Preschool countdown

Tomorrow I leave for Boston, the (2nd to?) last trip my original babysitter has agreed to cover. I say 2nd to last because I am hoping to beg her to take the kids during my event over Labor Day - she had said she might be able to. The idea of having a completely new person taking the kids for five days with both me and the BF not available scares the crap out of me. Also, based on the people I’ve interviewed since my last post, even if I could find someone it looks like I’ll now be paying two times what I used to for these weekend trips. So...let’s hope I can convince her to stay on for one last hurrah. 

Bids are finally coming in for my kitchen. It is not going to be cheap. But...I’m not doing this to have a crappy, low-end kitchen. I want a tile floor instead of linoleum, more than one dim light fixture, extra windows...it’s a lot. But I should be able to just barely manage it this year, most likely leaving myself broke but happy. It will be the most ambitious and invasive project I’ve done in this place. And in the end, working with such a tiny space, it’s hardly going to be transformative. But it’ll be pretty and functional and have all the vintage touches that make my heart sing. So...worth it?

The boys are doing well - the pool has increasingly become a part of our daily lives, and summer suddenly has meaning again when you’re on a standard school schedule. I am counting the days until I no longer have to drive Theo up to his Pasadena preschool three times a week; I am SO over it. We have also stopped our twice weekly “nap drives” since he doesn’t seem to need it anymore; he is tall and skinny and more and more a boy and less and less a chubby baby every day. Things are a-changing around here.

Separation Anxiety

Like just about everyone with a conscience, I’ve spent this week in absolute horror over the travesty going on at our border right now. Children being ripped away from parents and held in cages...thousands that will probably never see their parents again, their only crime trying to escape gang violence and crushing poverty. It’s horrendous. I can hardly function for how much stress and anxiety this is causing me, and it’s not even happening to me. And the monsters in my Facebook feed trying to justify it. A friend called these people out as Nazi sympathizers and I agree. I am beside myself.

It doesn’t help that right as this story was ramping up over the weekend, my nanny of more than three years abruptly quit Saturday night, leaving me stranded for the ten + traveling weekends coming up in the next few months she had agreed to, including my event, and my trip to Budapest, and my ten days in Thailand in December. It was nothing personal - she is just feeling burnt out, and now has a very demanding weekday job working with a new baby where she can’t just take off Fridays and Mondays every couple of weeks. I get it, and I knew this day would come. But I am thoroughly freaked out. It would be one thing if I had a normal fall with just a couple of trips - but it’s literally about two or three weekends I’m gone every month until December. Where am I going to find someone who has that kind of availability?!?

I started my search on Urban Sitter where I found a good sitter years ago before I started using this lady exclusively. It’s a lot like online dating - you look at the profile and try to get a vibe from their picture, send a bunch of copy and paste introductory messages, and then wait. So far I’ve written to about fifteen people and gotten five responses. I’ve scheduled three interviews, one which happened last night. I really liked this girl, but to my surprise she has a full time job and couldn’t do the Friday-Monday school stuff. I think this will be the case for most people. Yes, they can work nights and weekends, but they can’t pick a kid up from school at 2 PM. And Theo is too young for any after school programs, otherwise none of this would be an issue. Ughhhh.

This is where having a partner really helps. The BF had already been coming home the occasional weeknight to watch the boys when I go to my book clubs, go DJ, etc, and watching them on those long weekend days when I have something else I need to do. This is a fairly new phenomenon, and I am extremely grateful I have someone who actively wants to spend this time with the kids. I think I never asked before just out of habit - I was used to paying sitters for every little thing. But as our sitter became less and less available he really stepped up. Still - he does need to work, and can’t take entire weekdays off plus the whole weekend. So we’re trying to figure out a patched-together system wherein he can get the kids to school in the morning, he can pick them up and then wait for a sitter to come by in the evening and then he can get back to work. It’s kind of a mess but it’s the only way right now, unless I find someone who’s free on weekdays. 

Once next summer rolls around and Theo can be at afterschool with his brother until 5:30 everything will be different. But for now this is our life. How I wish I didn’t have those two long international trips back to back-!

I’m having all those feelings I’ve heard mothers describe when their long time nannies quit - the betrayal, abandonment, sadness. The fear of having to start from scratch with a new person with a thousand details, the fear of getting someone who turns out to be a nightmare. I’m triggered.

Oh, and of course this week’s (well, every week’s) episode of Handmaid’s Tale is all about mothers ripped away from children...of course. 

When does that Mr. Rodgers documentary open, again? I seriously need some feel good entertainment right now!

Summertime, summertime

Our usual spring gloom has lifted, and summer has at last arrived. With it, a couple of awesome things - today, the start of my summer schedule which means sleeping in another hour, and this weekend, discovering that after seven years I can finally enjoy the pool with the boys. I’ve hardly stepped a toe in the pool in all these years I’ve had small  children; finally I feel like the boys are big enough/pool savvy enough to be able to safely be in the pool with just me there. Water wings help them doggy paddle around, and they’re getting more and more comfortable putting their heads under water. Summers are going to be dramatically different from now on.

On the last day of school I wrote the dismissal time down wrong and was sitting at home when I got a text from the after school pick up lady saying Bobby was crying and wondering why I didn’t pick him up. This after days of telling him I was going to pick him up on his special last day. Ughhhh. I felt terrible. Hopefully the ice cream we got later made up for it.

The next day a group of us got together at a local park as a little kick off summer celebration. I chatted with the grandmother of one of the nicer boys who always comes to the school functions, and she told me a harrowing story. Apparently the boy actually started kindergarten the year before but they pulled him out of school because the teacher abused him - kicked him repeatedly while he was sitting on the floor, and apparently has been known to slap and pinch other kids. According to her, police have been called, but all the kids swear nothing happened; this teacher refuses to have assistants in her class or to allow parents in the classroom. I was horrified and am still shaken by it. The poor kid, and the other kids-! I’ve seen this teacher and I’ve got to be honest - she’s got the crazy eyes. I’m so glad Bobby dodged that bullet! However, I still have Theo to worry about. If I find out he has been assigned to her class I will do everything in my power to have him transferred - even if it means keeping him at his ETK school for a second year. There is no way I’m exposing him to that! I had an abusive, shitty kindergarten teacher, so HELL no.

We are going to have one of Bobby’s friends over next weekend. Having other kids over is WAY out of my comfort zone, but I know it’s something I’m going to have to get used to.

In mother news, we got a hold of her building manager in Rio and he said he just saw her and she just got a food delivery. So, she’s hardly in a heap on her floor. She ignored emails from my sister and cousins and friends; she is just isolating. This may have been another in a series of false alarms. It does become a boy who cried wolf situation after a while. 

First lost tooth!

After about a week of wiggling, Bobby lost his first tooth yesterday at school! As weird as it sounds, teeth falling out was one of my favorite parts of childhood, so I was very excited for him. I finally got to use the little felt tooth fairy pockets I made years ago. I left him a dollar coin.

He’s got “shark teeth” - teeth growing in behind the baby teeth, not under. I may still need dental intervention - he’s going to need to lose at least another baby tooth to make room. I’ll see if one of the others starts to loosen up in the next few days. 

Today is Bobby’s final day of kindergarten. He was never late nor absent. It’s a small thing, but I’m proud of it. I’ll pick him up and we’ll go celebrate with ice cream. Today was the last day I had to get up at 6:45 AM. Hooray! 

In other news, my mother has cut off communication with our go-between. My sister somehow managed to get a hold of someone in Rio who can go check on her and get us contact information for her apartment’s management. I think I need to apply for a visa now so I’ll be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Sigh.

It is upon us...?

My sister called yesterday to tell me our mother’s one friend says she believes our mother has cancer and is in her final days. This could be it. Or, it could be yet another in a series of false alarms. But at 76, alone, isolated and in terrible health (with zero medical intervention for decades), her day is coming. It might as well be today.

Quick summary - our mother has lived alone in Rio for about 20 years. Apparently she hasn’t left her apartment in years and is only in contact with people via computer. She has had some mysterious ailment for at least twenty years that has caused her to announce “I’m at death’s door!” many times; and yet she keeps soldiering on. She belongs (used to belong? Who knows) to a religion that eschews medical science. My leaving the religion is a lot of why we’re alienated and have been since 2006. The current friend, who is in the US, video chats with her regularly but says our mother is refusing video chats and has been increasingly difficult to get a hold of.

Our mother blocked both me and my sister on FB recently so we can’t even keep tabs on her. The friend says she did it because seeing me and my sister in our happy lives made her sad. This made me sad for her. But surprisingly, the friends I’ve mentioned this to had a different reaction - they think it’s further proof of how petty and selfish she is. My guess is they are correct. Sometimes my extreme empathy does me no favors. 

So my sister and I are, not for the first time, steeling ourselves for what may happen (and as of this writing, may have already happened). My mother - my talented, smart, funny, charismatic mother, who in so many ways made me who I am, for better or worse - is going to be one of those people who are “found”. Yes. This is how her story ends. It is unbearable but true. She has no one but herself to blame for her fate. And yet.

She did all of these things. She bore me and my sister, nursed us, wiped our butts, endured our tantrums and teenaged snark and everything else, only to die alone having pushed both of us away with her extreme narcissism, selfishness, and cruelty. What, indeed, was the point? She often told me she never should have had children. No truer statement has ever been made. 

Like all narcissists she self-published a meandering autobiography (which at one point I served as editor for; me and my sister are barely mentioned in it. My sister has a friend with a similar mother who also self-published an autobiography in which she and her sister are barely mentioned. How bizarre is that?). Last night I googled it and found a review written by someone who claimed to be a long time friend. It was carefully worded; while he overall praised the book, he also occasionally slips in criticism of her (“I didn’t always agree with her life choices”), etc. It was interesting to read that others picked up on her possible NPD. 

So now...we wait. Since the friend is not near her, the only thing we can do is keep in touch with her to see if they’ve spoken, and perhaps try to get in touch with the management of her apartment building to see if anything “happened”. My sister wants to go down there to “clean up” and I should go too...although it may not be possible. I just don’t know. 

One thing is for sure - I don’t want this. I don’t want to grieve, to be made non-functional, to be weepy and sad and preoccupied. All of those things will happen, and I am very resentful of it, in advance. I am going to cry and wail and rend my garment and feel all alone in the world, even though this woman never gave me an ounce of comfort in the 35 years she was in my life. I’ve been mourning her for twelve years. More, really. I am exhausted. Enough. And it hasn’t even begun.