He had a charming way that appealed to all the kids...

"Do you like kids?"

What a dumb-ass question. That's like asking "Do you like grown-ups?" Well, some, sure. Most? Not really. Besides, when a person asks that question what they want to know is either, "Do you intend to procreate?" or "Are you comfortable with kids?"

One of the great side-effects of having children is that you don't get asked this question anymore. Which is really silly, because it indicates that people assume that, because you have one or more of your own, you like all of them. In my case, that's a completely false assumption. I still like kids like I like grown-ups - that is to say, not very many of them - and I am still extraordinarily uncomfortable around them, because they are weird.

My daughter is, of course, an exception - that is, she's just as weird as the rest of them, but she doesn't make me uncomfortable because I've been around her enough to understand her alien behaviors. It's like with dogs. If you don't know the species, you may misunderstand the baring of the teeth as a friendly overture when, in fact, you're about to lose a finger. Toddlers are extremely similar, but if you spend enough time around one of them, you can at least identify the warning signs and know when to flee.

So I'm slightly more comfortable with children who are exactly my daughter's age, or up to six months younger (beyond six months ago, I don't remember so well). If they are a day or more older than she, they make me uncomfortable with their unfathomable ways. This makes daycare pick-up pretty tricky, because there are lots of those buggers crawling around.

Usually I take a few seconds to untangle my kid from the fray and then high-tail it for the car. But yesterday this little blond-haired demon child, ala Children of the Corn, cornered me, literally, and started, like, interacting, while I looked around for an escape that wouldn't be too obvious. I didn't want to hurt the kid's feelings, after all, because everybody knows that children possess a telekinetic ability to sense whether a person is good or evil, and as much as children creep me out, I still don't want them to think I'm evil. Luckily most of them give me the benefit of the doubt, with a wise, sage-like twinkle in their eye that indicates they are both slightly amused by my discomfiture, and at the same time graciously forgiving and understanding of it; thus I am generally dismissed not as evil, but as just one of your everyday imbeciles.

But this kid was freaky, and I suspected that rather than benevolently letting me off with a sympathetic nod of dismissal, he would pulverize me by shooting red lasers from his eyeballs if I didn't watch my step.

"My dad's name is Larry," he told me, shifting slightly left and right to keep me from escaping, so I felt like a lamb about to be slaughtered. His blue gaze was steely and unwavering.

"Oh?" I said, because this is my typical response when a child tries to communicate with me. Meanwhile, I was clutching my two-year-old daughter while she gazed down, undisturbed, at the boy-creature. Clearly she, sharing some sort of wavelength with him, understood she was in no danger.

"My mom's name is Mary, and my dad is going to pick me up AFTER dinner today."

"Oh?" I said again, because that's the kind of creative person I am under pressure.

The boy did not let up. "He'll be here at 6:00 and not later."

Was this a threat? Would something happen to me if Larry did not show up by 6:00? Will I be trapped in this corner until then and, if the father failed to appear at the promised time, would I be annihilated? Should I attempt now to toss my daughter to safety, bravely and selflessly sacrificing my own welfare?

"Oh?" I said, because the response hadn't, technically, failed me yet - I was still alive. "Er, and what's your name?" I asked, in a burst of inspiration.

"George and Harry and John," he replied.

This was the most disturbing thing he'd said so far. I didn't doubt he was three people - perhaps he'd eaten the other two? - but felt keenly that my response to this utterly bizarre statement would decide my fate. "That's a lot of names," I said, because it was.

For some reason this seemed to throw him. I could see little sparks going off in his silvery blue eyes, as if his brain were undergoing a severe malfunction. Perhaps he was a robot. In any case, it afforded me that split-second I needed to escape his steely gaze and hurl myself and my daughter out the back door.

God, I hope he isn't there again today. I'd better be prepared, just in case. How does one fend off these things? Garlic? Jelly beans? And today they're all dressed for Halloween - not that that one needs a costume to scare the shit out of me. What if I don't recognize him in time?

If you don't see me on Facebook by this time tomorrow, send help.

Our Wooden Anniversary

My husband and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary last weekend. I'm really excited about hitting this milestone because, in my mind, once you hit five years you officially don't have to return the wedding gifts if you end up getting divorced. Five years definitely gave your friends and family their money's worth. Also, five years is longer than I've ever committed to anything before, except for my rent-controlled apartment in New York, where I lived for six. But really if you are lucky enough to find a rent-controlled apartment in New York it isn't a matter of choice to stay or leave - not like with marriage.

So in honor of this grand occasion, my husband and I turned our noses up at the traditional five-year gift of wood and instead treated ourselves to an Evening Out.

Such a thing would not have been any big deal a few years ago. Certainly not worthy of a five year wedding anniversary. No, a few years ago such a momentous occasion would have been celebrated with a trip somewhere exotic in whose description appeared the words "swim-up bar." But we have a toddler now, so leaving the house after dark is about as special as it gets, and our options were limited to whatever we could find in our own city. So we opted to go with a dinner show that was the kind of thing you would only do on an occasion like this, on account of it cost more than a mid-size luxury sedan.

No, not really. And, no, I would not have knowingly spent that kind of money on a single evening. The ticket cost seemed extravagant, yet reasonably so for a special occasion. But then you get there and they say if you want a knife and fork with which to eat your steak, that will be extra. If you want bread it's extra, and there was a $10 per person "serving" fee which, it was explained carefully to us by our waitress, was not actually a tip, she didn't see a penny of that, no sireee, and she's not just bringing you your food, she's actually DANCING it over to you, which adds a nice dollop of whipped-cream guilt to your guilt pie.

Then there's the babysitter (turns out they don't work for 50 cents an hour like I used to) and parking and drinks and when all is said and done, maybe not a mid-size sedan but definitely one of those smaller ones that's a bit cramped in the back but no big deal if the kids are still small, they'd fit just fine.

But worse than the cost was the evening itself, which turned out to be one of those "audience participation" deals. This large and obnoxious woman would come out periodically throughout the evening, instigating simultaneous pangs of nervous nausea and excited anticipation. The first because her act consisted of pulling some poor sap from the audience and making a joke out of him for 30 minutes; the second because this was always followed by the next course. So the evening went: fun act, obnoxious woman, food; fun act, obnoxious woman, food. For five courses. I became like a Pavlovian dog, except instead of a bell it was an obnoxious woman and instead of salivating I'd get anxiety and a stomach ache.

I am terrified of being in the spotlight. The only time I find being in the spotlight acceptable is if it involves my getting a lot of gifts. Baby shower, wedding, birthday - that's fine. I can endure because I get stuff for my trouble. But if I am the one forking over my daughter's college fund in order to be fed and entertained, I expect someone ELSE to do the entertaining, not me. So I spent the majority of the evening on the verge of throwing up for fear the obnoxious woman would pick on me. I channeled my energy into throwing daggers at her with my eyes, sending silent bat signals of "Don't you DARE even LOOK at me, obnoxious woman! If you do I will barf on your ginormous sequined bosom and SUE you and THEN you'll be sorry" to the extent that I was utterly miserable, didn't enjoy much of the show and wasn't able to stomach any of the food. On the bright side I wasn't able to drink much which was good because drinks were the most extra of all the extras.

All in all the thing I liked most about the entire evening was the gift shop where pretty much every item consisted of sequins or rhinestones glued to various things you wore on your face or head, which was right up my alley. Nothing made of wood though, which would have been the only justification for parting with even more money.

Silly Tom couldn't understand why I was sputtering with indignation as we left. First of all, he doesn't mind that audience participation thing. He thinks it's FUN. Seriously! So he had no anxiety about the possibility of being plucked from the safe and comfortable darkness into the spotlight and was able to relax and enjoy himself. Also, he didn't know how much the tickets cost because I had made all the arrangements. When I bitched about the high price of our evening he conceded it was a "bit high" but not unreasonable for a special occasion until I clarified that the check he'd just signed was for the EXTRAS and didn't include the larger cost of the actual tickets.

I guess a nice anniversary gift would have been to keep that bit of information to myself, rather than ruin his night, too. But then, it wasn't made of wood anyway.

P.S. for those of you anticipating a joke involving giving/getting some wood on my anniversary, don't think I didn't IMMEDIATELY go there in my head. I just thought it was a little too obvious to actually write.

Y-M-C-Zzzzzz

So I was talking to a friend the other day who asked why I hadn't been writing much lately. Was it because I was too busy now that I'm a full-time working mom? Well, no. I mean, yes, I am very busy, in the way that I used to wonder was just an excuse when my friends who became parents claimed they could never, ever find the time to reply to my emails anymore. Can anybody be THAT busy? Yes.

But no, if I really thought I had something interesting to say I could make time to say it. In fact, several times I have thought, "That might make a good blog," but every single time it broke my no "cute things my kid did" rule. As I mentioned before, I do not want to become one of those people who bores everyone around them until they look around one day and realize they have no friends left because they have all hung or stabbed themselves, ala Ted's seatmates from Airplane!

Anyway in response to this, my friend said, "There are lots of parents out there who might actually be interested in what you have to say about parenting."

Well that was an interesting thought. There ARE a lot of parents out there. My parents are parents, for example. And so are theirs. That's... uh... six people already who might read these blogs? And God knows my friends are all procreating like slutty little rabbits lately. Instead of our own hard-partying-induced vomit on our clothes, it's now our offspring's. My favorite hang-out has become IHOP because they are open 24 hours, not for the reason I USED to love IHOP, which was also because they were open 24 hours, but the OTHER 24 hours, the ones where it was dark because it was 4am and I hadn't been to bed yet, not because it was 6am and I was up already. And also I love pancakes.

Wait, what was I talking about? Right, my parent friends who might get the IHOP bit. But by focusing on these sorts of issues in my life (not that pancakes are an issue, per se, no matter what time of day, because any time is a good time for pancakes) will I alienate those who do not have kids, or are still kids themselves?

Yeah, probably. But, I reason, my old blogs probably alienated my parent friends, so it's really their turn anyway.

However, if you don't have kids, I appeal to you in this manner: continue reading this blog, so it may serve as a warning to you. Heed! Having kids FUCKS YOU UP, and I will tell it like it is. So I will keep my non-parenting fans, whoever you might be (because I know my mom, the only die-hard fan I'm aware of, isn't a member of this group) by making you feel incredibly superior, not to mention fortunate, for your childlessness.

For example, a couple weeks ago we had a rare opportunity to go out sans toddler to a friend's wedding. Weddings are generally not something most people look forward to, what with the dressing up and requisite YMCA rendition, but I was totally stoked because a) I'd be out of the house past dark and b) there would be booze. I got gussied up and practiced talking in my grown-up voice and was all set to get down with my bad self, but of course I had two glasses of wine and started to fall asleep on my plate. It was 8pm. No, seriously. 8pm. We had to say our goodbyes quickly lest it become necessary for Tom to carry me over his shoulder to the car. My friend said the next day, "It was so cute how you got tired in the middle of dinner."

No, it was not cute. I miss the days of partying till dawn (stop laughing - I really did used to party till dawn. I DID). But now I have a schedule run by a three-foot dictator who is not, despite genetic predispositions, a late sleeper. When they say that you love your child so much you forget what it was like before? So much that, when you're leaving a wedding at 8pm just as the DJ turns on the strobe light and kicks it up a notch for the young folk who stay to party while the older generation shuffles out complaining about gassy bloating, you consider yourself one of the lucky ones? Don't buy that for a minute.

But hey, there's no wait at IHOP at 6am!