April 12, 2012

gap

102:365She finally lost her first tooth today. Came out during snack time at After Care, which I found out when I arrived to pick her up. "Holy cow, Zo! That's awesome! Where is it?""In my tummy!"She was eating something crunchy and thought the tooth was just a really really crunchy piece. "It's okay Mommy. You know why? The Tooth Fairy brings you a GOLDEN coin when you swallow your tooth!"F*ck. Where the hell am I gonna get a golden coin at 5:15 on a Wednesday night? Scratch that…7:30 on a Wednesday night because I gotta wait until she goes to bed. Enter M: superdad extraordinaire, even when he's not here. I raided the mug on his desk where he dumps all his leftover foreign currency after international trips. Tooth Fairy is kickin' it Denmark style and droppin' a 20 Kroner under Zoe's pillow tonight (it's golden, after all). Along with a few good ol' American greenbacks, of course. We called M using FaceTime so he could see the gap for himself. (That one call made the iPad worth every single penny.) We watched his eyes light up with recognition that there was something missing, and saw the look of awe on his face. It was really special. I was supposed to be in Kansas today. I was supposed to be gone. I blew the trip off for a number of reasons, one of them being that I was terrified at the idea of missing the loss of her first tooth. I realize as a working mom that I'll miss a lot of things. I've resigned myself to that fact. But I for damn sure was NOT going to miss this milestone. I want to be her first Tooth Fairy, and I want to celebrate with her, and I want to be here to mourn the physical loss of her babyness. I want to be here to witness how her smile changes, and how her speech changes (it's subtle, but you can hear that she's missing a tooth). No job is worth missing that, especially the one in which I am currently trapped. So here I sit, exhausted after a day of working, corralling all the various entities required to tear down a house and rebuild, researching summer camps for The Bug and then getting her registered with the right schedule to ensure maximum coverage, plus the various mundane tasks that make up a regular everyday life. And at the same time, I'm absolutely thrilled to play Tooth Fairy to the most awesome kid in the world.

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •

April 11, 2012

lucky

101:365Coach handed out jerseys at practice tonight, in the "get what you get and you don't throw a fit" system. The girls didn't care (that comes later), but they had a blast modeling their new visors for each other. I thought it was cool that she ended up with lucky number seven. The visors are genius. I remember sweating my ass off in a hot ball cap through many a summer. Plus, it's hard to cram perky pigtails under a baseball cap. At practice tonight she did a great job with fielding, throwing and batting. She was engaged and paid attention nearly the whole time, despite the usual suspects raising a ruckus in the background. Some things never change…the same girls who were a pain in the butt to coach in soccer are equally disruptive in softball. Regardless, I think she's going to do really well, and have fun with softball. Which is good because I hear great softball players can score some awesome college scholarships. Since soccer for her primarily consists of cartwheels between bouts of running, I'm now looking towards softball for potential tuition help. (Kidding! I just want my little girl to have fun and feel good about what she's doing. I think she's got the confidence thing down. On the way home from practice tonight, I said, "That was a great hit, Zozo!" And from the back seat I heard a confident, "I know!" Whereupon we had a teaching moment on the proper way to field a compliment.)

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •

April 10, 2012

windows

100:365Today's fun included:
An hour on the phone with four people from AT&T in an attempt to rectify a colossal f*ck up one person at AT&T set in motion three months ago. (That fun continues tomorrow.)A trip to Zozer's dentist to see about The Baby Tooth That Won't Fall Out. (We get to wait some more. Apparently it's ok for your child to have two sets of teeth at once.)The library to return books, and check out some new ones. Steak 'n Shake for lunch, because "they have the BEST shakes, Mommy!"A run downtown to AIA, to purchase stock contracts for building a custom home. A stop by the bank to drop off my set of construction documents, because clearly everyone in the free world needs to know the layout of my home before I can build it. My plans will be FedEx'd to a couple of women in Minnesota or Wisconsin who are responsible for reviewing plans for new construction loans. "I don't like where you put the powder room – loan denied!"Multiple games of Uno. The child is obsessed. A run to Build-A-Bear, because for Zo it's the equivalent of Schiller's for me and Elco for M, and she was so patient with all my errands today that she deserved a little side trip to heaven. A blood letting at church, where I gave my pint to the Red Cross not only to help up to three people but also to get those stalkers off my call sheet. I know when I'm eligible to donate, because they blow up my phone with daily pleadings. Being O- has its privileges. All in all quite a productive day. I did manage to get a little work done, but for the most part I played hooky and hung out with my kid. It was good.

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •

April 9, 2012

inventory

99:365After collecting the eggs, she carefully sorted her loot. It wasn't just by candy and money, though. The candy was sub-sorted by type: jelly beans, snickers, twix, reese's, etc. Her engineer father looked on with unabashed pride.

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •

April 8, 2012

eggstra special memories

98:365We dyed our Easter eggs today. She made hers pink, because that's her favorite color right now. Accordingly, she made mine green and Daddy's blue. Hootie got a yellow one. Then she put an egg in all four colors, rotating it between bowls arbitrarily until she decided it was done. That one she deemed the "family egg."And then 15 minutes later she ate the family egg as part of her lunch. We don't buy fancy egg decorating kits. We don't have special wire egg holders, or disposable egg dying cups, or egg drying racks. I dye eggs with my daughter exactly how my mom dyed eggs with me: mugs, spoons, boiling water, a little bit of vinegar, white crayons, newspaper, and food coloring from a package that still looks exactly like it did when I was a kid. It may be old-fashioned, but I loved it and I hope Zozer does, too.

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •

April 6, 2012

tower

96:365Home tonight. Was able to get on the road a couple hours early, so we surprised Zo. M called in a pizza and I picked it up on the way home. She was speechless when I walked in the door, as I was not expected until after she was asleep. We ate, and snuggled, and gave each other smoochies. We put her to bed, and within five minutes I heard her sneaking into mine. I carried her back into her bed a bit ago, and now M is asleep on the long couch while I make Instagrams on the short couch. The cats are around, the news is on, and all feels right in the world again.

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •

April 5, 2012

interchange

95:365Exhausted tonight. My British boss is visiting from France. He's a sales and ops guy who f*cked up his responsibilities in South Africa 3 years ago, and since the French can't fire anyone he was made head of global communications as it was thought that's where he'd do the least damage. Today we spent 30 minutes arguing about whether a press release I had written on behalf of a VP was "too long." This from the man whose writing I routinely have to tighten up, removing all the "in order to"s and redundancies. Now, I can take criticism on my writing. It's one of the first things they drill into students at The World's Finest School of Journalism. But the criticism has to be valid. Not "it's too long." Press release effectiveness is NOT determined by length. It's determined by CONTENT. And legibility. I'm reminded of the scene in Amadeus where the king, after listening to one of Mozart's beautiful compositions, pronounces that it's nice but a little too long. "Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect."No, I'm not saying I'm the Mozart of press releases. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of working for someone who hasn't a freakin' clue how to do his own job, much less mine. (BTW the sections he clipped from my release were data points the VP – who is a brilliant business man – specifically requested. When I pointed that out to my boss, he admitted he hadn't bothered to read the email from the VP. Nothing like editing without all the information at hand.)I have worked three 12-hour days in a row, and a 9-hour session from hell lurks on the morrow before I'm allowed to drop the jackass off at the KC airport and drive the four hours home. And thus, I find myself at an interchange in my career. (Had to tie this post to the photo somehow!) Stay tuned, my friends. I've got a different destination plugged into my iPhone map app and the blinker is on…

∼ Continue Reading ∼

• • •
1 … 109 110 111 112 113 … 281