ever-fixed mark

Aitch is good with adults. I have already described how, at parties, he schmoozes all the men, learning their names and bonding with them over fart jokes and tickle contests. I sometimes worry about his seemingly insatiable need to win over grown-ups. We were warned that this kind of over-pleasing behavior could be a sign of an attachment problem in an adopted child. We’ve consulted a few experts, though, and the consensus seems to be that since he shows positive signs of attachment to us, we shouldn’t worry about it.

(Recently, though, he’s started talking to homeless men. I don’t mean he responds to them when they talk to him; I mean, he goes out of his way to engage them in conversation even when they are trying to ignore him. Should I be worried?)

Anyway, in a big gathering, Aitch gravitates toward the men, but in smaller social setting, he is very, very charming with women. He really tailors his approach to his audience. To wit:

To me, dressed for work and kissing him as he wakes up: “You look so pretty, Mommy. I like your polka-dot shirt.”

At Starbucks, to the woman at the next table: “I really like your purse.”

To my visiting friend: “Your toes are red. They’re really pretty.”

Almost any adult in Aitch’s orbit makes the same prediction about his future career: “He’s going to be a salesman, eh?”

Overheard:

Minor: “Funny?”

Husband: “No, it’s not funny. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. Hitting is not funny. Biting is not funny. You know what’s funny? Pratfalls are funny. Can you do any pratfalls?”

It’s not often that the pharmaceutical and mommy domains of my life intersect, but here you go: Placebo pills for kids.

I think if it’s unethical to give placebos to adults, then it’s unethical to give them to kids, too — not to mention that it’s unhealthy to model taking unnecessary drugs.

Husband says it’s harmless, like a kiss on a boo-boo.

What do you think?

Friday was yet another opportunity for Husband and me to celebrate our triskadekaversary. We lined up a (free) babysitter (thank you, C! Thank you!), but I wasn’t in the mood to go out for a formal dinner. I told Husband that the one child-free experience I was really craving was an hour on the lake in my kayak. Husband doesn’t kayak, but I promised him an hour lakefront with a book and a beer, unmolested by infant demands. He agreed, and we bought a six-pack of Hefeweizen and tied up the kayak.

When we got to the lake, though, we discovered we had forgotten the bottle opener. “We’ll figure something out, right?” I said.

“I might, but you’re going to be in the middle of the lake,” Husband pointed out.

I put a beer in my boat anyway.

The weather was perfect — sunny, warm, not too windy, but not too still and buggy, either. After about half an hour of paddling I started thinking about that beer. I examined the cap, thinking maybe it was a twist-off after all, but no such luck. The bottle cap even bore the words, “Use Bottle Opener,” no doubt to forestall lawsuits brought by plaintiffs like myself who found themselves without a churchkey.

I did have a regular key, though, and I tried to use it to pry the cap off. There was a little hissing sound of air escaping from the bottle, but I made no real progress. By now I was really thirsty and beginning to feel that my pride was at stake. It was a pretty sad state of affairs if, after three years in the Peace Corps, I couldn’t open a simple beer bottle without aid of modern technology. Really, I might as well hang up my Birkenstocks.

What would MacGyver do?

I surveyed the equipment at hand: Key. Child’s lunch box. Sigg water bottle. Volume 4 of The Raj Quartet. Hair band. Thousands of gallons of water. And…kayak.

The kayak has a lip around the cockpit coaming that is used to attach a spray skirt. I positioned the bottle with the cap under the lip and cracked it down. There was a gentle “poof” and then the cap came right off. I lost some beer due to the fact that the bottle was almost upside down when it opened, but other than that it worked like a charm. It was the best beer I’d ever had.

When I got back to shore, Husband had also managed to open his beer, but there was blood and broken glass involved. Score one for Peace Corps ingenuity.

When the boys were babies, they were terrible sleepers, and Husband and I spent hours and hours singing them to sleep. Naturally, we chose songs that we liked and to which we knew all the words: Springsteen, Dylan, and Tull for Husband, and Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and Ben Folds Five for me. (Sample inappropriate sleepytime lyric: “Give me my money back, you bitch.”)

The boys are older now, though, and their tolerance for a capella has diminished. Aitch doesn’t like us to sing to him at all, and gets especially wiggy when Husband and I sing in unison. Minor only likes songs he already has heard a thousand times, which creates a Catch-22 situation that sounds an awful lot like “The Wheels on the Bus (Go Round and Round).” If I sing a song that’s not on his mental set list he complains about it, in his very Minor-like way of letting you know when every little detail in his world is not precisely to his liking.

A few weeks ago, I slipped a new song into my nighttime repertoire: “Rubber Ducky.” At first, Minor put up with it, probably because he had heard it on “Sesame Street.” But when I got to the part that goes, “Every day when I make my way to my tubby…” he didn’t recognize it as part of the same song and started whining: “No not that song other song Mommy other song Mommy OTHER SONG!”

“Relax, honey, it’s just the bridge,” I told him, and started the familiar part again.

The next few times I sang it, he did the same thing. I tried to head him off at the pass by distracting him during that section. I would put my head close to his and then rub noses when we got to “Rub-a-dub-dubby.” Eventually he twigged to the fact that it was part of the song. Now as soon as I begin to sing “Rubber ducky, you’re the one…” he begins chanting, “Every day Mommy every day mommy EVERY DAY.” When we get to the bridge he rubs my nose and laughs.

I don’t know that it’s that great of a story, but it’s one of those little fleeting things that gets replaced by other routines pretty quickly, and I wanted to remember it.

The lease on one of our cars recently expired. Car shopping has never been my favorite activity, and my experience this round did nothing to endear me further to the sport. In the end, I didn’t get the car I set out to buy, and I paid too much for it, too. It wasn’t even like I was wowed by some slick salesperson; I was just too impatient to walk away when they refused to lower the price any more.

After the dealership screwed up the paperwork, forcing Husband to spend a full day at the insurance company and RMV to straighten it out, I was in an evil humor when I picked up the car. I almost blew a gasket when they made me wait while they regenerated the contract — then they had my address wrong so they had to do it again. By the time the sales guy was ready to give me the grand tour of my new wheels, I just grabbed the keys and drove away.

On the way home, I started warming up to the car. It is the same make as my old one, but despite being two models lower on the food chain, it actually feels more spacious, peppier, and easier to drive.

I was experimenting with the various controls, and I saw one I didn’t recognize. “What’s this?” I thought, and pushed it. The radio cut out, and a voice said, “At the beep, say a command.” The stereo display read, “Telephone.”

It took me a little while to catch on, but it turns out it’s an integrated Bluetooth-enabled hands-free phone system that works perfectly with my new Blackberry. It allows me to dial by voice command and hear conversations through the car radio. I have a talking car!

I know this is hardly new technology, but can I tell you how cool it is to hear someone’s voice coming through six speakers while I drive, without having to lift a finger? It’s exactly like “My Mother the Car.”

I have been experiencing the weirdest sensation, something like, I don’t know, a taste hallucination. I keep imagining that I am tasting something distinctive, even though I’m not eating anything. Most of the time it has been this black truffle cheese, but a few times it was asparagus and once, oddly, a flavor of Baskin-Robbins ice cream (cherry cheesecake) that I used to favor when I was a kid, which I now (having “tasted” it as an adult) realize was disgusting.

Am I having some untoward neurological event? (Dr. Google says yes.) Does this sound like the run-up to a Very Special Episode of “House”? (Although if it were “House,” and I were complaining about strange symptoms, the person next to me would probably go into renal failure, and I’d never be heard from again.)

Speaking of “House”…nothing quite announces, “This show has jumped the shark” like a doctor show in which the regular doctors are suddenly the patients of the week. Same thing with a cop show where the cops are suspected of murder, a lawyer show where the lawyers start taking the stand, etc. TV writers, you were sitting around marinating in your creative juices for the whole writers’ strike, and this is the best you can do?

Dear Wellness Week organizers,

Thank you for your recent efforts re: Wellness Week. The posters are colorful and plentiful, and nothing says fun like “Free Mammograms at Work!”

I must object, though, to your declaration of “No Elevator Fridays.” Now, I’m as big a proponent of “wellness” as the next guy (back in the day, we used to call it “health”). I ran twenty miles last week! I took two yoga classes! I ate ten apples!

But…look at me. Over here. I’m wearing high heels. I’m carrying fifteen pounds of computer and accessories. Do I look like I want to schlep up three flights of stairs to my office? No. Here’s a clue: If I were interested in engaging in activities that promote wellness (back in the day, we used to call it “exercise”), I would be wearing athletic shoes and a running bra so strong it could subdue a guerrilla insurgency.

In short: I will take the damn elevator if I want to.

Yesterday just to mix up the training a bit, I went to the MIT track to do some speed work. Although the track is only blocks away from my office, I studied Google Maps for about fifteen minutes before venturing out to find it. In Cambridge, there is no “Point A to Point B,” even on foot. I had to run through two parking lots and down a path between two fences and across train tracks and through a construction zone to find the football stadium.

The track was a very high-quality springy material, and I was grateful for the cushioning. But MIT’s football stadium in scope and grandeur was on par with the one at our local middle school. There were a few bleachers on the “home” side, nothing at all for spectators from visiting Salve Regina or whomever else the Engineers face on the gridiron. (Click the link lest you think that’s a joke. Yeah, I thought Salve Regina was a girls’ school, too.)

The whole time I was running my intervals, there was a man hanging sitting on the field. He had work clothes and equipment, so he didn’t look like a loiterer, but he wasn’t actually doing any work. It reminded me of that ’70’s movie, One on One, in which Robbie Benson is a hot-shot college basketball star who is pampered by the university alumni with money, a car, a tutor to do his homework, etc. He has a work-study “job” turning on the athletic field sprinklers, which come on automatically. Strange the things that will course through your brain when you’re in oxygen debt.

It’s a testament to the gullibility of the 1970’s moviegoing public that we would ever accept Robbie Benson as a college-level athlete. Or, for that matter, a straight man.

The other day, Minor asked me for a fruit cup. That’s right, fruit cup: Single-serving, individually-packaged, environment-killing, high-fructose drenched death snack. Get DSS on speed dial and conference in Al Gore, because I’m the worst mother in the world. I opened it and placed it on the kitchen table for him. “TV room?” he asked hopefully.

I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule about eating in the TV room or anywhere else in the house; it’s just not something I can get too exercised about. I usually ask myself two questions: How much of a mess would it be if they spilled it? And, how likely is the dog to eat it off the couch and, subsequently, throw it up? If the answer to either of those questions is, “Ewwwww,” then the answer is no, it must be eaten in the kitchen.

“No, honey, you have to eat it in the kitchen,” I said.

He looked at me thoughtfully. “Daddy yes fruit cup in TV room,” he said.

“Well, I don’t care if Daddy lets you eat fruit cup in the TV room. I’m saying you have to eat it in the kitchen.”

He took a minute to parse that. “Daddy yes, Mommy no.”

If that’s not a concise summation of the difference in our parenting styles, I don’t know what is. It’s also a convenient shorthand for Minor to rat out his father’s overly permissive decisions.

“No, you can’t play with that electrical cord.”

“Daddy yes, Mommy no.”

“Honey! What the hell?”

“Gee thanks, Minor.”