Irish Daisy

I’m decrepit. Seriously, I am. Actually, I’m amazingly strong and reasonably fit for a woman of my age – which is a combination of the legacy of being an athlete in high school, stubbornness and an insistence on using hand tools, because they’re so much cheaper to buy than power tools, for all gardening functions. Toned arms are not indicative of overall fitness...at all. I mean really, there is nothing that matches the full-body workout of using manual tools to dethatch and aerate your lawn when you live in a place with rocky, clay-based soil. To hell with cross-fit or weight lifting – get a dethatching tool, a rake, a loop-hoe, some loppers and a pair of leather gloves. I can thank cheap gardening for my arms, my sore, painful, toned arms. At one point, I put together a slide show of gardening projects for my employees to explain why I arrived whimpering and limping every Monday. Window Dressing You know what’s not in great shape? My back – which is kind of the...

In July I lost my job. Layoff – a " it’s not you, it’s that the new management has no idea what you even do ,” kind of thing. And now, here I am, at home. The first time I’ve been unemployed since I was 18 years old…so, it’s been a while. Being me, I immediately set up a structure to work on what I’m going to do next – a schedule for updating the resume, polishing LinkedIn, getting my stuff out there on CareerBuilder and Indeed, networking and interviewing. The girls had a few weeks of summer left, so I pulled them out of summer camp and worked bike rides, parks and pool trips into my daily routine.  Great, I can do this! Rapid Fire School was scheduled to start at the end of August. Yay, I’ll be able to get more done without needing to shoo squabbling children out of the room. No one interrupting me to tattle on a mean sister, no one asking if they can just watch TV "N oooowwww???" , no one demanding to know what they can eat for the 20 th time in 30...

I have three girls...three girls and an irreverent sense of humor. This is why I had no one but myself to blame when I realized how much my once peaceful home resembles a constant re-run of Animal House. It's the oldest, my lovely Quokka who most often chides me for my...um...inappropriate jokes. Athena, on the other hand, joins in. And Badger, Badger lives by the credo: go big, or go home. So, the other night Badger was pouting a bit because her beloved Wubble (yes, for those of you who aren't in the know, that's an actual thing - go Google it, we'll wait) was a bit deflated and saggy. To lift the mood, I pulled up her shirt and blew on her bellybutton to "inflate the saggy Wubble." There were loud raspberry sounds, giggling, fighting to get away. Fun times! The pout was replaced by laughter and all was right across Puff land. And then my Badger decided to demonstrate, once again, that she is aptly named. She dropped her pants, bent over, pried her li...

Just when one might worry I’ve gotten complacent or that I may be deluded into thinking I’ve got this parenting thing figured out…I give you this: Driving 1.6 miles from Target to home. From the back seat, “Mmmmmeeeaaaaahhhhhh!” Starting as a low moan, rising in tone and volume to a prolonged, whining screech. Me: “What?!?! What is that? Badger? What is wrong with you? Are you hurt?” Badger: “Uuuuhhhhhh! Mmmmmwwwwaaaahhhhh! Eeeeehhhhh!” Me: “Why are you making that noise?!?!?! Girls, what is wrong with her? Is she hurt?” Middle Puff: “No, her seatbelt is tight. She can’t loosen it.” Badger: “AAAAhhhhhh! Mmmmmeeeehhhhhhhh!” accompanied by audible jerking on the locked seatbelt. Me: “That’s it? Badger, we’ll be home in two minutes, less than two minutes, you’re fine until then. Just sit up and deal for another minute and we’ll be home. We have frozens, I’m not pulling over! You’ll be fine for two minutes.” Badger: “MMMMMWWWWAAAAAAHHHHH!” louder, shriller ...

A friend’s twins are turning two next month, so she asked for some tips on dealing with the “terrible twos.” First, I had to give her the sad, sad news that the twos are not so terrible – at least not when compared to the tyrannical threes and F-U fours. [Yes folks, we've survived for a third time and we're in the clear...for two years before the oldest hits her teens...sigh] Of course, she doesn't have the perspective to appreciate that yet and parenting is pretty immediate – what's it doing now and what the hell do I do with the rampaging heathen wreaking havoc on my life? Join me, friend as we tiptoe through the minefield of a two-year-old psyche. Tiptoe, Tiptoe, BOOM!  If I can't see, you can't see me...as I have a hangry tantrum...in a spotlight. Imagine you’re in the land of Gulliver and you took two years of Gullivarian in school so you get the gist of what everyone is saying, but you can’t make your brain come up with the right words to tal...

This is my Kitchenaid Professional Stand Mixer. It is not shit, it is THE shit, and I love it. Seriously, I cannot enumerate the ways this marvelous contraption has improved my life...It is more than a mere mixing device, it is a compact, accommodating kitchen assistant, and I love it with a giddy sort of fervor. As with all love affairs, there’s a story with tragedy, drama and pain.  No, not really, more like inconvenience, sore shoulders and whining. I’ve always enjoyed baking, making cake for parties, cookies, and pumpkin bread, oh the pumpkin bread (more on this family obsession later). Baking was fun, quick, relatively easy and required only a hand mixer to whip out a boxed cake mix, or some pre-packaged bread. Then Badger came along…Badger and her irritating, inconvenient milk and soy allergies. Being allergic to milk and soy guarantee that there are NO pre-packaged mixes from which to rapidly and magically produce anything really. Well, there ARE a few allergen-fre...

My oldest kid is 11, she’s in the sixth grade, she stands about 5’ 2” and wears a women’s size eight shoe…She also passionately believes in Santa Claus. So passionately that she was engaging in verbal smack-downs with kids in her class who had the nerve to say the Jolly Old Elf isn’t real. My enthusiastic girl And, it’s not just Santa. My delightful, cheerful and whimsical oldest child is equally passionate about the existence of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, mermaids, unicorns and dragons. She believes with every fiber of her being because she wants to live in the kind of world where these fantastic things can be true (Ironically, she also loves science – it’s her best subject in school...so there’s that). The latest kerfuffle in class made me realize we couldn’t put it off any more – we had to come clean and tell her that there was no real, live, physical person, jolly or otherwise, who poofed down our chimney on Christmas Eve to leave a pile of gifts in the middle of th...

I love the holidays, LOVE them.  Except when I don’t. It’s not really about not loving the holidays; it’s about not loving what they turn me into, and some of the crap that comes with all of the good stuff. Clearly Christmas is strange enough at our house... Shopping for example, I hate shopping. Picking out just the right thing for someone I care about brings a lot of joy and satisfaction. Having to go to the mall to do so is like a trip to the seventh circle of hell. Now there is a new thing to irritate me about the holidays and I can’t wait until the fad dies and we can all just stop. I bet you have an idea of what I’m talking about, don’t you, because most people don't like it except for the few who have turned it into another competitive parenting event. Yes, it’s that creepy, irritating elf on the shelf. First, it’s damned creepy. Like, kill-everyone-in-their-sleep creepy. If it doesn’t creep you out, good for you! I would not be able to sleep with th...

With everything going on in the world right now, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about where we are and what we have. The whole concept of Thanksgiving has never been more apt, or more poignant. With bombs and guns and dead children washing up on strange shores, and petty arguments dominating our headlines at home...and we’re going to pause for a moment to gorge ourselves on food, accompanied by shitty debates with our, um, difficult family members, followed by gorging ourselves on the ugliest orgy of retail excess you can imagine, as we gouge each other in the eye to get to the last super-discounted game system in the store. It's all fairly depressing, really. Thankful for Autumn decorations & the house to put them in I’ve been watching the news – the worrisome, tragic and trivial – and I’ve been looking around. We have so much to be thankful for. So much with which we are blessed. So many riches we forget to see or appreciate or pause to really be grateful for. ...

No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Really, it’s not. This is not the lament of a parent with a hormonal teenager, or a dirge about girls and emerging PMS, or a cautionary tale about how my once sweet daughter became an actual fire-breathing dragon because…HORMONES! No, it's not about any of that at all...it's actually a whole lot worse. Puberty Sucks Large I went through puberty, and it sucked, but wrapped up in my own hormonal shitstorm I wasn’t able to put my finger on exactly why it was so terrible and soul-sucking. 26 years later, I have a ring-side seat to Quokka’s voyage and, yes Martha, it still sucks. There has been tons of research about what happens to girls in our culture during puberty – in a nutshell, their self esteem and confidence plummet. Feisty, kick-ass little girls, shrink down into pretty paper-dolls, a two-dimensional copy of their younger self. Theories about why this happens focus on the cultural pressures that assault a girl and undermine her en...