Virtual Slap Monday: Some Advice

My parents had a garage sale over the weekend. I helped (mostly by trying to unload some of our crap and making signs) and while I was helping, I had a few thoughts. Suggestions, if you will.

How To Be A Good Garage Sale Patron:

1. If all the signs say "yard" and "garage", you don't need to ask if there's more stuff for sale in the house. 
2. Go to the bathroom before you show up, not once you're standing in the yard. 
3. Loving the house from afar doesn't mean you deserve a tour of it during the garage sale. 
4. In fact, please don't ask to come into the house for any reason. 
5. Show up, at most, 15 minutes before the sale officially starts. Not 2 hours beforehand. 
6. If you drive up in a Mercedes and carry a Coach purse, don't balk at paying 50 cents for a book. 
7. The more rude you are, the more likely garage sellers are to donate the item you're interested in. 
8. Don't purposefully put things back in the wrong place after your super low ball offer didn't work.
9. You don't have to chat, but you can say, "hello."
10. Not only do you not have to chat, you should definitely not chat about your colostomy bag. 
11. Bring cash. 
12. Do not switch the tags around on items. Not only is it shitty and dishonest, it makes you look like an idiot. Who do you think did the pricing? Do you really think the sellers can't remember what they priced at $1 versus what they priced at $20? 
13. Tell your friends, especially if they collect something being sold. 
14. Bring a bag. It's easy to run out when you're not part of a corporate entity. 

I'm Being A Bee-Yotch Today

I try not to be a judgmental cow. I know that for every person I judge it's going to come back at me tenfold. I know that when I judge other people, I'm only learning how to be harder on myself. I know that I'm not even in the same solar system as perfect. But once in a while I forget.

Lovebug and I had an exciting day while Ironflower was at school. First, we met the oldest child I have ever seen with a pacifier. She tried to take the swing Lovebug was standing by as he waited for me to catch up and put him in. The girl was coaxed away by her mother, but I couldn't help but notice the large purple thing stuck in her mouth. She pushed it to the side of her mouth when she spoke, like a smoking waitress in a dive bar. Her mother told me that she would be five soon. Now, I'm all about comforting objects, but does an almost five year old need a pacifier while playing at the park?

As I followed Lovebug around the playground, I began to understand why the moms in the cute shoes congregate at the benches. I wore semi-cute black leather woven sandals with (small) heels today. The atmosphere at the preschool must be getting to me. Anyway, as I played with Lovebug, I got so much mulch stuck in my shoes I might as well have been barefoot. And I had to take them off to climb. It was almost dangerous. No wonder those women sit on the benches and let their kids run wild. How could they possible move around without getting mulch stuck in their Jimmy Choo's?

Next we went to the grocery store. I parked in one of the "mothers with infants" spots. I felt a bit guilty, but they were all open and Lovebug is a lot more unwieldy than an infant. Since he usually has to be carried in a parking lot and since carrying him and pushing a grocery cart is a challenge, I didn't feel too bad. I felt even better as I loaded up the groceries and a big, black SUV pulled up next to us. In another "mothers with infants" spot. (For the record, I think it should say "parents with infants" )A man and his daughter got out. I don't know how old she was, but since she managed to open her own door and look both ways before entering the parking lot I'm going to guess far older than Lovebug's eighteen months. Apparently the laws that protect handicapped spots don't apply to infant spots. I wonder why not?

Anyone else got any snotty comments to report? Anyone think I'm being especially bitchy, or am I justified?

Class Mother

So on one of the many forms I filled out for Ironflower's preschool, I indicated that I would be willing to be a class mother. I thought I just said I would help when I could, but maybe my willingness to help at all qualified me for class motherhood.

Now, the whole idea of "class mother" ticks me off in the way "policeman" and "fireman" do - why assume a gender when there are perfectly viable options (police officer and firefighter, class PARENT)? But, this is Bergen County - where the men work long hours in the city and the women wear cute clothes to go to the park (yes, I'm totally generalizing, but I grew up here, I can). Only a handful of fathers even showed up for the back to school night, so it doesn't surprise me that all the class parents are women. It just surprises me that they ASSUME that's how it will be.

I went to the initial meeting with trepidation, not having gotten high-heeled sandals or a manicure recently. Fortunately, the women were more casually dressed this time (maybe because they knew there'd be no men there?) and everyone seemed nice enough. But my Goddess, what a lot of work there is. Fundraisers galore, field trips and class parties to plan. My co-class mom and I are having our parent meeting next week (yes, each class has to have its own meet and greet, as if back to school night and drop offs and pick ups were not enough).

This meeting will be to hit everyone up for money. Yeah, that'll be fun. Can't wait.

I'm sure part of my shock at the duties of class parents comes from my teaching experience in the 'hood. We never had official class parents, we barely had a PTA. And while I had many wonderful and helpful parents, none of them planned things for me. Or ran the fundraisers for me. Or bought me gifts. Or did half the stuff I'm going to have to do.

I'm So Proud I Didn't Name Any Names

I'm not a jealous person. I don't get bothered when Hot Guy's ex-girlfriends find him on MySpace. I don't get mad when I see mothers who have two mellow children. I don't get upset when I hear about the great vacations my financially solvent friends go on. I even only get a momentary pang of bitterness when I see women who have five kids and wear a size four.

So when I say that if one more bitch I went to high school with writes a book, then more than my eyes will be green - that's out of character. While I am catty and gossip-y, I generally don't begrudge other people their happiness or success. I enjoy the success of other writers and bloggers, for the most part. Unless I went to high school with you. A few years ago, a woman I went to elementary, junior high and high school with published her second book. I had kept track of her career, even though we were never friends (not only was she a year older than I am, she was shy and quiet and studious and I, um, was not). I cheered her on as she wrote for Self and Glamour. I bought her book of essays.

Then she came out with her novel and I began to hate her. In her novel, a young woman from a town just like ours moves to the mid-west. Much learning and growing ensues, but her treatment of mid-westerners remains insulting and stereotypical. Not only had she written MY story, she had written it badly. I slammed the book to everyone I met and wrote an impassioned blog against it on Blogit.

This woman lives in LA now. The Week used one of her LA Times Op-eds. And I still hate her. But apparently my dislike of her has turned me into a jealous cow, because now I get annoyed any time I hear about anyone I went to school with publishing a book. Or an article. Or a dissertation. Or having a more popular blog. Or. . .well, I'm sure you get the idea. Last night I saw a mystery published by a woman with the name of another girl I went to school with. Before realizing that it is a fairly common name and not necessarily that girl who always did and said everything perfectly , I got ticked off enough to begin searching for bad reviews.

After reading a few I realized it wasn't her and I felt like a total a**hole for SO many reasons. So now I have promised myself to think only positive thoughts about people I went to high school with - no matter how they've turned out. Except LA Times girl, whose novel was a TOTAL insult to every mid-westerner I've ever known. But I pledge a non-jealousy contract to everyone else. Really.

Party Like A Rock Star

The coolest birthday party I had a child consisted of 10 girls going to the Ground Round (think precursor to Chuck E. Cheese) and sleeping over. I was 10 that year and I still remember it. Cake and presents were involved. Sleeping in sleeping bags on the family room floor. Very cool stuff.

Yesterday we attended a birthday party that had a clown, a bouncy castle, a wading pool, a sprinkler, a massive tent with seating for thirty, a personalized banner, a hotdog vendor, cupcakes and cake, hamburgers/chips/guacamole/bruschetta/salad and tons of Coronas for the parents. It was cooler than any birthday party I've ever been to.

And it was for a one year old.

I don't want to be a judgmental cow. I know that there are plenty of things that are imperfect about my parenting. After all, Ironflower was the only child who had a tantrum at the party (she was putting dirt into the wading pool as some sort of deranged science experiment and didn't want to be coaxed - okay, dragged - away). But all the birthday boy did was watch the clown and eat some cake. And while everything was videotaped and camcordered up the wazoo, what's he really going to remember about it? Nothing.

Maybe I'm just jealous that I don't have a couple of thousand to drop on my kids' birthday parties. Although judging from their behavior yesterday, all Ironflower needs is a wading pool and all Lovebug needs is a bouncer. But how are they going to top this party next year? And the year after?

I probably won't find out. We were invited because the birthday boy's aunt is my best friend from high school and because the birthday boy lives a few doors up the street from my parents. We will never fit in with that crowd, regardless of the fact that I went to high school with a lot of them. I can't do this over-the-top extravagant parenting.

Interestingly, many of the most extravagant parents I've met have nannies. The birthday boy's mother, for example, works sixty hour weeks and has a photography business on the side. Their nanny was at the birthday party, she seemed very sweet, caring and hot (according to Hot Guy). She certainly spent a lot of time with the birthday boy. But I just wonder how much time do mommy and daddy get to spend with the birthday boy? Is there perhaps some guilt in the face of all this extravagance?

Maybe I just want to think that because my kids are probably never going to have a birthday party like that. Even if we could afford it. I can think of so many other things that we could do for the kids with a couple thousand dollars. I'm not saying that we won't have birthday parties, we already make a big production of going to Build-a-Bear and the child's restaurant of choice. But with an extra few thousand I wouldn't invite twenty other little people to Build-a-Bear, I'd buy books and stimulating toys and a trip somewhere fun.

Does that make me anti-social?

Oh, Smite Me!

Jerry Falwell has died.

My introduction to Jerry, such as it was, occurred in the ninth grade when a friend was sleeping over. We were up late watching "dirty stuff" on HBO (this was before Real Sex and Taxicab Confessions, a soft core version of Lady Chatterly's Lover was as good as it got) when we decided to flip around the channels using that new-fangled invention, the remote control.

When we came across the Christian church services with the sweating and yelling Evangelicals, we were fascinated. It was more bizarre than anything on TV, including Headbanger's Ball. We started watching every time we had a sleep over.

We would argue about whether the audience members were real or actors, whether you had to have southern upbringing to fall for that crap, etc. It was like porn for our east coast, media savvy, church/temple ignorant hearts. We admired the faith, but couldn't believe that people would put their faith in a showboat-ing, yelling, judgmental man like him.

Since then, my contempt for Jerry and his ilk has grown. Though Jerry will always have a special place in my heart as the man who found a gay conspiracy in the Teletubbies. Anyway, he's dead. And it's all over CNN and the flock is expressing their sadness and yadda, yadda.

WHY? Don't they believe he's in a better place? Shouldn't they be happy for him?

I am.