Red Shoes

I bought a pair of high heeled shoes the other day – tomato red and spiky. They're really great shoes. Very sexy.

If this were a romance novel, my husband would take one look at me in those shoes, throw me over his shoulder, and search out the nearest flat surface.

Sigh.

The reality is that my husband is great at rocking my world, but it doesn't have anything to do with sexy shoes. At least not so far. And frankly, if things like slutty shoes were important to him, he should have married someone else, someone who wouldn't have waited this long to get around to buying some.

So, I've been trying to imagine how he'll react when he gets a look at these amazing shoes. He may go all Neanderthal, but I kind of doubt it. I can't help but think he's more likely to get very, very tense, the same kind of tense that men get when their wives ask them if these pants make me look fat, only probably a little worse, because he will have no prior experience to guide him. Face it, the right answer is "no" or even "NO!" And any man who has ever had even a little time to think about it knows that, or at least he'll know it the second time he's asked.
 
But here's a situation my husband's unlikely to have anticipated, and where he has no prior experience to guide him. A little marital landmine. It almost makes me feel a bit sorry for him.

In fact, I bought the shoes for an event that won't take place for another month, so it's quite possible that my husband's first glimpse of them will be on the Visa bill. I have to think that right off the bat he'll have the wrong reaction, even though that first glimpse will probably set his heart to racing.

When he does see the shoes, on me, he will probably appreciate that my legs look great. But it's not like this is the first time he's ever seen me. We've been together for twenty odd years. He's seen me looking great before. He's also seen me cleaning the garage. He's seen me puttering around the kitchen in sweats. He's seen me with some seriously scary bed head. He's seen me with the stomach flu.

He has seen me delivering a baby.

Obviously I'm lucky that there's more to our mutual attraction than the visual. I heard from one man (for the record – someone else's husband, not mine) that seeing a baby get delivered looks a lot like seeing a deer get gutted. Can one pair of red shoes really counteract a visual like that?

And of course my husband knows me. He knows I don't often wear impractical shoes. He'll probably be wondering how the heck I'll be able to stand in them all night long. He may worry that I'm going to sprain an ankle or dislocate a hip, and it won't only be because he knows he'll be the one who has to lug the groceries in from the car while I'm recuperating. It will also be because, you know, he loves me.

To compound the problem, he'll probably have to let me into his office to change out of my sneakers before the event, because the heels on these shoes are so high and spiky that I couldn't possibly wear them to drive the car, much less to walk across a parking lot of any size.

And it won't help matters that I didn't buy them to go on a hot date. I bought the shoes to match an outfit I'm wearing to an event where we'll be playing host and hostess, standing around making small talk, drinking wine from plastic cups and listening to speeches. By the end of the night my feet will be aching, and I'll be dying to get home, take off the shoes and hurl them into the back of the closet.

It'll be totally worth it though. They're really great shoes. Just ask my husband.
 

The Naughty List

This is a topic I've been meaning to blog about for ages, but it always comes out sounding all whiny. It's about when you try to be a good parent, but end up being a bad parent instead. It's one of the most maddening aspects of parenting, and it happens all the time.

Case in point - the cheerleading incident.  Her  dad and I made it to every game. We took pictures, shot video, and were very enthusiastic. We put up with homework headaches one night a week for months, when she went to cheerleading practice after school instead of Homework Center. We bought the uniform ($50) the turtleneck ($7) the practice T-Shirt ($10) and the shoes ($5). When parents were "invited" to learn a cheer to perform with the kids, I missed work on two afternoons to go to practice and learn the routine, and then embarrassed myself in front of my friends and their children by performing a cheer at half time. I attended the final party/awards ceremony and made a snack. I organized the parents, collected the money, and bought a thank you present for the coach. The evidence is clear - I was a good parent.

Or was I? The team got a last-minute invitation to cheer at a school pep rally one afternoon, and I couldn't go because I had an important meeting at work. My daughter cried. She tried to help me understand how very important this was to her. Where were my priorities?

So I have to ask - did one missed performance undo all the previous support? Or worse, did all the previous support lead to a sense of entitlement? Is she spoiled and manipulative, and it's all my fault? Or you might ask how I could even support her involvement in cheerleading, an activity that is fraught with social and gender issues.

Come on!  That's just not fair.

I think that example is fairly clear. On balance, I think I was a pretty good mom. (And if you disagree, I'd prefer not to know about it.) But sometimes it's less clear. For example, there was the time my friend Laura had her two boys in the car. The apple she'd grabbed for breakfast rolled off the console and into the backseat, where the 3-year-old snagged it and took a bite. When he was tired of eating it, the 5-year-old grabbed it. When he was tired of eating it, he dropped it on the floor.

According to Laura, who was understandably cranky having missed breakfast, her naughty boys stole her breakfast, and then made a mess. That may be true, but the first thing I noticed when she told the story was that she has kids who voluntarily eat healthy snacks. My first thought was to be very impressed by her parenting. And the fact that they shared nicely without being prompted impressed me too.

Hmm.

Now that I'm a mother, I realize just how good my parents were, although when I was a kid, I could have made a good case for the opposite. I have to hope that my daughter will come to appreciate my parenting skills. Because the other day, she was so disgusted by them that she reported me to Santa.

I'm not making that up.

My daughter maintains an on-again, off-again correspondence with Santa all year.  It started when she was little, when we read her a picture book that gave her the idea that Santa would get things if she left them for him on the fireplace hearth.

The other day she left him this letter:

Sigh. The funny thing is that this happened when I was making a special effort to be a good mother. In two ways! I was baking a batch of cookies and asked her if she'd like to help. She loves to cook, so I envisioned a little girl time together in the kitchen, wearing aprons, sneaking bites of cookie dough, making a mess, and generally having fun.

Sometimes when we cook I give her creative license in the kitchen to make up recipes or to try new ingredients. But as an only child, she gets used to having her own way all the time, which has led to some selfishness that isn't going over well with her friends. Because I was making these cookies as a gift and I wanted them to turn out, I thought I could use the situation as a vehicle for a useful little lesson in doing things the way someone else wants to do them. I wanted her to help me, but I needed her to do things my way, and follow the recipe correctly.  She left the kitchen in tears.

And now I'm on Santa's Naughty List.

Figures.