Please Remove Your Child From My Pubic Area

My parents bought us a gift—a night at a ski resort--which was a very thoughtful thing for them to do. The plan was this: they would keep the girls, and Thad and I would drive a whole hour away and drink hot chocolate spiked with Baileys and sleep in a hotel room without a single princess sippy cup in it and then spend the next day skiing.

Strangely, I was far more excited about the hot tub. The resort’s hot tub wasn’t just any old hot tub. It was an indoor/outdoor hot tub. You stepped into it inside, swam through some plastic car-wash flaps, and then were outside, sitting on underwater benches with other resort guests, snow piled around you, stars overhead, your wet hair growing teeny icicles while you held hands under the bubbling water with your husband who you realized you hadn’t exactly looked at since he drove you home from the maternity ward on March 18, 2005.

So we got in. And we swam out. And we scored a cozy spot on the far side right in front of a jet. And we held hands. And we looked at each other lovingly. And Thad started thinking about getting lucky later. And, just as I was about to give him a peck on the lips … there was a human form in my lap. 

“Hahahahaha,” said the human form, who I quickly discovered was a seven-year-old girl. “The water pushed me right into you. I can’t hold on. Hahahahaha!”

The seven-year-old girl was not wrong.  The current in the hot tub was as strong as a category-five hurricane. It took much resolve for Thad and I not to float into the 84-year-old man with the Einstein hair and Speedo sitting to our right. But we did not. Not so for the little girl. Because eight seconds later—boom!—there she was again. Square in my lap. Facing me. Her legs spread and resting on either side of my hips. Her mouth no more than one centimeter from mine.

“Hahahahaha!” she cackled. “Mommy! I can’t hold on to you!”

Only then did I realize that the woman sitting with her back to the little girl was, in fact, the little girl’s mother. The girl’s mother was talking to a man I presumed was the girl’s father. In between them was an empty space that could have accommodated three “Biggest Loser” contestants.        

Okay. So. Maybe I roll with different rules of engagement than mothers who frequent ski resorts with their children and bring them to hot tubs despite the fact that all children under 18, according to the “Hot Tub Rules” sign, were not supposed to even be in said hot tub after 9 o’clock at night. Maybe I’m more sensitive to the fact that I sometimes can’t tolerate my own children clamoring in my lap, much less the child of a complete stranger who is not only invading my personal space, but rubbing her naked, H1N1-infected thighs onto my naked thighs.

But, did the mother move over so that her daughter had more room? No. Did she say, “Get over here, Brittanyjolenerosemary! That nice lady doesn’t want you swimming in her lap! I am soooo sorry, nice lady?” No. The mother didn’t even turn around.

“Hahahahaha!” I heard, again, as Brittanyjolenerosemary circled back around, this time bracing herself by clawing my thigh—my inner thigh.

“Can you please not do that again?” I said, loud, intending to alert her mother to the fact that her child was in danger of being thrown.

“Hahahahaha!” The girl was now grabbing onto my shoulders, attempting to climb up my torso.

“Seriously…sweetie….um…ma’am?” I leaned in the direction of the mother, who didn’t hear me, probably because her daughter’s hair was in my mouth. “Excuse me? Ma’am?”

“Hahahahaha!”

I picked the girl up, fought the current with all my will, and placed her next to her mother. The father watched me do this. He did nothing. The mother finally turned, clearly realized what had been happening, then turned back around. These people, I thought, should be jailed. Brittanyjolenerosemary latched around mother’s neck in a strangle hold just as Einstein Speedo Man got up. Thad slid over. I slid over.

We are free! I thought. Free!

But, six minutes later, there was a human form in my lap. I was shocked to discover that it was a different child, the child of the man who had squeezed into the space between me and Brittanyjolenerosemary, the child whose back was resting on the father’s forearms, floating on the surface. And into me. Though not into my lap. This human form rubbed right up against my boobs.

Except this child was not a girl.

And he was roughly 18.

The First Monday Morning of 2010

5:05 a.m.--Thad’s alarm goes off. Mommy wakes up. Mommy falls back to sleep.

5:57:--Thad leaves for the airport. Thad is flying to Las Vegas for work. Thad will not be home until Friday night...after bedtime.

7:08--Drew wakes up, yelling, “Mommy, I need you.”

7:15--Blair wakes up, yelling, “Mommymommymommymommymommymommy,” as if she was in her bed, and mommy was on the top of the Empire State Building.

7:16--Mommy turns on Blue Clues.

7:17 to 8:43--Mommy makes breakfast (for 2-year-old Drew, a bowl of rainbow Cheerios; for 4-year-old Blair, half a pancake, three bites of mommy’s peanut-butter-toast, a fruit roll-up, chocolate milk, pink lemonade, and water in her “special snowman cup”); mommy dresses children; mommy writes out enormous check for daycare; mommy packs two lunches (for Drew, chicken nuggets; for Blair, as requested, Lipton cup-o-soup with extra-wide noodles, one white chocolate-covered-mini-pretzel, one brown chocolate-covered-mini pretzel, apple sauce in a cup with a red top, and apple juice “not watered down”).

8:44--Blair runs into the kitchen yelling, “Drew locked herself in the bathroom!” Mommy charges to the bathroom to find that Drew has, in fact, locked herself in the bathroom. Mommy sprints to find a skinny Philip’s head-screwdriver to push through the hole in the doorknob that’s used for unlocking doors in emergencies. The hole in the doorknob that’s used for unlocking doors in emergencies does not work. Drew starts to cry. Mommy whispers through the door, “Drew, honey, turn the knob. Turn the knob until the button pops.” Drew tries. Nothing happens. Mommy remembers that it’s not a push-button lock. Mommy panics. Mommy slams the right side of her body into the door. Drew screams. Blair stares at mommy, clearly thinking, “Mommy, why don’t you just unscrew the doorknob?” Mommy feels silly. Mommy grabs the screwdriver and begins to unscrew the doorknob. Blair sits down on the floor next to mommy’s feet and begins to flip through a pile of photos she found on the nightstand next to mommy’s bed. She looks up and says, "Look at this one, mommy! It's me and you on the bike! Look mommy! It's Drew in her bumblebee costume." Mommy says, "Blair, please be quiet." Blair says, “Mommy! Here we are at Nana’s in the pool!” Mommy, finally, gets the doorknob unscrewed. When mommy pushes inside part of the knob through, Drew starts to scream louder, then picks up the knob and proceeds to push it back into the hole on the door. Mommy yells, “Noooooooooo!” Mommy pushes the knob through the door again. Drew ignores it. The door still will not open. Drew peers at Mommy though the doorknob hole. She is crying so hard that she’s no longer making sound. Blair says, "Look mommy! It's me and Drew on a carousel!" Mommy shouts, “Shuuuuuuuuut uuuuuuup!” Blair starts to cry, then runs to hide on the other side of the bed. Mommy knows she should feel bad, but doesn’t. Mommy shoves the screwdriver into the hole and jams it around until the locking mechanism breaks in half. Mommy opens the door. Drew crawls out as if she has just been released from a concentration camp. Blair calls mommy an “idiot.”

9:01--Mommy takes Drew and Blair to daycare. Mommy leaves them there.



***A NOTE TO MY FAITHFUL SUBSCRIBERS: I have found that subscribing to a blog through the Networked Blogs option on Facebook pretty much stinks. (Since it doesn't alert you to when I've posted, I'm not sure what the point is. You?) I made it easier. On the upper right hand side of my blog page, you now have two options: 1. subscribe via e-mail (when I post, you'll get an e-mail) or, 2. subscribe via a reader, like Google or Bloglines or Yahoo or whatever you "do." I love you all.

The Tao of Christmas Tree Decorating

In retrospect, I would have done three things differently:

1. Strung the lights the night before when the children were sleeping.

2. Had a very clear plan as to what the “Tree Decorating Teaching Moment” would be.

3. Said, “No way in hell,” when Thad asked if, in lieu of decorating, he could go to the gym.

And still, even without the benefit of hindsight, it seemed like such a good idea at the time: placing several three-foot high stools around the tree and stepping from one to the next while artfully arranging the lights at the top of the tree as my helper--4-year-old Blair--followed behind on the floor, carrying a nest of lights that was three times the size of her head.

“Can we hang up the ornaments?” she asked.

“After we finish the lights.”

Eleven seconds later:

“Can we hang up the ornaments?”

“After we finish the lights.”

That, of course, was a lie. Because after we finished the lights, we had to hang up the garland--a 10-foot long necklace of tiny silver balls--which wouldn’t have taken long, if 2-year-old Drew hadn’t secretly confiscated them for her first-ever attempt at jump rope. Under my breath, I cursed Thad and that gym. It took one-and-a-half episodes of Dora to untangle them.

“Can we hang up the ornaments?” Blair asked.

“Can hang hornmats?” Drew asked.

“Sure!” I yelled, loud with the joy of the season, gleeful with timeless beauty of this holiday scene--two loving little girls decorating the Christmas tree with their loving mother, who never anticipated what said tree would look like when decorated by people who are barely three-feet tall.

I found myself, yet again, at a maternal crossroad.

If I were the kind of mother who wanted to teach her children that there was no right and wrong when expressing oneself artistically, I would have simply let it be--six ornaments above waist-level, 67 below waist-level.

Unfortunately, I am not that mother.

If I were the kind of mother who wanted to teach her children that all good things come to those who wait, then, much like my friend Sally who waits for her kids to go to bed and then throws away all of their artwork, I would have waited until Modern Family was over before I reapplied and rearranged.

Unfortunately, I am not that mother, either.

I am this kind of mother: one who managed to convince herself later--after, in full view of the minors, I plucked some of the low-hanging ornaments and placed them in the higher branch zones, which led to two girls in tears, one biting me on my thigh, one time-out, and me, aloud, cursing Thad and that God-forsaken gym and all of it’s God-forsaken thin and toned patrons of avoidance behavior--that the best teaching moment of Christmas-tree-decorating was the art of properly decorating a Christmas tree. (In some cultures, this lesson might be translated, “You can’t always get what you want, unless you’re me.”)

I should, however, have thought this through beforehand. If I had, I’d surely have been gentler when passing on the wisdom. I’d clearly have avoided the shock, the fear, the residual trauma sparked by my spur-of-the-moment explanation: “Girls, it’s like this: If your ornaments aren’t evenly distributed on the tree, Santa won’t come.”


***A NOTE TO MY FAITHFUL SUBSCRIBERS: I have found that subscribing to a blog through the Networked Blogs option on Facebook pretty much stinks. (Since it doesn't alert you to when I've posted, I'm not sure what the point is. You?) I made it easier. On the upper right hand side of my blog page, you now have two options: 1. subscribe via e-mail (when I post, you'll get an e-mail) or, 2. subscribe via a reader, like Google or Bloglines or Yahoo or whatever you "do."

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

I thought I’d convinced myself--thanks to the recent swirl of requests from Facebook friends to vote for their various children in various cutest-child-on-earth contests (The cutest baby smile! The most-cutest-ever GAP kid!)--that I’d not stumbled into the Gosselin circle of hell for pimping my kids’ cuteness on a TV show. I mean, it wasn’t like they got paid. Or that I forced them to pretend they were trapped in a flying object.

All I did was write an article for Philadelphia Magazine. It was about Sprout, the new preschool channel for kids based in Philly that runs live shows and uses local kids in promotional spots. When the head of Sprout e-mailed to tell me he liked the story, I responded with a P.S.: “If you ever need any cute girls for promos, I have a couple.” As it turned out, they did.

The shoot? A promo for Thanksgiving to air during Thanksgiving week.

The instructions? “We'll be asking the girls about the Thanksgiving holiday and 
what they are thankful for.”

Sitting around the dinner table last Monday, I posed my first prep question: “What are you girls thankful for?”

“My little sister,” Blair said. A tear bubbled in the corner of my eye. My first thought: She is the sweetest four-year-old who ever walked. My second: Sprout will eat that shit up. But, then, Blair went on: “And my fork. I’m thankful for my fork. And my chicken. And my salt shaker. And my rug. And my door….”

“Drew,” I said. “What are you thankful for?”

“My poppy,” she said. Again: the bubbling mommy tear. Unfortunately, only three people on the planet could translate what Drew had just said, and they were sitting at this table. When she said it on national TV, the world would hear, “Ma poopy.”

Against my better judgment, I decided not to read aloud to them from Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares.

A few days later, the afternoon before the shoot, I called my mom. I was driving home from Marshalls, where I’d gone to look for shirts for the kids to wear on TV, since I wasn’t satisfied with the two shirts each I’d bought for them to wear on TV at Kohls the day before.

MOM: “Have you coached them on that they’re thankful for?”

ME: “I’m SO not doing that. I want them to say what they’re thankful for, not what we told them to say that they’re thankful for.”

MOM: “But what if that means Sprout doesn’t use them?”

ME: “Then, Sprout doesn’t use them.”

(Long pause.)

MOM: “I hope the shirts you bought are fall colors, at least.”

On the morning of the shoot, the girls and I left the house at 9:36, which meant we were already six minutes behind schedule. I was drinking my sixth cup of coffee. The girls were in their car seats—Blair wearing a Kelly-green shirt with an abstract apple design on the front, Drew in a purple shirt, which complimented the thin purple stripe in the abstract apple. Hanging on hangers, were an additional five shirts for each of them, two sweaters for Drew, and one for Blair. In a bag on the passenger seat--since the producer told us to bring any specific items the girls were thankful for--were their blankets (a.k.a. “cakeys”), a pair of drum sticks, and a ukulele with a hot pink pick.

I took inventory in my head. Outfits? Check. Things they are thankful for? Check. Factoids about the Thanksgiving holiday? Um….

Crap.

ME: (deperately) “Blair? Where do we eat Thanksgiving?”

BLAIR: “Turkey.”

ME: (more desperately) “No, where do we celebrate Thanksgiving?”

BLAIR: “After Halloween.”

Crap. Crap. Crap.

ME: (like a woman in need of lithium) “Who is coming to our house for Thanksgiving this year?”

BLAIR: “To our house?”

ME: “To our house.”

BLAIR: “Nana and Poppy, Grammy and Pappy, and Barack Obama.”

And, with that, suddenly, I transformed. Hearing that line--imagining Blair delivering that line...that most-honest, most-perfect, most-marketable line...on a Sprout Thanksgiving promo--extinguished my soul. Immediately, it was replaced by the spirits of the Holy Trinity of Vicarious Living--Dina Lohan, Kit Culkin, and Mama Rose Lee. (“Sing out, Blair! Sing OUT!”)

“Blair...tell me again...what are you thankful for?”

“My sister. My cakey. My thumb.”

“Brilliant! Say it again! Say it again!!!” I wondered how long it would be before she was cast in a major motion picture movie as the charming and wise-beyond-her-years daughter of Bob Saget. No, of Bradley Cooper. No...of Brad Pitt! “Who is coming to Thanksgiving dinner, Blair? Who? Again! AGAIN!”

We arrived at the shoot. There was a producer, a director, a camera-man, a grip. Blair and Drew were instructed to sit at a table that was covered in very-carefully placed craft items--crayons, construction paper, pipe cleaners, mini pom pom balls. In the middle was a little turkey, made by tracing a hand on a piece of paper and cutting it out. The director pointed at it: “That’s what you’ll be making, girls. You need to trace your hands.” And the camera started rolling.

Drew was far more interested in trying to consume the mini pom pom balls. Blair grabbed a purple crayon. She flattened her little hand on the paper. She traced. She proved to be a very serious tracer, unaware of the cameras, of the crew, of anything but what was right there in front of her.

“Look mommy!” she said, holding up her traced hand. “Look!”

“Perfect.” I said, seeing, too, what was right there in front of me. "Perfect!"

Only after the shoot was over, after we left, did I realized it: the girls weren’t asked to recite a single word.

She Talk Pretty One Day

When I pulled the note out of Blair’s folder at school, I decided that the future of human civilization was crumbling right before my very eyes.

Here is what it said:

“This is a reminder that all children must get there Flu Shot by the end of December.”

I tried to convince myself that it was merely an innocent typo. But then, I read on: “Please bring in there immunization records with proof of there flu shot.”

I knew that my gasp of horror (because I gasped in horror) was slightly unfair, for several reasons:

1. I am a writer. And, before that, I was an editor. And before that I was an English major. And before that, I took No-doze to properly cram for spelling tests. If I didn’t know the difference between “there” and “their,” I should be forced to parade through the Acme wearing nothing but pages ripped from Strunk and White. Or something.

2. Even spell-check can’t tell the difference. And spell-check is God.

3. I figured out “that” and “which” only last year, though I suspect that I use a rule--“which comes after a comma and that doesn’t”--that I made up.

4. I needed an ex-boyfriend--a college-drop-out, stoner, ex-boyfriend--to explain to me when to use “it’s” and when to use “its.” (“Think of the apostrophe as replacing the ‘i,’” he said. And I do that. Every time. For example: “It is hard being so smart and important” can contract into “It’s hard being so smart and important.”)

5. Words I write are typically copyedited. By professionals. So there will never, ever be proof. Like in a note. From a school.

But this was in a note! From a school! And not just any school--the school where my kids go daily! To be schooled! Okay, it’s technically a “learning center.” But we pay big bucks for the learning center’s learning. I may be able to look beyond some of the things Blair brings home, things that are wrong on far more complicated levels. (For example, “Firecracker, firecracker, boom boom boom! The boys got the muscles. The teachers got the brains. The girls got the sexy legs. And we won the game!”) But I can not sit idly by while my child (who, incidentally, can't yet read such notes) even breathes the air where such affronts to the English language are left unproofed and unfettered and unabashedly written on notes to the very parents who are writing the checks.

The larger question was this: what should I do about it? In fact, I was puzzling out this very issue--my best plan, so far, was to write a note about it to the owner, though unsigned, perhaps using letters cut out from magazines, in order to protect Blair and Drew from any “their mom is a total bitch from hell” retribution--when I got an e-mail from a friend. She was passing along a note that one of her friends had just received from a preschool teacher:

“E. has not been wanting to participate in Music--she removes herself and set out when she decided she is not like the song. M. follow her. I spoke to them early on--telling them this was not an option and that if it happened again not only would Mom’s be told be them would be remove from Music. So yesterday the teacher brought both of them to the class room where they laid their heads down until the class returned. E. also lost her job. In taking her job I'm hoping she understands her actions had consequences.”

And, with that, I suddenly felt better about everything--our learning center, “their vs. there,” the future of human civilization. Because, now, I knew one thing for certain: Thirteen years from now, Blair and Drew would totally kick E. and M.’s asses on the SAT.

If You Must, Bite Your Sister

When I arrived at school to pick up the girls on Drew’s first day, the teacher immediately gave me the dreaded Teacher Look--a cross between “You’re lucky I didn’t kill your children today” and “You’re a bad mother.”

“Drew bit,” she said, her voice filled with such reproach, I fully expected her to complete the sentence with “...somebody’s nose off” or “...into a live electrical wire” or “...her tongue clean through...and here it is” as she handed me a bumpy, bloody napkin. But she did not. She simply let the words--“Drew bit”--hang in the air, like fart.

Drew, as if to prove she wasn’t entirely maladjusted, began to embrace me so tightly it felt like she and my leg were reenacting the kissing scene in The Notebook. I have never before witnessed her so happy to see me, and I might have appreciated it had I not been momentarily paralyzed by the words running through my mind: Please let her have bitten Blair. Please let her have bitten Blair. Please let her have bitten her big sister and not the little boy whose daddy is an attorney.

In this brave new world of parenting, I have discovered one inalienable truth: biting is bad. It is bad enough at home, where Drew does it quite a lot. But amongst the children of others, biting is worse than all other offenses: hitting, spitting, touching bathing-suit parts. It is the preschool-version of first degree-murder. And now, in just a single day, Drew had been cast as the two-year-old Hester Prynne of Tiny Treasures Learning Academy, emblazoned forever (or at least until she left for kindergarten) with a scarlet letter “B.” The Kid Who Bites. The Biter. The Bad One.

“Look Mommy,” Blair said, as she crossed the room, lifting up her dress to reveal her new Ariel big-girl panties and a circle of dark red tiny teeth marks. On her back. “Drew bited me.”

“Oh...you poor thing,” I said (though I was really thinking Thank God) as I leaned down and examined her wound. Drew hadn’t been messing around. Skin was broken. There would be a significant bruise. Blair looked up at me with her big blue eyes and shook her head in four-year-old disgust. I looked down at Drew who was still melding with my thigh.

“There is no biting, Drew. We don’t bite people,” I admonished, using the pronoun “we,” which has become my odd parenting habit. (“We don’t eat Doritos for breakfast.” “We don’t put My Little Pony in the toilet.”)

Drew looked up and me. Then at Blair. Then at me.

“But I bite Blair,” she said. And then she grinned, which made one teacher put her hand to her mouth in alarm. I didn’t wait around to see her reaction to what Drew did next.

Because, next, Drew growled. Like a dog. An angry dog. And then--as if she hadn’t quite made her point--she pretended, with her teeth, that she was yanking beef off of a bone.

Mommy Goes to The Dark Place

It seemed like such a good idea, going to a real Italian restaurant in South Philly where the waiters and waitresses sing opera. Our 17-year-old niece was in town, and we wanted to take her some place Philly-y. We'd already done the Pats/Genos cheesesteak stand-off for lunch, plus pasta was the one foodstuff that both Blair and Drew actually ate (provided it had no sauce, no spices, and nothing "slippery" on it, like butter). Victor's Cafe had pasta. And entertainment. And white tablecloths. And wine. Lots of wine.

I thought it was very wise of the hostess to seat us in a corner, as if she knew what I knew: that my 4- and 2-year old, upon hearing music of any kind, were accustomed to singing along. And making up their own words. And occasionally shaking their butts a little. But wasn't this what it meant to be good parents? To expose our offspring (including our niece from the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania) to the world? To fine dining, and culture, and cloth napkins? To make sure they knew that there was more to music than "Big Red Car"?

When the girls first heard the bell ring--the signal that someone was about to sing--they got so wiggly and bubbly I thought they they might knock over their Shirley Temples. Throughout the entire aria, they stared at the waitress singing, completely still and quiet, totally awed but the very fact of it all. When the waitress hit the ridiculous high note at the end, Blair turned to her cousin and made a face that I can only describe as, "Holy Jesus!" I was proud.

And then he came in.

I thought it was very unwise of the hostess, in a room filled with empty tables (besides one four-top of gray-haired ladies who were exchanging gifts) to seat The Man, his wife, and their two friends next to us. But they seemed grandparent-y enough. They were my parents' age--in their late-60s. Or, at least, he was. They saw us there. They knew what they were getting into.

But, the next time the bell rang (and our meals had still not arrived), Drew was growing a little tired of her crayons (which I'd brought), and her Shirley Temple (which she'd spilled half of), and her bread (which I was feeding to her like it was Valium). She started whining.

The first time during the song that The Man turned around and gave Drew the stink eye, I ignored it. I decided he was looking over to see the sweet sisters dressed in sweet twin sundresses, inspired by the wonder that is a child experiencing something for the first time.

The second stink eye pissed me off. Granted, Drew was now fake-crying and trying to climb onto me, but not very loud. I knew she'd calm down in a second, once the food came. She leaned into me and started talking. I shushed her. She wouldn't be shushed. Finally, I translated what she was saying to me: "I want sing, mommy! I want sing!" Unfortunately, at the exact same time she was saying this, the man was stink eye-ing her, straight on, while simultaneously shaking his head. I should have controlled myself. I did not.

"Stop shaking your head," I whispered to him. The Man turned and looked at me as if he just discovered I was topless.

"Why don't you take your kid for a walk?" he whispered back, spitting on Drew a little.

"Why don't you go f@*k yourself?"

[Note: When I relayed this story to my friend April the next day, she said, "Boy, you went there fast." She was right. I knew it even then, at that moment, as the words were coming out of my mouth. But, no matter how many times in the days after The Opera Incident that I come up with comebacks that were far more eloquent and biting (i.e. "I brought my kids here to learn about opera but it seems they're learning much more about crotchety old men"), the words were already coming out of my mouth.]

"Wha..." the man said, his mouth literally hanging open, looking around the room, as if he was trying to find someone who had heard me so he would have a witness. There was no witness. "You are such a lady," he said. The first thing I thought? This is the first time in my life anyone's ever called me a lady.

After the song, as he was regaling his dining companions with the play-by-play (which ellicited at least one, "No she didn't!"), I turned back to him and said: "I'm sure the hostess would be more than happy to move you to another table."

"You can go to hell," he said.

Thad (finally) piped in: "Sir, our daughter's only two."

Man: "Exactly!"

Me: "Are you saying that we've done a bad thing by bringing our children here to hear opera arias?"

Man: "You really are quite lovely."

Me (in my head): "Don't make me have to kill you...you son-of-a-bitch, bastard, poopy-diaper, jerk-man."

And that was the end of it. The Man stomped to the hostess, she moved them to a completely different room, and I sat there for the rest of the meal, dazed. What was wrong with me? Why was I so angry? How did I accelerated so quickly from "zero" to "homicidal?" What kind of lesson did that teach my girls?

One of the women from the table across the room started walking towards our table. She was older than The Poopy-Diaper Man. She was wearing a pink shirt. And she was clearly prepping to say something to us, probably about the fact that Blair was moaning, loudly, about how she wanted Drew's pasta (which was exactly the same pasta she had). I steadied myself. I would not attack her. I would not scratch her in any way. In fact, I would not say anything at all. I would just nod. And smile. Pleasant and neutral,Vicki. Be pleasant and neutral.

"I have to tell you," pink-shirt lady said, "your girls are so well behaved. They're just delightful."

I should have felt vindicated. Instead, I immediately formed a fantasy in my brain, in which I picked up my plate, walked into the next room, located The Poopy-Diaper Man, and poured the remains of my Linguini with Clam Sauce on his lap while simultaneously giving him the finger.