I’m back from New Orleans a changed woman. Or, at least, a woman much jigglier. We ate dessert after every meal and slept until 7am every day. SEVEN. Life was glorious…free. My favorite part was a trip was to the national WWII Museum. New Orleans was awarded the honor of this prestigious distinction – home to the official WWII museum - due to a New Orleander (sp?) named Andrew Higgins. Higgins designed the first amphibious boat – a boat that could beach. He then modified his fleets by adding ramps – a much more efficient way to unload men and equipment than jumping/throwing them over the side. Eisenhower said that it was Higgins who won the war for us. The whole strategy in Normandy (thousands of boats descending upon the unsuspecting beaches of Normandy) could never have happened without Higgins’ design.

The exhibit was painful. A play-by-play of men and women lost. But it was also inspirational. I mean, I am sitting here at my computer with a hot cup of coffee being paid to do what I love. I owe my freedom to so many people, so many lives. So I ask myself on the eve of this election – what really matters? A kid with two dads? The fact that Ellen and Portia said I do?

D-day is upon us, my friends. We have our boats, we have our ramps…let’s march for what really matters.

Please, California - vote no on 8.

One more thing before my trip….

Yesterday I took our cat Donut to get neutered. When I got to the vet’s office, there was only one other surgery scheduled – a castration of a Russian Wolfhound named Flash.  Flash came up to my bra - had I been wearing one - about the size of a donkey.

“They’re not going to be spending the night in the same room together, are they?” I asked the technician.

“Well, yes. But they’ll be very sleepy and in their cages.”

“You have a cage for that animal?” I asked, pointing at Flash.

“Mmmhmmm…” she muttered, and then she busied herself with paperwork.

I knew she was lying. And I also knew I wouldn’t sleep all night. I’d toss and turn, thinking about poor Donut’s fate. Finally, at 4am I woke Joe up.

“Donut’s a goner.” I cried. And then I told him about Flash the donkey, who came up to my bra had I been wearing one.

“Just be glad Donut’s not a goat in Afghanistan.” Joe muttered.

Even goats are oppressed in Afghanistan? I thought to myself. Who knew?

“Their castrations involve teeth and a small paring knife.” He explained.

“Who’s teeth?” I asked.

“The herder’s. A dad at the park told about it. And then the goat just gets up and eats grass as if nothing’s happened.”

And then he fell back asleep.

I continued to lie awake for two reasons: A) That’s disgusting; B) I was ashamed. All the moms talk about at the park are other moms. And here the dads were, talking about all that trouble over in Afghanistan.

My husband and I leave on a trip to New Orleans tomorrow. We’re celebrating a milestone wedding anniversary this year – 8 years. (if you care to know the significance, click here http://www.parentingoc.com/sugarmama_0708.html) We were supposed to go to Mexico, but I didn’t want to leave the country without our kids. (Louisiana is actually farther away from where we live, but I’ve never made very much sense.) Which is probably why I have anxiety about this trip. Joe and I haven’t traveled together – just the two of us – since having kids six years ago. We didn’t even take a honeymoon unless you count taking a slightly modified road trip from our wedding in San Francisco to Laguna Beach. So what if he finds the real me out? That I’m a nut? A fraud? A bore?

So I asked him to bring a legal pad home from his office last night.

“What for?” he asked.

“To write notes for the plane ride.” I answered.

“Notes about what?”

“Well, I was going to write down a list of topics…which of my haircuts have you liked best, why won’t you let the cat sleep with us, where’s my present…That sort of stuff.”

“Are you worried we won’t have anything to talk about?”

“Kind of.”

And then he walked down the hall laughing. Hysterically.

“Well, you write your own topics then!” I yelled after him.

See? This is why I picked New Orleans. Where the music is loud and the talkin’ is boozey.

So I’ll y’all next week. I’ll work on a list of topics for us when I get back.:)

My oldest son Jackson is on a soccer team for 5 and 6 year-olds. He’s the oldest, I think, by at least two months…years, by AYSO standards. So he should be the best, according to the looks I get from other parents. I think he’s the tallest, too.

Except that Jackson hates soccer, almost as much as I do.

You may be asking yourselves why I signed him up for another season in the first place? Why subject ourselves to boredom/torture/bad coffee every Saturday morning for an entire season? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why. And because my friend promised to bring beer to the sign-ups.

Regardless, we made a commitment and now we have to fulfill it.

“Just kick the ball when it comes to you, run around a bit and act like you know what you’re doing,” I tell Jackson before a game. And he does. No more, no less.

The coach has been disappointed in his performance – understandably so. “He’s a bit of daisy-picker, now, isn’t he?” he’ll joke. (He’s from Ireland, though, so it comes out like, ‘day-zee pickuh.’)

“Well, you know…kids.” Is all I say back.

But I started to feel badly for letting his teammates and their parents down. They needed Jackson to perform, to shine. To make at least…ONE…MEASLEY…GOAL! THINK OF THE TEAM!!!!

It occurred to me this week that I never asked him to actually make a goal. So this Saturday, I told Jackson to make one before he left for the game with Joe. (Any chance to skip these things, I’ll take.) And wouldn’t you know it, he nailed one across the field – a Hail Mary sort of thing – and the crowd went wild. A “Disney movie goal” Joe called it. And Jackson’s team won.

“Huh.” Is all I said when they got back. “Way to go, bud.”

“Thanks.” Jackson said. “I’m hungry.”

He and I are just missing that soccer part of our brains, I guess. Clearly, we think with our stomachs instead.

By some miraculous twist of fate, my husband discovered what I do for a living. He actually googled something about NOT USING SHAMPOO and my blog came up. Sure, he knew I was a writer, that I was always at my computer…but my nasty, on-line habit of cajoling, humiliating and disgracing him? Somehow that tiny tidbit had eluded him until yesterday.

Shame on him for not paying attention, if you ask me.

But alas, it has cost me. With one tiny flip of his wrist, he tossed my last hope of a handsome head to run my fingers through. That eco-, au natural, hippie-smelling shampoo I bought him (hey, just trying to be a team player!) met its unopened death in the trash can with one fell swoosh.

“You know that ‘blog’ rhymes with ‘hog,’ Shoog…” he said as he brushed past me and the trash can.

Indeed it does, honey…but at least I don’t smell like one!!!

My oldest son’s introduction to same-sex couples happened two years ago when he was four. Jackson asked to have a play date with a boy from school named Aiden, and I said, “Sure, let me call his mom.”

Then Jackson told me, “He has no mom, he has two dads.”

I said “Oh, I’ll call one of them, then.” And then we each had a cookie.

Marriage of any flavor is a non-issue in my house, except for my own.

But if a neighbor came to my door with a clipboard, campaigning to protect the “tradition” of hetero-marriage and to please vote yes on Proposition 8 (CA), I’d probably kick her off my property. “Think of your children!” I’d imagine her saying, behind slammed door. “Believe me, I am!” I’d probably scream back.

This hasn’t happened to me but it did to Aiden’s parents. In front of Aiden, no less. I braced myself for their retort when I heard this. “Did you tell her that ‘tradition’ is a turkey on Thanksgiving?” I asked one of the dads. “A Hallmark card on Mother’s Day?” I wanted the details, the dirt “Oooh, did you call her vile and plug your nose?”

They did none of those things, of course. Instead, they showed her the respect that every human deserves. “It’s a matter of opinion,” one dad told me. “And I don’t presume I’m going to change everyone’s minds on this subject, but I wanted her to know that this is not only an academic or theological argument we will be voting on. This has real consequences in life and coincidentally on the street where she lives.”

Proposition 8 obviously impacts Aiden’s family – in an excruciating way, if passed - but it also affects yours and mine. Our job as parents is to raise our children with an understanding of how to love, not who to love. By voting yes, you could be de-valuing the matters of your own child’s heart.

So if you don’t want to marry a girl, Clipboard, then don’t marry a girl.

It’s as easy as that.

It’s a mystery, actually. One day, he’s the Lord ‘o Clean with “immaculate” tattooed between his toes. (And you can actually make the word out, they’re so clean.) Then one day he boycotts the bottle…he doesn’t tell anybody, doesn’t seed his new distaste at the dinner table with rants about being robbed of natural oils by commie chemical companies…just “poof!” NO MORE ‘POO ON JOE’S HEAD.

I don’t know what to make of it. Should I ride it out for a few more days or climb over the shower wall and dump a bunch of suds on his head when he’s not looking?

I’m waiting for feedback, bottle in hand.

I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately to Sugar Mama-ize politics.

Are you a donkey or an elephant?” readers what to know. “Red or blue?”

I’m neither, actually. Or maybe I’m just a cow. Seriously, I’ve waffled more in my voting life than an Eggo. The truth is, neither candidate makes me hurl this election, nor do they make me hoola-hoop.

But, if you must know…Sugar Mama’s for Obama. If you care to know why, you’ll write me. Otherwise, I’ll continue to bore you with all things meaningless and non-political, LIKE HOW MY HUSBAND HAS STOPPED USING SHAMPOO. 

My October column is out on Parenting OC newsstands! This one took a lifetime to write, it seemed, but about an hour to type. (If that makes any sense…:)

http://www.parentingoc.com/sugarmama_0810.html

Someone asked me the other day which one of my kids was my favorite. I know she was kidding, but I also know that she wasn’t. It’s a strange phenomenon, this bond between mother and child - “like no other,” as it’s often described. Yet most of us do have another, and in some cases three or four.

So what happens to that bond with your first? Does it weaken to accommodate a sibling? Or does the new sibling get shafted? I know that love isn’t finite, that it grows…but time, energy and instinct have caps.

As mothers, we give what we have.

So in my case, the first makes me cry and the second makes me laugh. I can stare at my first sleeping for hours, watching him dream. With my youngest, I sneak peeks through his school’s playground fence during the day, watching him laugh and destroy.

I don’t know what this means. Is one heavy, the other light? Is one familial, the other friendly? I’m curious, too, I guess. I love them both the same amount, but like them for completely different reasons…so it depends on the day, I guess.

Today, neither is my favorite because one threw a cup at my head and the other told me my butt was getting big. But lucky for them, I still love them.

And always will.