Postcards from Suburbia

Déjà vu

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:06:00 +0000

In the words of the venerable Tom Waits, "You know the story. Here it comes again."

Today

6:15 - Wake up.

6:30 - Make Wolfgang's lunch because he forgot to do it last night.

6:30 - Help Gunther pack his football gear.

6:40 - Get ready for work.

6:40 - Say goodbye to Wolfgang, remind him of today's afterschool schedule.

6:45 - Supervise the walking & feeding of the dogs.

7:00 - Wake up Otto, help him choose picture day clothes, fix his hair.

7:15 - Say goodbye to Gunther, remind him of today's afterschool schedule.

7:45 - Remember that I need the minivan today. Switch David's briefcase to my car.

7:50 - Pack the minivan with football gear, the saxophone, my lunch.

8:00 - Get Otto on the bus, remind him of today's afterschool schedule.

8:02 - Call Gramps to remind him that I'm bringing over Gunther's football gear.

8:10 - Drop off saxophone at Gunther's school.

8:15 - Drop off the football gear at Grammy and Gramps'.

8:20 - Call a friend on the way to work - it's been forever since I called.

8:35 - Feel good. Feel real good. The family is dispatched. Everyone has everything they need and knows everything they need to know to keep our world running smoothly. And who made it all happen? Who got everything done? Yes, that'd be me.

8:35 - Arrive at work. Realize that I left my laptop at home. I am useless without it.

And there you have it.

With a little help from my neighbors ... please ...

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:55:00 +0000

My kids must really stink. They must smell so bad that if they were to get in your car, you'd be hard pressed to ever remove the stench.

Or maybe it's our minivan that stinks. Maybe it smells so bad that if your child was to ride in it to school, he'd have his own personal PigPen cloud and have to be sent to the nurse to be disinfected.

Or maybe it's not the smell of the vehicle but the speed at which it is driven. Maybe I drive so fast and so recklessly that if you were to let your child get into the car with me, you'd wish you'd called that phone number on the TV for some of that Gerber baby life insurance.

It's got to be one of these three things. Why else would parents be so damned resistant to carpooling?

They'd rather make 4 trips back and forth to the school in the span of an hour to accommodate all their kids' events than share a ride with the Wallachs.

They'd rather wake up at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning to drive their kid to a football game across the state - just to get there and have nothing to do for an hour in the rain before the game starts and the rest of the family arrives - than share a ride with the Wallachs.

They'd rather have 3 cars leave our street at the same time every morning to go to the same place to drop kids off - only to turn right around and come back home - than share a ride with the Wallachs.

I don't get it. We waste time and gas. We get frazzled and rush from one thing to the other. It really could be much easier if parents would only let it.

But, no. Maybe they feel that they must always be present and involved in their kids' lives. Maybe they are so kidcentric that they think they owe it to their kids to shuttle them around. Or maybe they don't want to look like they can't manage this life they've created.

Either that, or we really do stink.

Thank goodness I'm not a nail biter

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:29:00 +0000

It's taken two rounds of steroids, two tubes of Cortizone 10, two tubes of Zanfel, one bottle of Caladryl and 1/2 a package of Benadryl, but I think I'm finally over the hump with this poison ivy.

For a while, I was good about the scratching, and I resisted. Toward the end here, though, I gave in, especially to those late night, in bed, self-satisfying indulges.

A highlight was last Sunday, when I sat on the front stoop with my friend Claudia and David. While we sipped our Chianti, I discovered that the edge of the concrete stair was the perfect thing for scratching the back of my knees. Ahhh, heaven.

But now I'm done. And, except for the scabs, the bruising and the screwed up menstrual cycle (the last two I attribute to the steriods), I'm as good as new.

I can't help but wonder what's next.

No good deed

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:39:00 +0000

Okay, so this is bittersweet:

This is not:

I just called the doctor asking for a prescription of oral steroids. I'm itching in places I don't think I can treat topically.

I ain't no stinkin' horse

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:59:00 +0000

So, I've started running again. After two months of an absolutely sedentary existence, I put on my running shoes and all my running gear (which, btw, fits a bit tighter than I remember) and hit the road.

Friday I ran 2 miles at a pathetically slow pace. Today, I ran those same two miles at an only slightly less pathetic pace. But, pathetic or not, both runs felt pretty good. I've found that all the long-distance running I did for the 1/2 marathon this past spring has paid off. My body now seems to have some muscle memory for running, and it just goes. Not very fast, but at least without much drama.

Tomorrow morning, Wolfgang is going to run the 5k portion of the New Haven Road Race. At one point - before the pneumonia knocked me on my ass - I was planning to run the 20k, or 13 miles. It was going to be part of my training for the November 1 NYC marathon. Alas, the two-month battle with pneumonia caused me to abandon my plans to run the marathon. At this point, it would be a virtual impossibility for me to do the necessary training to survive 26.2 miles.

Still, Wolfgang was encouraging me to run the 5k tomorrow. Not really with him, since he'd finish in half the time, but just to enjoy the running experience.

I was all in. I could run 3 miles and not have a pneumonia relapse. I'd just go slow. It'd all be good.

Until I looked at the racing brochure and realized that, as a woman of over 150 pounds, I'd fall into the category of a "Clydesdale."

There's only so much that one woman can take.

I will NOT be racing tomorrow.

(I googled "woman running" to find a picture for this post, and here's what I found. They're easily over 150 pounds, and they don't look like clydesdales. So there.)

Out of house and home

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:45:00 +0000

Here's what our three sons brought to lunch and consumed today:

2 peanut butter sandwiches
2 ham sandwiches
1 salami sandwich
5 oreo cookies
2 containers of mandarin oranges
1 bowl of yogurt & honey
2 containers of sliced cucumbers
2 fiber one bars
3 thick slices of banana bread

It's disgusting and it's exhausting, because, despite a trip to Costco, an afternoon baking, trips to the local produce stand, the local Italian market and the grocery store, they'll be out of options by mid-week.

And they'll be hungry.

The Rubber Duck Legacy

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:45:00 +0000

It almost seems exploitive to write about it. More mileage out of the rubber duck? Yes, it's true.

For those of you who don't know the story, here's the initial confession.

Here's the evidence:

Here's today's collection:

Here's what Wolfgang wrote THREE YEARS LATER on his first-day-of-high school get-to-know-you questionaire:

Q: What would your parents say about you?
A: Don't decapitate my rubber ducks.

On a mission from God

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:50:00 +0000

What does every nine-year-old want for his birthday?

That's right. His own personal Blues Brothers DVD.

We're so proud.

Pomp and Circumstances I forgot to anticipate

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:58:00 +0000

I just didn't know that it was going to be such a big deal. It's eighth grade, for God's sake, not high school.

The story goes like this:

A week ago my mother-in-law informed me that her grandson's graduation ceremony would be today. Her grandson. My son. I told her I didn't think so. It was a "step up" something or other, when the kids prepare to go from middle school to high school. Step up, not graduation.

No, she said. I called the school. It's graduation. 9:30 at the high school.

Good enough. Middle school graduation. No big deal.

David couldn't make it to the "graduation," but Wolfgang said he didn't care. It's not a big deal, he said.

Grandma asked me what she should wear. I told her that if I wasn't going to work immediately afterward, I'd be wearing shorts and a t-shirt. It's casual - not a big deal.

But I forgot that this is the trophy generation, and EVERYTHING is a big deal.

We arrived at the high school to find custodians directing lines of traffic of parents and grandparents, dressed up and carrying arms full of flowers for their grads.

Whoops.

The 90 minute ceremony was actually quite nice, and quite full - speeches, awards, music, diplomas. Add caps and gowns and you'd have the exact same ceremony that's going to take place on the exact same stage tomorrow night when the seniors graduate high school.

Don't get me wrong. The whole thing was all very nice, and I'm proud of my kid and his friends and all they've accomplished. I'm only grateful that there wasn't a standing ovation at the end of it all. That would have been more than I could handle.

They like me, they really like me!

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:36:00 +0000

I was interviewed yesterday by a freelance writer for Trinity's alumni magazine, The Reporter. The quarterly publication is just like every other alumni magazine out there - it focuses on two different types of alums -

Now clearly, I am not rich, obsessed with Trinity or curing cancer. So why would they want to talk to someone like me?

Because in celebration of 40 years of coeducation at Trinity, they wanted to write an article focusing on "real" women, women who face the daily stresses of work and family - not killer viruses and high altitude.

Alright, that's worth something. I might not be important, but "real" isn't a bad alternative. An article that celebrates the rest of us is a noble idea, right?

And so we spent an hour and a half together, this freelancer and I. In that time, I'm quite sure I confused her with my philosophies on parenting (benign neglect is easily misunderstood) and feminism (remember my rally against the whole 'time for yourself' notion?).

Still, confused or not, she did a good job of trying to make me feel special, even arguing with my long-held notion that I'm essentially unremarkable, in the most literal sense of the word. By the end, I even started to feel just a little bit ... important.

Like I said, she did a good job. And I almost bought it.

But, apparently, my remarkable real life experience is only worth 300 words.

I should just send her this blog.

"Doing too much"

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:34:00 +0000

I crashed at work today. Got dizzy, queasy and couldn't focus. Dry mouth, pale, the whole thing. There's been some stupid stomach bug going around and I think it managed to sneak up on me in a moment of low resistance.

So, I came home (not really remembering the drive too well) and crashed on the couch. The kids and David eventually trickled in (David, mercifully, with pizza - I don't know how I was going to manage tonight's planned chicken dinner. Queasiness and raw chicken just don't mix).

As evening approaches, I feel slightly more lucid, though my stomach is swirling with flat Coke and my brain is swirling with today's proclamation from the older generation: "Carolyn, you've been doing too much lately."

The thing with being a working mom is that you have to do a lot. The thing with being a mom is that you have to do a lot. The thing with being a human being who wants to stay sane is that you have to do a lot.

And so I do it.

It's only a problem when some nasty virus finds its way around my defenses. Then the work, the family, the kids, the house, the running, the coaching - the living - are suddenly quantifiable. And, inevitable, the quantity is "too much."

I don't have it in me to accept the notion that my life makes me sick. Were that the case, I'd have to either start medicating or just close up shop altogether.

It's a stomach bug, and I hope it doesn't last a lot longer. I've got too much to do.

Drunk posting

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:24:00 +0000

I took a facebook-imposed furlough and ignored my blog for a month. I made friends and uploaded photos and commented on status reports. For a while, I thought that facebook would be the death of this blog. Why would I take the time to compose a 1000+ character blog when I could distill everything in my brain down to a couple measly lines?

Those measly lines were all I needed to convey my general attitude about life:

Carolyn Wallach is bribing the kids to get what she wants. Parenting 101.
Carolyn Wallach is The Road. Wow.
Carolyn Wallach thinks her toxic assets might be shovel-ready.

Now, you see, I thought that last one was brilliant - a witty commentary on the overuse of certain phrases in the media. Bleh. No one had anything to say. No one wanted to comment on my toxic assets or even seemed to know what "shovel-ready" meant.

And so, slowly but surely, as my facebook friends failed to give me the stroking necessary to keep this delicate ego aloft, I have started to feel that I need more than short third-person status reports to keep me sane. I can't sort out or unravel what's in my head in one sentence.

There's so much I want to write. Spring is here and, in classic Carolyn fashion, I'm dropping balls left and right.

I'd like to tell you about it - about the social engagements and niceties that I've totally fucked up, but my glass, the same one that brought me back to this blog, is empty.

Damn you, red wine. And thank you.

Boys are gross

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:28:00 +0000

As I write this, the male members of this family are involved in an in depth conversation about their different bathroom techniques. Folding toilet paper, positioning, etc. This "poop conversation," as they have deemed it, has been going on for at least 10 minutes.

Fortunately, they waited until we had actually finished consuming our food before diving into the food's eventual condition. I had to leave.

They sit there at the dinner table, the boys enraptured, worrying only that their father (or mother) might sometime put an end to the discussion.

Oh wait, now the conversation has moved on to "bear poo" and the latest episode of Man vs. Wild.

I am surrounded by boys and men and boys wanting to be men and men wanting to be boys.

No wonder I get such severe PMS. It's my female hormones trying to assert themselves in this testosterone filled world.

When he's not memorizing Pi,

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:31:00 +0000

this is how Wolfgang spends his time...

Spring Training

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:30:00 +0000

At our house, this is how we know that spring is coming:

Note the handles reinforced with black electrical tape to make the bats stronger and more light saber-like.

Sign me up!

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:00:00 +0000

The following message arrived in my inbox this week:

Hey all,

Just wondering if anyone is interested in pigs again this year. I need to reserve them now. Hope you all liked how the pork turned out!

The beef isn't bad either! I contacted Tim Rodriguez, the guy we bought beef from last year, and he says there are cows available this year for slaughter in Nov, so let me know if you are interested.

Steve

I am now into it for another 1/2 pig

and 1/8 of a cow.

Blasphemy

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:59:00 +0000

I can multitask with the best of them. I can make dinner while helping with homework while cleaning the kitchen while taking phone calls from work while updating my facebook status while making the next day's lunches.

I'm good, very good, but I know when I'm beaten.

Flipping through the channels last night before falling asleep, I came across the most impressive multitasker I've ever seen.

Celeste Zepponi sang her songs to Jesus while, at the very same time, painting wispy angels on canvas. Thank you EWTN for sharing.

If only I had a youtube video to show you what a real multitasker looks like. But alas, you'll have to take my word for it: I've been outclassed by the religious right.

Perhaps I need some divine intervention.

Alert: potential downer

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:32:00 +0000

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm not slipping into another spiral of despair. The sun is higher in the sky, the days are longer, and, perhaps most importantly, I'm back at the gym. The outlook is generally good and I'm doing just fine.

Then again, the email I just sent to a friend begs the question - exactly what the hell is fine? This is what poured out of me:

Sometimes I feel like this is what it's going to be like for the rest of my life - just more and more death. It's like somewhere a valve was opened and it won't ever shut off.

It feels like now that I've tasted the grief of death, it's to be a regular part of my diet.

Where does it all come from and why now?

As I ask the question, I know the answer. In part it comes from working in a newsroom - I find out about death, the manner of death and the pain of death. I guess it also comes from just working at all - interacting and developing relationships with a diverse group of people. And, then, of course, there's the fact of my own loss, which just makes me more sensitive to loss in general.

There. Analysis by Carolyn.

I'm sure that this must be an official grief stage, so that's progress, isn't it?

Creamy goodness

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Does it mean that I'm old if the highlight of my 41st birthday weekend was having David make me grits for breakfast?

There was lots of other good stuff - a fair amount of doting, presents, time with friends. Oh and cake, yummy cake that I made myself because I felt like baking.

I kicked butt in a Scrabble game, I finished The Shipping News, I took a long bath.

But none of it compared to David serving me a hot, salty, buttery bowl of this stuff:

Mmm...I like being old.

A healthy disregard for authority

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:42:00 +0000

Through most of my high school career, I was a fine, upstanding young woman. I was one of those kids the principal or guidance counselors would call on if they needed a model student. I'm not proud, but it's the truth.

Early in my senior year, I wised up. A healthy, cliche case of senioritis. I quit anything and everything, I started questioning teachers and especially administrators. No, actually, I didn't start questioning - I just became downright rude.

Fast forward 15 years. I was a reporter for the local paper, covering the schools and the Board of Ed. I had learned enough not to be rude, but I still didn't trust the authorities. Or, shall we say, I had developed enough savvy to not to take them at face value. I questioned, I probed, I pissed them off. I think they didn't trust me - because I refused to eat up what they were serving.

Fast forward another 9 years, to last week. There I was, in the high school auditorium listening to the principal and the guidance counselors tell me what to expect from next year, when Wolfgang enters high school.

I was totally confused. On the one hand, I felt like it was 1986, and I found myself looking around for someone to make offhand comments to about the questionable intelligence of the speakers. On the other hand, I felt like a reporter and wanted to take out my notebook, write down the administrative spin and then ask the revealing question.

But I knew that I could do neither. I was not an obnoxious high schooler or an investigative reporter.

I was a parent. Of an almost freshman.

And it killed me to admit that those administrators did a good job. I bought what they had to say, hook, line and sinker. Damn them.

CTRL-ALT-DEL

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:45:00 +0000

I feel like I have been reset. Like someone went into my Task Manager, shut down the non-responsive programs and restarted my whole system (yes, I spend much of my day on the computer).

I attribute my improved disposition to two things:

1) Last week, when I was stressed at work and having trouble getting over a couple things that really pissed me off, my loving husband gave me these extremely effective words of advice: "Just fucking get over it." The man knows me well.

2) Last weekend I visited two of my college roommates. In spending time with them - one frustrated in her thus-far-failed attempts to have a baby and the other coping with a newborn and a willful toddler - I discovered that I still have the capacity to care about others.

It feels good to feel better. I'll take it for as long as it lasts.

So this is the anger phase.

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:37:00 +0000

It appears that I have reached a new phase in the grief continuum, the anger phase. Actually, it's more appropriately titled the "anger and resentment" phase.

Inexplicably, I find myself resenting people I know who are happy, doing well and feeling good about themselves.

Now, if this resentment was targeted toward strangers - you know, people on TV who'd won the lottery, the scientist who won the Nobel Prize - that would seem reasonable. It'd even be reasonable if it was directed at people I know who haven't suffered any kind of loss in their lives. I have loss and grief and general dismay, they don't. Makes sense. Textbook, really.

But no, I get the good fortune of directing this toward people who I know, people who I care about and who care about me. Friends who have had their own losses but who seem happy at the moment.

Life feels hard. Happiness is fleeting, untenable. I want no part of those people who feel good about themselves.

How's that for healthy?

The only solace is that I know that it was my father who shared with me the following Gore Vidal quote: "When a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies."

I always thought it was kind of funny in its subtle truth. Right now, though, it just feels ugly.

Grief post #10,463

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:20:00 +0000

Sometimes I find that I use my grief as a way to let me off the hook. When I'm beating myself up about not getting to the gym, having a bad attitude, being so tired or just feeling useless, I try to inject what I've come to refer to as "grief perspective."

It goes like this:

"Someday, Carolyn, you'll look back on this time and realize that the reason you were the way you were and did the things you did is that you were grieving."

Sometimes it helps and I stop the negative inner dialogue. Then, of course, I usually pour a glass of Bushmills. Sometimes it doesn't help though, and I figure that I'm just using it as an excuse.

That's when the self-talk gets really healthy.

Epiphany

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:52:00 +0000

This one might seem a little late in coming, but I had an epiphany this week. I realized that three children is enough.

You might think that I realized that before, say, back in 2001, when I had that little burning procedure done on my fallopian tubes.

No. Back then, what I - or, should I say, what WE - realized - was that three should be enough. We also realized that we could not be trusted to be responsible enough to stop at three. Given enough distance from newborn hell, we definitely would have given into the temptation to make just one more. And then maybe just one more.

So, we took matters into our own hands and put a stop to all that conception nonsense.

Since then, while I have felt that our family is complete, I have always felt that there is room for one more.

Always, until this week.

When I consider what it takes to coordinate the life of this family - of three children at different schools with different homework and different interests and different activities - I just can't imagine giving time and energy to one more person.

I'm all full up.

Upheaval

noreply@blogger.com (Carolyn) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:42:00 +0000

In the last two weeks, we yanked Wolfgang out of his inner-city magnet school and moved him to the white bread suburban middle school right here in town. (And, yes, btw, I'm fully aware of the implied meanings of the phrase "inner city.")

You know, you try to do the right thing for your kid, try to expose him to different ideas, experiences, people. We sent him to the school because of its science and technology focus, but I also hoped that being in a racially and economically diverse environment would be a good life experience. After all, life isn't all upper middle class white suburbia.

Well, when I went to the parents' open house at his old school a couple weeks ago, it became clear to me that eighth grade was not going to offer Wolfgang the academic experience we were looking for. I believe that if we left him in the inner city magnet school he wasn't going to be adequately prepared for high school here in white suburbia. So, we pulled him.

After the first day at our local middle school, I asked Wolfgang how it is different from his old school.

His response: "This school is way less ghetto." Or maybe it was, "There are way less ghetto kids here." Either way, you get the idea.

Yeah, I don't what the hell I'm doing when it comes to this parenting thing. About the only thing I can say with any certainty is that whatever I do, I do it deliberately. For whatever that's worth.