the pieces of my life

Rome around the world! (So maybe that’s not what the B52s meant, but I’m always happy to employ a good homophone to get my point across.)

The land of espresso, gelato, and pasta! Italy, you have met your match. Let the eating begin!

On the plane, ready to take off for….

My baby boy is home. Did you guys hear that? I’ll say it louder. MY BABY BOY IS HOME! And he loved camp. Sob! Next year he wants to go for the four-week session (refresh! refresh! refresh!).

I myself had a whirlwind weekend attending the wedding of two high school friends. It was one of those crazy stories–they dated for years in high school, broke up, married other people. Those marriages didn’t work and when they found each other again, the sparks flew. So I jetted off to Sunny Isles, Florida for their wedding. It was beautiful. But it meant that Adam had to pick the boy up from camp. So insufficient pictures. (And, let’s be honest, there would be no “sufficient” pictures if I’m not the one taking them.)

I woke up this morning to a not-so-little boy body in my bed. Ahhhh.

“Whatcha doing in my bed?” I asked him.

“I had a bad dream,” he told me. “You know, I really shouldn’t read the dictionary before I go to bed. I had these nightmares and people were using all these fancy words.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t even know what all of them mean.”

“Like what?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “Like ‘exquisite.'”

I’m so happy he’s home!

*One of my favorite songs, even if they do spell “all right” incorrectly.

It started last fall. It was the boy. “I want to go to sleep-away camp.”

To which I gave the only logical response: “No f**king way.”

But the boy was determined. “I want to go to sleep-away camp!”

“You’re too young!” I protested. “You can go… someday.”

Meanwhile, I had the girl reassuring me, “I will NEVER go to sleep-away camp! Don’t even think about it for me. Never ever!”

We debated through the fall. It was too late to visit camps, so it was a moot point anyway. I wasn’t going to send him to a camp I hadn’t seen.

“Sleep-away camp, Mom,” he’d say. Then he’d become specific. “Cub Scout sleep-away camp.”

“That one is never going to happen. No Cub Scouts. Cub Scouts are too evil to do sleep-away camp. If you do go to sleep-away camp, it’ll be Jewish sleep-away camp.”

“No way,” he said.

Well, that’s that. I walked away feeling smug and secure as we ended the conversation. Except… he thought for a few weeks and then came back to me. “Okay, Jewish sleep-away camp.”

Oy.

“Mom,” the girl reminded me, “don’t forget, I am not going to sleep-away camp! Never!”

I attended the camp fair at our synagogue and was fairly impressed by one of the camps. It also happened to be the camp our rabbi had sent his daughter, so I felt in some ways it had been vetted. But the thing that sold me on sleep-away camp for sooner rather than later was this: This summer was the last summer the boy could go for a two-week mini-session. Next year, when he hit fifth grade (did I just say that? fifth grade is just a year away? Ahhhhhggggggg!), the shortest he could do is a four-week session. Plus, one of his buddies from Hebrew school (whose mom not only attended the camp, but worked there for a number of years as a counselor) would be in the mini-session this year.

Relunctantly, I relented: “Okay. You can go.”

A zillion dollars later and the boy is signed up to go to a camp that we’ve actually never seen. About two weeks ago, they had a day for prospective campers and we decided to go. I was worried about going, as the boy had been to a sleepover at a minor league baseball team the night before, and I knew he would be tired and cranky. My fear was that he would see the camp and declare–after the zillion dollars was paid in full–that he hated it. When the boy is tired, he can be a beast. I was setting us all up for failure. I was afraid. Very afraid. I thought about saying we couldn’t go, but I was dying to see what the place looked like.

So we went. And I was right. The day completely backfired on me. I. Am. Screwed.

Oh, the boy was no problem. He liked the camp. It was the girl.

“I WANT TO COME HERE!” she yelled as soon as the adult tour rejoined the kid tour of the camp. “I CAN GO NEXT YEAR TO A MINI-SESSION WHEN I START THIRD GRADE AND I AM GOING TO COME HERE!”

Shit.

“When I go,” the girl continued, “I’m going to take for my electives the dance, tennis, and art. Or maybe boating? No, tennis! But outdoor cooking sounds cool! Maybe I should do drama? When I get to come for eight weeks, I can do all the electives I want!”

“My love,” I told her, “you will never go for eight weeks. Four weeks is max. I want time with my children.”

“But, Mommy,” she whined, “I want to come for eight weeks! Can you sign me up now for next summer?”

Did I mention how screwed I am? I. Am. So. Screwed.

On Tuesday, I took my boy to camp. He could not get out of the house early enough. “Can’t we drive to drop the girl at her camp and then leave straight from there?”

I told him, “Drop off doesn’t start till 10. We can’t get there early.” The camp is just 75 miles away.

I heard every five minutes, starting at 7:30 a.m., “Can we go now? Is it time to go?”

In the car, he was a little quiet. He admitted to being momentarily nervous, but it disappeared the second we arrived.

He hopped out of the car and ran into his bunk. He so kindly allowed me to unpack him and make his bed (what joy!), and he was thrilled that his Hebrew school friend was not just in the same bunk as him, but the same bunk bed.

I took note of the daily schedule. Which I absolutely couldn’t read. Because–you know–it was in Hebrew. Huh? Oh wait, a Jewish camp. Yeah, that was my idea.

The boy was hopping all over the place and soon ran outside to play Frisbee with one of his counselors (there are three counselors for his bunk of ten boys; all ten boys are there for the mini-session and all ten are going into fourth grade). After that, he headed down to the main area where there was a camp fire and they were getting ready to bake pita bread on it, and he rolled candy sushi (fruit leather as seaweed, and Rollos, Fluff, jelly beans, and other candy as the innards).

After a few minutes, I said, “Okay, I guess I’ll get going.”

He barely looked up as he said, “‘Kay, Mom. Bye!”

And I left.

Waaaaaaa!

That night I spent hours hitting “refresh” on the camp website waiting for a picture of my child. I told him I’d pay him 50 cents for every photo I saw him in, to give him incentive to dive for the camera. There were none, although by morning I saw a few.

When I mentioned this to an acquaintance, she laughed and sent me this video. When I sent the video to Adam, he accused me of making it myself:

(Note, the following video drops a few F-bombs, so proceed with caution when watching around others.)

It’s just two weeks. Waaaaaaa! Refresh, refresh, refresh!

*Don’t get the title reference? It refers to a novelty song from the 1960s by Alan Sherman.

Every year I’ve had a really pitiful little garden that I spend an ungodly amount of money on to try and coax out a tomato or two. Seriously, do you know how much compost costs?

This year, I realized it was actually cheaper to have someone who knows what he is doing install my garden. So in the beginning of June, I had someone come and plant for me. Let me say: Wow. Someone who knows what he’s doing can really make a garden that can produce food!

For fun, let’s look at a comparison. This was my garden in 2010:

Nice, huh? Some lettuce, some tomato, some basil in nice neat rows. I put down organic compost, used organic fertilizer. That stuff ain’t cheap.

This year, having someone else put in my garden, this is what it looks like:

I’ve vowed to eat a salad a day to use even a portion of the lettuce. We have tomatoes, peppers, radishes, cucumbers, zucchinis, beets, collards, kale, basil, cilantro, oregano, and lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce (I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but that’s a start).

So now that I have this beautiful lush garden, I have discovered something.

I hate organic gardening.

Actually, more specifically, I am afraid of organic gardening. I’m afraid of my garden.

Because it turns out that “organic” part? The part that includes “no pesticides”? Well, that’s a big old invitation to every bug and critter out there. And the bugs and critters that live in a garden truly gross me out. To be fair, most of them are fine. Bees, no worries. Slugs? Flick them away without a second’s thought. Ladybugs? Well, those are downright cute. The rabbits? Yes, they may like my veggies, but they’re bunnies for goodness sake! How can anyone say anything bad about bunnies?

It’s the earwigs. I. Hate. Earwigs. I don’t mean I kind of dislike them. I mean I hate them with such a ravishing passion that they appear in my nightmares with those stupid pincher claws and that nasty roach-colored back. And did you know that earwigs like to hang out in-between lettuce leaves? It’s true!

I’m at the point where I refuse to go pick lettuce unless I have Beetle standing there for moral support. In fact, I need to pick lettuce now. But Beetle isn’t home. So I’ll just do without lettuce until she returns.

The other critters aren’t making me much happier. I had rows and rows of gorgeous blueberries and raspberries just waiting to ripen. The birds enjoyed them all. We got one raspberry. The blackberries barely made it. It’s a race to get the tomatoes when they’re ripe enough to pick but before they’ve been eaten by the squirrels.

And let me tell you, we have vicious squirrels. Think I’m kidding? Adam had to rig the garbage can with bungee cords to keep them out, and they still chew through the plastic. I pride myself on my composting. I have two decent looking wooden compost bins. Which just scream to the squirrels, “Come and get it!” I couldn’t figure out why rotten vegetables were all over the ground until I noticed the hole chewed in the sides and back of the bins. Adam pushed the bins together, stuck weeding cloth between them, and nailed chicken wire on the back. So the squirrels gave us a big “F**k you,” and just gnawed through the front.

I refuse to use pesticides. But I also refuse to deal with earwigs and losing my fruit. I see a battle lines being drawn. I’m putting on my armor. If you don’t hear from me in a while, send in reinforcements!

7:20 a.m.
“Boy, get dressed. We have to get you to camp.”

7:33 a.m.
“Boy, are you dressed? Put down the comic book and get dressed!”

7:41 a.m.
“Where are you? How long does it take to get dressed? You need breakfast!”

7:50 a.m.
“You are leaving in 10 minutes! Get your butt down here!”

“Okay, okay!” the boy yells, as he runs down the stairs, fully dressed, and into the kitchen.

I look at him. “Are you wearing clean underwear?”

The boy looks at me exasperated. “You didn’t tell me I had to put on clean underwear!” And back upstairs he went.

Later that day, after returning from School of Rock camp: “Mom, there was a line in the song we’re writing that I don’t understand. The line is, ‘You bang your drums when you should be plucking my g string.’ What does it mean?”

Ah, the joys of having a fourth grader!

It started out innocuously enough. The song “Call Me Maybe” would play on the the radio, and I’d change the station. It’s an annoying song. Truly. And then a friend posted a link to the Harvard baseball team dancing in their car to the song. She thought it meant she was a cougar, because she liked the boys in the video. I thought it meant I was a total mom because all I could think was, “Why aren’t they wearing their seat belts? I can see them, right there in the corner! Put on the DAMN seat belts!” I played it for the girl. She liked it. And then there was the Barack Obama version. I played it for the kids. They were amused.

And then the kiddos went off to a movie-making camp. And for part of the camp they made a music video. To Carly Rae Jepsen. And that’s when I discovered how much the boy hates the song. I mean it really upsets him. Makes his skin crawl. Which means I now love it. Frequently. At top volume. The girl is in on this.

I find the song online and play it. Today, we were driving home from the library and the song came on just as I pulled into the driveway. I locked the doors and cranked the volume, while the boy tried to frantically claw his way out of the minivan. But I prevailed. I feed lines to the girl. “Hey, I just met you!” I say. And she responds, “And this is crazy!” I whisper to the song to him as he’s falling asleep. “I’d trade my soul for a wish, pennies and dimes for a kiss…” [Edit: Even Cookie Monster is in on it!]

Just another reason of why I deserve the Mom of the Year award. And why he’ll be in therapy before he’s twelve.

The girl has a minor blackberry addiction.

Which is odd because I tried to get the girl to eat blackberries for years, but she hated them until her Nana* fed her some and now she can’t get enough.

Which (thanks to my genes directly inherited from said Nana) led to me singing, “Blackberries singing in the dead of night! Take these broken wings and learn to fly!”

Which led to a mini-Beatles dance party. The boy pulled out his drum pad and joined in. We went from Blackberries (oops, “Blackbird”) to “Back in the U.S.S.R.” to “Birthday.” But the boy was frustrated.

“Can’t you play something other than the Beatles?” the boy asked.

“Why?” I said. “The Beatles are good.”

“Hippies are annoying. They play music on street corners,” he said.

What? “I blame your father!” I yelled. “You are no longer allowed to spend time with your father!”

Adam perked up here. “What?”

“I don’t like your influence on the kids,” I told him.

“I didn’t say anything!” he protested.

“Say it, Boy,” I told the boy.

“Hippies are annoying,” the boy repeated.

“Oh yeah,” Adam said. “I did say that.”

The gauntlet has been thrown. Adam and Nathan don’t like it when I play the Beatles? Well, they’ll really freak when the Grateful Dead come out…. “Riding that train. High on cocaine….”

*Note, I do know that “Nana” used in this manner is actually a common noun and should be lowercased, but–and this applies going forward in this blog so I will not make note of this again–I make the editorial decision to capitalize because she really is “the Nana.”

[edited: Adam asked, “Did you put that disclaimer in there just for Peter [my dad]?” I said, “I put it in for anyone who knows proper grammar and might think I made a mistake.” He responded, “So you put it in for Peter.” Whatever.]

The boy is in his room, on his bed, reading in his underwear.

Me: You need to get dressed. With CLEAN underwear!
The boy: Got it.
Me: I’m serious. I’m making a note of your underwear right now. You are wearing your boxers with the stars on it. When you come downstairs I am going to check your underwear to make sure it’s clean.
The boy: Got it.
Me: Okay, so get dressed, tidy your room, and come on down.

15 minutes later. The boy ambles down, dressed, hair wet and styled.
Me: Da da dum! Time for the underwear check.
I peek.
Me: This is the SAME underwear! Boxers with stars!
The boy: I actually have two pairs of this underwear!
Me: So if I go upstairs and check the laundry hamper, there will be a pair of boxer shorts with stars on them on the top?
The boy: Um. On the bottom.

He’s going to be really popular in the dorms when he gets to college.

Two years ago, for my birthday, I got lice. And by “I,” I of course mean me, my daughter, and my son. I spent my birthday literally nitpicking. Last year I got Adam’s high school reunion with funky cold medinas and no cake. So I knew that [warning: TMI alert] when I went to the bathroom this morning and discovered my pee was red that clearly I had a kidney infection. What else can I expect from my birthday?

One Google search later and I had narrowed it down to two options: I either had Porphyria (a hereditary disease in which part of the hemoglobin is not made) or I had beets last night. A quick mental scan of the previous night revealed it was the latter.

We can stop right there. This birthday is a success. Let’s call it a day before anyone can screw it up.

No, no, the day turned out perfectly lovely, although not as blog-worthy as some people might have hoped. I got a solid morning of writing done (the second draft of my novel is on target to be finished in the next week), the girl and I had pedis, and then we all had a lovely dinner out. And, yes, there was cake. Of course for the “Are you one? Are you two? Are you three?” my boy had to be clever and count by tens. But I suppose that’s the logical thing to do when you have a middle-aged mom. (I said to the girl, “When Nana was my age, she had a daughter who was the same age she was when I was born.” The girl said, “Really? Who was the daughter!”)

And now I’m going to look over my booty, drink my whiskey sour, and revel in my middle-agedness. Happy old to me!