But here’s something that nobody tells you before you bring children into this world. It helps to learn “how to be fast on your feet.” And I don’t mean when working the dance floor. It doesn’t matter if I’m dealing with a child, a customer, or that rude lady waiting behind me at the checkout counter, I’m always three days late with a quick answer that puts a stop to the conversation that needs to be stopped. And, 99 percent of the time, three days is just too long. I have yet to meet the person who appreciates the phone call that starts with, “And this is what I MEANT to say to you three days ago!”

My ten-year-old daughter came home from school last week and asked me if it would be OK for her to start shaving her legs. I simply said NO. And maybe that should have been the end of it. But when she asked why, it would have been nice if I had prepared a succinct answer that went,”Because *fill in the blank here with a great parable, metaphor, or analogy* The End. “But I wasn’t ready. In my defense, I didn’t think the shaving question was going to happen for, like, another three YEARS. And so, like so many other times, she caught me unaware and the best answer I could come up with was, “Because I said so.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think “Because I said so” is an EXCELLENT answer sometimes. Like when she looks over at me and goes, “Aww, come on. Why do I have to put it back on Oprah?” “Hmmm…. Let me think here a minute. Because I said so!” But the shaving thing. This was kind of important. I felt like she deserved a better answer.

So I gave it the usual three days and here’s what I came up with — There isn’t a PRACTICAL reason why it is a good idea. But there are several IMPRACTICAL reasons why it’s a bad one. Sure, her ten-year-old legs would look less hairy. But, practically speaking, there’s nothing WRONG with the hair being there. There is no medical reason for the hair to be gone. There is no school that she’s trying to get into which requires hairless legs. I haven’t come across any new studies that say shaving legs increases intelligence or improves soccer skills in young girls. From what I can tell, it doesn’t do anything for compassion or world peace, either.

ON THE OTHER HAND, having a ten-year-old shave will cost me more money in razors and band-aids, neither of which is cheap. It will also increase shower time, thereby making my water bill slightly higher. Not to mention all the complaining of her new scabs and scars that I’ll have to put up with in the process. But what REALLY clenched the deal was letting her run her hand across the length of my leg. I hadn’t shaved my legs in the three days it took for me to think on this whole shaving thing. “And this here? This is what happens when you get lazy about shaving,” I said. You would have thought she’d just been forced to pet the back of a cootie-infested porcupine by the way she recoiled.

I haven’t heard another word about it since. Still, it would have been nice if I’d had an answer readily prepared in the beginning. I suppose this means I’ve got to start thinking on my answers for why she can’t date or drive or pluck her eyebrows yet.

Several of her classmates are donning smooth legs already. Call me crazy, but I think you need to bring in a steady paycheck to start shaving. So what’s the general consensus out there on girls and shaving? Am I being too harsh?

In retrospect, I should have left the stupid milk sprawled to lay where it may until coming back home from dropping them off. I should have been savoring that last half hour I had with them. But the milk on the floor bothered me. And I’m not even a neat freak, by any stretch of the imagination. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I felt it needed to be cleaned up immediately. I would live to regret that small decision for a very, very long time.

As I moved all the dining room chairs into the living room, lining them up like a train so that I could mop, Antonia rose from the couch and tripped over her packed-and-ready-to-go duffel bag, landing directly on the edge of one of the chairs, the caboose of my train. In an instant, she was screaming and covered in blood. She’d knocked out her four front teeth in one fell swoop. Luckily, they were baby teeth, but that didn’t mean any less blood and pain and panic. I put a washcloth to her mouth to stop the bleeding and rushed her to the emergency room, calling her father from the road to meet me there.

Despite the snail-for-cars that exponentially delayed my trip to the ER, everything turned out okay. There was no permanent damage, just a mouth full of missing teeth. But she was still shaken up and hurting. As it was, this was already a painful time for her. Antonia was taking the separation of her parents especially hard.

Emergency room visit all taken care of, it was time for her and her brother to go with their father. We were all still very new to the idea of packing bags, loading up and saying goodbye to one another every weekend. But the goodbyes were by far the worst even under the best of circumstances. She looked up at me with her swollen upper lip and blood-crusted toothless face and asked me to come with her. She said that she didn’t want anything else in the whole world but for us to be together as a family that night. Just that one night. How deeply I wanted to say yes. It would have been so, so easy. Most definitely not because I wanted to spend another night with her father, but because she had just been through a horrific experience at an already stressful time in her young life. My soon-to-be six-year-old girl needed her mother! How could I cause her more pain by saying no? The demand for an answer to her question lay completely with me because her father’s vote was for more together time.

But I couldn’t. The implications would be terrible. So, with a heavy heart and a knot the size of a cantaloupe in my throat, I said no. I said it was their father’s time now. And she really was okay. This is how it had to be, I added. She looked at me as if I’d just slapped her open-handedly across the face. I closed my eyes to stop the tears, kissed my children goodbye and left as fast as I could. “How could I have said no?” I wondered, driving aimlessly around before heading back to my empty home with the train of chairs still in my living room, her blood still in my carpet.

But how could I have said yes? At that point, I had no intentions of working things out with their father, under any circumstances. What would saying yes have meant? It would have meant that reuniting was something negotiable. It would have meant that all she had to do in the future is get hurt again, act ill, look sad, cry or, hell, just ask, and I might be talked into staying together. It would have been a lesson in how to manipulate.

That night, I drank lots of wine and cried myself to sleep. I finally understood the labors of parenting like I never had before. And, even though I myself didn’t become one, I understood how easy it would be to fall into alcohol or drug addiction when emotional pain was so excruciating.

Itss been several years since then, and I’m happy to report that we’ve all adjusted to this new arrangement. Whether she fully understands my reasoning or not, I think Antonia has finally forgiven me for what she perceived as abandoning her that day. The blood and gore and pain of separation is now a fading memory.

I’ll remember enough for the both of us.

Catherine Dix is a former Mile High Mamas contributor and an award-winning author.

It was my bellybutton. It has slowly gone from an ugly, war-torn innie, to an ugly, war-torn outie… sort of solid, hard to hide when wearing a form-fitting t-shirt and, holy macaroni, OUCH! This wouldn’t be so troubling if the rest of my belly had grown right along with my navel. I’m quite familiar with that type of ailment. If I remember correctly, it was accompanied by swollen ankles, back pain, and massive cravings for chocolate-covered pizza.

Yes, my NOT-a-doctor friend confirmed my suspicions for me in that bathroom in front of way too many mirrors… It would appear that maybe I have a hernia. Furthermore, said friend thought it required a trip to the emergency room. Some ice cream. And maybe a piggy-back ride. (I love her.) But I I thought it wise to consult with another well-known doctor before dropping a load of cash at our local ER. You might have heard of him… Dr. Google? I’m being presumptuous in calling it a HE, I know. But he gave me way more information that I asked for and showed me some really gross pictures, so… you do the math. Moreover, Dr. Google didn’t want to talk about anything except swine flu whose symptoms, by the way, had nothing to do with protruding bellybuttons.

So I’ve made an appointment with a certified honest-to-goodness doctor of medicine and have taken to wearing a girdle. What does this have to do with book signings, you ask?

I wanted to announce a couple of events where I’ll be signing my new book Rosetta Stones, and I wanted to make sure that if you happen to go, please understand why I’m breathing shallowly and giving you the one-arm hug while my back appears to be made of oak.

I’ll be looking for you in gorgeous Chama, New Mexico on May 29th and 30th at the Chama Book Fiesta and at the Narrow Gauge Book Store in Alamosa, Colorado on June 27th. I will be updating information at my website as more events are scheduled and you can also find my announcements on Twitter.

Congratulations to A Mom in the Burbs and Melissa Taylor for winning a copy of Rosetta Stones! And many thanks to everyone who dropped me a comment.

It was okay that she cried when it was amongst those that loved her. But when she had to go to day care, I imagined the worst happening in the company of people who were only taking care of her because it paid slightly more than minimum wage. I was always waiting for that phone call from the day care’s director, telling me that Miss Sherry was removed in a strait jacket with her ears bleeding while my child was being extricated from the bottom of a dumpster. It drove me crazy. And in my state of crazy, I convinced myself that MAYBE I could write a book and become a stay-at-home-mom if I was just diligent enough.

I went out and bought a couple of “How to write a novel” books. I eschewed the idea of sleep and dedicated at least three hours each night to my task. I made lots of promises to St. Anthony. And I told myself that, for Toni’s safety and well being, I wouldn’t give up.

Well, she’s now eleven going on TWELVE. Not only did Miss Sherry not kill my little girl, but neither did Miss Burris or Ms. Romero or Mrs. Parker or Mr. Dalton or the countless other teachers and day care providers whom I’ve entrusted with the safety and well being of my slightly high maintenance child. The payoff for all these years of diligence is that now I can say that I’ve written a novel. It’s called Rosetta Stones, and it’s now available for pre-order from Amazon. So yay for crazy!

If you are a reader who enjoys throwing your name into virtual hats to receive free stuff from bloggers, let me know in the comments. I will have my sweet daughter Toni randomly select two people to receive a free signed copy.

This is a taste of what you’ll be getting: It’s a story of four close friends who witness a terrifying crime when they encounter a psychopathic killer in the remote Gila wilderness of southwestern New Mexico. In the chaos that follows, two entities-one good and one pure evil-fight for control of their souls as they struggle toward a terrifying climax that will change their lives forever. At turns frighteningly violent and nearly sublime, Rosetta Stones is a coming-of-age story that transcends the divisions of race and culture through the power of friendship and redemptive love.

So, tell me, has mental illness ever worked to your benefit?

My employer has finally gotten with the times and decided that, in order to secure the very important and confidential information on our intranet, I need to answer five personal, random questions lest I forget my coveted password. There are several questions to choose from on a variety of arbitrary subjects.

Pseudo examples:

What top secret name did you give to your favorite childhood teddy bear?
What book have you STILL not returned to the public library after twenty five years?
Which of your body parts is screaming for plastic surgery?
Where have you hidden the paper trail that leads to the boots that you bought online three months ago?

Random my butt.

My bank did this to me back when I was setting up my online banking account years ago. It all seemed so innocent. So nonchalant and unsuspicious. And yet I can’t help wondering if my husband was somehow involved in the making of these questions:

On average, how many times do you use your debit card on the weekends?
How much money do you plan on spending this Christmas? The honest answer, please.
When was the last time you opened mail pertaining to your Roth IRA?
And by the way, where have you hidden that secret stash of leftover Halloween candy?

This system might work for the bank and the government and the non-paranoid of this world. It doesn’t work for me. Back when I did actually lose my password and had to reset it, I struggled remembering what lies I’d told them six months before. That’s why I’m all for the systems where you get to make up your own private questions. That way I can give me, myself and I (*wink wink*) personal information about OTHER people. My kids, for example.

What does Emma say every time she climbs up her daddy’s back? “Giddyup Cowman!” Easy enough.

What happens when babies leave toys on Mommy’s bedroom floor? “The big, hairy guy trips and breaks his baby toe and then the toys disappear from the face of the earth forever.” A total no-brainer.

What does Jonah do every time he gets in trouble? Simple. “He draws a picture of his mother wherein she looks like Medusa, only with lightning rods for hair instead of snakes. If he’s REALLY in trouble, she’s drawn as a walking mass of flames.” (I’m assuming it’s to signify her scorching hot anger as opposed to his wish that she burn in hell.) He then has his older sister hand-deliver the picture to said mother and mumble an apology on his behalf.

See? Simple. Informative. Not-too-intrusive. And now you, too, can change my password to the Hypnotist Wannabes’ Secret Online Clubhouse.

How do you keep track of all your secret questions and passwords? Do you have the same password for everything or do you prefer to mix it up?

And then one sadder-than-usual day… I lost my checkbook. The checkbook that had my innumerable high-interest-rate credit cards tucked away inside, 20 bucks in tips… not to mention THE CHECKBOOK with ALLLL that student loan money I had just deposited into it. I told myself, “Self. This is it. You are going to be seriously poor now, all because you can’t pull your brain cells together like a normal, functioning adult that accounts for their material belongings regularly.”

And then I finally did what my mother (and aunts and subconscious) had told me to do so many times before. I prayed to this St. Anthony dude, in a mocking, half-hearted kind of way. I remember laughing as I said out loud, “All right! If you can find it in you to help me with this checkbook fiasco, I will be SO UTTERLY impressed that I will name my first child after you!”

BEHOLD.

Almost immediately, I got a phone call from someone who said, “Hey, is this Catherine? I just found your checkbook and thought I’d dial the phone number printed here and let you know that I’m on my way to your address, that’s also printed here, to return it to you!!” Upon hearing this, I had the intestinal butterflies of someone who’d just accidentally bumped into their soulmate at the mall. Mr. Anonymous sounded just as thrilled… in a good Samaritan kind of way.

About five minutes later, he was knocking at my door to return the goods. Everything intact, not even a dollar of my tips missing. He wanted no reward, no cold drink, no French kiss. Returning it to its rightful owner was reward enough, he said.

So, three years later, true to my word, I was holding this 7 lb. 13 oz screaming, squirming ball of miraculousness who would forevermore be known as “Antonia.” Maybe Toni. (Anthony just seemed a little weird for a girl.) And, while I’m not really into the whole saint-believing thing, I still consider St. Anthony to be a secret pal, kind of like Santa Claus but without the commercialism.

Great story, right? Toni thinks so, anyway.

THEN there’s my almost-seven-year-old son. Jonah. He’s been told a million and one times that he was named after the little boy in Sleepless in Seattle because, at the time, his father was in love with everything Tom Hanks. And, besides, we didn’t know any Jonahs. It was simple. And original. And better than the SECOND name his father was leaning towards which was Walter. As in Payton. As in NOT.

Yet Jonah has chosen to believe all the compelling strangers around him that counter he was ACTUALLY named for a prophet that refused to save the sin city of Nineveh and was henceforth swallowed by a large whale to contemplate the err in his ways. Okay, maybe he doesn’t say it quite like that. Nonetheless, he’s in love with the idea that he could hang out in the innards of a whale with nothing to keep him company but his hobo pack, waiting for the whale to sneeze him out… because it IS kind of Pinnochio-ish. I’ve decided to let it go. The real story just doesn’t put out NEAR the flamboyant artwork.

I’ll deal with the origins of Emma and Kyra’s names later. At three and four, respectively, they currently could care less what sitcom character/Biblical phenom/estranged aunt they were named after. I figure I’ve got a few years left to think up something really epic.

So what’s the story behind your childrens’ names?

I don’t always relate to my own kind. In fact, I’m confounded by the behavior of the members of my gender, myself included, on a regular basis. But some things generally remain the same. For example, we don’t get thrills out of finding an innocent-looking woman and throwing her purse into the Men’s Bathroom and then lifting her by the scruff of her neck and tossing her in there to go retrieve it. Not even in the second grade do I remember that kind of bizarre torture occurring. If we didn’t like a particular girl, we usually addressed the issue by not inviting her to our slumber party. And yet this bathroom thing occurred to my son just this past week, except that it was a backpack instead of a purse. Sure, he was upset for a day, but he did what most GIRLS I know could never do… he dusted himself off and immediately got over it. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t involved, and I’M still not over it. But when I demanded that we talk to the supervising adults, he stoically insisted that it wasn’t necessary. He could handle it, he said, while lying on my couch with his foot propped up on a pillow, his swollen ankle being iced.

“Boys will be boys,” a co-worker of mine says. “Parental involvement makes it worse with boys. You’re gonna label him a wuss for life. Let him handle it. Those boys that threw him in the bathroom are probably his friends. They were PLAYING AROUND. That’s how we do it. We throw each other into the Girl’s Bathroom to get a good look around.”

I don’t want to encourage my kid to fight. But I want him to be able to defend himself so, call me reactionary, but I’ve enrolled him in taekwondo. In the meantime, we invited his best-good friend-Andres-from-way-back to come over. Jonah showed off his mad cooking skillz by frying an egg for Andres. Andres showed him an easier way using the microwave. They had farting and burping contests. They wrestled. They took turns trying to break their necks by flailing themselves down my stairs. When I took them to rent a movie, they walked the aisles and squealed “EWWWW!!” in unison every time they passed a DVD cover with a scantily-clad woman on the cover. Or kissing. Heaven forbid they saw any kissing.

I still haven’t memorized the User’s Manual for little boys. I disagree with three-quarters of what’s in there. But this much I do know… grossing out over sex on a DVD cover will be one of the first things to change.

As mothers, do you find raising little boys more challenging than little girls?

The evaluation, which is titled “A Little Bit about My Day” goes like this:

Name: Kyra

1. I enjoyed:_______________________

2. I ate______________________ of my lunch.

3. I _____________ take a nap.

4. I felt _____________________ today.

5. I had _____________ manners today.

I understand that most of these answers aren’t formally asked of her, but observed and then noted. If they were discussing dental hygiene today, the first line will probably say, “I enjoyed making my toothbrush chart!” If she ate all of her applesauce but didn’t touch the broccoli, #2 will say I ate some of my lunch. The nap question is pretty straight-forward answered with either a DID or a DID NOT, and the last line is usually answered with a “good,” except on the days when she does her Linda Blair routine in which case it’s answered with a very sarcastic “OKAY.”

It’s that fourth question that confounds me. At first glance, it appears to me that it ALSO could be answered by observation. If she had a runny nose and was low-energy, you could answer it with an “I felt ill today.” If she was happy and participatory, it could be answered with, “I felt GREAT today!” But, based on the evaluation slip we receive daily, they don’t go by observation. Instead, it would appear that, come closing time, they pull out their psychiatric pad and pencil, get down to her eye level and say, “Kyra, how did you FEEEEL today?” I’ve never been there when the question is posed, but I imagine her pausing, setting down her wooden blocks, looking off into the horizon as she carefully considers the question. Then she becomes quite profound. “I fet like a refrigerator today,” she might say. Or “I felt like a wizard today.” (Which is actually a LIZARD in Kyraspeak.)

My theory was that someone at this day care was bored senseless, dreaming of a different life for themselves, maybe in the field of stand-up comedy, trying desperately to make their job a bit more interesting, snickering to themselves as they tried to think up a better answer to question #4 than the day before… Wouldn’t it be cute if I told Kyra’s parents that she felt like a drunk driver today??

I decided to put my theory to the test this weekend and so, while we were driving to the library, I turned around and said, “Kyra, how do you FEEL today?” She pulled up her sunglasses, stared right through me for three or four seconds, gently bit down on her bottom lip and then said, “I feel like purple rocks today.” Theory disproven.

Quick, how do YOU feel today??

This loathing of labels, as you can imagine, has done nothing but given me multiple labels throughout my life. I’ve been wishy-washy, noncommittal, lazy, even snooty to some people. I went through this period in college where I was really intrigued by angels. Word got out to my family and pretty soon everyone was buying me books about angels, angel earrings, angel figurines, pillows with angelic embroidery. It really made me squeamish because this meant I had just been tagged… you guessed it… as an “Angel Collector.” Heaven forbid. I had to do some quick damage control and make it known that I wasn’t really into angel STUFF. Just, you know, the angels in THEORY. This was where the snootiness label came in.

And yes, there is some truth to the wishy-washiness, too. I can’t really decide whether I’m FOR being a hair dyer or against it. Or if I’m FOR being a Ghost Hunter enthusiast or kind of impassive about the whole thing. I recently mentioned to a co-worker that I was reading up on Buddhism and I immediately felt a box closing in around me. Was I going to be one of THOSE people in her mind? I imagined that she would now believe that I burn incense in my free time… as I write to my senators and congressmen, asking them to fight for the legalization of marijuana… all while in the Lotus position. True or not, why must I be LABELED as such?

Well. The damage was already done. I had put my fear of labels away long before the Buddhism thing, filed them under “No Longer Important” when I decided to campaign for Obama. For the first time in my life, I quit caring what anyone thought about me and followed my heart full throttle.

Let me tell you, ladies and you gentlemen there in the back row, it felt SO. GOOD. I discovered a whole new world of people around me that I never knew existed in my neck of the woods, people like me who readily admitted to not having all the answers to all the hard questions but who felt like, for the first time in their lives, knew which way was the right direction and were compelled to help us get moving there.

My reevaluation of label-loathing had begun after the last election and now was all but dead. Yes, I related to this political party more than that one. And, okay, more than just a little. But I had convinced myself that it wasn’t necessary to speak publicly about where I stood on any given issue because, well, why would I? Who was I? And aren’t these things private anyway? And wearing your heart on your sleeve, marching for a cause, standing up against something… those were things that my parents’ generation did back when progressives were being assassinated. Now it could only be clichéd. It wasn’t en vogue to care so deeply anymore. Not out in the wide open space.

Or was it?

Remember those people in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? The ones who were determined to find that THING that turned out to be Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming? Remember their obsessed conviction? THAT was what I felt at the beginning of this campaign season. Not because MY husband died in Iraq. Or because MY job had been shipped overseas. Or because MY civil liberties had been stripped away. Or because MY retirement savings was obliterated. But because SOMEBODY’S is, had, and was.

So I made the gradiose decision to give my blood, sweat and tears to the person whom I thought would best get us back on track. I don’t regret all those other times that I could have participated in the political scene and didn’t. I believe that everything happens in its good time. I believe that the world was ripe for THIS leader . THIS is the guy that that I felt good about putting my name behind. ME. MY NAME. I suppose it’s just a label anyway. Catherine. Mother. Daughter. Wife. Latina. Yoga Practitioner. Hair Dyer. Ghost Hunter Enthusiast. The girl who’s going to be watching the inauguration today, squealing with joy and looking for her two sisters and their high school students out in the audience.

So Happy Inauguration Day, everyone! Here’s to moving forward!!

Now you can label me a cheeseball as well.

But then Allan came around and suddenly I appeared as careless and apathetic as a swindling financier on house arrest… well… without the smug grin and curfew-monitoring ankle bracelet. I just felt very… negligent, reckless even.

He was/is the walking definition of pragmatism. He is the guy that doesn’t make any major purchases without seek advice from Consumer Reports first. He is the kind of person who not only carries a flashlight in his car but also the sleeping bag, first aid kit, the rain gear and maybe a utility knife, too.

So when our children were born, I was fully prepared for someone who would immediately open college savings accounts and jar his own baby food. What I didn’t realize is that all that careful attention to detail would kind of rub off on me.

I’ll be the first to admit that anyone can go overboard with the whole “conscientiousness” thing. I’ll never really know if withholding any and all foods with sugar for the first year of our children’s lives had momentous beneficial effects. Would a cookie have killed them at Christmas? They aren’t diabetic, so probably not. They didn’t really have lots of teeth to rot away at that point, either. But habits WERE established early on and now they treat sugar with the sort of reverence that I reserve for things like a nice French red at the end of a long, hard day.

I always thought I was something special for cutting white bread out of my family’s diet. But because of my husband, I no longer toss a loaf of bread into my grocery basket simply because the word WHEAT is splashed across the front in bold letters. My new and improved conscientiousness compels me to actually turn the packaging upside down and look at the ingredients in search of words like “stone ground.” I check the fiber percentage, too. I’m suddenly judgmental of boxed food and flowery language on packaging and totally skeptical of words like NATURAL and PURE if red dye #40 and the oh-so ambiguous “spices” are in the concoction.

He generally thinks that I’m not listening when he’s rattling on and on about how sunBLOCK protects better than sunSCREEN, but I do hear him. I agree that $6.99 for a pound of asparagus is too much, and my oil should probably have been changed 2,000 miles ago. (By the way, Resolution #79 is start paying attention to the numbers on that little sticker in the top left corner of my windshield.) So thank you, Allan, for giving me the gift of conscientiousness. I wholeheartedly believe our kids are the better for it.

What obscure resolutions have you made this year if any?