The Suburban Jungle

During the holiday season I was trying to teach my son about the joy of giving, and the concept that many people are less fortunate than we are. Look, I’ve spent many years spoiling him and now I must undo all that hard work so he stops asking me for presents every hour on the hour. Why did I teach him to tell time in the first place?

Anyway, I’ve been trying to find a charity that allows children to volunteer, as many children’s charities do not. It’s easy to relay facts of poverty and ailments on a cushy sofa in a perfect 74 degree room, but not easy to show them the reality of it. Last year we adopted a family for the holidays. We shopped for them and picked out their gifts according to age, likes, and height, of course. However, we weren’t allowed to give the gifts personally, so it was a very small taste of charity. It felt more like helping shop for a friend’s birthday present, with the usual sprinkling of “Can I get that too?”  Did I say sprinkling?  I meant whining, crying, and making a spectacle at the Super Target.

This year we found a charity called Kids Helping Kids. The first event was for “Facing It Together” – an organization that helps fund and find Doctors to donate surgeries for facial deformities. It sounded like a lovely idea, and with Jake being so sensitive, seemed like a good fit. I explained beforehand what to expect, and that these children were just like him. He went to his piggy bank, as he is always willing to do, and offered to help. I said this was all about giving his time, and he was very excited about the idea. Like me, he is a total sap and the first one to save a worm boiling on the sidewalk or help me send a millipede or salamander out of our house and back to their families.

He asked throughout the week. “When are we doing the charity?” If you must know, he really asked, “When are we going to help the children with no heads?” “Jake, honey, they have heads.” “I mean the children with no faces.” Well at least he won’t be scared or shocked by anything he sees, as he has certainly prepared himself for the worst.

My friend, who told us about the event, was certain that this day would be the first day of the rest of her children’s lives. She was convinced that each child would have life altering epiphanies, and would offer to donate all remaining holiday presents to charity. I was not so ambitious in my expectations, and just wanted to give him the sense of gratification one gets from helping others, and to understand there are more pressing things than the Ripstick G, or Guitar Hero World Tour.

As it turned out, the children volunteers way outnumbered the children of the charity, and getting them a space at the crafts tables among all the volunteers making snow globes, ornaments, and picture frames, was nearly impossible. Jake scooched in, and was thoroughly unaffected by the affected children (as none of them were missing their heads). He helped me check a few people in, while worrying that someone would take the last of the keylime pie, and made about 17 ornaments for the tree we didn’t have. Then my friend’s husband took him and his son to hang out in a sky box (as we were at the Home Depot Center).

To top off our generous altruistic giving, we were thanked for our help with tickets to that days Panthers game. So the boys had a ball and left hours later after Dippin’ Dots, hot chocolate and catching tee shirts that were dropped with parachutes from the ceiling. Well there’s the epiphany “If you give of yourself and your time, you get awesome stuff. You make stuff, hang out in sky boxes, get to see a professional sporting event, and prizes will actually fall from the sky.” This getting our feet wet thing might have set some unascertainable expectations for future charity events.

Hey, if you’re on FB join the new group Suburban Jungle and please invite your friend list. Thanks for the support!

My theory on the principal who attempted to “sleep” strangle his wife with her hoodie string, is that he was actually lucid and when she awoke he pretended to be asleep. This is something even a 4yr old can do. I know, my kids and husband are pros at fake sleeping, especially when avoiding a chore or when trying to get away with murder.

I told my theory to my Mother-in-law, who was very offended by my ignorance in sleep strangling. “Don’t you watch Oprah?”

“Umm, is she on Cartoon Network?”

“She has people on that do all kinds of stuff in their sleep. They eat, they clean, they garden, they cook. They are on video doing it.”

I had no idea how productive one could be when sleeping. And here I am wishing for more hours in the day, when they were there all along. I feel so lazy. To think, all these years I ‘ve been using my sleep to explore my unconscious desires and true feelings about people I’ve lost touch with, movie stars I will never meet, and ego shattering incidences that I never address or admit to in my waking world.

“Now, these people on Oprah that you speak of, are they complaining about these afflictions?”

“Well sure, they are in sleep therapy, and studies. They are trying to find cures.”

“Are they nuts? If we have any say in the sleep disorders we are plagued with, I call sleep cooking, then sleep cleaning, sleep aerobics, sleep showering, and sleep sex. Wait, scratch that last one, I’ve already mastered it.”

Can you imagine if sleep accomplishments could be taught? The next Hollywood craze could be Sleep Kabbalah, and Sleep Striptease workouts with Carmen Electra. I am certain a few celebs are onto it already. Ryan Seacrest, Steven Speilberg, and Martha Stewart, who up until now I was sure were androids or at the very least vampires, are clearly doing sleep stuff.

Take Martha, who has enough time to cook a meal in multiple courses, invite friends to eat it on hand written notes, calligraphied on hand dipped paper, make season appropriate place cards that are not only edible, but look like wreaths, and can be reused as lingerie drawer sachets, and still have time to make shady deals and verbally abuse the help? (That’s just breakfast.)

If I were still in college, I’d take slumber learning 101. Then I’d party all night, and sleep through all my classes. Everyone does the latter anyway. It’s a brilliant idea, learning to learn in your sleep. It would be like asking a genie for more wishes. That would be the one class that I could actually apply in real life; certainly more than English Lit. I can’t tell you the last time someone wanted to analyze the symbolic meaning of the labyrinth in “The Name of The Rose,” but I can tell you the last time I slept… last night.

I am going to try giving myself subliminal messages all day. If all goes well I will awake in a bed that is already made, refreshed, clean, with firm thighs, taught buttocks, and the smell of lobster risotto and bananas foster filling my home. If all does not go well, I may strangle my husband in his sleep. I’m gonna do a pro/con chart on this one, but I’m thinking the reward outweighs the risk.

PS- Mark if you’re reading this, don’t sleep in a hoodie.

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This time of year I amuse myself by looking back at last year’s resolutions. Ones I made with the best intentions, like learning an instrument or a foreign language. Last Chanukah I had my husband buy me a guitar. I had all the confidence in the world that by this new year, I would balk at a request to play Stairway To Heaven, saying something dismissive like… “Please, that’s so cliché, but why not?” or “Por favor, es muy cliché, pero porque no? Unfortunately, my guitar collects dust while my Spanish collects rust.

So for this year, I have made some resolutions that are a bit more achievable:

1. Nag More

For 10 years my husband has not picked up a wet towel, washed ketchup off of a dish, changed a light bulb, or remembered trash day without a friendly, “How many times do I have to tell you?” I vow to be relentless in my nagging. I will lay immediate blame using words like always and never. As in, “I always, and you never.” I will play the martyr by saying, “Forget it. I’ll do it myself.” I will amp up the guilt with, “I do everything around here.” Or something unarguable like, “It’s obvious by your refusal to change a light bulb that you don’t love me anymore.” If all goes well, I’ll be nagging him to go to couples therapy by 2010.

2. Gain weight

I will add carbs to my diet with reckless abandon. I will start each meal with a generous helping of bread and rolls onto which I will spread an obnoxious amount of butter. I will stuff food into my mouth with such fervor it will make other eaters uncomfortable to watch. I vow to eat everything a la mode including ice cream.

3. Work out less

This will actually take serious effort. The only thing harder would be to shower less. If I need the proverbial cup of sugar, I will drive to my neighbor’s garage and beep until she comes out and hands it to me. I will take elevators in two-story buildings. Lastly, I will drop my membership to the gym and use the money I save to buy more carbs.

4. Forget an old language

This year, not only am I not going to learn a new language, I will let my brain atrophy to forget the one I already know. I will watch endless episodes of Sponge Bob and Chowder. I will stop doing crosswords and speaking in complete sentences. I will break all grammatical rules; I will misplace modifiers, dangle participles, and end sentences in prepositions. I will express my thoughts through that African clicking language, modern dance, and a set of bongos that I will wear around my neck.

5. Stay out of touch

This time of year, I am reminded of the many friends I have let time and space interfere with. I intend to further that distance. I will start by rejecting any new Facebook or social network requests. I will also attach a note that reads “I never liked you in the first place.” I will cuss out and hang up on people who call in hopes of fulfilling their own resolution to rekindle old friendships.

6. Be less patient

I will be aggravated, exasperated, and ready to blow my stack at the slightest misstep. The next time my son wants help with his homework I’ll say, “That’s it! Clearly this whole Elementary Education is not for you. If you don’t know how to spell December by now, you never will…Now go get a job! Oh, and take your sister with you, she sits on the potty way too long.”

7. Hold grudges

This year I will forgive no one. I don’t care if you step on my toe, or pay me the five bucks you owe me, a day after the assigned due date. I vow to hate you forever and never forget how you wronged me.

8. Stress more

I will lose sleep thinking about planning parties, redecorating my house, trying to budget, missing appointments, teacher conferences, and health issues. I will laugh an evil cackle while erasing all the plans from my PDA, and then cry over what I have just done. I will empty our bank account on frivolous investments and watch it dwindle away. Oh, wait…that already happened. Well good, more for me to worry about.

9. Become addicted to something

Smoking, alcoholism and Starbucks are so trite. I’m thinking something unique like nasal spray or hand sanitizer. Or at least something beneficial to my endurance like crack. Look, I already have a shopping addiction, maybe I could offset the bills with a robust gambling problem.

10. Gossip More

I vow to talk about everything you do in the new year. If I see you at the pediatrician for so much as a flu shot, I will tell everyone your child has hand foot mouth, so you can be verbally assaulted when you show up at a birthday party the next day. If you look too skinny, I will assume it’s a divorce or an addiction. If you look too hot, I’ll call it a torrid affair. If you look too young, it’s an addiction to surgical procedures because you’re getting divorced due to a torrid affair. I will start a rumor phone tree and a blog called “WhatYourNeighborsAreReallyUpTo.com.” I may even have a megaphone installed on my “Gossip Mobile,” so I can drive through local parking lots amplifying the skeletons in your closet to all within earshot. Oh, wait… I’ll just write about it in my next column.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So, I was at a party about 8 months ago where there was a psychic.  She was one of those weird holistic ones.  As opposed to the normal “businessy” type you so often see.  Anyway, she had me pick from a tray of stones and then she asked me for family birthdays.  I was determined not to make any kind of give-away face or gesture and sat there staunch and stiff, talking robotic and trying to appear blank.  Which I’m sure just made it seem like I had to poop.

If I go to a party and get drunk with a bunch of girls, and the host in good fun hires a fortune teller to give her guests a 2 minute reading, I am going to make her work for it.  My stupid gaze is luckily unnoticed because she quickly goes into a weird semi-seizure like trance as she stares at the stars, hoping for one to blink her some kind of Morse code and reveal my true self to her.  She pauses and pauses, shimmies and shakes,  and flutters her eyeballs back into her skull.  Finally, ahhhh the epiphany, “I see… networking.”  “Really?  Networking?   You see networking?  No fame?  No travel?  No windfall? None of that, you see networking?”  “Well I’m sorry that’s what I see, and lots of it.”

Now of course I am racking my brain to think of the networking I do on a daily basis, okay a weekly basis, okay monthly?  I did recommend my cleaning lady to a neighbor recently, but I never called her back with the number.  Does that count?
I don’t even network with my friends.  I check my machine and there are messages from college that I haven’t gotten yet.  They say things like: “There’s gonna be a frat party after we go to the RATT, so come, okay, What-everrr.”

Seriously, anyone who has had the pleasure of awaiting my return call can attest to it.  My machine actually says leave your message and someone in the family will call you back…probably Buddy (the dog) and the truth is he used to call people back in a timely manner, before he went deaf.  Now he has a lot of trouble working the TTY system…cause he’s also arthritic.

Anyway, I continued to prod.
“Will I have a writing career?”
“I don’t know, but if you do it comes from networking.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, networking, and please send the next person, cause you’re taking all my time and thus inhibiting my ability to NETWORK! Oh and here’s my card.”

So, I waited like a vulture for each reading to end, making the person on the block highly uncomfortable.  I know you’re thinking, “I want to party with Jenny.”  I asked around, and people got stuff like, “You’re bored with your day to day routine.” and “I see you were close with your mother growing up.”  She even told one girl she was pregnant. But to me she said those 3 quizzical syllables, net-work-ing. I came home and woke Mark to tell him how dead on she was with her reading for him and the kids, and that she knew Ally was pregnant.  “What do you think networking means?”

He said, “It means you’re an idiot.  Ally is showing.  These “mind readers” take one look at you and than say the most generic things possible… everyone networks.  She probably told 10 people that.”  “Nope, you’re wrong.  I know because I made it my duty to stop enjoying the party, and hamper  others from doing the same by grilling them about their personal readings.”  “All I m saying is, I am so surprised a smart person like you falls for this.  You really think some random woman, from the big city of Pembroke Pines, Florida, who works the party circuit, has the gift of seeing into the future?”

About a month later I and I started my blog and started getting feedback from companies and groups.  I  have found that literally all I do, outside of my mothering and housewife gig, is network.  I’ve joined 107 groups on facebook, 3 women entrepreneur networks, and 237 bloglog communities. I write personal messages to editors, bloggers, mothers, and reviewers.  Then I annoy the crap out of all of them by mass emailing on a daily basis.

About a week ago I looked at Mark and said “Remember that fortune teller?  She said all she saw was networking and look at me.   She was right.  How crazy is that?”  “Jenny, you are not seriously thinking that because you now network she was right?  She could have said that to anyone… maybe it’s simply ironic.  Or maybe it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that you started networking?”  “Are you suggesting that because this woman said that I would network, that I dropped my enjoyable shopping and sleeping habits to spend all my free time getting fat in front of a computer?

Wow that shlub from Pembroke Pines Florida sure has some serious power of persuasion.  Lucky she didn’t say we would get a divorce.  I’d be looking for a good lawyer right about now.  Oh, the irony in Mark calling me naive for believing in such foolishness.  The psychic told me I would come across a disbeliever… see, she was clairvoyant.

For 4 days I have been sick.  Nothing crazy, just the usual sore throat in the morning, coughing, fatigue kind of thing.  Yet in those four days, the world miraculously kept spinning, my children’s schedules did not disappear, nor did mine.  They made it to school, and to baseball, and the Doctor.  They did not suffer from starvation because I decided to forgo grocery shopping, making them breakfast, or packing their lunches, so that I could lie around and do something trivial, like recuperate.

Last night I happily turned out the lights at 11PM, hoping to make up for that 4hour “nap” I had the night before.  At midnight my dog Buddy, pacing and panting like a sex caller, sent me out like a shot for his first pee break of the evening.  At 1AM my son ran in soaking wet, exclaiming, “I think I sweated too much.”  Unable to peel myself up, I let his little naked tush into my bed where he continued to whine for about an hour straight.  “Mommy, I neeeeeeeeeed pants.”  “I’ll get you pants,” and let our heavy breather out for the 2nd time.  “Mommy, I neeeed my favorite pillow.” “I’ll get your favorite pillow” and give our letchy dog a bowl of water.  By 3AM Jake had tried 12 different positions.  Including the one where you go all the way under the covers to the end of the bed and push until you fall to the floor taking the comforter with you.  He complained about 20 different things, from being upset that I had to remake the bed after he fell out of it, to having an actual dislike for color of my sheets.  “They’re white.”

In the midst of this chaos, my husband was completely oblivious during those last few hours.  Some could argue that this has been the case for the last 9 years.
He was sleeping with his body pillow, the one he stole from me in the 3rd trimester of my 1st pregnancy.  It has been our small person sized bedmate ever since.  A bedmate that he shoves in his crotch and smothers between his knees. Well, better the pillow than me.  He had 2 more pillows over his head and was taking up 73% of the bed.  He had built and Iron clad barricade which my son could not penetrate or budge.  Jake and I were so snug I’d have to rebirth him to get him to school.  Finally , I gave up and wooed him back into his room by promising to make him a fort, “just like Daddy’s.”  Of course I had to remake his bed first, as the sweat had an uncanny resemblance to pee.  I got back into bed around 4 AM, after reading my dog a story and letting my son out.  Wait, scratch that and reverse it.

By 4:45 my son was back in the womb.  “Mom, can I be your snuggle bunny?”  For how many years will I get to hear that?  At 5AM my daughter was squeezing in on the other side of me.  We laid there like a hermetically sealed package of sausages, my arm coyoteed under Ryan’s head.  Then she started complaining.  “Its too hot with this blanket.  Mom my PJ’s hurt.  Mom I hate the color of your sheets.”  Somehow, 6:30 managed to roll around.

I banged on  my husbands fort with the door knocker he installed.  Bang…Bang…Bang.  “Please get the kids ready for school.  I was up all night.”  Mark is a morning person so I imagined it would be no big deal.  “Grumble grumble… no.”  “What do you mean you won’t help me?”  “Grunt, I’m sick, my throat is killing me.  Besides, I was up too.”  “What kept you up?  Was it the sound of your snoring?  Or maybe the pillow over your head wasn’t soft enough.”  “I just can’t I’m too sick.”  My husband’s cold might as well be the plague, as the Earth has halted on it’s axis.
It would take a hemorrhaging artery to get him to the Doctor, excuse me the clinic, as he has never officially acquired a Doctor.  But, why go?  It’s easier to lay around and tease my children with his untouchable presence.  He’ll spend his day creating an impressive mound of snotty tissues, large enough to pitch off of.  Tissues which he is too sick to bend down and pick up, however he is not too sick to work, or to make sure to keep up with his fantasy football team.
He’ll refuse to use sanitizer, and sluggishly mosey around the house, putting his grubby, germy hands in every bag of chips, touching every door knob and remote, and talking on every phone.  He may even lick the straws on the juice boxes for good measure.  All in a effort to ensure that as soon as he gets better, both my children will surely contract his illness and I will have no shot at personal recovery.

Now I should Mommy him, which in my bitter and sick state, I cannot even feign an attempt.  Listen, if I wanted another child I would adopt one from Indonesia.  If you need to be babied, call your Mom.  Better yet, go stay with her.  I don’t ask that my sickness or lack of sleep take precedence over yours.  I just ask that you go to a hotel until your’s passes.”