Momming Around

We gon’ light it up like it’s dynamite

Posted on by Beth Hull

In which the Ever-Suffering Mother listens to pop music.

Some months ago a friend posted on Facebook that some days, country music is a necessity. I know I will offend more than a few people when I say that country music is only a necessity if your aim is to drive people away. And up until a month or two ago, I would probably have said the same thing about pop.

Let’s travel back in time to see Beth as an Enlightened College Student, rather than an Ever-Suffering Mother. She (ten or fifteen pounds lighter) walks around her flower-bedecked college campus with her diary book, some pens, and a well-read copy of T. S. Eliot’s collected poems. American Beauty, although dead depressing, is the most meaningful movie she’s ever seen. The Enlightened College Student has just discovered Pink Floyd. She never heard such beautiful caterwauling. Such dips and valleys of emotion in a single Shine-on-you-crazy-diamond kind of song.

Pop music blares from the open window of a shiny white Jetta blazing down the street. She wrinkles her nose, distracted from translating her own dreamy/angsty poetry into French, naturellement. Pop music? Quelle horreur. It’s such a cliché. Please. That Jetta-driver is killing brain cells with every beat of the synthetic bass drum.

[Fast-forward sound effects, please.]

The Ever-Suffering Mother needs some pep. She’s sleepy. Unhappy in the mornings. Grouchy. She filled a prescription for antidepressants but was too afraid to take them. She’s tried re-reading all her favorite books, and they are great escapes. But she cannot read them while she’s driving. The Spanish radio stations are fun in their way, but she keeps searching, searching…there. Rihanna’s rich voice sounds from the speaker. The Ever-Suffering Mother turns up the volume. What is this? This is…shallow. Light. Easy to digest.

She is transported into another world. What are these sounds? This is nothing like the alternative rock she listened to as a teenager. Where is the anger, the creepy “give it up to me” the Toadies intoned over and over? It is not here! This is one-second teenage-dream infatuation! Pop stars slinging out slang she will never ever understand: like a G-six? What? The announcer comes on, name-dropping faster than a stuffy literature professor. The Ever-Suffering Mother cannot even interpret where the names end and the song titles begin.

What a great escape! For a few minutes, she pretends she’s in a club, where they go hardcore and there’s glitter on the floor and she’s just dancing dancing dancing (and not looking like an idiot because after all this is a fantasy).

Then a voice sounds from the back seat of her sport-utility Mom-Mobile: “Snack please?”

Duck, Duck, Goose by Tad Hills

Posted on by Beth Hull

But it’s Wednesday, not a book review day!

But it’s a Momming Around sort of book. So enjoy. Or else.

Goose’s best friend, Duck, shows up one day with a new friend who is also a duck, but is thankfully not named Duck (which would be understandably confusing), but Thistle. Goose is a laid-back sort of bird. He likes to watch butterflies, kick the ball around, and sit around and smell flowers. Thistle, however, likes to compete. “‘Hey, I’m really good at math, too!’ exclaimed Thistle. ‘I’m probably the best!'” And so begins Thistle’s nonstop contest with Goose, poor Duck moderating and watching from the sidelines.

Now, I don’t know what this little gray duck has to prove, but she’s got an ego the size of (oh, I don’t know, something really big. I’ve sat here thinking about this for too long; it’s time to move on). Thistle creates contest after race after competition, and poor Goose is exhausted. Finally he runs away, and Duck eventually finds him. Their solution to Thistle’s obsessive game-making is creative and keeps anyone’s feelings from getting hurt.

The illustrations are bright and attractive. Thistle’s know-it-all expressions are fantastic. Best of all, my Z loves this book and will sit through it, although the story seems a bit lengthy for a two-year-old’s attention span. Must be the creative accents I use for each of the characters. Hey, Z has no idea that this isn’t what a British accent sounds like!

My Tiny Secret

Posted on by Beth Hull

Some of you may know that I don’t like a lot of noise. Most of you probably know that I’m essentially a selfish person. One thing that I always knew about myself was that having children would be a real challenge based on those other two things about myself.

A few years ago, after climbing during a kid’s birthday party at Rocknasium (a climbing gym in Davis), I wrote in a card to Husband: “Children should not be seen or heard.” At that climbing birthday party they were all over the place, shrieking and laughing, having a blast, and nearly getting tangled in our climbing ropes and killing us all.

But it’s the noise that bothers me most, even more than near-death experiences from great heights.

At the baby shower some friends threw for Z, my friend B-Dawg gave me a pack of earplugs as a sort of joke.

There is nothing funny about these earplugs. I depend on them. From her very first day On the Outside, Z’s screams of rage, her cries of pain, and her shouts of joy have been too much for my eardrums to handle. Her mighty roars make my brain tremble inside my head. Whenever it’s too much (which is often), I use earplugs to dull the noise and am able to barely tighten my grip on sanity.

So here’s my secret: At all times I have a pair of earplugs tucked inside my bra.

Sexy? No. Practical? Oh, yes.

That Niggling Question

Posted on by Beth Hull

There comes a time in every mother’s life when she asks herself: “Am I raising a sociopath?”

Oh, you mean you’ve never asked that question? Never? So your kid has never said, with a sweet smile on her face, “That baby is crying!” And she looks, well, happy about it, or proud or something. Like she orchestrated the other child’s tears. And the look of horror on your face.

It wouldn’t bother me if this had happened only once. But any time there is a child crying, or even whining, in the library, at Target, the grocery store, a birthday party, anywhere, she says this. All creepily. She looks a little like Jack Nicholson when she says it (Nicholson in The Shining, Batman, whatever). And I put on my sad face, and say, “Yes, the baby is very sad. Poor baby.”

And Z just stands there, smiling.

So here’s a list of criteria for antisocial personality disorder (also called sociopathy), researched on that paragon of scientific truthfulness, Wikipedia, and how Z fits the mold:

1. Persistent lying or stealing. Do you have to go potty? No. Are you sure? No. Do you have to go? No. SHE GOES. Then there’s: Hey, that’s my DS! Leave it alone! Come back here! SHE RUNS OFF WITH DS.

2. Apparent lack of remorse or empathy for others. See smiling while other children cry, above.

3. Cruelty to animals. All I can say is, Poor Clark. Her tail will never be the same.

4. Poor behavioral controls. We’re talking about a two-year-old, here.

5. A history of childhood conduct disorder. Already in the making.

6. Recurring difficulties with the law. Two words: time out.

7. Tendency to violate the boundaries and rights of others. Um, yup. Not only were my boundaries violated during the sixteen months of breastfeeding, but there’s the constant skirt-tugging. And the hug-attacks on her little friends that often leave them crying.

8. Substance abuse. Her addiction to goldfish crackers counts, I think.

9. Aggressive, often violent behavior. She bit me today. Then she said, “Biting Mommy.”

10. Inability to tolerate boredom. Wow. It’s like the people writing this list actually know my daughter. Were they here yesterday afternoon? [Checking home for hidden cameras right now.]

11. Disregard for safety. She runs everywhere without even looking at the ground. She almost fell into the fish pond at the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver. She ran around with a fork before dinner last night.

Well, there you have it. I am raising a sociopath.

But she’s so freakin’ cute. And she’s my sociopath. And I love her so.

Out Damn Spot!

Posted on by Beth Hull

If I had any sort of ability with these pesky computer-type things, you’d be listening to the Jaws theme music right now. Or maybe the shrieking music from Psycho.

People are coming.

To my house.

I invited them, of course. If I hadn’t, there wouldn’t be a post today at all because I’d be busy barricading the doors and phoning the police instead of trimming the jungle outside and collecting piles of recycling and freecycling.

And since I invited these people, I should probably make something of an effort to make my house presentable. And if not that, at least I can attempt a look that isn’t offensive. As in, you know, clean a little. Or maybe you don’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know how dirty this place was until I started cleaning it. (With my mom’s help of course. Otherwise, why bother at all because there wouldn’t be enough time to make a dent – a dent! – in the mess.)

We’re pig people. Disgusting pig people, living in filth.

We’ve been in this house for one year and eight months (and three days…easy to keep track because we moved on New Year’s Day). In all that time, I have never wiped down the outside of the microwave door. Blech. But you know, it’s not a high priority when one is simultaneously trying to keep a little (demanding) person happy, write a novel, and maintain some facade of sanity.

I could gross you out with further examples of my housekeeping negligence. But I won’t. I could also write out my rationalizations/justifications/whining-creations of why I don’t go to the effort to keep my house pristine and shining and golden.

But people are coming over, so I have to get my booty back upstairs to clean (with my mom’s help) so I can pretend I’m a great housekeeper/mother/everything-together kind of girl to a bunch of friends and family who know me better than that anyway.

P.S. There’s a Yappy #3 next door. I hope it’s just visiting.