This morning Jason had to take his car to the shop, leaving me to corral Lu into her clothes and out the door to school. Jason normally handles most of this process (although I do take her to school), and I am really bad at it. Especially this morning.

When hurried, Lu downshifts into slooooow moootioooon. She wouldn’t brush her teeth. Her shoes were lost. She let the dogs out the back door and I had to chase them home. I couldn’t find my keys. I almost forgot the chili for the chili cook-off. I yelled at Lu and the dogs.

On the way to school, I apologized.
Lu said, “Mom, you were having a hard morning from me and the dogs, right?”
I said, “Yeah, I was, but it’s okay.”
She said, “I’ll try to apologize…I’m sorry. Here, I’ll sing you a song:
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you at the bottom of my heart.”
I said, “Lu, I love you at the bottom of my heart, too.”

…that Duck is a real duck, not a pretend one? And his family lives in China and he misses them very much? And even though he IS real, he sleeps in a bed and not on a pond? And we need to feed him bread and sandwiches because he gets very sad sometimes? Just making sure you knew that, because I didn’t.

Right as we were pulling into the driveway at school this morning, Lu realized she hadn’t brushed her teeth. She sobbed and wailed:
“I NEED TO BRUSH MY TEETH.
I HAD CANDY, SO I HAVE TO BRUSH MY TEETH.
OTHERWISE I WILL GET A CAVITY.
AND MY MOUTH WILL SMELL BAD.
AND NO ONE WILL WANT TO TALK TO ME.
I HAVE TO BRUSH MY TEETH.
TURN AROUND TURN AROUND TURN AROUND!”

I explained that Dad would bring the toothbrush later, and she thought we should wait in the parking lot for him to get there. I talked her out this, sending her teary-eyed and foul-mouthed into school. I ended up delivering the toothbrush later in the morning and Mrs. Robinson greeted me with, “Thank God you brought the toothbrush. We haven’t been having a good morning.”

So I write this blog. I document as much of our family life as I have time to and is fit/safe to print. I started doing it because the demand for Lu news was more than I could keep up with on emails or photo albums. I do it now because I love to write, I love to write about our life, I have not pasted so much as a clipping of hair into a book for Lu and…well, I forget why. But it’s good for me. Someday it will embarrass the shit out of Lu, which, given her behavior today, is a good reason.

My Aunt Mary Jane called me today to tell me how much she likes to read the blog and it MADE MY DAY. I had no idea she was reading so regularly. I am, sadly, very driven by feedback (See 10 Things. Working on that. Damn me and my need to please. Until I am strong enough not to need it, however…).

No need to get weird, but if you read this blog, say hey once in a while. I could use it. What is the sound of a neurotic working mother falling in the forest? For those of you who do regularly say hey (my mom, Pie, Jenn, Miss West, Nini, Jana, Patrick and Kevin), the sound is: thanks.

It’s been a long time since I liked a movie as much as I liked “Juno.” Maybe since “Rushmore.” Roger Ebert says it’s his favorite movie of the year. The Academy agrees, giving nods for both Best Picture and Best Actress (Ellen Page is the sweetly acerbic outsider I wish I’d been…and was grateful not to be). The movie could be dismissed as self-conscious and hip, if not for the truths it captures about Motherhood, High School and True Love. Dude.

Maybe it was all the discussion of me being at my “bridal” retail client in Philly, but while I was gone, Lucy began to plan her wedding. To her father. Electra Complex, much? We just went with it, and the wedding was quite a whirlwind affair.

The couple was united in marriage January 6, 2008 at 6 o’clock in the evening at the home of the Stephens, family friends of the bride. The bride wore yellow polyester and a tiara-style headpiece. The groom wore a suit jacket hastily thrown over his t-shirt and jeans. The bride was attended by childhood friend Susan Lane Stephens. She was given away by her father, who was also the groom. The ceremony was officiated by the bride’s mother. After the ceremony, a sit-down dinner of barbecued chicken and macaroni was served, followed by nude dancing and bathtime. The groom is a graduate of the University of Texas. The bride is a student at the Children’s School Montessori Center, which she will continue to attend after the marriage. The couple plan to enjoy a brief honeymoon on a playground somewhere at a later date. They will reside in Austin.

…some things I intend to blog about, but haven’t gotten around to yet:
• the wedding we threw for Jason and Lucy
• the parent-teacher conference we had
• the addition to our house that we are planning
• the glory of having a maid come once a week

Stay tuned.

By the way, there is a writers’ strike in Hollywood. And you don’t need writers (or very good ones) for “reality” TV. Which is why I am watching “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” (Note: I am folding laundry and cleaning the bedroom and getting ready for my 6:30 a.m. flight to Dallas. Because I am a REAL nonHousewife. With no servants. If I were a decent woman, I’d be doing crunches and all of the above.)

This show always has astoundingly, ahem…different views from mine, which is fine and entertaining and who cares. But for some reason tonight I am struck by how scary it must be to exist as the children of these women who seek nothing but Youth, Money, Beauty, Status and Stuff. What are you supposed to do with your life when every signpost you encounter directs you back to…(see YMBSS above)?

I fail a lot, but at least I am striving toward the right stuff? More or less? These women make me feel better about myself (and also suck my abs in a little). If I look strangely tan next time you see me, you’ll know why. But at least Lucy will know a multisyllabic word.

She dressed herself this morning and put both her pants and her shirt on backwards. I managed to convince her to turn her shirt around, but she is adamant that the zipper on her courduroys does, indeed, go in the back. “IT DOES. They are NOT BACKWARDS.” And so that is how she is wearing them.

So, in case you hadn’t noticed, Lucy is an only child. We didn’t intend it — we always planned to have two. But when she turned one, I thought maybe we should think about when…Then when she turned two, I had a profound panic. I knew we should start planning. But I really didn’t want to have another baby. I wasn’t ruling it out. I just had no longing.

I was on a business trip to Philly from Thursday to today, and along with missing Lucy desperately, I was traveling with my friend Pam, who has 3-year-old twins and a 10-month-old. She makes it look easy enough to consider. Two? Can two be that hard? Maybe it was reproductive vanity (if I am not bearing any more children, why not just yank out the machinery and wait for my beard to grow in?) or nostalgia or actual longing, but I felt some possibility stir.

Until I saw the haggard 25-year-old and her three children under the age of five. They trudged past me in the airport like refugees, banging into each other and strangers. Then they were in line in front of me to get on the plane, throwing shoes and granola bars and tantrums. THEN THEY SAT BEHIND ME ON THE FOUR-HOUR FLIGHT FROM PHILLY TO DALLAS. Tyler kicked the back of my seat and talked in bellicose language about plane crashes and death. Samantha screamed and smacked her brother and mother, then screamed some more. The pig-tailed little one (whose name I never learned because she was too cooperative to merit any tired correction from the mother) sucked her pacifier, as docile as Maggie Simpson herself. She is the only one I have hope for. The rest are doomed.

They trudged off the plane in Dallas, assaulting people with their kicks and screams on the way out. I bade them farewell, and my heart (and neck muscles) released for the first time in four hours. During our short layover in Dallas, I began to forgive them. Poor young mother and her too-many, too-close-together babies. She was not trying to raise monsters, she was doing her feeble best. Go with God, little mama.

THEN MAMA AND THE MONSTERS GOT BACK ON THE PLANE. Legend of them had already circulated among the remaining passengers, attendants and cleaning crew. I got lots of sympathetic looks as they resumed their seats behind me. The kicking and screaming recommenced. While I am not saying they stomped on any burgeoning possibility of a sibing for Lu, they were, ahem, poor ambassadors for the multi-child family.