Time, Out At My Boss’s House

My boss watched the kids last Sunday.

He offered.

“For fun,” he said, though at the time he made the offer we were at a going away party for a colleague and I’m not entirely sure he was sober enough to be making that kind of an offer. When it turned out that none of our sitters were available because one was in Hawaii and one was in Spain and the others were out of state (yeah, it’s killing me too) we took him up on it. He didn’t back out when we gave him the chance. In fact, he made us all breakfast when we dropped them off.

#5’s first words to him upon entering the apartment were, “I know bacon when I smell it!”

My boss has a ten-year-old Vizsla. Currently, a temporary bonus dog that belongs to the other guy who mixes my show is staying there: a ten-month-old teacup chihuahua named Vato (that’s Spanish for Dude).

Um, he’s awesome. I loves him.

Vato has a bark control collar. Instead of shocking the dog when it barks, the collar sprays the dog in the face with a refreshing burst of citronella.

If you’ve read about them here, you know that the Puggle and the Fuggle are horribly trained dogs. Or, more correctly, they have us trained very well. Barking’s a problem. We even got a ticket one time, for the barking. I’m thinking about giving the Vato collar a try, though knowing my dogs either Casey will make Jack do all the barking for both of them, or else they’ll develop a citronella habit and bite open their collars to start mainlining it.

Here was the kids’ day with my boss (who has actually known them longer than I have):

He took the kids and the main dog plus the bonus dog for a walk in Central Park, where #5 almost fell into the boat basin; #2 and #3 renamed Vato PC, for Precious Cargo; #5 asked to be carried on the walk back to the apartment, to which my boss replied that he could only be carried upside down, which #5 agreed to until the point where he started falling out of his pants because gravity was working against him; and finally they came back to the apartment where they played an epic game of Monopoly and ate Chinese food.

(#5 keeps talking about how much money my boss has. I finally figured out he’s talking about the Monopoly game, which is some modern version that appears to be adjusted for inflation and has $500,000 bills.)

Then they went to the drug store where he bought them $36 worth of candy and did his damnedest to have them eat at least $20 worth of it before I came back.

When I came to pick them up after work, #5 immediately said to me, “Don’t ever leave him in charge of me again!” I asked what had happened but it took a minute to get the story, because #5 was shifting back and forth between the little boy stubbornness of trying to appear wronged and starting to realize that what had happened was very, very funny, and my boss was literally doubled over laughing so hard he couldn’t get the words out.

While Vato was not wearing his bark control collar, #5 barked into it, and it controlled him.

It is unclear exactly whose idea this was.

As we were leaving, #5 gave my boss this parting prediction: “You’re going to be a really great parent, and a really terrible parent. Great because you’ll buy your kids lots of candy, and terrible because you’ll let them get squirted in the face.”

When you were a kid, what did you think made for a great parent? What’s your favorite thing to do with other people’s kids?

Time Out At My House

There’s very a strict boys-don’t-hit-girls rule at our house. The girls know that if they egg #5 on just to try and make him hit so that he violates the rule, they’ll get punished too.

We were in the kitchen talking about which girls at school like #5 and which girls he likes back. Apparently we picked the right one (psst… it’s Iris), because he suddenly overreacted and kicked #3 in the back of the knee, hard. I sent him to his room.

Here’s the thing about sending this kid to his room. I always forget he’s in there.

Every. Damn. Time.

I’ll send him to his room and go along about my business and start feeling really smug and productive, entirely forgetting that the productivity is solely due to not getting interrupted every ten seconds- because I sent #5 to his room. I get so productive that I lose track of time. At some point, but usually not until at least forty minutes into it, I wonder where he is.

So last week when he kicked his sister, I sent him to his room, laughed with #3 about how he actually does like Iris no matter what he says, finished making dinner, got dressed, even put on makeup (which really should have been my first clue that something was amiss because there’s never time for that), packed my bag for work and went out to the car to work on my late Easter present for the kids. More about the gift in a minute.

I had something for #5 and went to get him. He was not in the music room. Not playing video games or watching TV. Not reading on my bed.

Me: Where did he go?

#2: You sent him to his room.

Me: Oh crap! I totally forgot.

#2: Wasn’t that like, an hour ago?

Me: Ummm. . .

#2 and #4, in unison: Parenting Fail!

So I went in to #5’s room and we talked about why he got sent there in the first place. We don’t want him to ever be a man who hits a woman, hence the rule. He gets it, and knows why it’s important. He still doesn’t believe that one day he’s going to be bigger than all his sisters.

I did not own up to the fact that I had forgotten him. He can work that out in therapy later when he figures it out. Then I showed him why I was looking for him, what I had saved. And I took him outside and let him put the last one on the car.

One what, you ask?

In Kristin Lamb’s excellent book Are You There Blog? It’s Me, Writer she talks a bit about privacy and mentions that she doesn’t like the little stick people that you put on the minivan because it tells robbers exactly how many people they’re going to have to subdue when they break in, plus a hamburger full of sleeping pills for the dog. She’s totally right. There’s even an episode of Dexter where the predator gets his prey that way.

My message to robbers here is clear:

We are an entire army of the goddamn undead. Don’t even try it.

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Is this going to hurt my chances at becoming class mom? What parenting or other fails have you had recently?

Beat This

At the risk of ruining my street cred, I’m going to tell you the truth: I don’t have an iPhone.

I’ll pause here, so you can judge.

{whistling out of tune}

Shall we go on?

My family has what the phone companies now refer to as “basic phones” – slidey phones with a teeny keyboard. We text and make calls with them. Well, CC and I make calls, but the kids only communicate via text. #3 once texted us from the bathroom when she was throwing up in the middle of the night. We didn’t get the message until morning.

The reason for the lack of smart phones is purely financial. Right now, braces and getting everyone back to school fully supplied are higher priorities than being able to check email in a public restroom or block pedestrians by looking up movie times while walking around the city.

I don’t look at the cell phone bill every month. Because we block all data and have unlimited texting, it’s always pretty much the same.

Eventually though, I do look at a bill and discover that #3 has managed to send 18,749 texts IN ONE MONTH. I am not making this up. She’s thirteen. I’m astounded, impressed, and appalled all at once. Thank god for unlimited texting. Still.

I immediately go around my workplace and tell every single person and then post it on Facebook. Everyone, even teenagers, agree that it is A LOT of texts. More than twice what even the most prolific texters produce.

When I get home I call #3 into the dining room. I sit her down with a pencil and a piece of paper.

Me: Did you know that you sent 18,749 texts last month?

#3: {mouth drops open}

Me: Let’s pretend that you follow the rules and don’t text in school.

#3: Ummm, okay. Sure, let’s do that.

Me: And let’s pretend that you sleep eight hours a night and aren’t texting boys at two in the morning.

#3: {looks guiltily at floor}

Me: Take away the time that you’re playing sports and eating dinner and that leaves how many hours in a day?

#3: {adds and subtracts figures} Sometimes four and sometimes eight or a little more on weekends.

Me: Let’s just call it seven per day. Now, how many free texting hours would you have in a week?

#3: 49?

Me: Good work! How about in four weeks?

#3: {scribbles} 196?

Me: Okay. Divide your total number of texts sent by your total number of available texting hours.

#3: Wait, what?

Me: 18,749 divided by 196.

#3: Can I use a-

Me: No, you can’t use a calculator.

She does much scribbling and eye rolling, but I am holding her phone hostage, so she is motivated. It hasn’t stopped buzzing since I took it.

#3: 95.6 something.

Me: You’re sending almost a hundred texts an hour! Don’t you think that’s too many?

She lights up with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on her.

In this moment I know everything I have been trying to do has backfired. She’s so proud of herself. Here is an achievement that far surpasses what any of her friends have done. Nobody can touch this.

I stand my ground. I am nothing if not tenacious. I summon up all my follow-through and channel my own mother’s voice as best I can, and say the only thing I can come up with. I hand her back her phone and say, “Make it less.”

And she has. The numbers still come in well over 10,000 but they are, in fact, under 18,749. She was without a phone all summer because it was broken. She texted it to death.