You know you're working too much

And complaining about all the work you do, when your kid starts worrying about your deadlines.

We were at the pediatrician's office the other day, taking Sec for a strep test, and before he left, the doc told Sec not to kiss Mommy on the face for a few days so she wouldn't get Mommy sick.

Primo piped up: "Oh, its Ok if Mommy gets sick because then at least she'll have a few days off from her deadline."

Maybe I'd better keep the deadline stress to myself for a bit.

Pulling strings in East Tennessee

Primo woke up at 4 in the morning complaining of ear pain, the day before Thanksgiving. Within five minutes, I'd come up with an emergency earache investigation plan.

Normally, a little ear pain doesn't alarm me, but we had to get on a plane in a few days and I know just enough about pediatric medicine to worry about a perforated ear drum (and not enough about it to talk myself down). I also know that I couldn't take him to be seen by anyone on Thanksgiving or the day after, so I mobilized for pre-emptive action. When we woke the next morning, I called my doc in New York first thing, and he informed me that since he was not a virtual doctor, he would not be able to treat an ear infection in Tennessee, from New York.

"Have him seen by someone over there," he advised.

"Ok," I grumbled, "But just tell me what you'd do, and what you'd prescribe, so that I know if they're doing the right thing."

The reason I love my pediatrician is that he did so, with no complaint.

Then I called my sister-in-law to see who she brings her kids to locally and she referred me to a general practice, walk-in clinic run by - what a small world -- one of David's friends from the Boy Scouts. David hadn't seen this man since he was 12 years old -- in fact, the doc was going by an entirely different first name nowadays - but nonetheless, there was the link.


"Ok, here's what we do," I told David, " You call them up and see if they take our health insurance. Then you tell them you are a CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND of the doctor's and that we need to see him, and have them squeeze us in -- anytime is fine, whenever opening they have."

"Ok,ok," David complied dialing the number. I listened to him explain the situation and refer to his close childhood friendship with the doctor and I heard him "uh huh." "uh huh" "huh uh" a few times and then he hung up.

"Well, what did they say?"

"Come anytime after 12:30," he said.

"Great!" I exclaimed, "We'll get there early, beat the rush, cut down on the waiting room build up."

With two young kids, you spend a lot of time in pediatrician's offices and you learn some tricks. You learn to strategize.

We get to the walk-in clinic at 12:30 on the dot and find the waiting room empty. There is no pre-Thanksgiving rush, no like-minded strategists, it seems. I gave David a nudge, and he recited the words I'd prompted him to say.

"Hi, I called earlier about my son, who we think has an ear infection. The doctor and I go way back, we were boy scouts together, so I'd love if he could see us today."

"Are y'all from out of town?" drawled the middle-aged woman behind the front desk.

"Yes," I said, "What gave us away?"

She was kind enough not to reply: "The neurotic way in which you try to control everything, and the obnoxious habit you have of trying to throw your weight around and how damn seriously you take yourselves."

Instead, she said, "Y'all just look BE-wildered! Come on, I'll help you fill out this paperwork."

I instantly took umbrage at this assessment, wanting to retort, "I'm from New York and I don't GET bewildered. Being from New York means I'm bewilder-proof. I'm the one who does the bewildering. Capisce?"

But of course, that'd just be me, getting more bewildered. Instead, I filled out the paperwork, tried to bite my tongue when the nurse practitioner looked inside Primo's ear and said it looked "dark" (of course its dark, that's why you use one of those nifty lights) and made a minimal amount of fuss declining the Z-pac she wanted o prescribe and pushing for the more appropriate amoxicillin.

We did see David's long-lost close childhood chum on the way out though, and he gave the kids a sucker. We call them lollipops but I didn't quibble. I can be flexible like that, you see.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

By the time I was my Seconda’s age, my mother had drummed it into my head that there was only one appropriate response to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and that was “Physician.” Not even “doctor,” mind you, since I guess that’s too broad a term, under whose umbrella might fall (God forbid!) getting a Ph.D. No, I was going to be a “physician.” We all see how fruitful my mother’s programming was. I literally cannot tell you the difference between a liver and a kidney, except that you have two kidneys so they probably aren’t as important.

Because I am nothing like my mother (please see “You sound like your mother”), I have never given the children the slightest hint as to what I’d like to see them doing twenty, thirty years down the line. (Except of course, that I expect them to be living next door to me, and that’s a deal-breaker, non-negotiable). In fact, one of my favorite things to hear them talk about is their delightfully half-baked, wildly improbable future employment trajectory. I think my kids would write their generation’s “What Color is Your Parachute?”

So it gives me extreme pleasure to announce to you their most recent career aspirations. And since everything sounds a little more impressive in haiku form, I have masterfully modified their quotes to fit.

Primo, the entrepreneur

When I grow up I
Will open a restaurant
On Pluto -“Moonies.”

Seconda, the hedonist

When I grow up, I
Am going to eat gum and
Have an elephant.

And you, readers? What were your most deeply-felt or hare-brained career aspirations as a kid?

O Pussy my love!

I had a strange exchange with Primo last night.

P: What’s the difference between a cat and a pussycat?
M: There is no difference. They are both just cats.
P: Wrong. A pussycat is a bad cat.

I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact that my four year-old has come to understand that pussy = evil. I don’t even know where to begin. Is this a fear of woman sort of thing or a misogyny sort of thing or just a misreading of the classic tale Puss in Boots? Either way, there’s no hope of me correcting him because I eschew the word “pussy” at all costs, in any circumstance where children may be present. Which is actually not as easy as one might think.

For instance, I was at the pediatrician’s office a few weeks ago, waiting for the doc to examine a strange series of bumps on Primo’s leg (turns out its nothing more than molluscum contagiosa. “Contaga-what?” you ask, likely feeling relieved you are reading this rather than hearing it as I sit across from you, my molluscum-ridden child by my side. It just means a wart, that’s all.) So I was there with both kids and we were waiting 15, 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 40, and by this point, we’d read every single children’s book in the waiting room and the examination room.

Except for one especially grimy and germ-infested book which has been buried under the others.

“Read this one, Mommy,” said my son, handing me a copy of “The Owl and the Pussycat.” So I read it, of course, but I had to steel myself every time that dastardly word came up. It wasn’t that I felt weird reading it to my kids, it was that I felt weird having other people listen to me read it to my kids, like a parent in the waiting room might hear just that one word, out of context and think, “What kind of a madwoman is this! Someone call Social Services!”

Because it wasn’t just like, ok, you’ve got an owl and a pussycat, and they have some adventures. Edward Lear was clearly working through some shit when he wrote this, because on the first page, the word “pussy” appears like five times, with no “cat” or any kind of suffix attached. You try reading this to your two young children in public:

'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'