embarrassing things

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I Know You Want a Playdate Play-by-Play

You are so lovely and kind and comforting and wise. I adore you, truly. Thank you. 

Also, just as an FYI: posting something highly vulnerable in the middle of the night – despite receiving kind, gentle, and understanding responses – may result in searing embarrassment. 

Moving on, let’s talk about playdates!!! It’s all playdates all the time over here, folks! 

We had two, on consecutive days, and they are now over, and they went okay. I feel more confident about future playdates, and have also reinforced my belief that back-to-back playdates are Too Much For Me.

Like many suggested, I allowed Carla to fill the kids in on our house rules (i.e., no shoes in the house, wash your hands when you come into the house, no food outside of the kitchen). As you predicted, no one complained. 

I mainly left the kids alone to do their own thing, but there were two hiccups with this plan during the first playdate. 

First, I had to unexpectedly re-do a writing project, so I needed focused time to work while the kids were playing. But of all Carla’s many toys, they seized on her small collection of remote-controlled animals/robots and brought them all downstairs – presumably because they move more easily on the hard flooring instead of the carpet. 

After I asked them not to spy on me with the walkie talkie robot, they abandoned this avenue of play. One of my rules is “no screens” – although there is a special dispensation for a movie once all other play options, including going outside, have been exhausted. But during the first playdate, the kids went into the basement and started playing music on the TV in the workout room. Carla does this when she “works out,” by which I mean she sets the treadmill to something like point-five miles per hour and then sings along to Dua Lipa and Ava Max while she walks. Fine, I can be flexible with this re-interpretation of the no-screens thing. 

After awhile, I noticed that I couldn’t hear the music anymore so I went to check on the kids… and they were sitting in the dark on the exercise bench playing some sort of “would you rather” game on the TV. They’d found it on… YouTube? Netflix? I honestly have no idea. The questions I saw were pretty tame, but I have NO IDEA what the content of the other questions was so I put the kibosh on this activity pretty quickly. 

Well. Lesson learned, and before the second playdate, I re-discussed with Carla my reasoning for not allowing screens, and talked with her YET AGAIN about why unsupervised internet surfing freaks me out, and I specified that even the downstairs TV is off limits. 

So. We were all set for playdate number two, and that went very smoothly. The kids played Truth or Dare most of the time, which consisted mainly of them daring one another to run into my office and shout something nonsensical or do a little dance. 

All of the other things I worried about – you are going to be SHOCKED by this, so brace yourself – turned out to be non-issues. I had Reasons for being near both of the friends’ houses, so we were able to pick up one friend and drop off the other, and one of their parents did the other half of the interaction. I loaded up on plenty of snacks, and the kids ate the snacks – except for the bananas, which I will now have to add to my already robust supply of frozen overripe bananas. I fed both kids dinner, and that worked out fine, although one of the kids didn’t want chicken nuggets so I had to pivot at the last minute. Thankfully, I had some meatballs in the freezer and she was amenable to eating those with some spaghetti noodles; my kid ate plain pasta. 

Because the kids had other activities, the duration of the playdates sort of fell into place organically. They ended up being about four hours each, which worked just fine. Time will tell whether Carla gets invited to the kids’ houses for playdates – although one parent said she was welcome anytime – but after everyone’s accounts of how infrequently their own kids got invited to playdates, I am no longer focusing on that particular worry; I’m sure others will move right in to take its place. 

You are so lovely and kind and comforting and wise. I adore you, truly. Thank you. 

Also, just as an FYI: posting something highly vulnerable in the middle of the night – despite receiving kind, gentle, and understanding responses – may result in searing embarrassment. 

Moving on, let’s talk about playdates!!! It’s all playdates all the time over here, folks! 

We had two, on consecutive days, and they are now over, and they went okay. I feel more confident about future playdates, and have also reinforced my belief that back-to-back playdates are Too Much For Me.

Like many suggested, I allowed Carla to fill the kids in on our house rules (i.e., no shoes in the house, wash your hands when you come into the house, no food outside of the kitchen). As you predicted, no one complained. 

I mainly left the kids alone to do their own thing, but there were two hiccups with this plan during the first playdate. 

First, I had to unexpectedly re-do a writing project, so I needed focused time to work while the kids were playing. But of all Carla’s many toys, they seized on her small collection of remote-controlled animals/robots and brought them all downstairs – presumably because they move more easily on the hard flooring instead of the carpet. 

After I asked them not to spy on me with the walkie talkie robot, they abandoned this avenue of play. One of my rules is “no screens” – although there is a special dispensation for a movie once all other play options, including going outside, have been exhausted. But during the first playdate, the kids went into the basement and started playing music on the TV in the workout room. Carla does this when she “works out,” by which I mean she sets the treadmill to something like point-five miles per hour and then sings along to Dua Lipa and Ava Max while she walks. Fine, I can be flexible with this re-interpretation of the no-screens thing. 

After awhile, I noticed that I couldn’t hear the music anymore so I went to check on the kids… and they were sitting in the dark on the exercise bench playing some sort of “would you rather” game on the TV. They’d found it on… YouTube? Netflix? I honestly have no idea. The questions I saw were pretty tame, but I have NO IDEA what the content of the other questions was so I put the kibosh on this activity pretty quickly. 

Well. Lesson learned, and before the second playdate, I re-discussed with Carla my reasoning for not allowing screens, and talked with her YET AGAIN about why unsupervised internet surfing freaks me out, and I specified that even the downstairs TV is off limits. 

So. We were all set for playdate number two, and that went very smoothly. The kids played Truth or Dare most of the time, which consisted mainly of them daring one another to run into my office and shout something nonsensical or do a little dance. 

Another unexpected – hmmm… “dilemma” seems too strong a word, but that’s in the neighborhood of how I’m feeling about this so we’ll stick with it – dilemma arose during the not-insignificant car rides to and from the playdates. It’s partially my fault, and I have now Set A Precedent, so it’s something to mull. I suggested that the kids take turns making song requests to liven up the car ride. They really enjoyed this, and I enjoyed hearing their adorable conversations about the artists they like. However, Carla is allowed to listen to a lot of music, even if it has questionable lyrics. I draw the line currently at hard rap and other words with frequent cursing or use of the N-word, but even Taylor Swift will throw out an F-bomb now and again. We’ve talked about cursing and how there is a time and a place, and Carla is pretty averse to it overall, so we feel that it’s okay in music. I prefer the radio edits, honestly, but I’m not precious about it. But… I don’t really know how OTHER PARENTS feel about this. For one of our playdates, I know the parents really well and I think they would be okay with it… but the other kid’s parents are not as familiar to me. She didn’t seem to request, like, exclusively Disney songs or KidzBop songs, so I am guessing her parents let her listen to a range of music, but may be a little more restrictive than my husband and I are on this topic. Anyway, there was a lot of whispering in the car over song selection, and I heard Carla say, “Oh, she won’t mind” about me, and I overheard some discussion about and then a decision not to request a song that had a curse word in the title. And there was a song Carla requested that has the F-word in it, so I very loudly and obnoxiously bleeped that out every time it came up, which the kids found both annoying and hilarious. I don’t know. Curse words exist in the world. These kids are ten and eleven and are aware of that. So I guess I don’t feel too bad about allowing a little bit of cursing in songs we listen to??? But also I feel a little unsure about the “right” stance to take, when I am charged with caring for another person’s kid. Your thoughts are welcome.

All of the other things I worried about – you are going to be SHOCKED by this, so brace yourself – turned out to be non-issues. I had Reasons for being near both of the friends’ houses, so we were able to pick up one friend and drop off the other, and one of their parents did the other half of the interaction. I loaded up on plenty of snacks, and the kids ate the snacks – except for the bananas, which I will now have to add to my already robust supply of frozen overripe bananas. I fed both kids dinner, and that worked out fine, although one of the kids didn’t want chicken nuggets so I had to pivot at the last minute. Thankfully, I had some meatballs in the freezer and she was amenable to eating those with some spaghetti noodles; my kid ate plain pasta. 

Because the kids had other activities, the duration of the playdates sort of fell into place organically. They ended up being about four hours each, which worked just fine. Time will tell whether Carla gets invited to the kids’ houses for playdates – although one parent said she was welcome anytime – but after everyone’s accounts of how infrequently their own kids got invited to playdates, I am no longer focusing on that particular worry; I’m sure others will move right in to take its place. 

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Millennial Moment

One of the differences in my personality vs my husband’s is that I expect to figure things out as I go, and he prefers to know things in advance. Say we are going to a concert in the park. He will go online, map out the directions, look at parking. He will probably visit the park website to see if there is any information about parking. This is all fine and good and useful. I, on the other hand, would probably plug the park address into my navigator on the way to the concert and figure out parking when I get there. I trust that most things will be easy enough to figure out as you go along, and I think I’ve mainly been right about that. This is not to say that my husband’s methodology is wrong – and it has plenty of benefits. It’s just different. 

When it was time to wire our down payment to the title company, I figured it would be pretty intuitive. Just go to the bank with the wiring instructions, and the money would be wired. Easy peasy lemon squeeze. My reasoning is that banks deal with this kind of thing all the time. Sending a wire may be an unusual occurrence for us, but this is something banks do all the time. There must be systems in place.  

My husband was not willing to leave it at that and had me ask the title company agent what we should do. (He was in the hospital, so I was left to this task.) The title company agent told me that we needed to go in a day or two early, to make sure the money was wired on the date of closing, but that any teller should be able to make the wire transfer. This satisfied me, and since I was the one doing the actual wire transfer, I felt good about it. 

This, my friends, is what is known as “foreshadowing.”

But. If a blog is good for anything, it is for sharing one’s most humiliating moments publicly and in perpetuity.

Two days before our closing, I went to the bank. 

I need to pause for a moment and describe the bank to you. You walk in the door and are immediately greeted by a small welcome desk. I have been a patron at this bank for more than a decade and I don’t think I have ever seen a human at the welcome desk, but it is there just in case. The welcome desk is positioned in roughly the center of the bank. To the left are offices; to the right is a big upside-down-L-shaped bank of counters behind which the tellers stand. There are spaces for at least eight tellers; on this day there were two tellers in attendance which is neither here nor there but between that and the welcome desk, I’m guessing this branch may have staffing issues. In front of the tellers is a big open space for patrons to wait in a cordoned off multi-server queue. There is also a large desk in this area that has pens, deposit slips, and advertisements for various services the bank offers; this desk does not feature prominently in the story to follow, but I included it in the drawing so I feel like I need to describe it to you. I have included a rendering of the interior of the bank for your reference. It is not to scale.

Two days before the closing on our new house, I went to the bank. I stood in line to wait for a teller. One teller was, I think, counting money using a very loud machine. Thpthpthpthpthpthpthp went the bills as the machine organized them into neat stacks. The only other teller was helping a very elderly man who had visible hearing aids. He was having trouble communicating with the teller and kept asking her what she’d said. I felt bad for this poor guy who could hardly hear, especially with all the noise of the money counting machine, which would fall silent and then comically renew its thpthpthp efforts every time the teller began to speak. 

When I’d arrived, it was just me and one other person. But as I waited for the elderly man ahead of me to finish his halting interaction with the teller, people filed in behind me. The second teller finished counting money and took her position at the drive through window. The elderly man finished his business and I was next. 

I explained to the teller that I needed to wire money for a down payment on a house. 

“Oh,” she said, “mumble mumble something.” 

Aha. So it wasn’t that the elderly man was hard of hearing, it was that the teller did not know how to project her voice through the plexiglass window and across the counter. Or perhaps a lethal combination of both.

I asked her to repeat herself. 

“I can’t help you with that,” she said, more loudly, and in that forced-calm way that makes it seem like it’s my fault for not being able to hear her. “You need to meet with a banker.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’d like to meet with a banker then.”

“You have to go sign in on the whiteboard,” she said.

“The whiteboard?”

She motioned toward the front of the bank. “The whiteboard. Right when you come in. At the front, by the door.”

Okay. I thanked her and went back to the front of the store and looked for the whiteboard.

Let’s all take a minute and ask ourselves what a whiteboard might look like. This is what I pictured:

I could not find a whiteboard near the front of the bank. I looked around, scanning the walls, scanning the welcome desk. 

“Right there,” the teller called. She had been watching me and was now directing me across the heads of many people waiting for her. 

I looked. I turned in a circle, panic building as I continued to not see a whiteboard. Or anything resembling a whiteboard. Or even a clipboard or a sign up sheet or a notepad. The teller pointed, which was, ironically, pointless, because she was all the way across the room. “Right there! Right in front of you! The whiteboard!”

Internet, I cannot even describe to you my bafflement. There was a desk and NOTHING ON IT. Where was this whiteboard that she could see and I could not? It was not on the desk, it was not on the floor. I was sure – SURE – that the teller thought it was there, because it was normally there, but maybe no one had put it out yet that morning? I could feel the eyes of all the people in the line, waiting for their banking needs to be addressed by this lone teller or perhaps waiting to find out how long we could keep up this hilarious prank.

“RIGHT THERE,” the teller yelled across the bank. Finally, in a fit of descriptive genius she said, “Leaning against the wall!”

I looked to my left. Against the wall indeed something leaned. Was it a whiteboard? Apparently, in this teller’s mind, it was. I will let you be the judge:

I will share my opinion: This is not a whiteboard. This is a fucking A-frame sign that my eyes dismissed as an advertisement.

The sign was leaning against the wall just to the left of the door. Leaning, out of eyeline, as though it had been closed up for the day. It was not standing on top of the welcome desk, which would not have transformed it into a whiteboard, but would possibly have caught my eye.

I have added an X to the diagram of the bank, indicating the location of the not-a-whiteboard:

“This?” I asked, gesturing to the sign that I had not even acknowledged because it bore so tenuous a relationship to the word “whiteboard” in my mind, my face by now aflame and my pulse rapid in my throat. The horde of bank patrons looked on as the teller said, in tones of my-god-I-thought-I’d-have-to-hit-you-over-the-head-with-it, “Yes.”

I like to think that I would have eventually noticed and examined the sign, had I not been so completely befuddled by the spotlight of the teller’s attention. But perhaps I really am that dumb; who’s to say.

“Oh I see,” I said, not sure whether I was speaking to her or the other patrons or myself, “I just scan it and then sign in that way?”

A woman materialized behind the welcome desk. She would have been much more welcome, to me at least, a few moments prior to this little drama. 

“Hi,” she said smoothly. “If you just scan the QR code, you’ll be able to sign in. You’ll get a few questions and I can walk you through how to answer them.”

I was so flustered I could hardly see. My hands were trembling under the pressure of all those eyes. But I managed to open my camera and scan the QR code, like the tech-savvy millennial I pretend to be. 

“It should pre-load a number in your text messages, and you just hit send,” the woman directed, her voice low and soothing as though I might at any moment startle and take flight or maybe bare my teeth at her and growl. She was there to avert another scene as much as she was to help. 

I dutifully sent the text; I was so discombobulated that I honestly don’t know if I could have figured out what to do by myself. 

I understand and value technology. I do. But just because a technological tool may make simplify or improve workflow for the staff of a company doesn’t mean it is useful or workable for its customers. If I hadn’t been so publicly floundering, I don’t know that I would have gotten any help. I might still be there, in that bank, looking for an invisible whiteboard.

“You’ll get a text,” the woman explained, “and you just need to answer ‘yes.'”

A few long seconds passed and I got a reply text with some ridiculously simple question, like “Do you have an appointment today? 1. Yes 2. No” and the woman, reading over my shoulder said, “Now, type in a 2 and hit send.” She walked me through the remaining questions, all equally basic – “What are you here to do? 1. Deposit 2. Set up account 3. Withdrawal 4. Other” and “What is your name?” and “Do you have an account here?” etc. I could feel the eyes of the remaining patrons on me, curious to learn just how much help I really needed or possibly feeling grateful they were safely on the other side of the crowd control stanchions and far away from this check-in process.

Finally, I reached the end of the text questions – the “sign in process” – and I got a text that said, “Thank you! A banker will be with you shortly!”

That’s when the calming woman said, “Great! Thank you for signing in. I can help you right now.”

Picture me blinking rapidly as though something had short-circuited in my brain. 

I followed her back to her office. We sat down. I explained to her why I was there: we would be closing in two days, my title company advised me to come and set up the wire in advance. 

“Oh, we can’t pre-schedule a wire transfer,” she said. 

I stared at her. “But… we haven’t signed closing documents yet. I don’t want to wire the money until the date of closing.”

She nodded. “I understand. But the wire transfer occurs the same day we schedule it.” She left her office briefly to double check that this was true with a colleague. 

When she returned, she smiled at me pityingly.

“You’ll have to come back in two days,” she said. “I’ll make an appointment for you, so you don’t have to go through that again.”

by

Weigh In Wednesday (Post Not in Any Way Related to Weight)

My hands are still shaking from a horrendously embarrassing experience, so I am trying to distract myself with some fun and fluff. 

Oh, you want to share in my humiliation first? Okay. 

I texted the owner of The Kitten to see if Carla could come visit him (“him” meaning the kitten; the owner is a woman). I had recently put her number in my phone, at Carla’s request. She’d (the kitten owner, not Carla) texted me so I would have her number, and I’d added her to my contacts. I tend to add people to my phone as “FirstName LastName,” and then never include any other identifying details… and you are well aware that I have a terrible memory… so there are multiple people in my phone who are now complete mysteries to me. One of these days I should really go through my phone and delete those people. 

I clicked on the kitten owner’s name – noting briefly that there was no prior text from her; I must have deleted it – and texted her: Hi, this is Carla’s mom. Is there a good time for Carla to come visit The Kitten?

A few minutes later I got back a series of question marks. 

As you may have intuited from my expert foreshadowing, I texted THE WRONG PERSON. Apparently, I have two people with the same first name in my phone. A fact which I have long since forgotten. The one whose name popped up when I started the text was the wrong one. 

And I have NO IDEA WHO SHE IS. 

Is this an old work contact? Is this someone for whom I’ve done freelance work? Is she a fellow parent from Carla’s school? Is she a board member I’ve interviewed for a writing project? Is she someone I went to grad school with? Is she a friend of a friend I’d connected with at some point? Is she some sort of service provider I have employed at some point? ZERO IDEA. 

I typed back, So sorry! I must have the wrong number!

But what I REALLY should have typed back was, So sorry! I must have typed the wrong FirstName!

Because if she is in my phone, there is a real likelihood that we know each other, and have interacted via phone before. Which means that there is a real possibility that she is sitting there wondering a) why I am contacting her about a kitten she doesn’t know and b) why I am pretending it was a wrong number and c) why I haven’t asked her how her work/family/life is. 

But I have no idea who this person is, or why she is a contact in my phone. I even googled her and I swear I have never seen her before in my life. But she was in my phone. So we must have known each other at some point! 

All I can do is hope that this person has as terrible a memory as I do, and has long since removed me from her phone, and isn’t feeling hurt/miffed/weirded out by my faux pas. 

LET’S MOVE ON TO LESS HORRIFYING TOPICS.

I have some questions for you. 

Weigh In #1: What food do you hate, but wish you didn’t? While I am a very choosy eater, I don’t feel particularly bad about it most of the time. I eat enough of a variety of foods that I’m pretty confident I can go to any restaurant or any friend’s house and find something to eat. I’ve never once thought, “I wish I enjoyed lamb. Or beets.” But there are a few foods I hate that I really wish I didn’t. 

Tomatoes. I hate tomatoes so very, very much. But they are one of those wildly ubiquitous foods that show up all the time, in places expected and not. (I cannot tell you how frequently I have encountered tomatoes on a Caesar salad, when they have no place in a Caesar salad.) Life would be so much easier and more pleasant if I just liked tomatoes! Or could at least tolerate them! Even friends who kindly ask about food preferences before they invite us over sometimes have tomatoes in their offerings, and I am just so very weary of being that picky person who doesn’t like tomatoes. 

Oatmeal. I cannot bring myself to enjoy oatmeal. Outside of oatmeal cookies, which are the sole exception. But lots of people genuinely enjoy oatmeal, and it seems like such a hearty, healthful food. I really wish I liked it. 

Eggs. Outside of scrambled eggs – which, even then, I only like a specific way – I avidly dislike eggs in ALL FORMS. But they are versatile and easy and full of protein. I want to like them. 

Weigh In #2: What is the best seat on an airplane? I prefer the window, myself. I like being tucked in next to the wall, I like being able to look out during turbulence to reassure myself that we are not in fact falling out of the sky, I like being able to lean my head against a solid surface. But when I fly with my family, my husband is the one who gets the window (although sometimes he swaps with Carla) and I get the aisle. I do not care for the aisle, because it puts me in close proximity to people, and those people tend to be very oblivious to the boundary between their space in the aisle and my space in my actual seat. The only benefit to the aisle seat is easy access to bathroom breaks. But then again, you have to be the one to pop up and down while the middle- or window-seater squeezes past you to the bathroom. I still remember the time I flew and a woman in front of me refused to swap seats with her row-mate’s spouse, because the spouse was in a window seat. “I have a bum leg, and I prefer the aisle so I can stretch out my leg,” she said. But… you aren’t supposed to stretch your leg into the aisle, right??!?! Isn’t that a tripping hazard? Isn’t that begging for a new leg injury when the drinks cart slams into your shin? 

Weigh In #3: What is your worst time-wasting habit? I am already terrible about spending too much time on social media. But more recently, I have found new depths to my time wasting online, which is that I have gotten sucked into watching gender reveals on Instagram. There is literally nothing beneficial about this habit – except that I derive occasional joy from the rare parent that shows true, unbridled joy at the result. Okay, and usually only if that unbridled joy is coming from the male parent, and in response to a pink result. These videos are fascinating, though. There are a bunch that feature the same bearded guy, who must run some sort of company that offers and records these sorts of reveals. There are a bunch where the timing is off. There are a bunch where the couple have other children, some of whom seem very disaffected by the whole event. 

The worst – and most fascinating – ones are the ones where one parent is CLEARLY disappointed by the result. I am not faulting someone for being disappointed: when I was pregnant, I was SURE I was having a boy, and I pictured a tiny blond copy of my husband. I got very attached to this fantasy. When we found out that Carla was a girl, I was disappointed. I hope you know that not a single cell of my body is disappointed NOW, now that Carla is a real wonderful human and it has become clear to me that everything I love about her is completely unrelated to her sex. But I get the disappointment. What I find perplexing is recording that disappointment and then posting it for the world to see. Perplexing and fascinating.  

Anyway. That is how I have been wasting far too many minutes of my one wild and precious life lately. I blame spring break. 

Now it’s your turn. Please weigh in.