Trying New Things

History in the making: My first time ever buying
holiday decorations for a holiday that isn't Christmas.

All day Tuesday, I was trying to think of ways to break out of my daily rut. Day-to-day is mostly the same-old, same-old, transporting household members to various engagements, tidying up the house, writing, trying to find time to be creative in the evenings between dinner and bedtime while occupying Ruby. I just sort of coast along and coast along doing my little thing, and most days I have no idea what day it is, or how far into the month we are. Mine, like everyone's, is a rote, robotic existence at times. Eat, work, eat, work, eat, play, sleep. Life just moving right on by without you fully in it.

I read my horoscope every morning. Sometimes they're spot on, and sometimes I wonder if they got Taurus mixed up with Virgo. I don't put much stock in horoscopes, especially when it's a mass-produced Yahoo! version of things, but I do like the advice that they give. Here was Wednesday's horoscope:

Have you gotten a bit lazy about exploring new things? It can seem like a lot of work to try something new or investigate a new restaurant to go to with friends. The tried-and-true is so easy and safe! But unless you add a new element of the unfamiliar to your life, how are you going to find any exhilaration or inspiration? Try someplace new today, or start a conversation with a stranger. Keep trying new things until something exciting happens.

So I thought trying something new might be a good way to break out of the rut.  My first thought was to part my hair on the left instead of the right. Because that's how adventurous I am. I thought and thought all day, what can I do, what can I do, what can I do....and aside from taking a scenic driving route or hauling my office up to the dining room table for a day, I could think of nothing new to try that would make much of a difference in my level of exhilaration or inspiration. 

Remember Liz? Ruby's cousin and twice-weekly daycare provider? Well. Let me tell you. Liz has four kids, two in kindergarten and two in diapers, and she has one on the way. Instead of popping into Russ's Market at 8:15 on Kindergarten Christmas Party day to buy a few dozen cupcakes for 42 kindergarteners, she spent a good amount of time gluing pipe cleaners, googly eyes and a red puffball nose to 42 candy canes, turning them into reindeer. For Valentines Day, she's using a new frosting she's been experimenting with to make 42 conversation heart cookies for the kids' classes. She's writing each of the 42 kindergartener's names on the cookies and tying them with ribbon in a cellophane bag. Oh, and did I mention she has four kids? With one on the way? Sometimes I find it difficult to get up the energy and wherewithal to brush my teeth in the morning. 

Liz reminds me of my mom, who made every holiday extraordinarily special, building up excitement and getting creative and festive to make a kid feel really, really loved.

And then there's Ruby, who's growing up with a couple of cranky old cynics. When did holidays become just another damn chore? When did we start complaining about the commercialization of holidays and stop thinking about the meaning? I recently posted about how we're approaching religion with Ruby, given that we aren't religious. Holidays could a perfect opportunity to cover the most basic religious tenets with her. And yet, I don't think I mentioned the Baby Jesus more than once this whole Christmas season.

Liz has given Ruby the Valentine's Day bug with her talk of a wild and crazy Valentine's Day blowout at daycare. Ruby's been talking about it nonstop for three days.  At first I was all, yeah, yeah, Valentines Day, another excuse for buying blood diamonds and lining the pockets of florists and Hallmark, love can't be manufactured, blah, blah, blah. Well, things are what you make them, and I don't have to make Valentines Day another excuse for buying blood diamonds or lining the pockets of florists and Hallmark. I can make Valentines Day and every other holiday about giving Ruby the same kind of warm and happy childhood I had, where my mom enjoyed making holidays something we anticipated with giddy excitement, a day that stood out from the others and seemed to be a different color than the rest.

This morning, as I was taking out the recycling, I remembered that Liz asked me to find a cereal box for Ruby to bring to daycare to decorate for her valentines. And what you just read above is what went through my head as I rummaged through beer bottles and dog food cans. So on the fly, giddy with my sudden and newfound appreciation for holidays, I told Ruby that we should decorate a shirt for her to wear to the Valentines Day party. We went to Hobby Lobby and I bought pink, red and white fabric paint for the first time in my life, along with a cheap little felt and chipboard banner just to solidify the deal. Ruby spent the afternoon painting her trademark layers upon layers on a shirt and a pillow case, both of which are now stiff as a board. We talked about love and hearts, and then for Ruby, it somehow turned into a holiday about blood. Well, whatever. Once she's older and out of her gore phase, we can talk about the origins and the meanings of various holidays. (It'll be interesting to explain the crucifixion to her come Easter.) 

So, try something new. Huh. Screw parting my hair on the side. I'm trying something new that will make Ruby's life a spot happier and ours a spot less cynical. We're gonna start celebrating the holidays with all the trimmings! Valentines, corned beef and cabbage, Easter baskets, hilarious pranks, May baskets, fireworks, carved pumpkins, horns o' plenty, menorahs and all the Christmas bangles and baubles. The Valentine's shirt we made and the decorations we put up today will be my daily reminder to lighten the hell up about the holidays and have fun getting into the spirit with the kid.

A Conversation With Ruby About Her Artwork

Ruby: Look at my collage!

Me: That's beautiful! Tell me about it.

Ruby: Well, this is fire, and fire, and fire. This can electrocute you. This is a smoke monster and this is a dirt monster and this is fire dirt. The dirt monster comes out of the smoke, and the dirt lives by itself and moves the people into the fire and the fire burns them and these cuts [she fringed all four sides] are where everybody lives.

Me: Should I frame this and we can put it in your room?

Ruby: No! I don't want it in my room.

Me: Why not?

Ruby: Because it'll scare me and give me nightmares. I don't want to look at it anymore. Never frame it! Never frame it!

Five Things

These kept me highly entertained this week.

1. Parents recount the creepiest things their kids have ever said.

2. Hilarious interview by WNPR reporter Jeff Cohen of his daughters, 3 and 5, after the 5-year-old gave the 3-year-old a horrific haircut.

3. Cue the angel choir: this is what crickets sound like when they're slowed waaaaay down.

4. Hilarity ensues when Jimmy Kimmel hooks up a poor 7-year-old kid up to a fake lie detector and gets all his dirt.

5. Holy hell! I'm not usually much moved by birds, but this encounter with a murmuration of starlings is magnificent.

A Conversation With Ruby About the B-Word

Ruby: I'll fold the towel on the bench. Ha, ha, hey! Bench sounds like bitch!

Me: Yes, it does. But let's not say that. It's not nice.

Ruby: You can only say "bitch" in the bathroom, right mommy? Because it's a potty word.

Me: That's right. It's not a nice word.

Ruby: Yeah, bitch is a potty word, right? So little kids should only say "bitch" when adults aren't in the bathroom, right?

Me: Yep, that's right. No one wants to hear that.

Ruby: Pretend like you don't know that "bitch" is a bad word. Say it. Say it!

Me: Hey, I have an idea! Pretend like I don't know how to fold a towel and show me how you do it...

God is in Your Stomach

We're not particularly religious around our house. We're not athiest or even agnostic, quite the contrary, but we don't subscribe to any particular religious ideology. The only time we really mention God is when we're taking his name in vain. Both of us grew up religious, him Catholic and me some kind of fundie freakshow drawing on the fear of the Rapture to keep us in line. I'm more skittish than my BFF about the personification of All That Is and the oppression and ignorance that sometimes stems from organized religion, and I am hellbent on not letting Ruby grow up in the dark shadow of paralyzing fear of death and of God and of eternal retribution for her sins like I did. Took me 30 years of hard work to shake it off.

We've had a few discussions about how we will present religion to Ruby. I certainly don't want her going to kindergarten not knowing the essential Bible stories--Noah's Ark, Adam & Eve, Sodom & Gomorrah, Jonah & The Whale, Daniel & The Lion's Den, Josie & The Pussycats and other classics--and I want her to at least be aware of various religious beliefs so that when her friends are being confirmed or celebrating Hanukah or observing Ramadan. she'll have an inkling of what that means to them and won't appear to be a complete philistine. Plus it'll help her do the New York Times crossword puzzle later in life.

The thing is, neither of us is going to sit her down and give her a lesson on the major world religions, so much of what she will come to know of each religion, other than our very broad and unimpassioned version, she will come by in her interactions with those who subscribe to those religions. And my hope is that when she hears something that gives her pause, she'll talk to us about it.

One evening just before Christmas, Ruby was riding her tricycle in manic circles around the kitchen singing this really long, weird song. She told me to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen! Introducing...Ruby Gianna Meza singing God's Song!" I started filming a few minutes in.

GOD'S SONG
by Ruby Meza

He doesn’t know when God is coming to save him.
God, baby Jesus!
God, come!
You don’t know that Baby Jesus is in your heart.
Cause you don’t know her.
We still can’t live in people’s bodies by themselves.
People can’t wander in somebody’s body
cause they can’t go in the dream that they wanna go in.
That they wanna go in.
When they want go in.
God lets them go in
people’s stomachs
and people get some food to eat
and they live in your heart forever.
God lives in your heart forever.
Cause one! two! three!
God lives in your heart forever.
You don’t know what she’s in.
And she doesn’t know that he’s
in your heart forever.
And she doesn’t know
that she’s on the computer
and she wants to sing
like her God and her father
and if she doesn’t know that her little brother
is in his stomach,
but one! two! three!
She doesn’t know that she’s in her stomach.
One! two! Three!
She’s in her stomach
but you don’t live,
he’s in your stomach,
she’s trying to get out of her body.
It’s been a long time to get out of this dishwasher
and God doesn’t know
if she’s pregnant or not. Whoooo!!!

Her daycare providers are her aunt and her cousin Liz, and they're fairly religious, so I assumed that's where she got the God living in your heart forever part. I figured they had talked about the Christmas story at daycare, although I did think it was odd that they would go that deeply into the pregnancy of Mary, with Jesus in her stomach trying to get out. But, whatever. Maybe that's a big part of the Catholic Christmas story.

A few days later, Liz was telling me about how one of the little girls at daycare decided she doesn't want a little brother. Liz told her that it's too late--Jesus already put the baby in her mom's stomach, and so she was getting a little brother whether she wanted him or not. A light went on, and I told Liz about the song Ruby had been singing, and we got a good laugh out of it. It sounds like Ruby got a whole bunch of information that was new to her in a short amount of time, and "God's Song" was my opportunity to see how her little brain wraps itself around ideas that are very difficult for a 4-year-old to grasp, then spits them back out.

Given this song, I'll probably wait a couple of years before trying to familiarize her with the concepts of religion.

A Taste of Stay-At-Home Motherhood

Ruby's daycare has had a run in with the flu, so I'm keeping her home this week. She usually goes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then spends Thursday at my mom's house doing special stuff with grandma that almost always results in some strange artifact, like an inexplicable lump of baked clay embedded with buttons (it's a paperweight!) or an old Visa bill embellished with bows and stickers and whatever else my mom pulls out of her apron pockets.

That gives me a full day of work three days a week, which is generally sufficient for making what I need to make, although when I have Ruby on Mondays and Fridays, I sneak down to the office whenever the kid is engaged in whatever project I set up for her, whether soaping up her babies in the bathroom sink or watching her Peppa Pig DVD. When she's home, it can take me a whole day to write the same 700-word article that would normally take me a half hour, due to the constant fetching of gum, blueberries, pretzels, oranges, grapes, Starburst or whatever else she decides she needs right this second. Like the napkin she just dropped two inches away on the floor. Or moving her blanket an eighth of a centimeter so that it doesn't touch her neck.

Yesterday was frustrating to say the very least, and I found myself regarding Ruby as more of a distracting annoyance from my writing than my darling child who needs my attention. So today I decided to not even think about writing. I would just take the day off and be a mom.

First we had a tea party, complete with gloves and tiaras. You may recall that I hate to play. A boring old tea party with stuffed animals and my kid dishing out pretend food in a high-pitched voice would have made me nutters, and I would have lasted maybe five minutes. But she wanted to pretend like I was an old friend, and so I came to the tea party wanting to catch up. I asked her about her son and daughter, and about her boyfriend. Here's what I found out:

• Her son fell off the roof and broke his leg and his head. He bled a lot. 
• He was putting water in the chimney for the birds when he fell backwards and landed on the ground.
• His blood was hembrolating. It was hembrolating in his arm and his head and his legs and his eye and his other eye and his cheek and his other cheek and his mouth. I don't know what hembrolating is, but apparently it has to do with lots of blood being all over the damn place.
• He was in a wheelchair the last time she saw him because zombies had eaten his legs. They bled. A lot.
• Her boyfriend has a studio downtown. They kiss all the time.
• Her boyfriend's name is John, but he's not Johnny, the ghost who lives in the fireplace in our TV room.
• Her daughter got kicked out of school for kissing a boy. They kissed like this. The boy didn't get kicked out. 

After the tea party, we embarked on the task of getting Ruby's room in order. Ruby has been sleeping with us for way too long, not because we are believers in the Family Bed (ew, that just sounds icky) but because during her phase of refusing to go to sleep no matter what, I found it easier to plop her in my bed so that at least one of us could rest. But that monster has run its course, and for her birthday, we got Ruby a really cute set of sheets that will hopefully sweeten the deal and make her more likely to want to sleep in her own room, in her own bed. Our faces will enjoy not being kicked every night by deceptively small feet.

After getting her room all set up, I talked Ruby into watching TV for awhile. I thought I was free for at least a half hour to check my stuff and waste some time on Facebook, but unfortunately, Nick Jr. has a conscience and runs these "commercials" between shows that encourage kids to turn off the TV and get off their asses and do something productive. Ruby came rushing into my peace and quiet, wanting to make a car out of a cardboard box. Thanks a lot, Nick Jr.! I put my kid in front of the TV for a reason, and that reason is to keep her occupied, not to give her ideas about how I can keep her occupied myself. If I wanted to do that, I would not put her in front of the TV. Duh.

Normally I would make a hundred excuses as to why we would not be making a car out of a box, the top three of which are:

1. I don't feel like it.
2. It will make a huge mess.
3. Collaborating with a four-year-old on an art project is not a two-way street. It's their way or the highway. If you're like me, you have to gear up to forget all the rules, and even then, it's cringeworthy moment after cringeworthy moment as you watch your child paint the tires pink and yellow and the taillights blue, cut the windows crooked and tear off a four-foot piece of tape to cover a two-inch gap. 

But today was all about not making lame excuses that children don't give a shit about, and so we gathered up a bunch of stuff and spent the rest of the afternoon making a car out of a cardboard box. Unfortunately, I didn't think it through entirely, and now whenever Ruby wants to move from one room in the house to another, she has to get in her "car" and I have to push her wherever she wants to go. But it's a good workout for my butt, so there's that.

It was a good day, but I would not sign up to be a stay-at-home mom unless I was paid a fair living wage as Ruby's executive assistant. 

Overheard at Target

"I saw these for a lot cheaper at Dillards and Younkerds."