Complicated as Pie

Nathan and I made these lemon meringue pies a couple of days ago. It was a boring day in the middle of a boring week, in the middle of a boring month. Nathan wanted to make lemon meringue pies because Amelia Bedelia made lemon meringue pies in his library book.

The pies were, if I do say so myself, delicious. I made 3 total, but by the time I took this picture I had already given one away to my friend, whose blog (side note) I want to plug right now. If you like scrapbooking, click on that link.

Anyway, in typical Shannon fashion, a pie cannot just be a pie. A pie had me thinking about a couple of my latest issues.

Issue 1: Why am I eating pie?
Remember how I said I was doing Weight Watchers? Yeah, umm. I fell off the wagon and I can't quite climb back on. At this point, I'm just figuring I'll restart some form of healthy eating/exercising after Labor Day, when we're back in a routine. Right now there's no structure in our lives in the form of school or activities for Nathan, and the gym has drained the pool/closed the group exercise studio for its annual "spiff up" week. So I just feel like there is no routine, and I'm just stringing together a bunch of days, and I think the point of this paragraph was Weight Watchers, but now I'm off on a tangent. The point is, no schedule, no dieting, no routine. Which brings me to Issue 2 ...

Issue 2: Why don't I have better things to do with my time than make 3 pies in the middle of a random Monday?
Now, let me just state that the pie-making was a great bonding time with Nathan. (If you can call me standing over a hot stove while yelling at Nathan to stop sticking his hands in flour "bonding time.") If I was one of those braggy moms, I might even go so far as to say that baking provides a sort of rudimentary math lesson. And at the very least, he learned how to crack an egg (well, toddler-style), so maybe he won't grow up to be as clueless in the kitchen as his, cough, father. I know my mother-in-law tried with Bill. Just the other day we came across a photo of little Bill in the kitchen making cookies. And all the other men in his family cook. It's just that young Bill developed an interest in other things, like reading and board games. Because those are really useful when we're starving. How come for a man, cooking can just be an "interest"? What if I wasn't interested in cooking? Who would make dinner for our family? Ooh, feminist tangent.

Anyway, what was I saying before I painted myself as a martyr and implied that we have no take-out restaurants in the area?

Ahh, yes, why don't I have anything better to do than make pies in the middle of the day on a Monday?

Now, let me say that pie-making is actually very important. Aside from the afore-mentioned benefit of mother-son bonding, I think pie makes people very happy. I gave the pies away to two friends, and we kept one for ourselves. Now, assuming a pie can be cut into 8 slices, that means a total of 24 people could potentially get some enjoyment out of my pies. (See, there goes that math lesson again.) I suspect it was more like 6 people, but that just means those people get 4 doses of happiness, right? So, see, pies are very useful, because the pursuit of happiness is one of the most important pursuits there is. Just ask Will Smith. Or, you know, the Declaration of Independence.

But, in our society, you are not useful if you make people happy. You are not useful if you keep a child alive for another day. You are useful if you make money.

I have had this sense lately that I need to make money. I have not been paid anything, not one cent, since October of 2008. I wasn't even on jury duty, for crying out loud.

But, what to do? I know I don't want to go back to full-time work downtown. That was one end of an extreme on a continuum, the other extreme being what I'm doing now for work, which is nothing. How much would I love to cobble together one of those new hybrid flexible careers that can be defined by acronyms, like WAHM or PT WOHM?

But, what to do? I could try my hand at freelance editing, but I'm finding the breaking-in process daunting. (I'm not so much a "strike out on my own" type. If there's not a clear-cut application process, I tend to give up.) And is that what I want to do?

Short answer: no. I want to be a flower-arranger. And if attempting to find freelance work in a field where you have experience is daunting, imagine doing it in a field where you have no experience. Like, "Here's my resume. As you can see I have been an elementary teacher and a textbook editor. I'm very qualified to arrange flowers."

And anyway, the economy is bad, and there aren't any flower-arranging jobs. Though let me say that I'm thankful that this minor setback to my career-of-fancy is the worst problem I have in this economy.

I also like to write ... but. You know, you can't just go and put in your application at the writing factory. It takes years and years of rejection and tenacity before you even eke out an inkling of a living as a writer.

And then I just get overwhelmed with all the possibilities. I decided to simplify this decision and ask my kid:

Me: Nathan, you know how Daddy's job is to teach law school? What should Mommy do for a job?

Nathan: But then, who will watch me? I don't think you should have a job.

Somehow this irrational 3-year-old seemed to hit the nail right on the head. Or at least, one of the nails. How will we handle childcare if I work?

I'm very pro-daycare, but I'm anti- putting Nathan back in full-time daycare because it gutted me emotionally. On the other hand, it makes no sense for me to have basically removed myself from productive society for the sake of one human being. But somebody has to watch him. I can't just leave him to fend for himself because I'm being unproductive.

I realize I'm putting the cart before the horse here. I should maybe secure employment before I figure out childcare. It's just that, at this point, daycare is something to consider, and that just adds a whole other wrinkle to the already daunting question about what to do in the future. And it's not really so much a question of who would watch him, as it is a question of whether or not it's worth it for somebody to watch him. The question of whether it's worth it financially is the most
concrete manifestation of this issue, but there's also sort of a more nebulous question of "Is it worth my time and energy to juggle all this stuff, just in the name of being a productive member of society who has it all?"

Now, of course I'm not the only mother who asks these questions. I can practically hear every mother in America asking these questions, right this very minute. I'm aware that, by virtue of socio-economic status and the freedoms offered to modern women, I am lucky enough to have the luxury of choice in these matters.

But the uncertainty of it all is so daunting. And so instead I make pies.

Whoa, lighten up

In case you didn't see, I wrote a nice, heavy blog post below this one. Heavy, heavy, heavy. So heavy. You might need a dolly to move it.

So, it's time for some lighter, update-y miscellany.

First off, a book update. I joined the adult summer reading club at the library. It lasted from June 10 to July 30, which was about 7 weeks. I read 8 books, which I consider a success. Unfortunately, not a single one of those books translated into winning raffle ticket for the summer reading club.

After the club was over, I continued on with my attempt to read 52 books in 2010. I figured out that I have to have completed 34 books by the end of August if I want to keep up the pace to finish 52 by the end of the year. I have fallen behind. But the thing is, do I want to treat every book like it's just something to be marked off on a chart? Shouldn't I focus more on enjoying the books? I mean, the days of required reading for me are over.

Anyway, these are the books I read this summer:

1. Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok: I got this for free as part of the one-and-only book club I participated in for the now-defunct Chicago Moms Blog. It was really good. It's the story of a girl who emigrates from Hong Kong with her mom, and they work in a sweatshop.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson: I read this because it's the "it" book everyone's reading. While I appreciated the author's story-crafting skills, this is just not my genre.

3. Family Ties by Danielle Steel: This was my first-ever Danielle Steel novel, and I figured as an American woman I had to read at least one. Let me say, I was so pleasantly surprised. The writing wasn't fabulous--I mean, she does have to churn out approximately 17 books a year--but I liked the story.

4. Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan: Another pleasant surprise. The story is light: four girls meet their freshman year at a women's college, and then remain friends through the struggles of early adulthood. What I liked about this story was that the characters could easily have been sort of stereotypical stock characters, but the author made them much more multi-dimensional.

5. My Name is Memory by Ann Brasheres: This book by the author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series seemed like a fun summer read along the lines of Twilight and other sort of fantasy-grounded-in-reality books. But, somehow, it didn't work for me.

6. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler: Anne is always good for a light-but-not-too-light read with interesting characters. I liked this story and read it quickly, although I must say that those interesting characters were, for the most part, also very annoying characters. And the book is more of a "slice of life" than an actual story with a climax and resolution.

7. A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White: Stupid, stupid story about the relationship between two sisters after their parents die in a plane crash. (Oh and BTW, ratio of parents dying in plane crashes in books to ratio of parents dying in plane crashes in real life: 100 to 1. The Danielle Steel book also featured parents dying in a plane crash.)

8. The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton: This is the story of some moms in the 60s who form a writing group. I liked learning about the life of mothers in the 60s (so hot right now! Mad Men! The Help!) as well as the sort of roots of mom blogs.

9. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: A great historical fiction book centered around the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

10. The Icing on the Cupcake by Jennifer Ross: OMG bad. So bad. I thought it would be a light read that would allow me to live vicariously through the main character, who experiences a personal setback and then goes on to realize her dream of opening her own cupcake store. But the story was so ridiculous. Stupid, contrived stuff like the kind of thing you see in soap operas, like pathetic revenge plots and and a woman who gets pregnant during an extra-marital affair and can't pass it off as her husband's because everyone knows he was rendered sterile in an auto accident years ago. Yeah.

11. Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern: What can I say? Hilarious.

12. This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia: I wanted to like this book more. The writing was good and the characters were interesting. But, there was only one major, suspenseful Super Big Reveal that they kept stringing you along with, and it was so easy to figure out so early on. Plus this book suffered from Too Much Description. I hate TMD.

13. Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith: This book, by the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, was an interesting look into the everyday lives of people in the 1920s.

Okay, that's it. I'm on Book #14, but I'm not going to count it because I have 100 pages left. Anyway, 13 books in approximately 10 weeks. That's good, right? That just goes to show you what you can accomplish when you have one occasionally independent child and zero jobs.

In the interests of accuracy, I must say that I also started 4 books that I didn't like enough to finish. I like to keep track of these things.

Now, movie-wise, I was a lot less accomplished. I was too busy trying to keep up with stupid book-reading goals. Anyway, I saw two movies in the theater: Toy Story 3 (cute) and The Kids are Alright (thought-provoking). I saw Valentine's Day (predictable), The Hangover (hilarious), and Shutter Island (creepy as hell) on DVD.

Not, let's not suggest I was so high-brow that all I did was read. I watched a lot of TV. Like, crap TV such as I Didn't Know I was Pregnant. And good TV, like Mad Men. And approximately 3 viewings of each episode of Seinfeld ever aired. Because as fun as new TV can be (I thought I had to take a giant crap, but it was really a baby!), nothing will ever top Seinfeld.

Other bits of news:

• I got a new iPod. It's this one.
  
• Damn, I can't think of a second one.

And yesterday we went to two birthday parties. I didn't take pictures. But the second one was at the splash pad. My kid always refuses to get in the splash pad. Here's a picture from two years ago of him hating the splash pad when he was 18 months old:


He doesn't hate all splash pads. Just, you know, the one that is closest to us and free.

Into each life a little rain must fall

Well, it has been rather rainy this summer, but I'm actually talking about rain in the figurative sense, as our good friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow meant it in the above quote.

Now, obviously, this quote means that there will be sad times in everyone's life. (I know you knew that. I wasn't trying to underestimate your intelligence. That explanation was just a lead-in to this paragraph.) So, yes, there is sadness in everyone's life. There are rainy days. But there are, of course, sunny days as well.

But what I didn't realize until now is that there are days when you can be happy and sad simultaneously. What I mean is, it's okay to have a little bit of sadness that is always present in your life.

Let me explain. It's not as though I'm saying I go through life with some persistent depressive funk following me around, like those personal rain clouds they used to have in some old antidepressant commercial. I'm actually more-or-less happy most of the time. What I'm saying is, there can be problems in life that make you sad, but you don't have to fix them so you'll be happy. You have to become comfortable with the presence of some things in your life that make you sad.

Perhaps I should give a specific example. My great sadness in life is that I know it would be bad for me to have another kid. I always pictured myself having two kids, and so to say that a second child might never be created is to say that the second child I always imagined having has, effectively, died. I know it makes no sense. But apparently that's what happens. And I thought I'd have a daughter. She's dead, too. And yeah, I would NEVER trade Nathan for any daughter in the whole world, but still, she's dead.

Sad yet?

Anyway, I think as humans we have this tendency to want to banish anything that makes us feel the least bit sad. I think this is especially true for people with depression issues, because every little sad situation that happens, it's all ohmygosh am I depressed again? Must. Get. Rid. Of. All. Sadness. There is sad and there is happy, and the only way you can be happy is to erase all the sad.

Except, the options for erasing my sad situation RE: not having another kid are (1) to have another kid, or (2) to just get over it. As previously mentioned, Item (1) is a bad idea. Babies and my general body chemistry do not mesh well. But Item (2) is also not possible. You can't just get over it. We're talking about creating people here. It's the most basic, primal, biological drive we have, even though of course the whole "perpetuation of the species" campaign is totally unnecessary these days. (I mean, yeah, somebody has to do it. But other people have kind of taken over that task for me. For crying out loud, the Duggars alone give at least 20 of us a free pass to stop procreating.)

So, if there are no logical ways to erase the sadness, I must learn to live with it.

Learn to live with it. With sadness.

And I think it's only natural to wonder, when will it all be okay?

But of course, it's okay now. It's okay if I have this sad little issue in my life. It's okay if it makes me uncomfortable when I think about it, every single day of my life. It does not mean I have to find a way to banish it. It's an issue, for sure. It's my issue. And it's something I will live with.

So, I think, happiness does not mean the total absence of sadness. Happiness means the acceptance of sadness.

Floating

Nathan on a raft of noodles, July 2010

Last week Nathan watched a library DVD of Wow, Wow Wubzy approximately 75 times. While I don't entirely understand the appeal of an ambiguous animal and his/her friends repeatedly saying "wow, wow," something good did come out of this particular DVD. On one episode, Wubzy and friends went to the beach, which led Nathan to repeatedly beg me to go to the beach every single day.

Well, twist my arm.

We went last Friday. We only had about two hours to go before Nathan had to get back for his toddler enrichment activity du jour, and I almost think the limited time contributed to making this one of the most magical days at the beach we have ever had.

We got there at 10, which at California beaches would mean that the beach would already be crowded and the parking lots would have filled up hours earlier. But that's with the overly-ambitious, wheatgrass shake-drinking Californians. Here in the Midwest, people apparently approach beach trips at a more leisurely pace, which means that when we got there at 10, we got parking in the front row of the lot and only had to share the beach with a couple of other groups. It was so peaceful. By the time we left around noon, the beach had filled and boats had arrived, making the beach quite festive, which was actually fun too.

Anyway, we brought along a raft I purchased at the grocery store about a month ago. I just love to float on a raft, I tell you. Now, let me say that when you're alone with a toddler, there is not a lot of leisurely floating time, so you have to appreciate what little you get.

But no matter how much time you get, there is always that moment when you're floating and you can just feel all the energy draining out of you. You realize you are no longer in control. The water is in control. You have to just go with the flow, as it were.

You might as well just check all that pointless, nervous energy at the door (shore?) , because it doesn't do you any good while you're on a raft. Your only job is to just stare up at the gorgeous blue sky with the puffy white clouds and try to think of ways that you can hold onto this moment when you're shoveling four inches of snow off your driveway in January.

I'm hesitant to go all "this is a metaphor for life" on you, but I have been trying to think of ways that I can be a little more floaty in my everyday life. You know, like ways I can just let it go and give trying to control everything? And to accept that worrying about everything isn't going to do any good?

I think people with strong religious faiths have an easier time giving up control. My brother, the priest, talks about being a sheep in Christ's flock, and how the sheep don't need to be in control, because the shepherd is in control. I am not a good sheep.

I worry about everything. Nathan's preschool. My weight. Will we ever have another baby? Do I have a good marriage? Do I spoil my child? Is he being raised with an appropriate amount of stimulation, but not so much that he can't entertain himself? Do I do enough crafts with him? What about music? Is that other kid better than Nathan at talking/sleeping/behaving/swimming/identifying letters? Why is my basement so disorganized, and why does my yard have so many weeds? Why don't I go to the gym more? Why do I spend so much money? What if Nathan gets hit by a car/kidnapped/[insert horrible fate here]?

And so, when I get bogged down in my own thoughts, which usually happens about 2 minutes after I become conscious each day, I remind myself to just float. Point my raft in the right direction, then put my hands up and give up a little control. If I'm heading into a speedboat, I'll put my arms in the water and paddle. Because, in the immortal words of P!nk:

I'm not dead, just floating.

Twenty-Eight Days

No, I have not been in rehab, as the title suggests. Nor is this about my monthly menstrual cycle. It's just that it has been 28 days since I last posted.

You all mostly know what's been going on with me, because the only people who read this blog know me in real-life and/or on Facebook. But to fuel my obsessive need to officially chronicle everything, let me just do a few quick sum-up paragraphs.

At the beginning of July we took a trip to Indiana Beach, which is an old-fashioned boardwalk amusement park built on a small lake in Indiana. Except "old-fashioned" ended up meaning "run-down" in this case. And our hotel room was nasty, with a bright-orange bathtub courtesy of rust from lake water. So we got a partial refund and high-tailed it out of there after less than 24 hours.

Nathan took swimming lessons the week before and after that failed weekend trip. It was a production getting him out the door every day because he didn't really want to go, and so we were late, which made it even harder for him to just jump in the water and transition to the class. Despite the fact that he was fairly competent in the water and enjoyed the class each day once it got going, he had to spend at least the first 5-10 minutes of each class whining that he didn't want to get in. And then he got a whole private teacher just to himself, so that was a perk of being difficult.

Oh, and now he hates going to the pool, and the splash pad. Which is just seriously a !@#@$% for me because both of these activities are such pleasant, low-key ways to fill a summer afternoon. And also, we have such a limited time to enjoy them, but that argument never works on a 3-year-old.

The following week Nathan was signed up for camp, and I decided to withdraw him because of the whole peeing issue with the last camp session. And also it's just so much work to get him out the door every single day, complete with the 57 items the camp checklist instructed us to bring.

So I decided to do my own camp. And I have to say, my camp was fun. On Monday we went to get haircuts at the super funnest haircut place ever, which I consider an activity in and of itself because they have a train table there, and kids get to sit on little cars while they get their haircuts. Anyway, the haircut place is across from the movie theater, where we saw Despicable Me, or at least the first 45 minutes of it, because Nathan was whining that he hated it, and since I kind of did, too, I just let us leave. And then we went to a newly-opened nature center at The Little Red School House.

Tuesday we drove to Michigan. I had heard that Michigan has much nicer beaches than Indiana, so we made the trip. You can reach the Indiana border in about an hour, but we drove a little farther in to go to a beach my friend had recommended. Let me paint the picture for you: after a bunch of packing, hauling, driving, and walking, we arrived at a beautiful beach with soft sand and a gorgeous lake. (I mean, technically it's the same lake as in Indiana, but it just looked so beautiful and blue on this particular day in Michigan.) I had purchased a floating raft to hang out on while I watched Nathan play with the sand at the water's edge. It was about as relaxing as you can get with a 3-year-old. And then, about an hour in, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker that the county health department (of whatever county we were in) was recommending that everybody get out of the water due to a high bacteria level. The water we were just in. Ick. So that trip was a minor FAIL, but at least I learned about a nice place to go in Michigan.

Wednesday was a rest day, and I think we just went to the pool, where Nathan refused to get in. And Thursday we went to Ikea, and for $250 I solved all my organization problems, in the living room at least. Friday we cleaned out the living room and Nathan's room. So I guess my DIY camp was the most boring camp ever, at least on Friday.

So that puts us at the weekend of July 17-18, which we spent cleaning in anticipation of Guestfest 2010. Sunday night I hosted the most embarrassing dinner party ever, wherein I ordered pizza and made my guests chip in for it.

Monday my mother-in-law, father-in-law, oldest nephew (age 12), and father-in-law's cousin (age 60-something) came for a visit. My mother-in-law and father-in-law come all the time, so I didn't feel the pressure to do the whole Chicago tourist bit, but the other two guests never get here. So on Tuesday we all embarked upon the mother of all downtown trips: Buckingham Fountain, Millennium Park, Macy's, The Eye, Navy Pier with boat ride, John Hancock/Sears Tower (the group split up and half went to each building), and Portillo's hot dogs for dinner.

Wednesday we went to a waterpark, which was my nephew's special request. The guests left early Thursday, and then we were off on our next adventure, a trip to Grizzly Jack's waterpark resort in Starved Rock with my mom and stepdad. The place not only had a waterpark, but also an amusement park and arcade ... and a small train that went around and took you to the different locations! Oh, and there was some natural beauty in the form of the state park, but I must admit that due to weather and tantrums, we didn't get to see much of that.

So, we returned home Saturday, and my mom and stepdad followed us. They are staying an additional week while my stepdad competes in a disc golf tournament just over the border in Indiana. (Most of my mom and stepdad's travel involves Frisbee competition.) And we're back in swim lessons this week, where Nathan has moved up to the big pool. And so far my current guests haven't seen much more than our local parks and restaurants, but I have a few big trips planned. Today's trips are more medium-sized: we're going to the bouncy castle place, out to lunch at Joe's Crab Shack (they have a playground!), and to the gummy bear factory in Indiana.

And now we're caught up. Don't you feel better?

All she wants to do is dance, dance

Okay, actually all I want to do is write, but being a longtime Eagles fan, I was reminded of this Don Henley song. Anyway, I was thinking about how I have an hour to kill before Nathan's swim lesson, and I could spend it doing something useful, like laundry, but all I really want to do is write. I think what's hard about having a not-so-popular, not-so-paying blog is that you have a hard time justifying the use of valuable time to write a blog that seemingly has no purpose. (Can you say your time is valuable if, in the previous sentence, you used the phrase "time to kill"?) But, I like to write, and it makes me happy, and I think happiness is a good purpose.

Besides, I re-started Weight Watchers yesterday, and when I'm on WW I try harder to do non-food-related things I like, rather than fill my life with pure drudgery. You know what I mean, where it's like 9:00 p.m. and technically you could go and clean your kitchen, but what you really want to do is read? With WW, I decide I deserve leisure time, and I don't feel bad about the chores that don't get done. (Besides, I'm too exhausted from my day of planning, purchasing, preparing, carefully measuring, and tracking all my food.)

I suppose that taking time for yourself is one of the gifts of WW. The other gifts are things like being thinner, feeling better, living longer, not having diabetes ... you know, little things like that. But none of those benefits are immediate, and so you find yourself in a big ball of frustration.

I'm frustrated that when I went to WW yesterday to weigh in, I weighed exactly the same as I did last year at this time, before I lost 33 pounds on WW. Which means, yes, I gained exactly 33 pounds. Oh, for crying out loud.

And on the one hand, I feel very frustrated that over the course of the winter/spring, I pretty much undid what I worked so hard for over the course of last summer/fall.

BUT. First of all, I think it's good that I only gained back exactly what I lost. If I had gained back 34 pounds, even though it would only be one pound more, I think it would be light-years more psychologically devastating than gaining back the exact 33 pounds I lost. (Though, really, this is all ridiculous because weight varies slightly according to what clothes you're wearing, hormones, whether or not you just peed, etc.)

Second, I think this time around, I at least have a good basis for my fitness routine. I've done almost every class the gym has to offer, and I actually have a tiny bit of muscle underneath all that fat. I have definitely slacked in terms of the hard classes in recent weeks (months?), partially out of laziness and partially because these classes are usually in the evenings when my suddenly-not-napping child is having meltdowns. However, I have had enough gym experience in the past that stepping up my workouts has not been too much to bear, even in conjunction with the other lifestyle changes I have made this week for Weight Watchers.

So, my current plan is to work out in the mornings. Unfortunately many of the morning classes my gym offers are in the early mornings, like 6 a.m. Now that I can't grab a nap in the afternoon, 6 a.m. classes are to be avoided. I might try to make it to one this week, on Thursday. The other days, I'm shooting for later in the morning. Nathan has swim lessons from 9:40 to 10:10, so I think Monday/Wednesday I will try to do a Spin class before the lessons. Tuesday/Friday I will swim after the lessons (different pool, unfortunately), because I think swimming is good for my mental health. Thursday morning is the dreaded 6 a.m. Spin and Sculpt, and then Saturdays are Muscle Pump. (I should note that the Wednesday Spin is also a Spin and Sculpt, so I will have a total of 2 hours a week of weight work. Because I know you were concerned.) Sundays I automatically get off because the gym daycare is closed Sundays during the summer.

Here's what I want to tell myself: If I skip a day of working out, that is not an excuse to skip the entire rest of the week. The philosophy of "I've already blown it, might as well keep blowing it" makes no sense, but I think that's how we all think. That's how we think about food, and don't try to deny it. There is something about the human mind where you just feel like you need to wait until the next day or the next week to start over again. And I wonder if maybe the WW weekly weigh-in contributes to this line of thought. Like, "I didn't work out Monday through Thursday, so no point in working out Friday when it won't show on my Saturday weigh-in." Which is a dumb way to think, of course. Every day belongs to your overall lifetime, not just to a particular weigh-in period for Weight Watchers.

In conclusion, although WW seems pointless because I feel like I always gain back the weight, I think maybe I gain a little bit of wisdom with each WW experience. (Could I be a little more cheesy? But that's 2% low-fat cheesy.) And maybe by the time I come to the end of my life (which, hopefully, will be prolonged just a little bit from weight loss, and not shortened by yo-yo dieting), I will finally have the whole weight loss/fitness thing completely down.

And here's a little chub who doesn't care about her weight:

Because of Camp

If you watch enough Hulu, you will eventually encounter the commercial for an association known as Because of Camp. It's an alliance of camps throughout the U.S., and their commercial features a cavalcade of B-list celebrities who tell us about the life-changing benefits they reaped from their own camp experiences. Singer Lisa Loeb* tells us, "Because of camp, I learned to play the guitar." Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug** says, "Because of camp, I learned to be a team player." The guy who plays Alex on Grey's Anatomy says, "Because of camp, I'm sending my kids to camp this summer."

Well, after my two-week experience of sending Nathan to a day camp with the park district, I can add my own:

Because of camp, I am totally and completely bat-shit insane.

Day camp seemed like a simple enough proposition. Five days a week, Nathan would get a fun, enriching experience with other kids. He would get to do activities like crafts, singing, and sticking his hand in a vat of rice, all of which are things I would gladly pay other people to organize for my child. I would get several hours to myself, several days in a row. And we would get all this enrichment/fun/babysitting for approximately $3.25 an hour.

Here's what I didn't realize: camp is sort of like school. I mean, not so much in terms of its educational-ness, but in terms of it being a formalized group situation where you just drop off your kid and he is expected to conform to a series of policies, and you have no control over what he does there.

Honestly, I didn't expect this to be such a Big Deal. But from the day the stupid 12-page camp parent handbook camp, I found myself a little terrified to be on the parent side of the parent-teacher relationship. (Though obviously in this case the "teacher" is a 21-year-old camp counselor.) The handbook had explicit instructions about what you should and should not bring. I went out to Target and spent a lot of money getting exactly what they said, along with a new backpack big enough for all the stuff to fit in. I labeled everything, including socks and underwear. When my husband suggested that maybe a 3-year-old didn't need to bring his own separate bottle of bug spray in his backpack (and that presumably this item was on there because they use the same list for every single camp they offer, including the ones where 10-year-olds go galavanting around the wilderness), I was all, "No, we must get bug spray and label it with his name! It's on THE LIST! We don't want to be the problem parents."

And when that very same troublemaker of a husband told Nathan to wear a hat to camp for sun protection, I hesitated because a hat was on neither the "what to bring" nor the "what not to bring" lists.

Then we got to camp and some girl's mom actually had the audacity to put her kid's belongings in a tote bag. A tote bag! The list specifically said a backpack!

Anyway, on Day 1 I picked up my kid amid a sea of other little campers, all of whom were wearing paper visors that they had decorated with roller-ball paint pens. Nathan's hat was blank. "I didn't want to decorate it," he said.

Day 2, each kid had been given a piece of rectangular paper on which the counselors had glued a race-specific blank outline of the child's face. The children were supposed to add facial features and hair. Now, obviously most 3-year-olds are only able to draw scribbles, but that would have been a welcome change from the completely blank face my kid went home with.

Day 3: the craft was decorating camp pennants with stickers. Nathan's pennant: You guessed it, blank.

Bill and I were not sure if this constituted an Issue or not. The counselor told us that Nathan really just wanted to play with toys instead of doing a craft. We weren't sure if this was some kind of willful disobedience or if the craft was merely presented as an optional alternative to free play. We talked and talked and talked to Nathan about this issue. "DO THE CRAFT!" we said when dropping him off on Day 4.

He actually did the damn craft. It was a paper kite on which he had smeared one blob of paint, but it was a start. We displayed it prominently in our home and made a big fuss over it.

So, it was Friday, and all camp problems were solved, right? No, because Friday began the great peeing disaster.

The thing is, Nathan has not been potty-trained for very long. He still has daily accidents, but they are almost always in the evenings when he's tired and uncooperative. I figured he would be fine at camp, and for the first 4 days, he was. Then Friday I picked him up and he was wearing his hideous extra outfit I had packed (and labeled!) in his backpack.

Monday, same problem.

Tuesday was Day 3 of peeing on the camp bathroom floor. Apparently the boy was waiting too long to go to the bathroom. "It's really becoming kind of an issue," the camp counselor said. I really had no idea what that meant, so I asked if we were kicked out of camp. She said no, but we should keep an eye on it.

Now, here is where I began what I can only imagine is several years of payback for the bad karma I amassed while hating on my students' parents back in my teaching days. I used to get so worked up about these people and the anxiety they had over their inability to control every detail of their kids' school lives. This anxiety translated into their expectation that I, as the adult present at school all day, should be the one working to control every single detail of their kids' school lives, and that I should do it for every single kid in my classroom. "Could you just check his backpack every day for his homework, because he forgets to turn it in?" one parent of a fifth grader asked me once.

Plus, in talking to the counselors, I pulled the argument that I absolutely hated to hear from parents back in my teaching days: "But he never does that at home!"

I told Nathan that if he had an accident the following day, which was Wednesday, he wouldn't go back to camp Thursday and Friday. The counselor looked mildly sad for him, but I didn't see her vehemently disagreeing with me.

I went home Wednesday night and actually cried about this issue. I felt like such a bad mom for sending my kid to camp without being fully potty-trained. I felt like the camp counselors hated me. I figured they thought I was a totally negligent parent who had no control over her child. And to be honest, I felt like a totally negligent parent who had no control over her child.

Making things worse, AND YES, I AM TYPING THIS SO IT IS PRESERVED FOR ALL OF POSTERITY TO HUMILIATE THE CRAP OUT OF MY CHILD, we went to the pool right after camp, and the counselor was there. And Nathan, I kid you not, got out of the pool and squatted down and peed right on the concrete right in front of her. Except I'm not sure if she saw him, which meant that I was very quiet in my reprimanding of him, so as not to call attention to this. If she did see it, I'm sure she and the other counselor had a good laugh about it, which makes me sad because the other counselor is a woman from my running class and also will be Nathan's teacher for preschool next year. Maybe we should just move out of town now.

So, okay, Wednesday was the moment of truth. I was actually nervous when I picked Nathan up, but it turned out he had stayed dry all day!

Today is Thursday, and I threatened him with skipping camp Friday if he had an accident. Friday is the big camp field trip to the Dairy Queen, so that's a pretty big incentive.

Now, I should note that I typed the previous paragraphs before picking him up from camp. In typing them, I became so nervous about The Pee-Pee Issue that I couldn't write any more until I picked Nathan up and got a verdict.

And the verdict is ...

???

I pulled into the parking lot and saw him wearing the tell-tale red shorts from his emergency bag. Nooooooooooooooooooooo! But then the counselor told me that she thinks he may have actually peed on his clothes during the process of using the toilet because males, especially little ones, have very poor aim. So, that's kind of a gray area. Technically it isn't really an accident. But I don't know if the whole "peed on his clothes while using the toilet" story is actually true. I attempted to ask him, but have you ever tried to get a clear response out of a toddler? Toddler answers are so cryptic that army generals have used toddlers to transmit war secrets. Except that there isn't anybody on the other end who can translate for them, so Operation Elmo was quickly scrapped.

Anyway, I think I'm going to let him go to camp tomorrow. Even if he technically had an accident, I think the message got through to him that he shouldn't wait to go to the bathroom.

Tomorrow is the last day of the two weeks we were signed up for, though technically he's on the books for a week in mid-July as well. I'm gonna see how things go and then decide if we're still going to do that one.

In a way, it's sort of a shame that he isn't going next week, after we went through all this transitional hassle. Besides the crafts and the peeing, I am also concerned that he isn't a good cleaner, either. He says, "When it's time to clean up, I don't want to," which could mean anything from a mild disappointment-but-ultimate-acceptance, to a full-out inappropriate refusal to clean.

It has truly been a big transition for me. And if it seems like a big deal to this grown adult who is very capable (possibly overly capable) of assessing/managing her own emotions, I can only imagine what a big transition it is for a toddler whose response to something new and overwhelming is just to get mad and throw a tantrum. Nathan is just coming off of the bulk of his potty-training, and he's dealing with some major bedtime/nap issues, and now I'm sending him off to camp several hours a day? No wonder he seems so uncooperative and frazzled.

I have come to three realizations in the last two weeks: (1) I cannot control what my kid does when I'm not there,(2) I have to get over the fact that the camp counselors are probably hating/judging me, and (3) Formalized educational institutions exist so that your child can learn appropriate behaviors, not so he/she can come in and get them right the first time.

On that third point, I think if in two weeks my kid improved on the arts & crafts, potty-training, and cleaning fronts, that is a successful educational experience. And, that, quite frankly, my kid is a freakin' genius.

* "Stay" is still the best "belt it out in the car until you trip on your words and/or can't breathe" song ever written.

** Am I the only one who thinks that Kerri's "camp" probably consisted of a little less s'more-roasting and lanyard-making, and a little more "go do 100 pushups because you gained 3/4 of an ounce"?