Chalk and Cheese Chronicles

SV Moms Book Club: Writing Motherhood

Today, I am participating in a book club hosted by the Silicon Valley Moms Group.  Inspired by the book, Writing Motherhood by Lisa Garrigues, my mission is to write about one of my most outrageous or inexcusable bad mothering moments and gosh, I, um, have so many of such moments. Where to begin?

I guess I'll talk about the time I bad mouthed my own mother in front of my diaper clad children. I only did it because it made me feel better and saying it in front of the children was like saying it in front of a dog. Surely they weren't listening to my little diatribe.

What Not to Eat before Sex and the City

My friend leaned over, "Did you see it? They showed his PENIS!"

"Mmmhmm," I replied vaguely, neither confirming nor denying any sighting.

A few minutes later, she tried again, "Those ladies are starting to show their age!"

"Right, " I muttered in agreement.

I had wanted to say more. I had wanted to elaborate and discuss, discuss! Surrounded by a group of moms from my Silicon Valley multiples club for a moms' night out at the movies, I kept mute. The film? "Sex and the City" - but of course! We'd gathered at trendy El Jardin Tequila Bar and Restaurant, sipping wine and dipping into appetizers beneath a canopy of beautiful oak trees. As we later made the move from restaurant to theater and began settling into our seats, I noticed a cloud following me.

The First to Find Nemo!

The photo at left shows a Disney ride attendant slowly and calmly leading our little family and hundreds of park goers through the queuing area of one of Disneyland's top attractions, the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. The time is 8:14 am (this was last week, the week before the Memorial Day crowds) and he is pacing us, probably with the intention of having the day's first passenger step on board at exactly 8:15 am.

Yep, this is what it looks like to be the day's very first riders aboard the Nemo sub. This is an incredible feat considering that 1) I am not a huge Disney fan and 2) I'm rarely early for anything, let alone on time. So how, might you ask, did this happen? Or better yet, as I might ask myself, why did this happen? The simple answer is that I was nervous about my boys' willingness to tolerate a long line so we got to the park early. Super early. Super duper early. Super duper grumpy early.

Here's how we did it:

I want to tell you about this great new preschool (but I won't)

The notices had gone out. Friends who had already received theirs had promptly filled in the dates of their calenders. I envisioned the bold, black ink scrawled across the month of July,

<-----S U M M E R  S C H O O L----->>

I glanced down at my Busy Body Book, turning to the page in which I'd hastily penciled in, "summer school?" The pages of summer were all so woefully blank. I reread the forwarded email from my friend, searching for my name.

First post: Why Chalk and Cheese?

Confession:  I have had a blog since the summer of 2006 but it has languished in blog limbo because 1) I couldn't get the customized layout to format correctly and 2) I couldn't think of a name. When my two Gemini Crickets friends and fellow Silicon Valley Moms Blog contributors, Linda and Linsey, went forth with their personal blogs and started blogging away, I so wanted to join them. So I moved my blog over to Typepad and well, here I am. Let's hope I can keep this up!

Why Chalk and Cheese? It's an old idiom that means:

        "Two things that seem alike but which are in fact very different."

And I have twins who, despite appearances, are as different as chalk and cheese. Enough said.

Original Chalk and Cheese Chronicles blog post.