Hey Joe, the Bucket's Here

My sister and I are working on a fun project together- collecting some family recipes and lore. I thought it might be fun to share some of these as we go. This one in particular is legend. 

As a child, I was extremely curious. In fact, I still am, but a desirable trait in an adult can certainly be a drawback in a child. I am relatively sure my curiosity made parenting me much more difficult.

To further complicate my parents’ lives, I was also a total night owl (and that is a trait I definitely have not carried into my 30’s).

Shortly before my fifth birthday, I was playing a game on the living room floor late at night. Mom was asleep on the couch behind me. The game I picked involved using tweezers to remove various objects from a make-believe patient. If you did not do this with precision, the patient’s nose would light up. However, being not-quite five, I misinterpreted the objective and assumed the nose-lighting was the goal.

Since the game with my modified rules was far too easy and I was unsupervised, I devised a way to up the ante. Why make this pretend man’s nose light up when it would obviously be more fun to make my nose light up. My plan to accomplish this was to remove the only piece I actually could get out, which was the bucket, and insert it into my nose.

Much like the rest of the game, I found getting the bucket into my nose did not prevent much of a challenge. Unfortunately, getting it out did.

It was nearly ten at night when I woke my sleeping mother with the announcement that I stuck a bucket up my nose and couldn’t get it out. She, understandably, told me I was dreaming and attempted to send me back to bed.

In response, I stretched out my nostril and made her look.

Mom was suddenly very, very awake. She attempted to remove the bucket with her fingers, the tweezers, and a few other household items before admitting defeat and calling the doctor.

Did you know that you could die from bucket inhalation? It’s apparently, according to my pediatrician, a thing that could happen if a bucket inserted up one’s nose were to be inhaled into one’s lungs. The doctor ordered us to the emergency room and promised to call ahead so they were ready for us.

As soon as we arrived, my mother approached the counter and shared my name. The triage nurse immediately leaned back and yelled “hey Joe, the buckets here!” to her colleague, and the giggled throughout our entire intake.

In retrospect, I am now convinced that the ER doc that examined me was very new, and had never met a child before. 

He pulled out a long pair of plyers with a serrated blade. “These are my alligators,” he said. “I am going to put these up your notes and pull the bucket out.”

Adult me would said “the hell you are.” Child me simply pinched my nose shut and refused to cooperate.

It took hours and the bribe of a new toy that Mom had put away for Christmas to get me to unclamp my nose and allow the procedure. I will always remember the feeling of cotton swabs (damp with numbing solution) rolling around in my nose and then how quickly and easily the bucket came out.

The offending bucket made its way into my baby book and the game to which it belonged was outlawed in our home until all children reached the age of 18.

The great RSVP debacle

I love to plan parties. Honestly, if I planned every party I thought of, I would be broke and my house would be in a perpetual Gatsby-esque state of recovery. For me, though, half of the fun is planning. I find delight in looking for ideas, coming up with crafts, outlining a menu and day dreaming about how the event will culminate.

I have been working on my son's first birthday party since he was about 3 months old. We're throwing it in a private party room... at a bar/restaurant... and there will be kid-friendly activities as well as adult-friendly food and a case of champagne. We don't want people to bring him gifts-- goodness knows we spoil him enough-- we want people to come toast with us and delight in our awesome little man and how amazing it is that we kept him alive and healthy.

But now I have reached a conundrum. It is the conundrum of my usual variety... I can't decide if I am being ridiculous or not. I am finishing up the invitations (so I can sit and get all antsy to mail them for the next two months). There is the "definite" stack, and then a handful of invites that I am on the fence about sending.

Are these people I am not sure we are close enough with to justify inviting them? Nope.

Are these people that live far away and will not be able to make it so I am worried about looking like a gift grubber? Nope... remember, no gifts.

Are we at capacity in the room and I am worried about a crowd? Nope. We have plenty of space.

These are the people that never f*ing RSVP.

Sound harsh? Allow me to explain.

A week before my bridal shower, I was swamped with full time work, part time teaching, and wedding planning. I got a very polite email from one of my bridesmaids asking for phone numbers for a handful of women that were on the invite list for the shower. Seems that the restaurant needed the final head count and these women hadn't replied. I didn't think anything of it and send the numbers, though I did grimace that they needed 8 phone numbers for a guest list of 24. But hey, I have forgotten to RSVP to things myself. Shit happens. Everyone gets a pass now and then.

But then there was the much longer list of people who didn't send back their response for the actual wedding. OK, shit happens, but this one had a self-addressed stamped envelope. And most people are aware of how catering and seating charts work, right? So, again, one week before the wedding I was calling people to see who was coming, and noticed some recurring names.

Then there was my baby shower, and the same meek request from a planner for some phone numbers. That one was at my house, so I was surprised we needed to follow up. Yes, they had to plan food, but how big a difference could one or two non-responders make if they showed up? Except it was more like 10 non-responders, and the difference between planning food for 15 and food for 25 actually is kind of substantial. And again, some of the same names...

There have been other events in between. Every year, my sister and I have a ladies' brunch in August. Two years ago, six of us stared at each other around a table for 10 after four people said they would come but then didn't. Last year fourteen of us crammed around a table for 10 because several people never responded but then came. This year we moved it to my house to lower our stress level about it.

Every time we plan something, I talk to myself in advance and make a self-promise to not get annoyed. I know some people just don't respond. A few isn't that big a difference. Except its rude. And that pisses me off.

Again, shit happens. I do not judge people who miss a response deadline here and there, or accidentally deleted that evite. I have missed RSVPing for things. But this is not the norm for me, it is the exception. However, if the same name was in every "follow up because he/she didn't RSVP" list for every major event in my life for the last five years, then it isn't a "shit happens" thing. It's the norm. And it is not a personality quirk- "oh you know me, I can never remember to do that on time." It's inconsiderate.

And so here I sit, with a small stack of envelopes addressed to people that I love, even though this particular behavior really bothers me. I am torn. I want to celebrate with these people and don't want any hurt feelings if one person gets invited but someone else doesn't.

BUT.

The fall is busy for me at work, plus I am teaching part time. I will be slammed in October. We have to order food for this party, and thus can't have a margin of error as big as this stack. Do I just swallow my annoyance and know that I will have to work in some time to follow up with these people because I know they won't reply? Or is it fair to exclude someone based on past inconsideration?

Am I being ridiculous?

Also, question 4- is not getting invited to a first birthday party really some kind of consequence, or will these people feel they dodged a bullet? But remember this party really is a pretense for day drinking...

6 Reasons I am Jealous of Formula Moms

Before becoming a mom, I never realized that the personal decision on how to feed your child could devolve into a public fight reminiscent of some kind of Hunger Games arena.  You hear horror stories of poor, sleep-deprived moms who can’t escape the formula aisle at Target without some bitchy onlooker muttering “breast is best” as though Mom hadn't heard that before. Seriously, the tributes from District Breast can be such dicks.

And what does that even accomplish? Is one obnoxious stranger muttering a painful cliché going to make a woman who has chosen formula (for one of any number of very legitimate, compelling reasons that are all none of your damn business) suddenly going to realize the error of her ways, throw that Similac back on the shelf, and shove a boob in baby’s face at checkout?

Personally, unless you are filling your child’s bottle with Diet Coke, I pretty much don’t care how Junior gets a full belly. My son was breastfed, and there were things about it that I loved, and things I did not love. I was very fortunate that breastfeeding was (mostly) pretty easy for us. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feeling moments of jealousy towards the formula moms I know, because…

1.       They got more sleep. Hey, you, breast feeding enthusiasts, yeah, I noticed that you forgot to put this in the f*ing manual. Not only does formula put your partner on the hook for night feedings, but babies apparently take longer to digest formula. While I was still up every 3 hours when my kid was eight weeks old, my friends that fed their kids formula were blissfully sleeping 6 or 8 hour stretches (though I am sure there are exceptions). Thus, as a reward for breastfeeding, I got another month or two of looking like Pigpen and feeling like I was losing my damn mind from lack of sleep.

2.       They traveled easier. I thought breastfeeding would be the simpler choice- my son would always have food as long as I was with him, right? Well… yes… but particularly in the beginning, I pretty much couldn’t feed without a boppy and a chair with arms. This made going anywhere an ordeal. Meanwhile, formula moms just dumped formula in a bottle and voila. There were no strangers ogling them, and no screaming baby who couldn’t quite latch on while propped up against the counter at a sushi place.

3.       No one stared at their chest. And I am not talking a “I was sitting in a public park with my boobs out and people looked” situation. I mean people would ask if I was breastfeeding, and then stare directly at my chest for the rest of the conversation. 

4.       They didn’t have to sit at work… topless… There aren’t enough door locks in the world to make this feel OK. Pumping at work is just strange. I get bonus points for forgetting to mute my phone on a call with 80 people. Nothing says “embarrassed” like listening to your bosses’ bosses’ boss say “what is that noise? Does anyone else hear that whirring?” and knowing it is you and your milking machine vibrating on speaker phones throughout the country.

5.       They never wondered if their kid only loved them for their boobs. To be fair, babies are blobs of goo and I am sure formula moms also sometimes wonder if and when that blob of goo loves them. However, as a woman, it undermines your self-esteem when your kid gives you the cold stare until face to face with your nipple and then grins. We’re raised to think we’re worth more than just our racks… until we spend 3 months watching the thing we love the most only care about said rack.

6.       Most importantly, the caffeine! If ever I needed 10 cups of coffee to survive, it was when my son was up all night screaming. However, if I drank more than one cup at 7 a.m., he would be up the entire next night dancing. I don’t know how we have pills for everything but keeping caffeine from entering breastmilk. Someone needs to get on that.  

Despite all of this, the decision to stop breastfeeding was one of the hardest of my life. I am also very sure that my formula mom friends have a list similar to this one about why they sometimes wish they could or would have breastfed (like the "eat everything and not gain weight," thing). All in all, those first months are so wonderfully difficult (or difficulty wonderful) no matter how you feed. 

As long as we all have happy, healthy babies, we’re cool… right?

Perhaps the one thing we can all agree on is to not be the asshole at Target muttering “breast is best” in the formula aisle.