Friday Quickies, Vol. 5: Just Under the Wire

1. Just, sigh is all. This week. It was Tink’s “winter break” from school, and my house most certainly looks like a 3-year-old has had the run of the place. For a month or two. I’m astonished at how little non-Tink-related anything I’ve been able to do, and it makes me quiver at the thought of summertime. As luck would have it, I need to turn in the summer school form Monday. Wonder if that’s a brilliantly engineered bit of strategy on the part of the preschool director to bring in the bacon during the lean summer months? If so, she needs to be put in charge of the recession.

Three-going-on-4 is the most exhausting of ages. My job is to be RightThere to keep her from certain harm without her realizing I’m actually, you know, mothering her. Tink thinks she’s completely independent and just proceeds forth with tasks on her personal agenda with nary a “Hey, Mom, is it OK if I …?” Sometimes she announces in the most matter-of-fact way what she’ll be doing next: “We need to open this box! I’ll get a sharp knife.” “I think that water is boiling. I’m going to pull the chair over and help you stir it.” “I know how to turn the mixer on!” Sometimes she can’t be bothered to keep me apprised. Then she stamps and flaps furiously, indignantly howling “Nooooo” when I overstep what she feels my bounds should be and try to prevent her from losing a digit or two.

After five full days of being on constant guard against impending ER visits, I was so tired today that when she said, dragging her step stool behind her, “I’m going to get a stick of cheese; you want one?” I resignedly said, “Yeah. Sure.”

2. Winter break started out exactly so. Wet snow began to fall late Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning it was considerably colder and whiter. After a good hour playing outside, C called to tell me that he needed me to come in because most of his employees were tragically housebound by the deadly four inches of South Carolina snow.

It wasn’t until I got there that he told me I had to actually take tables. I made $16, cash. It made me feel dirty.

It was the second day poor Tink had to sit at the counter and keep herself occupied with the contents of her backpack. And then we had to do it again Tuesday, only this time, gratefully, I was the hostess/cashier. Luckily, Tink is extraordinarily well-behaved, but three days at the restaurant is a lot to ask of a 3-year-old.

3. When my daughter wasn’t offering to sharpen our Global knives or roast peppers over a gas flame, my husband was barking orders at me. Make this, fetch that. The piece de resistance was Thursday night, while at a Junior League meeting as a favor to a friend who needed to bring some fresh meat, I got a call to actually get fresh meat. Something about two beef tenderloins and forgetting to order them from the meat vendor and someone let their Costco card expire and they need to be ready to be picked up on the way to Nashville tomorrow morning, blah, blah. How ridiculous is it to ask someone to drive you to Costco so you can buy $87 worth of vacuum-sealed flesh? I’m one of those too-much-trouble friends, I just know it.

Then we drove back to her house, where her husband was watching South Carolina basketball lose the kids, and then to the restaurant to drop off the meat. My mother happened to be there with a friend, something C neglected to tell me because he was too busy ladening me with ramekins for my next assignment. Once she realized I was there, she wanted to show Tink off to her friend, and we ended up sitting at their table chatting.

Until a waitress leaned down and whispered in my ear, “(C) says you better get a move on. Your daughter should have been in bed an hour and a half ago.” HOLY WHAT THE ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS? Sweetie, where’s that knife you sharpened for Mommy?

Then, today? Cell phone charger, steel-cut oatmeal, deodorant. And this morning while on the phone with my mother, who was on her cell phone, he called her home phone to relay a message to me. These will be the days we all look back on when he’s hospitalized for a breakdown. It’s not like he didn’t give us any clues.

The silver lining I should be focusing on is the fact that if he needs things for the restaurant (except for the deodorant; that’s not an ingredient in anything on the menu), it must still be open! Shuttered restaurants rarely need chocolate creme brulee.

4. In addition to not having the requisite quiet time to post more this week, I’m suffering from a wicked case of blogger’s block. Well, not block, exactly. More like, why write about Octomom/”The Bacheolor”/the name of M.I.A.’s baby/whatever when someone else has already tackled the topic so much better than I could?

I don’t want to stoop to attention-grabbing pieces of crap like this, designed to shock and outrage. I happen to agree with a lot of what she wrote – or did at one time, but, the point is, most every woman can relate in some way – but the tone of it is cheap.

And even when it’s not a case of “She stole my idea!” the talent out there is seriously intimidating. The bloggers I follow all had such kick-ass, on-fire weeks this week that I’m left sputtering and drooling. You know who you are, and you may go fuck yourselves. I’m so insecure that instead of being inspired I want to lie curled up, clutching the October 1998 Sunday New York Times that quotes my review of “A Night at the Roxbury” and dream of a life that does not so closely resemble my own.

5. When I’m not writing blog posts that go viral, I find myself hounded by the limitless volume of content on the Web that I should be paying attention to. Tips, advice, op-eds, blog networks to be discovered, how to write better queries, revolutionary ways businesses are using social media to deepen the conversation they’re having with their customers, AM I USING TWITTER TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL?? … it is literally never-ending. I scan as much as I can and bookmark the rest, but my to-read list is growing and taking on a life of its own. I get some ideas for the restaurant or for my career, but then who has the time to implement this stuff as well as carve out time to write, clean, cook and work out? Must be people whose 3-year-olds aren’t on winter break.

6. With every resume I send into the cybervoid – and every piece of cheerful news about the economy – I feel more and more drawn to doing something truly outlandish, like starting a business. Intellectually, I know it’s a half-baked lark, but I can’t help romanticize about the headlines in Forbes after I make it big: “How One Woman Turned the Dregs of Her Life Savings Into an Empire.”

I have an idea, and I think it’s a good one. This business idea won’t make me rich, but it could be a solid second paycheck (Second? Haaa! You need a first paycheck in the family to have a second one! I slay myself!). The best part of this idea is that it would require lots of up-front work, meaning that before I ever spent a dime on things like a lease, I’d know a lot about my client base and its needs. As close to a no-fail as one could get. Besides, Penelope Trunk (item #4) says I should.

7. Why in the hell is Dooce going to be on the “Today” show AGAIN? Don’t producers know there are at least five or six other bloggers out there to interview? Seriously, what up? Lazy reporting, meet undemanding audience. And Al Roker, you’ve been warned. Don’t touch her belly. Or try to eat it.

PS – I can’t figure out how to fix the time stamp in my Wordpress dashboard, but it is now … 11:43, which means it’s still Friday. So, suck on it, Greenwich Mean Time minus whatever.

PPS – Jen, the genius creator of 7 Quick Takes Friday, has an entry today – a mere four days after giving birth to her fourth child. Go, Jen.

Related posts:

1. Friday Quickies, Vol. 10
2. Friday Quickies: The BlogHer Edition
3. Friday Quickies, Vol. 7

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Tagged as: blogging, blogs, business, Dooce, Octomom, Penelope Trunk, reality shows, social media. Twitter, startup, writing