Car Conversation Number 4,321,896

I know if you're a parent you've discovered that the car is probably the best place to have a conversation with your children. Sometimes it's the only place to have a conversation with your children, particularly when you drive around all day, seemingly willy-nilly but actually as part of a carefully orchestrated feat of organizational genius.

Anywho.

This morning, I threw on a sweater over my pajama pants, transferred my coffee from "my cup" into the travel cup and shepherded the three boys (one of whom is not mine) out the door and into the car. I noticed, as he walked ahead of me, that Henry's pants were hanging slightly too low and that the top of his boxers were showing. Henry, pull up your pants, I said, I can see your underwear. He pulled them down, exposing the entire expanse of his underwear and shuffled to the car while the other two boys laughed hysterically. When we were all settled into our car, I had the genius idea to tell them what might be urban myth but what I understood to be the origin of the unfortunate fashion of pants hanging below one's waist. That perhaps urban myth states that people in jail, hungry for contact, would signal their willingness for sexual assignations by pulling their pants down below their underwear.

Isn't that a lovely fashion trend to emulate? I asked smugly as I sipped my coffee and took a sharp right turn. I glanced into the rearview mirror as one does during car conversations and raised my eyebrows. Oliver was sitting beside me and just stared, confused. Henry said, I don't think that's appropriate, Mom. 

Reader, if there were a grave in the car, I would have kept digging. I told him that sometimes, men in prison got lonely in prison and wanted to have sex. Oliver was silent, his amazing brain apparently struck still.

What do you mean, Mom? Oliver asked, horrified. The third boy said, drolly, When you're in the shower, don't drop the soap! and he and Henry laughed out loud.

Oh, Lord. I won't go into it here, but I managed to climb somewhat out of the grave that I'd dug for myself and divert the conversation to other issues surrounding prison -- the food, the close quarters, the boredom -- but not before I might have irrevocably damaged my eleven year old.

The bottom line, though, is that I don't think anyone who comes with me on car trips will be wearing their pants too low from here on out.

Culmination Cupcakes, Vile Comments and Pablum

Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes with Fondant Checkers

This blog appears to be turning into a superficial baseball and baking fest with a bit of eggsex education thrown in. Where are the grim reports of disability, shitty government and seizures? Where's the poetry? Where's the politics and parenting? Over the last week, I've not only gone to four baseball games, but I've also baked and decorated nearly ten dozen cupcakes and three cakes. I've got four dozen more to go, so anything pithy or angst-driven will have to wait. I'll hope you'll hang around if you're more of the mind for the serious. If you're in to that sort of thing, I was recently baited by a vile commenter who calls himself skunkfeather on a reactionary conservative blog that I visit every week or so to see what the crazies are up to. He uses the word libtard regularly and sort of drives home or confirms my perhaps cynical belief that all the talk of needing more civil discourse and we have more in common as Americans than not is pablum at best and bullshit at worst. I didn't take the bait -- except for here, of course, because I doubt he comes around and seeing my name in his comment made me throw up a little in my mouth (an expression that I usually despise) and want to purge.

OK.

Here's a photo of a cake I made for someone for Father's Day. It's chocolate with dark chocolate ganache filling and white buttercream.

And here's a quote from one of the world's greatest satirists, Jonathan Swift:

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

And this:

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. 

Reader, how was your weekend?

Mulan: An Epitaph and Addendum***

Yeah, I know. How perfect is this French postcard?

Mulan didn't make it home yesterday afternoon, but Brooklyn did, cracked-up, to be sure, but nestled securely in his box and held by Noah.

We threw Mulan out, Mom, Henry told me when I asked where she was. It was the end of the project, he added and turned on the radio. Geez, I said, just like that, she's gone? Yesterday, when I tried to take the picture of a beautiful young classmate of Henry's who was wearing her egg in a lovely box around her neck, he stopped me, embarrassed. Thinking of Mulan lying at the bottom of a school trash can made me wonder how some of the girls might have dealt with the end of the project. But the radio played one of the six songs it rotates through, and the three boys talked over one another like they generally do. They told me in their already-deep voices about an egg fight that broke out between two other boys. Evidently, when the project was declared finished, a few of the boys started throwing eggs back and forth, and since this is Los Angeles and the 21st century, another boy filmed it. Before long, one boy threw an egg a bit too hard at another boy who then put the egg-thrower in a choke-hold and then punches started flying. The guy with the camera phone kept filming.

It was a real fight, Mom, Henry said, laughing, and when I asked who broke it up and what the consequences were, he admitted that he didn't know and that he'd just watched the video.

Reader, go where you'd like with that.

So, guys, I said, when they'd calmed down relating the fight to me,  you each have to tell me what you learned with this egg baby project in two sentences or less. Henry?


Henry said, I learned that it's really hard and stressful to take care of a baby, even if it is for a week and it's an egg.


Noah said, Yeah, I'd basically say the same thing as Henry. And I learned that I'd do anything to get enough money to get out of debt.


I nodded my head and decided to no longer be smug and satisfied. You know, there's a lot of joy, too, in a baby -- way more joy than anxiety and stress, anyway. 


But only if you're ancient in years and experience, I added, and the boys rolled their eyes.


***The comments provoked my memory, and I completely forgot to tell ya'll that Oliver was sitting in the car during the discussion about Mulan's demise, and do you know what he said?


You know what, Mom? When I do the egg project, I'm going to have TWO eggs, TWINS!


 Like one of my old writing mentors said about memoir, "you really can't make this sh#$@ up"


Stay tuned. I'll probably have twin grandeggs in two years.

My grandegg Mulan - an update

This is where Mulan spends most of her day, nestled in a soft bed made of a cigar box, cotton material and an upside-down strawberry crate. Henry got into the car yesterday in a grumpy mood, tired and unwilling to share what had happened that day. Henry is almost never in a bad mood, so when I gently probed, I learned that not only was he tired of dealing with his egg, but the whole project was getting boring and hard.


Tell me about it, I said, trying not to sound smug. Henry slumped further down in his seat, clutching Mulan's box. The money thing is just hard, he said, I'm tired of it. I just raised my eyebrows and murmured

The other night, at the school's fundraiser, I had commiserated with Henry's in-laws about the project. The father thought it was too negative as did a haughty French woman I'd met earlier in the day who I rather ineffectively argued with about being a thirteen year old parent. She was impossibly French, inferring confidently in the usual never-disappearing-French-accent-despite-years-and-years-of-living-in-the-United-States that with the proper amour, a baby can be a beautiful thing. She disapproved of making the whole baby thing so negative. When I pointed out that I was the loving mother of three and the only mother in the room, actually, and that I would of course, support, a baby if Henry were to have one, but that it would be an unequivocal disaster, as far as I'm concerned. Frankly, I wanted to say that if Henry were to have a baby, I would be hard put to not say Your life is fucked.


Oh la la.


So, the ride home in the car was pretty silent. Moods were grumpy enough that Oliver's pleas to play music from the station that rotates about six songs were ignored, and when we pulled up to Noah's house to drop him off, I cheerfully asked whether I could take a photo of Baby Brooklyn. Noah, who is a quiet guy and probably the sweetest kid on the planet, cheerfully uncovered Baby Brooklyn for his first photo:

Noah, I might remind you, is a single parent, and while I'm a little bit in debt, he told me, everything is pretty good.


Reader, I'll let you take that where you will.

Mulan, Part One
Mulan, Part Two

Grandegg Mulan Update

For those of you wondering how the weekend went for Mulan, my grandegg, evidently all went well until this afternoon when, Henry told me, S and I got up for a minute, Mom, ONE MINUTE, and she was cracked.


I refrained from expressing the fact that well, it only takes a minute, but I did initially gasp and say what do you mean, you left Mulan alone? and was immediately reassured by Henry that they are given the chance to boil another egg to take care of for the rest of the week but that they can't get any higher than a 92% on their final grade for the project. When Oliver and I expressed wonder that this would be allowed, because, after all, you can't really replace a baby so easily, Henry stated that it's about taking care of the egg, Mom, and it wouldn't be fair to not let us finish. We get penalized but we still have to finish. 


This late in the game of school, I'm deflecting any arguing, so I let it go, but Oliver kept at it pretty much the entire ride home until I raised my voice and shouted Enough about Mulan! Both of you be quiet and not another word! Evidently, my son-in-law S is responsible for Mulan's resurrection tonight and he's decorating her as well, because not only is he a hairdresser but moonlights as a pretty incredible artist. Noah's egg remained peaceful in his little box on Noah's lap and stayed there the entire ride home despite Oliver's pleas to hold him for a just a little while. The thought crossed my mind that single parenting might be easier in some respects -- well -- let's not go into marriage right now.

Before long, I imagine I'll have one of those fold-out wallets with pictures, so Reader, stay tuned.

Mulan, the Egg Baby

We've been waiting all trimester for sex education to begin at my sons' school. When I say waiting, I don't mean in some kind of suspended titillation. I mean that both boys have been aware that it's coming up -- Oliver, who is in fifth grade has had a sort of excited dread about it, and Henry, who is in seventh grade, an affected nonchalance. So, now that we're about a week and a half away from the end of school, it begins, and this is how it goes when you're two boys attending a progressive public school in Los Angeles, California.

Oliver came home yesterday afternoon requesting deodorant.

You have deodorant, I said, patiently.

Does it have aluminum in it, Mom?


Uh, no. That's why you have the Tom's stuff, Oliver.


Oh, so you know about the aluminum?


Yes, Oliver. I know about the aluminum.


I refrained from adding that I know everything, and then the conversation veered toward the various things that were going to happen to Oliver's body as he grew into an older boy and then man.

Easy peasy.


Henry came home on Thursday and told me that he needed a boiled egg to bring to school on Friday for their health and sex education project. Evidently, the egg was going to represent a baby and would be squired around school for the week, a centerpiece of a larger project that included budgeting for a child, health insurance, negotiating childcare contracts and a myriad of responsibilities pertaining to having a baby. The project is worth 500 points, a significant part of one's final science grade, and rules include a "O" if you break your egg. If a caregiver breaks your egg and hasn't signed a liability contract before said sitting, you get 150 points deducted. Don't quote me on that, though, as parenting an egg makes my head spin. Henry asked me to boil an egg for him, and I told him to boil it yourself. When the timer went off, he asked me to remove it from the heat, and I said You're going to have to take that egg off the heat yourself.


And so on.

Now, you might roll your eyes (I did) because, honestly, an egg doesn't come close to representing a baby when you're thirteen and fourteen years old. On one level, it reminds me of  a disability awareness project that I heard about where the kids are asked to walk around blindfolded to get a sense of what it's like to be blind. Right, I thought, caustically, being blind for a day is a real hardship. But I digress. I've heard that areas with better school budgets -- ahem -- have real baby dolls that poop and pee and cry for these projects, but keeping an egg safe, dry and clothed is evidently a substitute, and Henry was pretty excited about the whole thing. Maybe too excited.

In the morning we placed the little brown egg in a tiny shopping bag that we lined with paper shreds, while Oliver chattered nervously about his upcoming health and hygiene class. I said good-bye to my two sons and my grandegg and tended to Sophie who in a weird twist of fate wears deodorant (non-aluminum), a bra and diapers, which made me wonder about a disability project that might include caring for an ostrich egg, perhaps? -- caring for an ostrich egg for more than a week, though, and maybe the ostrich egg would be barely shattered and dripping protein and points would be taken off if you missed therapy or threatened to kill someone at your insurance company or spoke rudely to the little girl staring at your over-large egg in its stroller -- But I digress, again.

Henry got into the car with his friend Noah (also an egg father) on Friday afternoon and enthusiastically told me what had happened that day. Evidently, each student was required to pick a partner for the egg-rearing and was also given a random job or career. Noah had decided to be a single father and carried his egg in a neatly designed box. When he got into the car, he placed it carefully in his lap. Henry and his friend S decided to co-egg.


S and I are gay parents, Mom, Henry said.


We went to China to adopt an egg and named her Mulan. I'm a veterinarian with health insurance, and S is a hairdresser with none. Right now we're a little bit in debt which we have to get out of to earn back points. 

Evidently, other occupations included McDonald's cashier, doctor, movie producer, unemployed, and Noah is a salesman. Each egg parent was given a salary, commensurate with their experience, and had to budget accordingly.  Oliver listened to all of this avidly, shaken out of his former foul humor (he'd lost a file on his lap-top for a science project and had gotten into the car completely enveloped in a cloud of Oliver rage that I've learned to endure, if not ignore completely).

Henry was not in possession of his egg because his partner had volunteered to watch and take care of Mulan over the weekend, so we're egg-free today.

That's what's going down out here in La-La Land. My son is the proud gay father of a little brown Chinese egg named Mulan, and I'm a grandmother. And everyone smells nice and is aluminum-free.