HUSBAND PROOFING

It’s late. We’re watching TV. There’s a beer commercial or another interchangeable ad in which the girl is unattainably hot. The guy is a doofus bordering on…my husband interrupts, “Why does every ad make the guys look like morons?”

“Research,” I reply.

My front door is open. There’s the unmistakable smell of carcinogens. Something’s burning and yet no one’s home. The images in my head are Movie Of The Week worthy. A torch-bearing bandit played by the actor who plays “Bo” on Days of Our Lives, takes my husband and kid. Maybe Valerie Bertenelli plays me, hopefully in her skinny phase so people don’t think I’ve let myself go.

I follow the smell of fire to the kitchen. No fire here, just a pot of water left burning on the stove, next to it 3 uncooked eggs. No bandit here, just one husband, who started something, which had the potential to burn my house down, without finishing it.

We have a lot of these incidents in our house. Ever since the baby came, I feel like I’m following him around, my husband not the baby, making sure everything is safe for him, my baby not my husband, so that I don’t have one more reason to be up all night grinding my teeth down to sandstone. Ovens are rarely turned off and safety gates usually left open. Toilet seat safety locks remain unlocked without fail and our floor is a smorgasbord of hazards like coins, shoes, and dry cleaning bags, all of which are met with a gleam in my son’s eyes as he thinks to himself, “I wonder what that plastic bag tastes like?” You see while my house is baby proofed, I can’t figure out a way to husband proof.

I’m faced with two choices: put on an orange vest and become the family default Safety Patrol or nag. Trust me, every woman gets accused of nagging, every man distracted to forgetfulness. As far as I can tell, no woman wants to spend her time reminding her husband about the minutia of life. Truth be told, for every nagging wife, there’s a husband who forgot to finish what he started. I can’t help but wonder, which came first, the chicken or the eggs left burning on the stove?

Before you think that I think I’m perfect, I don’t. It’s just that my flaws won’t say…kill our kid. And before you think I believe all men are actually morons, I don’t. They’re just very distracted. We all are.

I can’t remember a time when my husband and son were playing together when a Blackberry, a magazine, or a computer weren’t involved. Technology, it seems, makes us feel like everything coming in is important, timely, must be handled immediately. The Blackberry buzzes “Incoming!” and we feel like we’ll miss the boat and be passed up by some other colleague or friend who’s armed with their technology all the time. Time spent with our kids feels like wasted time, we’re not “getting things done.” But isn’t the whole point of technology to free us up so we aren’t locked in an office, unable to spend time with our own families? We’re distracting our lives away to the point of missing out.

Drive down the street you’ll see a Mom driving a Suburban full of kids yet she’ll be texting while driving like she’s 16 year-old trying to find directions to the kegger. Go to a park on any afternoon and most parents, Moms and Dads, will have half their attention on their kids, the other half on the cell phone call they’ve been on for the past hour. Look around a busy restaurant, you won’t find a table where at least one patron doesn’t have their head down, hands under the table, answering emails or texts that need “immediate attention.”

All parents will face a day when we’ll go to kiss our kids and they’ll push our face away, roll their eyes, and squirm out of our reach. They’ll dread spending time us for fear that they’ll miss an email, or won’t be able to get anything done while wasting time with Mom and Dad. We’ll long to have the moments back of uninterrupted kid time, which we squandered adding friends to our Facebook page or checking our stock portfolio on our iPhone.

TV Dads are portrayed as morons, but in truth we’re all morons if we miss out on our own lives. It’s a lot of pressure having a family, whether you’re the primary earner or the primary caretaker, but it takes discipline to turn off that pressure and show up for your own life. It takes discipline to unplug, unclog, and turn off whatever beckons, “Incoming!” and be with your family, friends, and loved ones long enough to cook breakfast without burning the house down or drive down the street without turning your car into a death bomb because you just “had to answer that text.” And while it seems like “getting things done” is moving our families further forward, sometimes the real forward movement is standing still, spending uninterrupted, distraction free time with the people we love. There’s a lot of discipline in doing nothing.

We’re watching TV. It’s a beer commercial or another interchangeable ad in which the girl is unattainably hot. The guy is a doofus bordering on…my husband interrupts, “Why does every ad make the guys look like morons?”

I think for a moment, grab the remote, “I don’t know,” I tell him as I turn off the TV, roll over, and snuggle into my spot. We’re foot-to- foot, cheek-to-cheek, doing nothing. Minutes feel like hours when you’re doing nothing. We’ve got time on our hands, just to be together. That's forward motion.

CALIFORNIA ON MY MIND

My brain is full. Really. I’m starting to forget things. Not my kid’s name, I’m talking the other kind where your brain is full with crap like the age difference between Kevin and Matt Dillon or the name of all of Ron Perelman’s ex wives. Then the name Pol Pot randomly pops into your head and you find yourself unable to remember who, or what, the fuck was Pol Pot.

Hmm, Pol Pot, wasn’t he a General for the ummmmmmmm Vietnamese Army? No. Right, Pol Pot was a place in uhhhhhh Laos. Yes, Laos. No, not Laos. Didn’t I order Pol Pot last week when we went to Dim Sum? No, that was Har Gow, not Pol Pot.

See, my brain is full.

I do this for two hours, me trying to remember who Pol Pot was. I don’t dare ask my husband who’ll surely remind me that I’d know the answer were I not the product of the Public School System; the California Public school system no less. “California” is a curse word to East Coasters who often say it with a whisper or disguise it as “Out West,” that’s New York for stupid.

My husband’s a native New Yorker, “Manhattan” he’d be quick to interrupt before reminding you he’s the recipient of not one, but two Ivy League Degrees. “Double Ivy,” he’d boast. So instead of asking the Prince of Manhattan, I wait until I’m alone with my computer and ask the Prince of Technology, my beloved Google. I can’t get through a day without Googling something. But if my brain fills up with more irrelivencia like the name of Chelsea Clinton’s first boyfriend, I’m going to forget to Google and then I’ll definitely be screwed.

You see my kid, while not even a year old now, is someday going to need more from me than making sure he doesn’t bonk his head on his head or that he doesn’t spend the day with a diaper full of har gow. Right now I know everything and can solve any problem, but the kid is eventually going to start talking, which means learning and asking questions. He’s going to need to know who Pol Pot was, how the Boston Tea Party started, or the capital of Mozambique. Then I will be outed as a total, utter, complete moron; a “Californian.”

Unlike most Angelenos I do in fact read the paper. I know things. I keep up on current events, but the events I keep up on are usually in the Arts and Entertainment section. I’m not an US Magazine reader; I’m not interested in the name of Nicole Ritchie’s baby….

Harlow. Damn it! Why do I know that? Nicole Ritchie’s never had a job and yet, I, who couldn’t give a shit, know her illegitimate baby’s name. Crap, why do I know that baby Harlow is illegitimate? Why?

This is why my brain is full. While I don’t read those mags, you’d have to live under a rock to escape the current pop culture blitz we face everyday about the lives of people who’ve never actually had jobs.

For the record, I read the New Yorker for the essays and the Calendar section for the movie reviews and Vanity Fair for everything. That’s not totally moronic, is it?

The truth is, I grew up in a fairly academic, politically spirited household. We talked about politics over feelings and could debate how any current President had ruined the country. You had to know stuff, a lot of stuff, or you’d be left in the dust, passed by another kid who’d read the paper, watched the news long enough to have something to talk about with our Dad whose sole interest after talking about how horrible the weather is, is to discuss how horrible any current administration is. Knowledge is my family’s connection.

But as an adult on my own, I’ve become unconnected from their interests and connected to my own. I’ve developed my own passions and now have my own family with our own dinner table conversation, which is all well and good as long as my kid wants to know that Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe were married and that Richard Nixon covered up the White House swimming pool to make room for a tennis court. So either I’ve got some reading to do or my son is going to look elsewhere for help with his homework.

The truth is, parents want to be seen as all knowing, like we have all the answers. But in reality, we’re just learning along side our kids. While I can’t remember a time my Mom didn’t know the answer to something, there’s a good chance a few times she winged it or looked up the answer before telling me. But I can’t remember those times; I can just remember that she always had the answers. So since I’ve got 5 or so years to brush up on my facts, I’m not going to worry about it. I should probably read more than the Entertainment section of the newspaper and might want to read a book that isn’t found in the “chick lit” section of the bookstore. But at least I read, at least I’m passionate and open to learning new things. That’s a far more valuable lesson to pass on to my kid than something anyone can look up on Google. And worse comes to worse, if my kid asks me who Pol Pot was and I can’t remember, I’ll say with confidence and passion, “The Dillon Brothers are exactly one year apart.”

And for the record, Pol Pot was the Prime Minister of Cambodia and the leader of the Communist movement Khmer Rouge. I remembered that without Googling. So I guess my brain isn’t full. It's almost full, but there's still room. Now that’s California.