Because we work nights, we usually get home after the kids go to sleep. They leave us notes: tests that need to be signed, permission slips, requests for money, and random thoughts are all written out and laid on the dining room table.
Also, anything that arrives in our absence and is addressed “to the parents of…” is immediately opened, read, and taped shut again. Or hidden in their bedroom in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable, since our schools always send an email alert saying what we should have received.
This is what we came home to last night:
Sometimes it’s better not to know, isn’t it? At least he didn’t hide the letter.
I usually don’t snoop because it always ends in regret. One year my sister found our Christmas presents and showed them to me. I felt so guilty about it. Christmas morning came and I felt like I had betrayed my parents as I kept saying “Just what I always wanted!” after I opened each non-surprise. Since I can’t remember if we ever actually told this story to our parents or not, this seems like a good place to end this post.
Did you ever find anything that made you regret snooping?
Okay, fine. I’m one of those people who’s all jaded about Valentine’s Day. No need for justifications and rationalizations; you’ve heard them all already from everyone else. I’m just not a fan.
But when you have kids, you’re not allowed to not celebrate the holiday.
My parents always gave my sister and I each a card and a little box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Some years, my mom made a heart-shaped cake (we had a special pan) with pink frosting and candy hearts pressed into it.
This year I thought, why be all bah-humbug to cupid? I decided to make heart-shaped chocolate crackers for everyone at work, homemade bath sachets with eucalyptus for my writers group, and a heart-shaped cake with pink frosting and candy hearts pressed into the edges for the kids, even if I don’t have a special pan.
Then I remembered who I am.
There were lots of doctors appointments, significant snow, and a shitload of paperwork that had to get done right now. Instead of staying up late to bake, I stayed up late watching Iron Maiden’s Flight 666 and Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage.
Because they’re awesome. And I didn’t want to do my paperwork.
I had a work call and two shows the day before Valentine’s Day. The florist shop was out of eucalyptus. There was no baking. There was no crafting.
Let’s be honest: there never is any crafting.
Two days before Valentine’s day, I was in the city and went to the drug store for gifts and cards.
Doesn’t two days before Valentine’ Day seem like a good head start? You’d be shocked at how few cards the average drug store in New York carries for such a commercial holiday. You’d be even more shocked at how few are left by February 12.
You’re standing there with all the other poor bastards who also think that two days is a good head start, maneuvering for leverage in front of the two and a half feet of shelf space where the last twelve cards are.
I needed exactly half of them.
I found two semi-sappy cards that didn’t make me want to strangle kittens and set those aside for #2 and #3. I found three cards that were supposed to be funny but weren’t that I thought could be salvaged with written modifications.
(I was remembering a birthday card my assistant had given to me years ago. It was a truly awful rhyming birthday card that was supposed to be from a husband to a wife, and everywhere it said “wife” he just crossed it out and wrote “boss”. I die laughing every time I remember it.)
I still needed a card for CC. I had one in my hands made of thick black paper with red metallic script. Gorgeous. And hands-down, the single worst godawful rhyming card I’ve come across in a long time. It had real potential. In fact it was so bad and so long that I couldn’t even finish reading it. I got him a Chinese New Year card instead. Which I then lost.
The card that referenced chocolates I gave to the kid that hates chocolate (#4). The one that was made for a toddler with a picture of a bee and the obligatory Bee Mine! we gave to #1 (the 19-year-old), with hand-written references to VD. Because that’s the kind of thing you can write in a 19-year-old’s Valentine.
#5 got this one:
Yikes.
Inside I wrote: Dear god, I hope that cat doesn’t eat you. Because I love you! Happy Valentine’s Day!
His father wrote: Dear Son, She’s Nuts. Love, Dad.
#5 woke up before everyone else (as usual) on Valentine’s Day and opened his card. Then he texted me: Dad’s right. You’re nuts.
When I tucked him in he informed me that the cat’s smile was big enough and bright enough that when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he can see it in the darkness even without his glasses.
#5: It’s creepy.
Me: Excellent!
On the way home from work Saturday night he sent me the above picture with the accompanying text It’s giving me nightmares.
I believe my work here is done. Clearly I have a future career in greeting card modification.
Monday is pizza lunch day at the elementary school, the only school without a cafeteria where one could buy lunch in a pinch. . . if, say, one overslept or forgot to get lunch meat, or just couldn’t fricking deal with the prospect of making that many goddamn sandwiches again. Therefore, Monday has long been our throw-money-at-the-kids-and-let-them eat-crap-at-school day.
When school started up again after the holidays, CC issued a mandate: each of the four kids who have not yet graduated will be responsible for making school lunches one day each week.
Monday plus 4 kids making lunches each one day a week translates into both of us getting a whole extra thirty minutes’ sleep in the morning. That’s almost better than sex.
Almost.
It had to be a rule laid down by him. I never would have been able to make it stick. First off, they wouldn’t have believed me. Then, when they realized that I meant business, they would have been stuffing fistfuls of dry cereal (if there was any left) into sandwich bags and hurling them at each other on the way out the door going, “Here’s your lunch!”.
But now, the night before their allotted day, they make the sandwiches. They gather the snacks. They label the bags and put the cold things in the fridge. There have been some interesting but predictable occurrences. Like the lunchmaker gets the most coveted snacks. And how the day that we were nearly out of bread, #4 equally dispersed the hateful heels from two loaves of bread so that everyone got only one, and no one got stuck with two. Except for herself; she was exempted from heels and got the last two regular pieces of bread. She left one heel for CC and I to share for toast.
The bread hates you too.
Last night #2 came into the living room full of angst.
#2: I would like to state for the record that I HATE that wheat bread for sandwiches!
Me: That’s what you said when I bought white bread! What do you want?
#2: Well, I like that OTHER white bread!
CC: I bought a loaf of that- it’s on the counter!
#2: I KNOW! That’s why I used it for my sandwich.
Me: And you used the hateful wheat bread for everyone else’s sandwich?
#2: Well, yeah. That way there will be more of the good white bread for my sandwiches later.
Me: When has that concept ever worked at any time for anything in this family?
#2: We’re out of goldfish.
My favorite part of this whole thing, maybe even better than the extra sleep, is what they’re writing on each other’s lunch bags.
In retrospect, it should have been obvious but we didn’t see it coming: My darling baby brother, Fart Face, Booger.
But #5, having Friday as his lunch-making day, has the entire week to think up retaliations for what his sisters write on his bag.
The girls underestimated him. My favorite last week was Don’t forget your ointment!
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 