk about our kids or compliment our friends on their new haircuts, but I think we would be amazed what could happen if we let people in deeper. I’ve tried it with a few casual friends recently, and you know what? They’re not casual friends anymore. They’re… my people.



P.S. I will try very hard in conversations with all of you in the coming weeks not to call out numbers when we inevitably hit these topics… If you would like to call me out by calling out numbers on me, please feel free.

The tiny black thong

You know what I did this weekend? I cleaned my house, cooked for a dinner party, did laundry, took care of my kids, and did some gardening. I planted bulbs. I mulched. In preparation for the dinner party, I ironed napkins. I made my own napkin rings. I baked chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I went to a Zumba class and then watched some prime time network TV before bed.

Oh crap. I am a housewife.

I have a PhD from Stanford. I am wicked smart. Or I used to be. Spending so much time with preschoolers has somewhat dulled my once razor sharp intellect. I now find myself laughing at jokes with the punch line, “Spongebob.” I used to be an intelligent and productive member of society. I was so good at my last full time job that when I moved across the country, they kept paying me to do the job via e-mail. I applied for a job recently. I didn’t get it, which is fine—the commute might have killed me—but the idea of getting up every day and putting on real clothing and working all day long with grown-ups… it felt pretend. When I was in college and would cook meals with friends, we made perfectly acceptable food, but it always felt a little silly, like “playing house.” That’s kind of how I feel about having a job now, like it would be “playing grown-up.” For the past nearly four years, playing house has been my job. I forget what real grown-ups talk about, but I’m pretty sure that children’s bodily functions, stain-fighting sprays, and American Idol are lower on that list than they are on mine.

I have a minivan. I struggle to lose weight. I am on facebook too much, posting pictures of my kids. I send Christmas cards and thank you notes and I know how to get grease stains out of clothing. I sew and mend things. And here’s the thing. I love it. I don’t love it every day. When the kids are fighting non-stop and the potholder slips, depositing dinner all over the floor, and someone just made a deuce in their pants, those days suck. But most of the time, I really love it. I like to garden. I like to bake. I like to make my own napkin rings. I like Zumba. I love my minivan. Oh, and my kids, yeah, I love them too. I love being with them, most of the time. I love this job, being a Mommy, way more than I ever loved any of my “real jobs.” In some ways, I was a housewife and a Mommy before I got married or had kids. At Burning Man, when others were recovering from the cocktails of substances they took the night before, I was spraying them all down with sunscreen and making them eggs. I was always the go-to girl if you needed a hot pink faux fur slipcover for your bike seat.

But here’s the problem. It’s the role, the label, the cliché, the stereotype. Now that I really am a housewife and a Mommy, and no one is asking me to make faux fur bike seat cozies anymore, it feels different. It's harder to settle in when that's all I am. I want to shout from the rooftops, “I am more than this! I worked my butt off for seven years to get a PhD! I danced in public in a coin bra! I have had transcendent experiences that showed me, for brief moments, what it is to be human! I am more than just this!”

So I dye my hair pink. But nope. Still a housewife. What would do it? How about a nose ring? Another tattoo? A tiny black thong? Something that signals (to me, as much as to anyone else) that I am not just a “type.” I am a super smart, super sexy woman, who used to be edgy and interesting and complex. Now I am a housewife, but inside, I’m still that woman. I just do more meal planning and stuff.

It reminds me—a very good thing to remember—that every person, no matter how easily they seem to fit into a box, has stuff beneath the surface that would be a surprise. Like a tiny black thong under size 16 mom jeans.

The ugly truth

I am as addicted to facebook as the next person. Um, by that I mean, I am way more addicted than most of the next people. So imagine my dismay at finding out that there is a phenomenon called “facebook depression." Bummer. One of the possible explanations for facebook depression comes out of the Psychology department at Stanford, my old stompin’ grounds. [Where by stompin’, I mean free-food-scroungin’. No one can sniff out free food like a PhD student.] So anyway, the possible explanation is that people tend to underestimate the negative emotions of their peers. We look at happy smiling people on facebook and think that their lives are so much better than ours. We look, for example, at our friend who got pink stripes in her hair, and maybe we think, “Wow, that’s so cool.” But I can tell you that I had to take 8 photos of that new pink hair to get one in which I didn’t feel like I looked fat, and I have been wondering ever since whether I am too old to have pink hair, even though I really do love it.

But I digress. [Which would have been a pretty good blog name, come to think of it, despite its lack of “ding dong.”]

So, in the spirit of showing you the ugly non-photoshopped truth, I have a confession. We have been living above our means. I know we can’t be the only ones, but it feels like a horrible secret. There is something about debt that fills me with shame. It began when I stopped working to stay home with the kids. At first we thought it was temporary, a function of diapers and emergency twin infant survival tactics, like too much takeout. We thought it was the car payments on the minivan we bought because two rear-facing car seats didn’t fit in the back of my little Sentra. But no, it’s pretty much just that we spend more than we make.

The fundamental problem, I think, is that both my husband and I ask ourselves, “Is [this thing we want] worth [this amount of money]?” when we need to be asking, “Do we have [this amount of money]?” and if the answer is no, then we need to either not have that thing/service/convenience, no matter how awesome it is, or find the money elsewhere and give something else up. When we had two incomes and no kids, we pretty much never had to learn that skill. You would think I would have figured it out, living on less than $15,000/year in the San Francisco Bay Area as a grad student. But there is something about the grad student lifestyle that is a surreal joke. We would literally wander the campus looking for leftover food after symposiums so we didn’t have to feed ourselves dinner. Those kinds of strategies don’t really translate to living in the suburbs with a family. If someone had told me back then what we would be making, and then told me I would be struggling to live within those means, I would have laughed.

We are very lucky. We are comfortable. We get to own a home and send our kids to preschool and save for retirement. I get to stay home and be a daily presence, for good or ill, in the lives of my two beautiful children. We have enough, and more than enough. We have more than most people. I know how lucky we are. And yet, we have a secret shameful red number—our debt—a number that is going in the wrong direction.

So it’s time for an overhaul. My once-a-month house cleaning service is the first thing to get the axe. The grocery bills suggest that it’s time for more spaghetti, less steak. Maybe heirloom tomatoes and Honeycrisp apples are not in the budget (even though they are TOTALLY worth the ludicrous amounts we spend on them). HBO and Showtime, I have loved you, but buh-bye. I already don’t really shop. I think the last time I was in a mall was Christmas shopping. But the kids probably don’t need any more toys off of ebay.

Here are the things we’re going to try to keep. Exercise classes for me. Zumba, dancing, whatever. Non-workout mommy is a depressed and unhealthy mommy. The classes stay. Dance and gymnastics classes for kiddos. Non-negotiable. I’ll give up my cleaning ladies. I would even give up the next thing on this list if I had to. And that would be… Wine. We’ve narrowed as far as we can. We’re working the system and getting pretty good wine under $8 or 9/bottle. We split a bottle most nights, a glass each with dinner and a glass each after. Doesn’t sound so crazy until you do the math. That’s $250+/month on booze before we even have a single friend over, before we include the occasional Saturday afternoon beer or Friday night glass of Scotch by the fire. So yeah, we need to think deep thoughts about the booze budget, but we’re not cutting wine completely unless we have to. The other big question mark is my hair. I can cut the uber-pricey hair appointments back to three times a year. I can live with roots. I no longer have the shorter style that needed more maintenance. But I have learned that when it comes to highlights and haircuts, you get what you pay for. I can go less frequently, but I don’t feel ready to give up my hair appointments altogether and revert to (grayer every day) hippie locks.

So it’s time for me and the hubs to sit down and figure out how much we need to cut to get back on track and pay down the shameful little problem that has gradually accumulated. I hope I get to keep my wine. I’m surely gonna need it. ‘Cause the roof is leaking again, and one roof repair seems to equal about a year of HBO and Showtime.

P.S. Despite my having a Master's in Statistics, we will probably continue to buy lottery tickets.