tricia booker's Open Salon Blog

How an NFL cheerleader saved my son's life

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:11:45 -0500

_{The Pterodactyl will be five in a couple of weeks, but he’s having trouble outgrowing the terrible twos.}

_{His tantrums have become legendary, although his teachers claim he’s the sweetest, most disciplined child to ever walk the earth.}

_{He can be. And then he can beat the shit out of the garage door with a golf club, empty all of the drawers in his dresser, and rip to shreds the adorable paper pumpkin he drew for me. And call me stupid. And he’s freakishly strong and has broken through two different locks we’ve installed on his door to assist with time-outs.}

_{_{But I had a revelation about my little boy the other day. My friend Sahmmy (}_{www.sahmmy.com}_{) and I took our combined five kids to a craft fair where they could make their own art projects like painted shell necklaces and bandana bracelets. The first thing we did was paint rocks. The Pterodactyl picked a huge rock, which he painted green. Then he wiped all the paint off and painted it brown. Then he wiped all the paint off again and painted it blue, and decided it was Pluto. That was the last cute thing he did for quite some time.}}

_{He freaked out because the cotton candy was pink instead of blue. He took the Diet Coke out of my hand, poured it onto the grass and stomped on the can. He ran away from me into the crowd three times. He told me I was a bad, bad mama and he hated me. He screeched it, actually. He threw trash on the ground. He begged me to hold him, then threw himself to the ground when I picked him up.}

_{I wish I could say that went on for a good 20 minutes. But it was more like an hour and a half.}

_{_{Finally, exhausted, he collapsed under a tree that happened to be next to where the Jacksonville Jaguars cheerleaders (The Roar!!!) were helping children decorate sugar cookies. He dragged himself over, slathered an enormous cookie with an inch of icing, and ate every bit of it.}}

_{And the devil disappeared. Totally. Sahmmy and I were left slack-jawed. He held his little sister’s hand. He kissed me. He thanked his little friend for coming.}

_{“I bet he’s hypoglycemic,” Sahmmy said.}

_{Maybe. But I think the problem is that I haven’t been feeding him.}

_{Now, I know this sounds bad. Really bad. But hear me out. The Diva, now 8, can go three days on a spoonful of peanut butter and a bag of Cheetos. Plus, when she’s hungry she just dives into the pantry and inhales stuff for a few minutes until she’s full. She also hoards fruit roll-ups in her bunk bed drawer. And the little Tyrant just eats Easy Mac and Goldfish and whatever candy she finds at the bottom of my purse.}

_{And Husband and I eat gross stuff like veggie burger wraps and Muscle Milk Shakes with artificial sweetner.}

_{So when I think about it, we might have gotten into a habit of… um … skipping meals. I suspect this is contraindicated for 4-year-old boys. I do ask them if they’re hungry, but if they’re busy pretending they’re homeless and living in the garage with old linens as beds, they’ll say no, they’re not hungry, and I believe them. Or throw them some chips.}

_{For the past two days, I’ve been force-feeding the boy every two hours. He is sucking down food like a vacuum. Yogurt, smoothies, chips, rice and beans, pasta, waffles, popcorn, eggs, watermelon – it’s like he hasn’t really eaten for weeks, which I fear is entirely possible. He hasn’t had a single tantrum.}

_{That’s not to say his behavior has turned stellar. He still retains his Pterodactylian quirks. He doesn’t like any brown spots on his omelet so I had to surreptitiously turn his bites of egg inside out last night so he would eat them. When I told him he was doing a great job on his cartwheels, he insisted I reword it so that I said his cartwheels were great. He continues to whack his little sister in the head whenever it’s convenient. But when he ripped out yet another lock Hot Firefighter Husband had molly-bolted onto his bedroom door, he simply smirked about his accomplishment and returned to his room to serve his time-out sentence. That’s all normal boy stuff, right? I mean, answer me here. Right?}

_{At any rate, it’s stuff I can handle. I think I’ve got my darling boy back. Tonight when I was snuggling with him, he started singing Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” and was giggling so hard he almost fell out of bed. And I thought to myself, “I’m so glad I started feeding him again.”}

Tears of a Mama Clown

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 15:11:22 -0500

The Pterodactyl wanted his little sister’s purse this morning, her pink shiny purse with the enormous heart-shaped rhinestone buckle. She carries it everywhere. It usually contains her Teddy, an old remote control she uses as a cell phone, and something ridiculously inappropriate like a screwdriver.

“That’s hers,” I told him. “Do you want a purse? I’ll find you a purse.” But he wanted that one because that’s the one SHE had. That’s how I think he thinks of the Tyrant — SHE — as in SHE’S the one who came into this family and took my rightful spot as the most adorable child on the planet, thereby ruining my life.

Finally the Tyrant understood the problem and offered to give her 4-year-old brother the pink shiny purse. She can be very helpful when she’s not throwing shoes at my head. But her generosity ruined the purse for him. He no longer wanted it. Instead he started pining for a piece of raw cookie dough. I gave it to him because I knew it would get us in the car.

Ten minutes later, we were on the road headed to preschool with the kids harmonizing to Boom Boom Pow by the Black-Eyed Peas (Them chickens jackin’ my style) and I started thinking about how funny it all is, because if I don’t think that way then I’ll cry. I was crying anyway, in fact.

People tell me I’m funny, and I suppose I can be, mostly in a warped, snide sort of way. I only know two jokes. (How did Captain Hook die? Jock itch. The other one’s too long to writel.) But I must tell you that most of the time, I don’t feel funny at all. Lots of times I just feel beaten and frustrated and exhausted. Over the past week, the Pterodactyl has told me to pack my suitcase and move to China, and has developed a fondness for tearing paper money in half. The Tyrant won’t eat anything except power bars and Easy Mac, and I’ve taken to bribing her with candy to convince her to wear underpants. The Diva is very nearly perfect. But she loses almost everything she owns every single day. She wears about four outfits each day. She needs an attendant, frankly.

So I feel like crying quite often just from the sheer volume of stuff to do and monitor, and I cry a lot. I’ve never thought of having a facelift, but I think I’ve cried so much that my eyelids will eventually droop down and blind me. Then I’ll have to have surgery.

I’m glad people laugh at my blog, and I’m glad I can find humor and joy amidst the craziness. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer an empathetic fist bump to those of you wading through the muck like me, and tell you that I know it can be a bitch. Sometimes, it’s just not funny.

Wicked Workout #3 - Wonderwoman rocks the joint

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:10:40 -0400

Cat crap must be salty. My dog, Damn Gem, loves cat crap. The vet says it’s sort of like an hors d’oeuvre for her, which of course makes me think she should be put down. But we love her, and she’s doesn’t mind at all when the Tyrant tries to put hair bands on her paws. She’s family, in a canine sort of way.

So the other afternoon, DamnGem found herself a nice pile of cat crap and made it disappear. That night, she drank about a gallon of water, and so she was up at 4 a.m. whining to be let out to pee.

I pretended not to hear her until Hot Firefighter Husband finally stumbled out of bed and let her out. But focusing so hard on pretending to be asleep made me a little wide awake, which worked out because I remembered that I had not put any Tooth Fairy money under the Diva’s pillow. (Yes, she pulled out another tooth. She looks like she needs dentures.)

I combed the house looking for money. I only had a twenty, and that seemed extravagant even by my lazy what-else-could-I-do? standards. Husband had the customary zero-balance in his wallet.

I resorted to quarters, and piled up $2 in coins. But the coins wouldn’t fit in her Tooth Fairy box; I had to write a note directing her to look on her dresser, then a note explaining that the Tooth Fairy had run out of dollar bills.

I finally returned to bed around 4:45 a.m., and fell asleep thinking I should have just given her the twenty.

The next morning I made two lunches, got the kids dressed, forced them to stare at the breakfast they wouldn’t eat, and Hot Firefighter Husband took them to school. The Tyrant’s car seat had been left out in the rain and smelled like feet, so she had to sit in the Pterodactyl’s seat, which he didn’t like, but we maneuvered through the situation with some Gummi Worms.

I went to the gym and worked out with my trainer, Son of Sam. Then I went to the UPS store and faxed something for Husband, went to the grocery and bought chicken, green beans and sweet potatoes for dinner as requested by Husband, and went home.

I had lunch and marinated the chicken in balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, which was 2 for 1 at the grocery. Husband left to pick up Pterodactyl and take him to karate, which reminded me that I had promised the Pterodactyl we’d have spaghetti for dinner. I made Husband a grocery list of ingredients for spaghetti dinner.

I cleaned the kitchen and tried to do some writing. The Tyrant stood behind me giving herself great big belly laughs by spitting chewed-up animal crackers on DamnGem’s head

Husband came home and I went to a chiropractor appointment. My neck has been bothering me, possibly due to my new cheap pillow. The Pterodactyl asked where I was going, and Hot Firefighter Husband said, “Mommy’s going to a pretend doctor,” which I did not appreciate, but I’ve never been to a chiropractor before so he might be right.

I was sitting comfortably at the chiropractor’s office eating the complimentary peanut M&Ms when Husband called and said the battery on the Motorized Landfill was dead so he could not pick up the Diva and her friends from their after-school yoga class. So I left the chiropractor’s office and picked up the girls in the GodDamn Yellow Jeep. They thought it was very cool to crawl in through the windows in front of their classmates.

I brought everyone home and went back to the chiropractor’s office where I laid down on on a table and a woman rubbed gel on my neck with an ultrasound wand. I fell asleep and drooled on the table.

When I left I noticed a text message from Husband to meet him at The Par. I thought it might be some new restaurant in town and he was surprising me with a last-minute date night. I was about to call him to ask how to get to The Par then realized he meant the park. So I went to the park and met him and the kids and played for a while.

By the time we arrived home it was too late to cook either of the two dinners we had planned, so the kids ate canned soup, Husband ate a peanut butter sandwich with Low Sugar Apricot Spread because we were out of strawberry jam, and I cleaned the kitchen and met some friends for a glass of wine.

Am I Wonderwoman or what? Not exactly. Certainly Wonderwoman would be more proactive about the giant roach she saw in the back of her van.

But everybody wants to feel a little invincible sometimes.

Which brings me to today’s Workout Wednesday.

We don’t work out for other people, I know that. We do it for ourselves. Nevertheless, it’s a great confidence booster when other people are impressed by what we can do. Here’s a workout that will leave fellow gym rats speechless, or at the very least, swearing they’ll never gossip about you again.

You’ll need: a treadmill, a medicine ball (somewhere from 5-10 lbs.- I used 7 kg.), a 5-lb. weight, the Hyperextension Thing, and either a low bench or a bench step.

Okay, warm up first - hop on the elliptical, turn the resistance waaaaaaayyy up, and use the tension to really stretch out your arms and legs. Go for seven minutes. Listen to Kanye West’s Stronger (...that which don’t kill me/can only make me stronger). Stare straight ahead. Wear a bandana around your head to show people how serious you are.

The Workout

1 -- Treadmill. Run a quarter of a mile as fast as you can go without fear of getting tripped up and falling off the conveyor belt. For a quarter mile, you’re probably looking at about 2-2 1/2 minutes.

2 -- Squats. Pick up the medicine ball and hold it by your chest. Feet should be shoulder -width apart, maybe a tiny bit wider. Holding the ball, do a deep-knee squat, staying upright, shoulders square and back. On your way up, thrust the ball as hard as you can up in the air straight above you. Keep looking up so it doesn’t land on your head and ruin the moment. As you catch the ball, go back into your squat. Do this over and over again for a minute.

3 -- Hyperextensions. The Hyperextension Thing is an incline bench on which you can hook your feet down low and lean down over the top so that your body resembles an upside down V. Get into position holding the weight with both hands. Go down into the V, and as you’re coming up, draw a capital A in the air with the weight. Go down again. Pull up and draw a B. You know where this is going. Do the whole damn alphabet.

4 -- Push-ups. Just 15 measly push-ups. No big deal. Oh, but keep your feet up on the low bench or bench step, whichever you chose.

5 -- Repeat 1-4

6 -- Repeat 5.

7 -- Lean up against the wall, one foot up propped up behind you, hand on hip, drinking water, and enjoy this badass moment. That was totally sick.

TAMIFLU, fancy clothes and patience

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:10:39 -0400

The Tyrant has piled 14 cans of food, three plastic cups and two nail files atop a plastic cutting board. She says it’s a cupcake store. But it’s keeping her from shredding up the packing tape with kitchen shears, which frankly seemed a little dangerous.

The Pterodactyl is eating chicken noodle soup for breakfast in hopes that it will cure him of fever (“Chicken soup makes you well, right, Mom?”) in time for his playdate, which it won’t. We are going to the doctor in one hour, and his mother has promised him that he won’t get a shot, possibly fudging the truth a bit.

The Diva has spent the morning making videos of herself dancing to Miley Cyrus’ insipid “Party in the U.S.A.,” a song which has woven itself into the fabric of my brain. I don’t mean that in a good way.

The mother - that’s me - is scoping out the front yard, devising a way in which she can do a workout within view of the roof being on fire and within earshot of the Tyrant’s Cupcake Store being razed. This probably won’t work unless the Tyrant agrees to entertain her 3-year-old self in the front yard while I sweat nearby. The child is utterly untrustworthy when it comes to avoiding trouble. On the bright side, she’s very proud of her mischief, and tells us about it in grand announcements:

-- “Yook! I pee on da floor!” She can’t pronounce her “L’s” yet.

-- “See? I put gum in da printah!”

-- “I got a yizard! I squeezing it!”

And the dreaded, “I HIT YOU!”

But she’s happy this morning, especially when the Diva suggests it’s dress-up time, then expands the idea into Fancy Dress For the Doctor Day. Moms included.

So we arrive at Dr. Em’s office in fine form. The Diva wears the halter sundress her aunt gave her from Bloomingdale’s, accessorized by a black velvet jacket and wedge heels. The Tyrant sports a Lilly Pulitzer white eyelet dress (hand-me-down, of course; I can’t afford that crap), a pink velour track jacket and black patent leather Mary Janes. The Pterodactyl is the best - he’s dashing in a black tuxedo complete with tails and an enormous fake red flower on his lapel. Last year’s recital costume. I’m wearing a black skirt, gold lame top and Birkenstock sandals. We look like a pack of Ukrainian refugees. But we’ve all sprayed lavendar-scented Deva Curl Cleansing Hair Tonic on our heads, so we smell fabulous.

Dr. Em is impressed; he’s even more impressed when the boy remains completely still while he shoves a test swab up his nose. To be honest, my kids are used to having things shoved up their noses because I am the founding member of the Boogie Patrol. Crusty noses creep me out and I just won’t have them in my house.

Anyway, the Pterodactyl’s flu test is positive.

Oink. We’ve got a Swine Boy on our hands.

Plans evaporate before my eyes like electric orange powdered cheese dissolving in Easy Mac noodles. No workout today. No martinis at the neighbor’s house. No going out to lunch and letting my infected child hack fearsome germs into the public atmosphere.

And, oh yeah, my son has the illness making headlines across the world for its indiscriminate fatality rate. There’s that.

I’m sure he’ll be fine.

A few hours later: he’s on a Motrin high, painting masterpieces including an apple tree, a jack-o-lantern and a portrait of his fish, Bluey. We’ve all converted to comfortable housewear, or in the Tyrant’s case, a state of natural being, though she still is clomping about in the patent leather shoes. The rain outside is making me sleepy. I’m sick of watching Max and Ruby, Ruby and Max, Max and Ruby, Ruby and Max, Max and his big sister Ruby, Ruby and her little brother Max. Shooting bunnies suddenly seems like a completely reasonable idea.

And no one (except me) has eaten anything in hours. The Diva’s at her friend’s house, but she brought a bag of Goldfish with her, so that’s probably what she had for lunch. The Tyrant has eaten all the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms, and Swine Boy has had four sips of apple juice which he drank to eradicate the taste of the anti-viral TAMIFLU. The pharmacy only had capsules, so I pulled it apart and dumped the powder into his dose of Motrin - then spent the next 10 minutes begging, cajoling, threatening and using brute strength to force the concoction into his mouth. He retaliated by spitting ribbony saliva all over my favorite sofa throw.

Now it’s 4 pm on a Friday afternoon, and I totally deserve a cocktail. My new CoolMax skullcap-style headwraps arrived in the mail today, and I’m wearing the one that has tribal markings on it. I look like the cocktail should be a little Mad Dog on the rocks, which incidentally can lead to No Good when mixed with grape-flavored Reunite and served in 20-oz plastic cups.

But I’m not going to have a cocktail at least until the kids go to bed, because the Pterodactyl’s fever will return and he’ll need my patience, the Tyrant is already threatening to throw a shoe at my head and the Diva will want to stay up late and watch iCarly reruns because it’s Friday night and there’s no school tomorrow.

All normal stuff. It’s a normal life. Which of course is what makes it so very extraordinary.

Wicked Workout #1 - do this instead of killing somebody

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:10:05 -0400

One of the nice aspects of being in shape is that when you feel like killing somebody (stay out of my way, suburban cougar lady driving a Cadillac Escalade at the speed of light through the preschool parking lot), instead you can go to the gym and work out until you puke or pass out or achieve that rare delicious, delirious state when you actually hear your body talking to you. In real voices.

Working out has become a bit like showering for me, though I actually work out more often than I shower purely due to logistical circumstances. This obviously is not ideal, and my children are the first to tell me when my aura fails to enthrall them.

Anyway. Sometimes you just need to work out hard and feel bad-ass and strong and unbeatable. If you’re reading this while fondly remembering that 8th grade game of Dodgeball, which is the last time you moved around in a gym, please don’t do this. But if you’re up for a little constructive self-destruction, lace up those sneakers.

For this, you’ll need a watch with a timer, a jump rope, a towel or mat, a wall, and a place to sprint.

Warm-up

3-minute walk, swinging your arms, fast pace. Imagine you’re heading to the restaurant bathroom with your 4-year-old son so you can yell at him in private.

Now run a mile listening to “So What” by Pink on your iPod.

Circuit

Set up 7 stations:

Jump rope

Plank

Lunges

Push-ups

Wall-sit

Bicycle crunches

Sprint

Descriptions of stations: (give yourself 20 seconds between stations)

Jump Rope - 2 minutes

Remember how fun that used to be? It’s still fun. This time, though, fling your wrists in circles like you were beating the shit out of that cookie dough. Count at least 100 jumps before you stop to look at your watch.

Plank - 1 minute

Lay on your belly. Raise yourself up on your elbows and toes, keeping your body straight like a board. Tighten your abs. Stay there. Look at your watch and realize with horror only 7 seconds have passed. Hang on. Go to your secret happy place. Imagine you’re balancing a glass of fine chardonnay in the small of your back.

Lunges - 15 each leg, alternating

This is a very misunderstood exercise. People think lunging is as easy as walking. It is, if you’re walking with a 4-year-old on your back and a 2-year-old under your arm and bending down every five steps to pick up the shit falling out of your purse. Don’t go fast - keep your feet shoulder width apart. When you go down for your lunge, make sure you’re moving downward, not forward, until your leg is at a 90 degree angle, with your knee above your ankle. Oh - and keep your arms straight up in the air the whole time.

Push-ups - 10

Take it like a man. At least do one like a man. Then if you have to weeny out and do the rest on your knees, go ahead. Try to make your nipples touch the floor. Sorry, flat-chested women. You have to work harder.

Wall sit - 1 minute

Find a wall. Lean against it. Sink down until your legs are at a 90 degree angle, knees above ankles. Hang out for a while. Think of Brad Pitt. Or Jessica Alba, I don’t care.

Bicycle crunches - 50

Lay on your back, hands behind your head. Bring left knee up to meet right elbow, then vice versa. Do 25 on each side. If your back starts to hurt, that means your abs are weak. So keep going.

Sprint - 100 yards, or 12 seconds

Run like Rocky going up the steps. Your body will be saying, “Noooo!! Noooo!! I’m too old for this!!” Tell your body to shut the fuck up and work harder. Nothing makes you feel as strong as your very own body propelling itself forward at a speed close to how fast a man can find a college football game on television at any time of day.

Way to go! Give yourself a minute to rest. Drink some water. Now do the whole thing again.

Twice.