Momming Around

Rule: You Just. Don’t. Ask.

Posted on by Beth Hull

When teaching high school English, I endeavored to impress upon my impressionable young ninth graders not only the life-giving truths of simile, metaphor, and onomatopoeia, but the simple life rule that you NEVER ASK A WOMAN, ANY WOMAN, IF SHE IS PREGNANT.

“What if she’s obviously pregnant?” they said. They hadn’t yet learned to trust my absolute wisdom. It was the first half of the school year, after all.

“That’s the problem. She might look obviously pregnant, or she might look sort of pregnant. But if she’s NOT pregnant, then you’ve just committed a serious crime. And keeping your mouth shut is always safe.”

Not every person was blessed with a high school English teacher of my caliber. I pity these people.

So let me say this again, for the benefit of busybodies and other uncool members of the public who think it’s okay to ask a woman personal questions about the contents of her uterus: Keeping your mouth shut is always safe.

On the bright side, no one has asked me this question in a long time (it’s either the glare of my gaze or the beer in my hand), and this blog post is instead the result of someone else telling a friend she looked pregnant. And I’ve gotta say, this friend has a supermodel’s body. I would do just about anything to have her body (except give up chocolate, and therein lies the problem, my friends). The fact someone asked Super Amazing Body Friend if she was pregnant is reassuring to ME. But not to SABF.

Again, just in case someone missed the announcement: Keeping your mouth shut is always safe.

It’ll be on Friday’s quiz.

Oh! And don’t forget to comment on last Friday’s post, for a chance to win an advance reader’s copy of Heidi Ayarbe’s new YA book, Compulsion. Click here to go there.

For Sale: Lovely Maroon Curtains – CHEAP

Posted on by Beth Hull

Photographs were taken. Dances were danced. Phone calls were made. Television crews filmed, newscasters reported. (Well, not really on the filming or news reports. But they should have.)

The maroon curtains are down. Dismantled. An ugly memory.

Excuse me, I’m feeling a little emotional here.

Because not only are the curtains a pile of excreted maroon on the living room floor, but the living room walls are GREEN.  (A happy green, not a mental institution green…except in artificial light. But we have other rooms to hang out in after dark.)

Yup, curtains came down, I painted my little heart out, and voila! I’m not embarrassed when people come to my house anymore!

Does anyone know a blue whale who needs a maroon ball gown?

(For last week’s post, “Marooned,” click here.)

Marooned!

Posted on by Beth Hull

When you move into a house that has been previously lived in, there might be a few…how can I put this delicately…inherited items. (Indelicate translation: You’re gonna have to deal with crap left there by the previous owners.) These things can range from household cleaners (Scrubbing Bubbles), bath mats (one of which is still in the house. Kinda gross, but that’s how we roll, I guess), an RV cover (don’t even let me get started on that), faded, historic-archival-paper-colored vertical blinds, and maroon curtains. And really, I think we had it easy.

It would be easier if we were quicker on tackling those kinds of things that are Ugly and Soul-Demeaning and Kill You A Little Bit Every Time You Look At Them. Looking at them happens often, especially if they’re located in the front room, copied in triplicate, and use roughly the same amount of fabric as a debutante gown would need if it were created for a blue whale. And her two BFF blue whales.

Window 1

Window 2

Window 3

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the tassled valances to come down. Actually, I have my mother to thank for this one. (Don’t worry, I’ll remember you on Mother’s Day!) I so wish I could share a photo of the tassled valances because they were awful. Well-meaning friends described them as macabre, theatrical, and funereal. I thought that was giving the valances too much credit.

Two years, three months, and twenty-six days have passed since we moved into this house and became the chagrined owners of these Maroon Curtains (something this terrible needs to be capitalized, like Ebola, Hurricane Katrina, and Voldemort).

I’m writing this blog post as a sort of experiment. Last time I complained bitterly about a Horrifying Aspect of Interior Design (again, came with the house), it changed, and it changed quickly. Will this blog post do the trick, now that my laziness and suffering have been shared with the public? Or will I continue to suffer, staring past my maroon-framed windows to the neighbors’ houses across the street and wondering, with a wistful sigh, what color curtains they get to stare past?

Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody, Everywhere…

Posted on by Beth Hull

…Clean up, clean up, before your mom pulls out her hair.

Somewhere in the universe there is a two-and-a-half-year-old who does everything she is told, when she is told. And happily. She doesn’t even whine. She says, “Okay, Mommy,” and scrapes her leftovers into the trash, and puts on her shoes when it’s time to go, and stops picking at her effing fingernails when you remind her not to because they will become bloody stumps otherwise. (Ahem. This is another issue I’ve been struggling with. But this is not the place, not today.)

I’ve never seen that two-and-a-half-year-old. She’s not in this house. Here we have the Ever-Suffering Mother trying to manage an adorable monster. We’ve tried bribing her to clean up by giving her “special occasion” toys. We’ve tried special songs – from the ever-popular classic “Clean Up, Clean Up” to Ricky Martin’s upbeat “Pegate,” to the ever-inspiring “Love Shack” by the B52’s. We’ve tried time-outs. We’ve tried time-ins. (Not really the time-ins, I just thought it sounded good.) Finally, what worked best was taking toys away if she didn’t clean them up.

Why did it work best? Not for the reason you’d hope, that she’d be suddenly transformed into a little cleaner-upper at the thought of losing her precious stuffed animal friends. No. It works best because when the toys disappear to the basement, there is less for her to clean up the next night, and the night after, and so on. Because the Ever-Suffering Mother does NOT traipse down to the basement every day to collect whatever toys were banished the day previous. So they sort of collect there.

The family room empties, the basement fills up.

And then, yesterday. I brought up armloads of toys from the basement, some of them Z hasn’t seen in ages. I made piles of toys in the family room. Guess what she did. Okay, fine, I’ll tell you: she put them away. And then she said something kind of sad, but so cute. “I’m not taking anything out.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Then I won’t have to put it away!”

The "friends" are so much happier when theyre hidden away in their little nest. Z doesnt buy this logic.

The Other Kind of App

Posted on by Beth Hull

It wasn’t something I downloaded. There were no electronic gadgets involved, only a pen and paper. On it, I wrote down Z’s name, her birthday. I circled eight adjectives that Husband and I thought best described her. I listed contact information. I attached a check.

It’s not the kind of app for your iPhone (I typed “eye-phone” at first, sheesh).

It’s The Preschool Application. And soon after her third birthday, I will upload my daughter into the car, drive her across town, unfasten the connection (aka the umbilical cord) and download her into the preschool parking lot. My feelings about this are already mixed, but I will admit I am mostly happy. When Z goes to preschool in the mornings, I will have an empty nest.

Party time!

Well, not exactly. I plan to do some work, maybe tutoring, maybe freelance editing, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be unable to work because I’ll be crying my eyes out from missing my daughter’s companionship. Don’t laugh, it’s entirely possible. Negotiating the terms of our relationship is never straightforward, and my reactions (and hers) are often surprising.

Happily or not, we are about to embark on a very different era. One in which I don’t know every exact detail of every moment of her day. Strange, sad, and somewhat liberating.