A Million Little Pieces of Dirty Laundry

Last night, I cleaned out the liquor cabinet. No, not because I was feeling any shame or remorse from my fun weekend, but because I found out yesterday that my dad is coming to visit for the weekend, for the first time in more than a year and a half.

My dad is an alcoholic.

He has climbed off and on the wagon over the years more times than I can count, and even though we live several hundred miles apart, I can tell when he's been drinking. And for the past year or two, he's definitely been off the wagon. Waaaaay off the wagon. Off the road the wagon travels on, even. Pretty much passed out by the side of the road while the wagon fades into the horizon. (I could tell you stories from the past eighteen months that would make you cringe and wince and cry, but I just don't have the energy right now.)

I would be less nervous about his coming to visit if Basil and I weren't scheduled to attend an adults-only wedding for someone in his office this weekend. Basil works for a small company that considers itself a highly dysfunctional family, and skipping 'family' events is very frowned upon. Months ago, we had arranged for Petunia to spend the day/night with friends, but with my dad coming to town, he is expecting to spend time with his granddaughter and - of course - cannot imagine why we would not just leave Petunia home with him.

So, we are trying to do the best we can. Even though we are so nervous about what my dad could do while we're gone for eight or nine hours on Saturday, we're going to try it.

Step one was boxing up the liquor cabinet and all prescription pain meds leftover from my meningitis. We'll take all our hooch to a friend's house tonight. I'm still toying with whether or not we need to hide the cooking wine.

Step two will be taking the car with the carseat to the wedding so, presumably, Dad and Petunia can't drive anywhere.

Step three will be taking both sets of keys to the other car with us to the wedding so they REALLY can't drive anywhere.

Step four is lining up a friend to come and pick up Lilah an hour or so after we leave and bring her back an hour or two before we're scheduled to come home, under the auspices of 'keeping the dog out of their hair' but really so that we can have someone swing by the house at least twice while we're gone to check in on Dad and Petunia.

Step five will be calling to check in once or twice while we're at the reception.

It seems like a great plan that has many redundancies and safeguards built in, but after nearly thirty years, I know my dad well enough never to trust him. Never. Ever. Even when something as precious and wonderful and rare as Time with His Granddaughter is dangling in front of him, he still can't be trusted to do the right thing. (There's a specific illustrative story here that I just don't have the energy to tell.)

In his defense, he is an addict. I do believe that alcoholism is a disease, and my dad is sick, sick, sick.

However, he refuses to seek help. There is no defense for refusing to seek help.

One of my favorite bloggers is Jenn in Texas, who is a 'shameless mommyblogger' and writes about raising three kids and blogging a lot and, among other things, being an addict. Jenn makes no secret of the fact that despite being a minivan-driving suburban soccer mom, she also has battled an addiction to pills. And she has been clean five years this spring. GO JENN!

I love reading Mommy Loves Coffee because it is a real-life example of someone who said, 'Okay. I have a problem. I need to fix it.' And then she went out and got clean - even though it was really, really hard mentally, emotionally and physically. And every day, she makes a choice to stay clean. Even though she's been through a lot in the past few months.

My dad, on the other hand, keeps being an alcoholic. He makes up these reasons why he can't go to AA, and he relapses every time he tries to quit drinking.

I was reminded of him the whole time I was reading Oprah Liar James Frey's memoir-ISH A Million Little Pieces. (It actually is a good book; too bad half of it's not true.) Not that my dad is crack addict or a glue sniffer (but was Frey?), but there are characters in the rehab center that remind me of my dad. Specifically, The Bald Man, if you've read the book.

The Bald Man is an alcoholic who is married with a family and hits his own personal rock bottom on Halloween one year. He gets drunk before taking the kids out trick-or-treating, passes out in their wagon while they're getting candy from a house and pisses himself while passed out (which sounds like something my dad could have/would have done when my sister and I were young and he and my mom were still married). The Bald Man does the rehab thing seriously and goes home clean halfway through the book. But in the epilogue, Frey writes, 'The Bald Man started drinking eight weeks after he returned home. His Wife threw him out of their house and his whereabouts are unknown.'

At first, I really liked the story of The Bald Man because it gave me hope in the concept of a rock bottom. Like each addict can get to a place that will shake their shit into an AA meeting and start the process of staying clean. About sixteen months ago, I officially gave up on the concept of a rock bottom for my dad. He has done so much wrong in the past several decades, iced by a really bad decision when he was on his way to see his granddaughter, that I can't imagine anything shaking him up at this point. And the end of Frey's book brought me back to that reality.

I wish my dad could be more like Jenn and quite frankly, like L.'s child who - in response to bed wetting at a late age caused by a physical problem that's beyond the child's control - has the presence of mind to simply say, 'I can't help it. My body has a problem.' If my dad could just say, 'I can't help it. I'm an alcoholic, and I need help' then I wouldn't be so scared to death of leaving him with my child unattended.

And I've finally accepted that it doesn't do any good to beat my head against the brick wall of my dad's addiction. I have tried over the years, because I love him and want him to get better, but my loving him is not enough. Threatening him doesn't work. Trying to give him incentives and positive experiences doesn't work. There's nothing I can do until he wants to help himself.

That's a hard thing to swallow - essentially giving up on trying to help someone you love. But the other choice is to keep bloodying my head against the wall, getting myself more and more badly hurt and never seeing any results from my dad. I feel like a stonecold heartless bitch sometimes, but I just know that this is the way it has to be.

We're welcoming my dad into our home this weekend, and we're going to allow him to spend time with Petunia. But we're not so foolish in our love for him to trust him and his intentions without any checks and balances.

Basil and I have already crafted a plan in which one of us can start the process of faking an illness on Friday night that gets worse on Saturday morning, thus requiring the 'sick' person to stay home and miss the wedding. We plan to watch my dad and see how things go tomorrow afternoon/evening and all day Friday to determine if we need to use that nuclear option.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but the safety and wellbeing of my daughter is too important. Better that my dad gets his feelings hurt or his pride bruised by one of us faking an illness to stay home and keep an eye on him than Petunia getting hurt because we trusted my dad too much.

My Essay for Mother of the Year Contest

Internet, I know you are jealous of my awesome parenting skills, but I feel the need to come clean. Sometimes, I am a little substandard on the motherhood thing. Take, for example, this weekend.

On Friday, Basil and I celebrated our fifth anniversary. We treated ourselves to a family dinner at Los Tios, including supremo margaritas for the adults at the table. Well, those margaritas were just so delicious that we swung by the Virginia ABC Store for fixin's to make our own 'ritas at home.

Here comes the first moment of awesome parenting. We tell Petunia that we're headed to the liquor store and she starts yelling from her carseat, 'Yay! Liquor store! Liquor store! We go buy some liquor!'

I splurged on a bottle of really good tequila, Sauza Tres Generaciones Plata, along with lime juice and blue curacao. When we got home, I mixed up a pitcher and salted the rims of our awesome margarita glasses, and we had some drinks while we exchanged anniversary presents and Petunia played.

After putting Petunia to bed, Basil and I had more drinks and talked and talked into the wee hours of the night. It was one of those great nights where we didn't turn on the TV or anything, and we cracked each other up and shared stories and mused about our future together. Despite having several margaritas, Basil and I were mostly doing okay the next morning. With some water and aspirin, we were alright.

However, here comes awesome parenting moment #2. When Basil was feeding Petunia her breakfast, she spilled her milk and said, 'Oh, dammit.' He told her that wasn't a nice thing to say, but when I was giving her Cheerios later in the morning and she spilled them, she said again, 'Oh, dammit.'

I like to think she picked that up at preschool.

Saturday night, Basil and I were supposed to go to a Nats game, but the weather was really gross. We decided we did not want to sit in the rain while they tried to eke out five innings. So Petunia's Uncle J.R. came over, and since we had more of the Tres Generaciones just collecting dust in the liquor cabinet, we thought, 'Hey - let's make more margaritas!'

Well, this was a fine plan until we ran out of the top shelf tequila. We had some plain old Sauza Gold in the cabinet, so we switched to that. Basil actually ran out to pick up more because Mozo was planning on coming over after work, and we didn't want to run out of this Mexican goodness too early!

At this point, warning lights should be flashing for you, Internet. It is a VERY BAD idea to go from top-shelf liquor to regular liquor on a night of heavy drinking. I know this because after about 2 or 3 downgraded margaritas, I suddenly didn't feel so good.

We were all laughy and chatty and having fun, and maybe I shouldn't have smoked that Dunhill cigarette, but all of a sudden I knew that I needed to go upstairs. Whether I needed water or food or fresh air or a toilet was unclear.

Turns out, I needed the toilet. Yucky yucky. The Sauza Gold betrayed me to the deepest level of my digestive system. Bastard. I was sick until well after midnight (all the while thinking, I am the worst mother EVER), when the spins finally stopped long enough for me to scrape myself off the bathroom floor and crawl into bed.

Well, it turns out that Basil was probably about one drink behind me. He didn't have any of the porcelein-god-praying that I did, but he did have a wicked headache and hangover the next morning. At which point, awesome parenting moment #3 happens.

Basil got up and walked the dog and then came back to bed while I was wallowing in misery. Petunia woke up bright and chipper soon after that, so Basil put one of her favorite movies on the TV in our bedroom: Singing in the Rain. (Seriously, I don't know any other two-year-old who loves Gene Kelly as much as ours.) Then, Basil and I laid in bed and faded in and out of sleep while Petunia ran around the upstairs, basically playing by herself for nearly two hours. She kept bringing me stuffed animals while I dozed and sipped water. After I got some aspirin in me and felt woman enough to get out of bed, I realized that I was covered in furry anthropomorphic critters and must have looked roughly like E.T. in little Gertie's closet. (Ironically, I think I was probably as hungover as Drew Barrymore was when she made E.T.)

Needless to say, we skipped church.

Anyway, I did manage to do some laundry and clean up the house, and become a functioning person again. If you ask Petunia, she probably would tell you she had a great time at the restaurant on Friday, had fun with Uncle J.R. on Saturday night, enjoyed watching Singing in the Rain and playing 'grocery store' with Mommy and Daddy on Sunday (our quiet, indoor pretend game for the day), so it's not like I caused any lasting damage to her psyche or anything.

But clearly, it's a very good thing that the Department of Social Services didn't have a hidden camera system up and running in our house this weekend, because I really outdid myself as a mother.

Mug Love

Even though I have kicked caffeine, I still make a pot of decaf every morning. After more than a decade of drinking coffee every day (even when I was pregnant), a cuppa joe is part of my morning ritual.

I love the smell of coffee, and I love the taste of coffee with cream or milk. (No sugar for this girl.) I like the sound of coffee beans spilling into the grinder. I love the color of a nice cafe au lait or cappuccino, and whenever I get around to repainting my kitchen, I actually plan to use that color because I find it so calming and comforting. I love that inviting someone for 'coffee' implies a time of casual conversation and deepening a personal connection.

But one of the things I love most about a morning cup of coffee is choosing a mug.

Opening the kitchen cabinet above the coffee maker is to take a little journey down memory lane. Basil and I have about two dozen mugs between us. Many have been gifts, like the Norman Rockwell set from my mother in law or the faded sunflower mug from my old college roommate. Many more are souvenirs from friends and family, like the white Carnegie Hall mug from my mother's trip to Manhattan or our Rosie's Diner mugs from a friend who formerly lived near Rosie's in Michigan. A few have been freebies, like the C-SPAN mug Basil got from speaking at some conference.

My favorite mug is white with blueberries on the sides. The blueberries are a little more violet than blue, and they have sort of a hand-drawn/watercolor look to them. I bought this mug after I graduated from college when I was preparing to move to Washington, DC for grad school and goodness knows what else. My mom and I had taken my college graduation gift money shopping at a Bed Bath & Beyond-type place for kitchen basics. We were focused on getting the things I would need to cook on my own, like pots, pans, knives and cutting boards.

As we were shopping, this blueberry mug caught my eye. I just thought it was pretty, and I liked it. I placed it in the cart. My mother objected.

'Why are you buying a coffee mug? You already have several. You don't need another mug. We need to make sure you get the basics to set up a kitchen where you can cook and eat on your own.'

I argued that one $5 coffee mug (or whatever it cost) was not going to upset the budgetary apple cart, and that now and then, I was allowed to have nice things just because I I wanted them. I was buying that damn blueberry mug.

I've owned it now for nearly ten years, and it's still my favorite coffee vessel in the morning. It reminds me of striking out on my own, of pampering myself, and of owning things that please me on an aesthetic level (no matter how small).

I plan to drink coffee from it until my grandchildren come over to play.

Celebrity Ice Cream

One of the many reasons that I struggle with healthy eating and getting to a healthy weight is that I love dessert. Specifically, I love chocolate, and I love ice cream. I love chocolate ice cream more than you can imagine. In the last week or two of my pregnancy with Petunia, I pretty much ate Ben & Jerry's three times a day.

I do heartily believe that if I eat a healthy, balanced diet all day, then a serving of ice cream is not going to kill me. However, when I'm trying to lose weight (as I am now), my eating choices come down to calories. At least theoretically. And full-fat ice cream has a LOT of calories. I let myself have some Edy's Grand Light or Breyer's Double-Churned (despite having about half the calories of a serving of B&J's, both have texture like real ice cream, unlike many other brands that lack any creamy goodness), but I try not to do it every single day.

Without a daily chocolate/ice cream fix, I crave empty decadence. At the grocery store, it is really hard for me not to linger in the ice cream aisle and load the cart with Phish Food, Fossil Fuel, The Gobfather, Dublin Mudslide and all the other sinfully good flavors manufactured by those sweet hippies in Vermont. (btw, Free Cone Day is next Tuesday!)

I want something indulgent! Something lacking any redeeming nutritional qualities. Something bad for me that feels sooooo good.

So, I buy trashy magazines.

Seriously, I make bargains with myself in the grocery store. That if I don't buy the B&J's that I want, then I can pick up one or two celebrity gossip rags by the checkout line.

There is something very satisfying about settling in for the night with an US Weekly or People to learn that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are taking their kids to Africa or see how Tara Reid's boobs are slowly consuming her entire body. It's like a big, pointless, calorie-ridden treat for my brain.

My latest obsession is TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, for those who only read Mother Jones and The Economist). For weeks, the media frenzy has been building around the birth of their upcoming baby, whether or not the delivery room would be silent, per the Scientologists way, and rumors that Tom would eat the placenta.

Well, thank heavens, they had their baby yesterday. A little girl named Suri. I can't say the name is my cup of tea, but I can't really see myself having tea with Tom and Katie anyway.

Anyway, between the arrival of Moses Martin (Apple's little brother) and Suri Cruise, I guess celebrity breeding season has officially begun. Which means that the gossip rags will be FULL of titillating tidbits. Which means that I'll be able to keep my brain gorged on fluff for quite a while.

The gossip tastes sooooo good.

Fattitudes

I haven't been in the greatest place for the past six weeks when it comes to my weight.

I hit kind of a minigoal (3 lbs away from pre-Petunia weight) by a deadline (annual GYN exam), which made me happy and, truth be told, a little cocky. Plus, I reached a point in my headache program where I could start reintroducing foods like cheese and chocolate and booze. Couple those factors with my not getting enough sleep from being crazy-busy at work and doing a lot at church (Lent is a busy time for Episcopalians!), and it's understandable that I've been backsliding on the diet and exercise regime. Nothing irreversible, but I've gained about 4 pounds in the past six weeks.

Worse than the actual weight, though, is the kind of mental slide I've been on because of the slacking and the gaining: a bit of guilt, more self-loathing, and flashes of defeatism. All very, very healthy attitudes, right? Unfortunately, they're old friends, as I've battled them pretty much my whole life about my weight.

When I was a girl, my mom and my grandmother called me 'Skinny Minnie' because I was long and lean. I was kind of a tomboy, always out roller skating and playing with the boys in my neighborhood. My mom and grandma are both thin and active, and I think my thinness and activeness pleased them.

Then I hit puberty, and my dad's genes fought back. I got thick and curvy. I went from wearing a size 12/14 girls to wearing a size 9/10 juniors/misses. I played volleyball throughout high school, but that was pretty much the extent of my physical activity. I spent all of high school fluctuating between a size 9/10 and an 11/12.

Well, this pleased my maternal family none. Shopping for clothes was a traumatic experience because my bodily flaws were always pointed out in those tiny particle board-walled dressing rooms, and I was always being forced to try on clothes that were one or two sizes smaller than what I wore, with the hopes that they would someday fit. The implied message was that the smaller clothes were the size I should be.

Worse than the shopping were the diets. In high school, my mother and grandmother conspired to put me on diet after diet. Sometimes, they did the diets with me; other times, they didn't. I can't remember all of them, but I know that Mom and I did the beet diet, I did NutriSystem by myself for awhile, and once my grandmother took me to a group weight loss hypnotism session in downtown Cincinnati. My mother routinely hid food from me at home, as she didn't want me to have ice cream, Pop Tarts, chocolate-covered granola bars or anything else she deemed too caloric without her supervision. In response, I binged on those thing in secret whenever she and my sister weren't around.

This was a really hard time for me, because my mom and my grandma love me very much, and I love them. I know they have food/weight/body image issues of their own that they have never really owned up to or confronted. I also know they they genuinely want the very best for me.

Towards the end of high school, my mother told me once that she was so focused on my weight/appearance because she didn't want other people to make fun of me or have opportunities to make me feel bad about myself. I responded that she had made me feel worse than anyone she had hoped to protect me from.

I think that remark resonated with her, and she has been gentle with me since then. However, she is still very focused on the food choices, eating habits, fitness level, size, weight and shape of herself, me, my sister, her sisters and pretty much anyone she knows, and she is always very excited and super supportive whenever I'm losing weight or being more active.

It took me a long time to shed the food/weight/body image baggage I got saddled with as a teenager, and I guess I will never be truly free. Even though I feel like I have a mostly healthy relationship with food now and am generally tolerant of the way I look, it's hard to completely ignore the voices in my head that tell me I shouldn't eat that, I should be skinnier, I should wear a smaller size.

However, I have always sworn to myself that I will not put my daughter through what I went through as an adolescent. Teenage girls pick up baggage like flies find shit, and I don't need to add anything to what Petunia will inevitably pick up on her own. If I do nothing else as a mother, I will refrain from passing on unhealthy attitudes about food/weight/body image.

Basil is with me. He doesn't like my unhealthy attitudes about myself, but he tolerates them without condoning them whenever they rear their ugly heads.

Petunia, however, is just beginning to understand the nuances of emotions and words. Which is why the other night when I was complaining about being fat at the dinner table, she asked me for the first time, 'Mommy, are you fat?'

There was no value there, no judgment. She heard me say it, and she wanted to know if it was true. She didn't have a positive or negative association with the word 'fat.' She just wanted to know if I was fat. Cause I said I was fat right in front of her.

And I had a choice to make.

I could perpetuate the unhealthy cycle of self-worth tied to body image started by grandmother, passed on to my mother and finally on to my sister and me. Or I could break the chain and forge a new path for my daughter.

I swallowed hard and looked at Basil, who didn't say a word.

'No, honey, Mommy's not fat. I was just teasing. I'm not fat, Daddy's not fat, you're not fat. We're all perfect and beautiful.'

Petunia paused and considered what I just told her.

'I pretty!' she said and smiled devilishly.

'Yes, sweetie. You sure are pretty.'

'You pretty, mommy.'

If you say so, darling, then it must be true.

One If By Land, Two If By Pie

So we ended up having a bunch of people over for dinner on Saturday night, and for no apparent reason, it became Boston Night. We decided to make Boston baked beans and brown bread, and then we decided that we should have plenty of Sam Adams on hand.

How should we end this night? Oh, yeah! What else? Boston creme pie for dessert.

The funny thing is, I've never particularly liked Boston creme pie. I've always had commercial versions of this dessert, which - if you don't know - isn't a pie at all. It's a single layer 9-inch yellow cake, sliced in half horizontally and filled with custard and then glazed with a chocolate icing on top (but not on the sides). Every Boston creme pie that I have ever had has been dry and heavy, a little stale and not very sweet.

But still, it was the perfect ending to our impromptu Boston Night, and I had all the ingredients in my kitchen already.

It wasn't particularly difficult, but it was a little time-consuming. First, you make the cake from scratch. (Note to self: be sure to thank mother-in-law AGAIN for the stand mixer she got me for Chrsitmas!) Then, you make the custard filling on the stovetop and put the mixture in the fridge to cool for a few hours. When the cake is cool and the custard is chilled, you asemble. Cutting the cake in half horizontally is important because you don't have any icing to cover up the sides. If you aren't precise and you jank up the layers, everyone will see. So I went all Martha and used toothpicks to mark the cake all the way around before cutting.

Then, after slathering the bottom slab with homemade custard and putting the top slab on, it's time to make the chocolate glaze. This is basically some butter and water and cocoa heated on the stovetop and then slowly whisked together with a cup of confectioners sugar and a little vanilla. Before it sets up, you pour the glaze on top of the cake and let it run to the edges of the cake and dribble down some of the sides.

I finished the cake and decided that it basically looked like the picture in my Hershey cookbook. So I stuck it in the fridge to cool until post-meal and turned to other things. I really didn't give it much thought until dinner was over.

When we all finished our baked beans and brown bread, Basil brought the Boston creme pie out. Everyone was pretty full and practically groaning from eating beans cooked in molasses and brown sugar and whole wheat bread with walnuts and raisins. But I have to say that dessert looked great, and I think it visually piqued our guests' interests. When I started slicing, I was amazed at how much the glaze on top had set up. It was really thick, almost like fondant icing or something. But the cake and custard beneath were still really soft. My hopes were raised.

Eating it was AWESOME. This was nothing like the Boston creme pie I'd had in restaurants or hotels! It was sweet and rich. The cake was moist and soft. The glaze added just enough chocolate to make the dessert really amazing without being overwhelming.

By the end of the night, every single plate was cleaned. I was so proud. I loved the way the pie looked, and everyone loved the way it tasted. I've decided to add that recipe to my dessert repertoire, which is not especially large as I'm really more of a cook than a baker.

I'm so glad that I gave Boston creme pie a chance to redeem itself from the horrible renditions that commercial venues had served me over the years. This is a dessert that I would serve anyone proudly.

Boston, thank you!