Episode 148:

Today we have a guest entry. Monica spent most of last week with the baby as she was on vacation. Thus, I have little material and she is ready to go. So, you get a break from my cynicism, hyperbole and random analogies today. Enjoy.

...

I decided that I would like to contribute to the blog since home last week on April vacation. I was really looking forward to spending time with Av since I am perpetually plagued with working mom guilt and have often reduced myself into thinking I am fun weekend mom. The child is at an age that I would like to bottle and save. Her hilarity is unrelenting. She is infuriating, annoying, spastic and adorable…sometimes all within the same action. With the weather forecast being less than promising my initial plan of a road trip to a Peace Pagoda and the zoo, didn’t pan out, so I had to get creative.

The family decided on a rainy Tuesday to take advantage of the free admission for Salem residents at the Peabody Essex Museum. I had heard there was a hands-on nature room for kids, so off we went. The room was full of taxidermy creatures and optical illusions. The museum smell was combined with other children’s diapers and petrified animal skins. I opened one discovery drawer to find old dried snake skins, one with ‘guess that animal hide’, and even a tiny stiff star nosed mole, my animal arch nemesis. Despite being all equally disguising, none of these compared the wall of stuffed birds. One thing immediately jumped out to the whole family…a grouping of three eyed owls. What the hell. These do not exist in nature, there was no literature to match up and explain why they had three eyes, and they were just there. All perched and gawking out of their three eyes. It was almost as if the curator was fucking with the patrons. Like, ‘who’s paying attention to this absurd wall of taxidermy birds?’ Like an animal abnormalities version of “Where’s Waldo?” Needless to say, I took a picture and the concept has tortured me ever since. Google it, it isn’t possible.

We had also collected the inevitable wayward child. It happens almost every time we take a trip anywhere. A child who seemingly belongs to no one latches onto me and before long I find myself correcting a stranger child’s behavior, tying it’s shoe, zipping it’s coat, pushing it on the swing, reading it a story, all but wiping it’s ass and putting it to bed. This one we collected at the museum appeared to have a limited language capacity and not realize its own strength. It was a child sized Lenny from “Of Mice and Men.” The child first grunted and joined up for a game of blocks. Av was intrigued and intimidated and I was just annoyed. I looked around hoping it belonged to some super serious museum going mom who would swiftly remove her from the likes of us and we could all commence playing. No such luck. The child continued to play with a box of stuffed chameleons and Av was giving me the ‘wtf who is this?’ look and I had to shrug and play it cool. Eventually it wandered away and we came to the conclusion that it belonged to the over-weight woman behind us loudly talking on a cell phone who occasionally swore while yelling about her dysfunctional drug addicted son or nephew. Go fig.

...

The slated day for the zoo was Friday. The forecast was again cold and shitty, like the rest of the week. I decided we would go to the movies. With Dan home “sick,” I was looking forward to a girls’ day at the movie theatre and mall. We arrived a little early for our 10:05 (am!) showing of the Easter film “Hop.” Av seemed so down with the concept. My brother’s fist movie was Ghost Dad staring Bill Cosby. Best. Mine was Flowers in the Attic. (My parents thought I wouldn’t remember/wouldn’t get it. They were wrong.) Anyway, I paid the $6 a ticket and fulfilled my promise for movie popcorn. It has been years since I have gone to the movies and paid myself…so I was kind of surprised by the kid’s popcorn at $5.50. I was not surprised however, by the clientele the movies contains on a weekday morning. Moms with unruly children, buying armfuls of candy and ice-junkies at 10:05 in the morning….good luck with that. Sad looking women with sweatsuits and perma-scowls.

I often feel conflicted about not being a stay-at-home mom…the weekday world intrigues me. We headed down to theatre number one, pricey popcorn and baby in tow, all the while Av is repeating, “don’t spill it mummy, don’t spill it…” I set her up, the chair folding up onto her tiny body, busted out Bert and Ernie and put them in each cup holder, strawed a juicebox and thought this was going to be awesome.


The lights dimmed and the most epic preview for a children’s movie commenced, sending the $5.50 popcorn flying and a clinging two year old onto my lap. “buh-byes! Buh -byes!” literal panic had set in. Did you know the fucking Smurfs were back? Like, 1980s can be both a noun and verb (yeah, I smurfed that) Smurfs are back. Terrifying. They are now in CGI animation. The preview consisted of a human (who WASN’T Brandon Frasier!) opening the box of Smurfs who screamed, then the human screamed, then the baby screamed, dug in her dirty unkempt nails, and demanded to be removed. Awful. In the lobby, the elderly usher and I tried to explain to her that the Smurfs were nice guys and the bunny movie was worth it. She wasn’t buying it. Smurf you, Smurfs. I liked the Snorks way better. Or Thundercats. Or She-Ra, or Jem. Assholes.

...

Ok, I'm back. Didn't she do a nice job? I think so. We are back in to the full swing of things this week, for better or worse. The baby clearly has more fun with Monica, but she deals with me because she has to. My week 'off' was nice, even though I was sick for a bit (and I was). It all just reinforces the fact that life would be exponentially better if neither one of us worked. Crackheads have it all figured out. Well, except for the crack part.