The longer-term readers may recall that I have been cutting and dying my own hair as an economy measure (indeed, one darling commenter once wrote, "Don't make me come over there and drag you out by your home-dyed hair!", which reminds me that I need to get off my voluptuous rump and announce that I'm going to start having "Comment of the Week", like the witty Comics Curmudgeon does). However, I felt like changing my hairstyle somewhat, and Iris Uber Alles needed a professional color intervention (I dyed Iris's hair blonde last summer, and it needed a professional assist to move back towards its natural color). So I booked us in together for an appointment, taking the latest one available so as not to cut into the husband's work time.
The Sober Husband was supposed to handle Lola, and he did arrive most satisfactorily at the beginning of our appointment, from whence he whisked Lola away for tea and a brownie at Samovar, an elegant teahouse nearby. However, he wanted to get away in time for a "Dads Night Out" held by our preschool, where the fathers would be convening at a particular bar before moving next door to a poolhall. So he brought Lola back before our mutual appointment was over.
For completely oblique reasons of his own, the Sober Husband brought back a single cupcake (evidently the last one for sale) and a chocolate croissant (intended to be a consolation prize). He asked Iris Uber Alles which one she wanted, and surprise surprise!, she picked the cupcake. Lola burst out into tears, entirely predictably, because Her Big Sister Had A Cupcake And She, Poor Cheated Orphan, Had None. "Bye, sweetie, I've got to go now! Enjoy your appointment with a screaming child!" the husband wittily remarked as he bolted out to make his beer-drinking appointment (and mind you, coincidentally there was a field trip, err, "morale booster" at Doggyo that very same day where all the little employees visited the Anchor Steam Brewery and spent the afternoon seeing how beer is made, so it's not as though he were particularly in need of beer-themed relaxation).
So there I was, mid-haircut, in a tiny hair salon surrounded by non-parents who were clearly not amused by hearing crying. I called Lola to me and held her in my lap. I promised her a cupcake later, which my non-breeding hairdresser Michele thought was poor parenting. "She had a brownie already!" said Michele. "But that didn't have frosting on it, and she has to see her sister eat the cupcake!" I said weakly. (Of course, it would have made sense to split the cupcake in half, but I just inherited the situation from my husband).
The always perky Nancy, co-owner of the salon, got down a gothic Tim Burton doll from a display to cheer Lola up, and I got her to sit next to me, away from her sister. Meanwhile Iris made sure to eat her cupcake slowly and luxuriantly, theatrically savoring each bite. She gave me her napkin and the scorned chocolate croissant to throw away.
I slunk out of the salon after paying, carrying my stench of Bad Parent Who Takes Crying Children Into A Place Where They Don't Belong with me.
22 comments:
do they actually do any work at doggyo?
They're obviously trying to develop a logarithm for taste testing fermented grains.
Good question, Hughman, good question.
too much fun, not enough cupcakes. where was the cupcake for you ????
At my house if a cupcake were split in half the amount of screaming would double. Cutting a cupcake is like killing it. Its useless after that. And if one of them refuses to eat the slaughtered cake, then the other one will say, "fine, I'll eat it." Then the gobbling will commence and then the screaming will redouble because now there is also regret.
Why is it that people (parents and non-parents alike) feel free offer unsolicited judgments and advice, yet never offer unsolicited praise???
Oh that's just wrong to have to have a crying child at a hair appointent. I would have killed my husband had he done that. I get so few moments away, and I only manage to get a hair cut twice a year or so, that if he had ruined my little bit of me time, there would be hell to pay.
And I would have "rewarded" my crying daughter with whatever it took - a dozen cupcakes if necessary - to get her to stop crying in that situation.
Anonymous (is that you, Kim?), thank you for that amusing anecdote of your pain. I love hearing about other people's unreasonable children, so that cupcake perhaps did not die entirely in vain.
i loved the whole "Death of a Sweetsfan" scenario too. there is no life in half a cupcake. it's a half moon of despair.
Freewheel, I hear that about the unsolicited criticism . The only exception to that blanket observation is when someone whose parenting practices you whole-heartedly disagree with catches you in a weak moment of parenting and compliments you. Like when the red-neck conservative saw me giving my 2 year old a time-out and complimented me on my parenting by saying, "I'm glad you're not a bleeding heart liberal" in front of a group of my liberal friends.
That's demoralizing in an entirely more humiliating way.
Wait, what's wrong with timeouts? I had timeouts and remember them being quite effective until I hit about age 8 (and learned to fall asleep during them.)
there's nothing wrong with the time out. a very effective tool. I use them all the time. But SOMETIMES I don't use them soon enough and by the time I get to them I'm a little less the parent I would like to be a little more Joan Crawford with the hangers, just a little. And it's always that sliver of bad parenting which gets complimented by your conservative stranger in front of your gentle friends.
We use timeouts (I have some good anecdotes about timeouts from Iris's toddlerhood), but in this case, the Sober Husband slipped out before I could put him in one.
Seriously, the problem wasn't a misbehavior on the part of Lola. She didn't do anything except cry, and the crying was genuine, from the heart angst. Yes, as grownups we think it's idiotic to cry because your sister has a cupcake, but she is a preschooler, and it was a particularly luscious cupcake.
Putting her in a timeout would have been punishing her for getting upset at the unfairness of life. Practically speaking, it would have added to our problems, as it would have made her cry all the more.
Of course that comment of Vodalus's was for anonymous. Oops, is my narcissism showing?
We were Bad Parents from Hell in business class last time we flew long distance, and the kids weren't even crying. Everything was going quite nicely and happily for us and our fellow passengers until we were 6 hours into our second 12-hour flight, when my 6-year-old daughter vomited. Then she vomited again. And again. Every 20 minutes until we landed, in fact (and for several hours after that). For reasons known only to airline management, the only sick bags were in the inflight entertainment packs by each seat – no spares anywhere. So after she’d used our lot, and a few supermarket-type bags that the staff found, I got to go from seat to seat begging people to hand over their sick bags. People were not smiling at us by the time the plane landed, thanks to the actual stench. We were grateful we weren’t in economy class, even if nobody else agreed with us! It was obvious to everyone that people with children Do Not Belong in business class if they can't even stop their kids from puking.
I can't stop thinking about the horror of having a puking child on an airplane.
Once my sister's son FILLED his molded plastic highchair seat with diarrhea. There we were in the middle of this huge restaurant and she couldn't pick him up because he was covered in dripping poo. She had to push the whole high chair (which did not have wheels) across the restaurant while I made a spectacle by laughing hysterically.
But how did your hair turn out?
yeah, i thought this post was about a bad haircut...
i used to live across the street from samovar. i went to the salon across the street and had my hair cut and dyed once by a *very* flaming Thai homosexual. apparently, 'i want my hair close to my natural shit brown as possible' must sound very similar to 'please make me blond'. i left there with him saying 'but you look like pamela anderson!!!!'
Non-parents should know that there are times when the Bribe is necessary. I call it "the cost of doing business in a foreign country." Whatever you need to do to accomplish the task at hand, is perfectly appropriate. Tomorrow, after all, is another day.
heh, bribe=necessary. salary=spoiled brat.
at 46, i can still be bribed.
Who can't be bribed? Only for me, it would be liquor and cheese. Maybe, shoes.
We were kicked out of Wolfgang Puck's restaurant thanks to my son a few years ago. The restaurant was full of haters.
Ugh.
Post a Comment