Tag Archives: funny

Bread Crumbs: Thinking about the one year anniversary of Mama Nervosa

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Jen | 4 Comments

When Lauren and I met a year ago, we had a couple obvious things in common: we are both grad school quittas, raising young daughters who are close in age. We are feminists who love pop culture.

The more we talked, the more connections bubbled up: We are writers who didn’t have writing as a primary part of our identity or daily life. We have had intense relationships with music, fan communities, and hippie boys. We love reading and teaching young adult novels.

Mama Nervosa was founded when Lauren and I were saying goodbye, standing across a kitchen counter from one another: we should blog together, Lauren said, completely casually, as if this were not the most awesome, amazing, generous offer anyone could have made to me at that moment. Seriously, she could have handed me $100 and it would have been less awesome than an invitation to blog together.

Over the course of the past year blogging together, we have had several conversations about what exactly Mama Nervosa is: Are we a mommy blog? A feminist blog? A post ac or alt ac blog? Are we writers? But we can never seem to narrow it down to a single category or check box: we are messy, overlapping, we don’t fit.

Mama Nervosa is motherhood and memoir, quitta and adjunct and post ac, feminist and funny. We are not a reliable product: we have no posting schedule, no length requirements, we begin regular features and wander away from them.

If we have a narrative throughline, a recurring theme that links our posts on topics as varied as loving Neil Young, growing up in Tulsa, quitting grad school, teaching Adrienne Rich, missing the ice cream truck, and falling in love, it’s our willingness to expose the process. If Mama Nervosa has a core belief it’s this: if there is grace to be found in this world, we are more likely to stumble into it along the way than to see it shining brightly ahead of us at some mythical finish line. I’m writing it down as I go, trailing blog posts and cheerios behind me, grateful to be here now, even if I’m not sure where I’m going.

Self portrait: blogger smooching baby. I looked for a picture of M and I around the time of the workshop last winter, and found nothing. Resolved: more self portraits in the new year.

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Posted in Creativity, Memoir, Mothering, This Is Not a Lifestyle Blog

Tagged blogging, family, feminism, funny, home, identity, Iowa, memoir, motherhood, post-academic, Quitting, real life, Writing

What You Learn About Thanksgiving in Kindergarten

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Jen | 2 Comments

In the car today on the way to gymnastics, D says:

“Mom, say this: Raise your hand if you know the name of the ship the Pilgrims sailed on.”

“Raise your hand if you know the name of the ship the Pilgrims sailed on.”

D raises her hand. I call on her.

“The Mayflower.” Then she says, “Wasn’t it good how I didn’t just blurt it out?”

“Yes. Nice job not blurting. What else did you learn about the Pilgrims? I noticed a picture of Pocahontas in your Friday folder last week.”

“Pocahontas went to meet the king and queen. She was an Indian. She lived in India. Her dad was in charge of their area, and he didn’t like the pilgrims, and then Pocahontas got tooken to meet the queen, and then she met her husband and they had a baby and he was their son! So was that baby a boy or a girl?” (That last question is clearly an imitation of her teacher’s voice, so I answer.)

“Um, a boy.”

“Right. He was a boy.”

I wait a minute, to see if more information is forthcoming, but this seems to be the end of the story of Pocahontas. I ask a couple follow up questions, but it seems like she genuinely has no idea why Pocahontas’ father didn’t like the Pilgrims, why the Pilgrims came to North America, or why Pocahontas went to England to meet the king and queen. Since we only have a few minutes in the car, I decide to try and intervene with the most glaring misunderstanding.

“Hey D, remember when you read about Christopher Columbus?”

“Yes. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That’s a rhyme: two, blue. His mom and dad thought the earth was flat but he did his dream and sailed and he was right because our world is a sphere, mom! A sphere!”

“Um, right. Remember how he wanted to sail to India, but he ended up in North America, but he didn’t realize that he had made a mistake sailing, so he called the North Americans he met Indians?

“Yes! But they were NOT India Indians!”

“Right. And neither was Pocahontas. She lived in North America, near the ocean, and the Pilgrims met her when they sailed here.”

“Oh. Did they think they were sailing to India?”

“Um, no. They pretty much knew where they were going. They just weren’t very respectful about people’s names. What else did you learn about the Indians?”

“Um, some really nice people bought Squanto and set him free after the bad people taked him and sold him. There’s a special word for that.”

“Slave? They made him a slave?”

“YES. They slaved him, and it was really bad, they were bad guys!”

“Who? The Pilgrims?”

“No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe Pilgrims. Or maybe Indians. But then those other people bought him and set him free. Wasn’t that nice?”

“Yes. That was definitely nice.” Again, all my follow up questions about this gem of a revelation are met with total confusion. She does not know if Squanto was enslaved (or freed) by Pilgrims or Indians, why he was enslaved, or how this story is connected to Pocahontas, if at all, beyond her initial (mis)understanding that both Pocahontas and Squanto lived in India.

Also, at no point did she mention the Pilgrims and Indians having Thanksgiving dinner together, which I would have assumed would be the centerpiece of any kindergarten lesson about the holiday. Or maybe it was, and I have the kid who only remembers the peripheral details of interest to her: ships, slavery, conflict, marriage babies. American History at its kindergarten best.

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Posted in Mothering

Tagged childhood, Education, family, feminism, funny, identity, kindergarten, motherhood, mothering, parenthood, parenting, Pocahontas, real life, Squanto, Thanksgiving

3 Things About Raising 3 Girls

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Jen | 4 Comments

1.) It’s not all tea parties. Yes, there are tea parties and princess dresses and My Little Ponies. There are also dinosaurs and robots made of legos and occasional wrestling matches and hair pulling. Today, D and Lucy defeated some sea snakes in the hallway by spraying large quantities of air freshener and then fleeing for the top bunk. Rather than saying no to gendered toys, we have tried to say yes to most things ( only a few things–Bratz, Alien Autopsy kits–have been ruled out entirely) and then encourage them to mix it up. It would not have occurred to me to put the My Little Pony skirts on the dinosaurs and stage an elaborate dino ballet, but they don’t hesitate to cross gender (and species) boundaries when they play.

2.) Having 3 is actually not that much more difficult than having 1. Because when you have 1, all you know is how to be a parent to 1 kid. And if you are anything like me, it is the most unbelievably overwhelming life-altering time suck you could ever imagine. I distinctly remember feeling that every minute of every day was overflowing with this new weird experience of parenting and sometimes that was joyful and sometimes we were all crying but there was no escaping, either way. I wrote about the intensity of those emotions earlier this spring. But once I had two, and three, I flexed. Time flexed. I parent differently. I’m less likely to read Busy Busy Pandas 100 times in a row and more likely to read it once and then say, “Now look at the pandas and make up your own story!” Or, “Go find your sister and ask her to make up a panda story with you!” Or, “Go roll around on the floor and pretend to be a panda!” Before Margeaux was born, I worried that D and Lucy would be jealous of the time I would need to devote to her. It only took a couple weeks to realize that in fact, they are so deeply enmeshed in their relationship to one another that if I left the fruit snacks and juice boxes within their reach, they might ignore me all day. And now that Margeaux is on the move, she tags along behind them and plays along to the best of her ability. Which brings me to:

3.) By the time you get to the third, safety standards seem like very flexible recommendations. When D was 1, if you had suggested that I let her go down the steps alone to jump on a trampoline with a 4 and 5 year old, I would have laughed out loud at your hilarious joke. Margeaux does this every day. In the morning, she sits on the couch with a toaster waffle and watches Ni Hao Kai Lan in her sleeper. She brushes her teeth. When I drop Lucy off at preschool, if I start chatting she’ll slip away and sneak into the classroom and sit down in a chair at one of the tables, like she’s totes ready for art center or play dough time. She can climb all the way up the ladder to the top bunk, though I try and prevent this since she and Lucy came crashing down in a sad, bruised pile last week. Today, though, I forgot to pull the ladder up because D slept in late, and when they fled the sea snakes Margeaux followed them up, lickity split, and they rolled around on the top bunk laughing and shrieking. When I reminded them that it’s not safe for Margeaux to be up so high D said, “But Mom! We were escaping the sea snakes! And sea snakes aren’t safe for babies either!” Can’t blame a girl for looking out for her baby sister.

Sisters are doin’ it for themselves.

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Posted in Mothering

Tagged childhood, family, funny, home, identity, kids, Life, lifestyle, motherhood, mothering, parenthood, parenting, real life, sisterhood, sisters

Dream a little dream

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Jen | 1 Comment

What I thought: I’ll just lay down with Margeaux this first night in her big girl bed while she figures out how to fall asleep.

What Margeaux thought: Whoa. I can just climb in and out of this bed? Anytime I want? Maybe I’ll just do that a couple times. Maybe a couple more times. Weird how mom is not excited about climbing in and out of the bed.

What I thought: Maybe she just doesn’t understand what’s supposed to be happening here. “Night night Margeaux! We go night night in the bed! Put your head on the pillow and close your eyes!”

What Margeaux thought: Oh! Night night! Maybe I’ll lay on my back. Huh. I’m not asleep yet. Maybe I’ll flip over to my tummy. Nope, still not sleeping. On my back? Still awake. On my tummy? Still awake. Mom looks like she’s sleeping. Maybe I need to be closer to her. I’ll just put my face right here, touching her face. Wow. Her eyes are right there. I can touch them! (pokes me in the eye about 50 times, saying EYE! in a perky voice each time) Oh look, there’s her nose! And her mouth! Does she have teeth? (jams a couple fingers in my mouth) Yup, teeth!

What I thought: Please god, please, let her fall asleep.

What Margeaux thought: Are those Polly Pockets? YES! I never get to play with the Polly Pockets!! I’m just going to dump all these tiny things on the floor, so it’s easier to find what I want.

What I thought: I wonder how much that sleep lady that my facebook friend was talking about costs. I’m pretty sure I remember her saying the sleep lady totally trained their toddler to sleep in a weekend. I need to look her up tomorrow.

What Margeaux thought: I love that duck and turtle on my wall. Maybe I should say good night to them. Night night duck! Night night turtle! QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK! Hey, is mom still awake? Hard to tell when her eyes are closed. Better look closer. Hmmmm. Our foreheads are touching, but I’m still not sure. Maybe I should shout in her face a couple times. Mama Night Night? Mama Night Night?

What I thought: I’m going to open my eyes, just to be sure this is actually happening.

What Margeaux thought: YES!! She’s awake!! “HI MAMA!!! HI MAMA!!!”
Funny how she keeps telling me it’s night night time when I’m so wide awake.Maybe I’ll try laying on my back again. Nope, still not sleeping. Tummy time! Hmmmm. Still awake. What if I kick these blankets off? Or pull them up to my chin? Or kick them off? I like how it feels when my feet bounce off the mattress. Maybe I’ll just kick the bed a couple times. Maybe a couple more times. Hey, what if I kick mama? Do my feet bounce? Nope. What if I kick the wall? Nope? Okay, better kick the bed a few more times then. Night night Mama!!

**It was around this time that I actually did fall asleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night Margeaux and several Polly Pockets were in bed next to me. Needless to say, no one got much sleep. If you’re the sort of person who prays, please pray for us. If you’re the sort of person who trains other people’s children to sleep, please come to my house immediately. Because I’m about to get back in bed with her, and I’m not looking forward to it.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged family, funny, home, kids, motherhood, mothering, parenthood, parenting, real life, sleep

6 Things I Learned While Listening to Kids Music on Pandora This Morning

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Jen | Leave a comment

1.) I know all the lyrics to Call Me Maybe, Moves Like Jagger, and several songs from The Little Mermaid.

2.) The Chipmunks version of Party Rock is neither better nor worse than LMFAO’s version.

3.) Singing “Hey, you just woke up, your breath is stinky. Here’s your toothbrush, brush your teeth maybe” inspires even the crankiest 5 year old to smile.

4.) The Killers guest appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba rocked just as hard as I would have expected.

5.) The Chipmunks version of Three Little Birds is definitively worse than Bob Marley’s version.

6.) Lucy can sing a very respectable version of You Cant Always Get What You Want, but she can’t tell the difference between Mick Jagger and the street musicians downtown.

L: What’s this song about?

Me: It’s about dancing like Mick Jagger. He’s got sweet moves. He’s from the Rolling Stones.

L: We saw the Rolling Stones at Art Prize singing “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try try try you can find what you need.”

Not a bad morning, all things considered.

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Posted in Mothering, Music, Pop Culture

Tagged Call Me Maybe, childhood, family, funny, home, kids, kids music, Kidz Bop, Mick Jagger, motherhood, mothering, music, parenthood, parenting, real life, Rolling Stones

Kindergarten

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Jen | 3 Comments

One week into kindergarten, this is what I have learned about what happens there:

1.) In music class, you stand on big shelfs. There are three shelfs, but really there are six shelfs, because there are three and three together. First position is when you sit down on the shelf, and second position is sit with your back tall, and third position is stand up. The music teacher has a monkey puppet and it whispers to her when kids are not following the rules and then she says Billy, my monkey says you are wiggling and kicking, we need to sit with our back tall in second position.

2.) On the playground, there is sometimes a problem because spiders and bombs don’t really go together. So when we are spiders upside down in our web and then the boys come and say there are bombs there are bombs and we say no there are NOT bombs here because we are spiders and spiders don’t like bombs. So that’s a problem, the spiders and bombs.

3.) When you give the teacher your quarters she gives you your milk card and there is a milk line and you give the teacher your milk card ticket and then you can choose your milk. The chocolate milk is SO GOOD.

(Side note: that afternoon, your mom will start receiving daily emails and messages reminding her that her daughter’s milk account is 50 cents overdrawn and instructing her to deposit money via a website that requires a student id number that does not appear to be on any form that has ever been sent home. Also, I have no idea who she gave the quarters to, because they obviously couldn’t be used to buy the milk.)

4.) We use our towels for rest time after we put our lunchboxes back in our backpack and we rest in the place we chose on the very first day we rested but sometimes Billy is SO LOUD TALKING TALKING TALKING and so that’s not really very restful.

5.) We are practicing our catness behavior and that means be kind be safe be respectful be responsible and when you use catness behavior you can get a green ticket.

(Sidenote: This is a behavior model based on the school mascot, Wildcats. All of the handouts say CATS, not catness, but I am not correcting her because in my head I hear Katniss, and I love the idea of an entire school of children practicing their Katniss behavior.)

It’s been an intense week emotionally: D started kindergarten, T is traveling, and I lost a dear friend who had two teenage sons. So I’m trying as hard as I can to just stay in the moment, be present, and enjoy the small details of their days as they share them with me. As cliché as it is to say this, I am deeply cognizant after this weekend that we have no way of knowing how many of their days we will be lucky enough to share.

First day hugs goodbye.

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Posted in Mothering

Tagged childhood, family, first day of school, funny, home, identity, kids, kindergarten, motherhood, mothering, parenthood, parenting, real life

In which the ice cream truck waits for no man

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Jen | 6 Comments

Yesterday was terrible.

And by terrible I mean, bladder infection, 2 trips to Target, a trip to express care, still trying desperately to finish my syllabi which requires intense focus on details even though I feel awful and the girls are running wild around me.

By 8 pm, we were finished. Worn down. I put M in the stroller and told the girls we would walk around the block before pajamas. Evening walk almost always works to bring everybody down to calm: look for bunny rabbits, talk about whatever is on their mind, let my own stress from the day go.

And then the ice cream truck drove by, slowly, blaring high pitched music and quacking like a duck.

D was astonished. Is that an ICE CREAM TRUCK? (We don’t normally have them in our neighborhood, no idea where this one came from.) A small shirtless child went running down the street, chasing the truck, trying to hold his pants up. T and I looked at each other. Everything on our front lawn is moving in that incredible slo-mo speed that it does at the end of the day.

D is freaking out: LETS GO GET ICE CREAM!!! The truck stops about a block away. T goes in the house to look for quarters. Lucy decides she needs to ride her scooter. A big line of people forms at the truck. I had no idea this many children even lived in my neighborhood. We start making our way, slowly, down the block, but the girls insisted on riding their scooters and we only make it about halfway before the truck starts pulling away. D starts wailing. We are too far away to shout stop or wait. They are too little to run ahead and cross the street. L hits a bump on the sidewalk with her scooter and goes headfirst over the handlebars. Now they are both crying. Shirtless kid walks past us, down the middle of the street, still holding his pants up with one hand, and holding a box in the other hand. No idea why he doesn’t have ice cream. No idea why this is happening to me.

We roll slowly back towards our house and we can hear the truck on another block. D is convinced we can still catch it, so T hops on the bike and she hops on the tagalong and L and I keep walking, pushing M in the stroller. I’m not even sure we have enough quarters to buy anything even if we find the ice cream truck.

The search is fruitless. We end up back in the front yard. T loads the girls in the car to go to DQ, but D is still crying that she wants the ice cream FROM THE TRUCK DOES THE TRUCK PARK AT THE ICE CREAM STORE WHERE DO THE TRUCKS GO AT NIGHT PLEASE CAN WE FIND IT PLEASE? I am torn between feeling like a completely inadequate parent because I can’t even get my shit together to make it to the ice cream truck and feeling like I wish I had never had children.

T takes the big girls to DQ. M and I share a GoGurt. She is ridiculously happy and smiley. She has no idea what trauma has just unfolded around her. Eventually, the big girls go to bed and it’s just me and T and the baby, if we can still call her that, watching the guys on American Pickers ooo and aaahhh over ancient Indian motorcycle gas tanks. She asks to nurse, but she’s not ready to sleep, so I nurse her and then she bounces around the living room a while longer. T offers to put her to bed and I am intensely grateful: crawl in bed, read 2 pages of a biography of Abigail Adams, go to sleep. Begin again tomorrow.

I was stressing about the mess in the kitchen and living room and T said, wisely: Just let this day be over. You get another chance tomorrow. So here I am, morning after, drinking coffee, handful of antibiotics and cranberry tablets, surrounded by mess, stack of quarters waiting by the back door in case the ice cream truck comes back today. How lucky, that we get so many chances at this life.

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Posted in Mothering, This Is Not a Lifestyle Blog

Tagged family, funny, home, ice cream truck, identity, kids, motherhood, mothering, parenthood, parenting, real life, teaching

But where did the first people come from? And what about sloths?

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Jen | 10 Comments

Last night, about halfway around the block, walking slowly, trying to let go of the stress of unpacking and laundry and semester prep, D asks, out of the blue:

“Where do people come from?”

I think she must be thinking about babies, because we’ve just spent time with her baby cousin, and I say, “Babies grow inside a mom, in her uterus, until they’re ready to be born.”

“No mom- the first people. Where did the first people come from?”

Her question is clear and reasonable, but I’m hesitant. T and I have not talked about what, if anything, we will tell our girls about God. I decide to go with science:

“So, a long, long time ago, there was a huge explosion called the Big Bang. That explosion created a lot of light and heat and energy in the universe, and on our planet, earth, the light and heat and energy meant that tiny creatures could start to exist. And very slowly, over a really long time, those creatures grew and changed a little bit at a time until eventually they were sort of like people. Sometimes we call them cave people. And the cave people kept growing and changing a little bit at a time, and slowly they became people more like us.”

We’re still walking. D is thinking. I am thinking I really need to brush up on my knowledge of evolution. Are there youtube videos about evolution for children? Lucy asks:

“What about sloths? Are sloths real?”

We talk about sloths for a minute. One of the differences between D and Lucy is that after you answer Lucy’s questions, she rarely needs any follow up. It’s hard to tell if she’s listening or understanding because she tends to scamper away as you’re answering. But D thinks it through and then repeats the answer to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

“Okay. So first was the big bam, and that big bam made the universe and the tiny creatures exist, and the tiny creatures grow and change to cave people, not like us, and the cave people grow and change to people people like us?”

“Yes. Does that make sense?”

She nods. We’re turning into our driveway. Lucy asks:

“But what about robot pinecones?”

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Posted in Mothering

Tagged cavemen, childhood, Education, evolution, funny, home, identity, kids, mothering, parenting, real life, religion, science

Camping with Kids Part 2: Keep a Camping Journal

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Jen | 2 Comments

I used to journal avidly, and always brought a notebook or journal on backpacking trips, packed into a couple Ziplock bags for protection against the elements. This year, we brought a sketchbook and, due to a general lack of planning, a handful of Sharpies (Lucy calls them Sharpeners), so the girls could draw pictures in a camping journal.