Zoe vs. the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, the movie---based on the book by Judith Viorst---is being promoted as a comedy, but to me it sounds like a docudrama. I know all about having a string of bad luck.

A few Saturdays ago I was taking Zoe to a birthday party at a gymnastics center. The party started at three. 

Our day started at 5:45 a.m., when Zoe woke us to ask when we were leaving for the party. Um, in about nine hours. She was to ask at least twenty more times.

Each hour.

Coming soon to Xbox.

The party was in the neighborhood, but far enough away that I'd rented a Zipcar. I'd walk to the garage while the Husband stayed with Zoe. The 2-o'clock pickup meant I'd have plenty of time to return, install the child seat, install the child, and head to the party. 

By 1:30, Zoe was bouncing off the walls, and I was starting to worry she'd be too exhausted to bounce at the actual party. So I left a bit early to get the car, limping all the way.

Why the limp? No idea. Either I injured myself or I've been wearing the wrong shoes, or I'm old. In any case, something is wrong with my ankle. It may even be swollen. 

Or I'm getting cankles. It's hard to tell since my glasses fall off when I bend down to look. I know. Don't go falling in love with me.

I come back with the car and go upstairs to get the booster seat.

Which is nowhere to be found.

We conduct a thorough search of the apartment. It's small so this takes about a minute. Since we don't have a car we barely use the booster, and so I'm forced to conclude I left it in a relative's car. Clever Mommy!

I still have time so I call a friend to ask if I can borrow one. I drive over, get the booster, and drive back to get a not only still hyper Zoe but a quickly becoming cranky one too.

I hustle her downstairs, strap her in, then turn the key in the ignition.

Nothing. I try again. Still nothing.

I call Zipcar and work my way through the menu with an increasingly whiny Zoe in back repeating: "Where's the party? I wanna go to the party. Are we still going to the party?" 

I finally get a customer service rep who informs me I have the wrong car. Apparently the parking attendant gave me Tesla* but I was supposed to get a car named Bogdan. (Why the cars are Serbian, I don't know.)

A hapless killing machine, the Toyota Yaris
is known as the Gavrilo Princip of cars.

Both Tesla and Bogdan were Kia Fortes and since there was no name tag on my car and it couldn't talk like Kitt, the parking attendant made an understandable mistake. I have no idea why I was able to start it the first two times but I didn't have time to learn what was likely unlearnable. 

Upshot: Zipcar switches the reservation and then Zoe, Tesla, and I are off. I check my watch. Five after three, officially late.

At the first red light I turn to check on an eerily quiet Zoe and, as I feared, she's asleep. I turn off the A/C and open the windows trying to revive her. She snores. I sweat.

Five minutes later I drive past our destination. Two minutes later I realize I passed it and circle back to look for parking.

I find a spot, turn off the car, look down, and notice a hole in my shorts, at the inner thigh. Nice. I am apparently Hulking out, but less from anger and more from cake. These are my favorite shorts too because they go past the knee. Since becoming a mommy, the days of shorts above the knee are gone because that's where I keep my spider veins. And though my shorts aren't that short it still would've been nice if I'd shaved my legs. Which I haven't. 

To recap: limp, holey pants, unshaven. Harried because of the car mix-up and the booster seat drama. Now let's add more sweating as I maneuver a sleepy cranky four-year-old out of a borrowed booster seat in a rented car so she can go to a party. 

I carry her down the block---her weight emphasizing my limp so I'm a ringer for Quasimodo---enter the party, and spend a good twenty minutes trying to persuade a cranky child to have fun. Eventually she gets her mojo back and is soon muscling other children out of her way. 

After the activity portion, there's pizza and cake and juice and the utter mayhem of twenty or so children. Throw in a conch shell and we'd have had another Lord of the Flies on our hands.

Tesla was the first scientist to harness the raw
power generated at a children's birthday party.

Soon the party's winding down but Zoe isn't. And she wants to take out and play with everything in her goody bag.

I bribe her, saying she can take out one item as we walk to the car. She hands me a mini bottle of bubbles to open. The plastic stretching across the top is not kidding around. Eventually I use my teeth. Once it's open I find it's just as difficult to get the little wand out since you can fit only one finger inside the bottle. So I have to tip it, causing some of the soapy water to spill.

Zoe gets upset. But after blowing a few bubbles her bonhomie is restored.

Then she drops the wand back in the bottle and can't get it out.

Zoe gets terribly upset. I have to spill more liquid to get it out. I hand everything back but now the soap's gotten too low for the wand to reach.

Zoe gets terribly and horribly upset. The bubbles having betrayed her in every conceivable way, she doesn't want them anymore. At the car, I take the bubbles from her, place the open bottle on the dashboard, and strap Zoe in. Then I get in, cross my fingers, and start the car. Go, Tesla! As I pull out, the forgotten bubbles fall off the dashboard. Slippery soapy bubbles all over.

Let's review: the gait of Quasimodo, the legs of Sasquatch, weight-related hole in pants, incipient cankling, copious sweating, sticky. 

At the next red light I decide to let the Husband know we're on the way home so I pull out my phone. Dead, naturally.

I glance in the rearview mirror to check on Zoe and spot a pimple on my chin. For the last time: Stop undressing this blog with your eyes.

Zoe: 64; Universe/Mommy: 0

* Names changed to protect the innocent. Actual names may or may not have been Serbian.

Z.O.E. vs. D.I.Y.

The other day I read something that shook me to my core, challenging everything I'd believed since the time I was a fetus. I was reading an article when I came across the phrase "DIY and crafting." Not "DIY or crafting," as in the words are interchangeable, but "and" as in they are two separate and discrete activities.

Deep down I suppose I always knew they were separate things. I seem to recall hearing that some people make their own deodorant, for instance. I suppose that would not be considered a craft in the same way that gluing dry elbow macaroni to corrugated cardboard to form something you tell others is a boat but really looks nothing like one is. But then people get up to all kinds of stuff in the name of fun, or personal health or political protest. I have no patience for any of those things, fun most of all.

Full disclosure: pipe cleaners hold a certain allure for me. In art class, as a child, while my peers were busy bending pipe cleaners into halos for their papier-mache angels (Catholic school), I balanced them between my nose and my upper lip to create multi-hued mustaches.

What does all this have to do with Zoe? you ask. Well, as far as I can tell, Zoe does not object to crafting as a way of life, but there have been certain creations that have revealed a heart of darkness at their center.

Decoupage of the damned

On weekends, I sometimes give her Play-doh or construction paper and crayons, but never glue or glitter or, heaven forfend, scissors. So for the most part, her crafting is confined to day care, meaning other people, thankfully, are responsible for doing this stuff with her. 

Early on, when I knew there was little chance Zoe had contributed to the creation of these abominations artistic endeavors, except maybe via a slash of crayon or a sample of dried snot, I was tempted to hand the items back to her obviously hardworking, craft-loving teacher and say, "Maybe this is something to put on your mommy's refrigerator."

Each day Zoe would come home with cutouts of numbers or letters sloppily colored in. "Art" ranging from endless sheets of paper covered in mad scribblings to advanced holiday-themed projects like a deformed turkey for Thanksgiving (Zoe's hand print with Popsicle sticks glued to it). 

One recent project required her classmates to decorate paper plates to look like their faces, using googly eyes, crayons, and paper cutouts. I walked in the room that day to confront sixteen paper-plate faces looking at me, like self-portraits of the mentally deranged. When I spotted Zoe's I was overcome with nausea and had to look away. Had my eyes deceived me? Had she used yellow Post-its for hair? The horror . . . The Horror.

The horror . . . of scrapbooking

I have an unhealthy relationship with Post-its. They are for lists, not art. Though the list itself may be art. Or it would also be acceptable to list art supplies. But the idea that they'd been used---wasted!---for such a disposable project made my heart stop. After steeling myself I drew closer and saw the "hair" was yellow construction paper. The pain in my chest eased and I could breathe again.

Another project in particular that I recall, if only because I did not immediately throw it away, was the Angel Box. The Angel Box is a box shaped like a treasure chest that Zoe painted yellow. It has her picture taped to the top of it. In the picture she has a serene expression on her face, one a perfectly lovely and innocent child might have, one I've never actually seen on her face when her eyes were open.

The Angel Box, the teacher told me when I picked Zoe up from school, was filled with slips of paper (not Post-its, because they are sticky, and also, I assume, because using them would be morally reprehensible) listing her good deeds, like cleaning up after herself or saying "please" and "thank you" without being prompted.

You don't have to be clairvoyant to see where this is going.

We get home and I open the box to find this:

Wherefore all the good deeds at?

Zoe looks at me with her customary feigned-innocence expression as if to say, it was full but I guess you lost all the slips of paper on the way home.

It's clear she's at least one kind of crafty.

Zoe: 63; Universe: 0

Zoe vs. Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is regarded as the world's greatest living actress. I believe that was true.

. . . Until four years ago, when Zoe arrived on the scene.

The second-best actress in the
world (as of August 2010)

Zoe was born dramatic. Though I suppose all births are dramatic. As renowned baby expert Dr. Benjamin Spock said, "Childbirth is the most unnatural natural thing ever, except maybe for Carrot Top."*

Still, the style in which Zoe arrived---a little resistant at first (induction at 41 weeks), then a lot resistant (plenty of Pitocin to no purpose), then causing a bit of a panic (um, where's that heartbeat?), ending in blood and screaming as if she was the one being cut open (semi-emergency c-section)---set the tone for what was to follow.

Even today, most of her emotional outbursts follow that same pattern: sluggish resistance, followed by irrational fear, then the blood and the screaming and the calls for drugs.

From what I've seen in the past four years, I think it's reasonable to conclude that in a diva-on-diva throwdown my daughter would out-act Meryl Streep. As evidence I present the following selections from Ms. Streep's impressive filmography and examine them against the theatrics of my pint-sized thespian.

A Cry in the Dark

Meryl made this movie in 1988. I was in high school at the time and probably preferred murderous dingos to children. (Now, it's a close call.)

I've never met a dingo, and I've never been to Australia, but the title resonates with me because it sums up that first sleepless year with infant Zoe. 

Early on, her crying was for serious, but by the time she turned two she was able to cue it up anytime for effect. She buries her face in her hands as she cries then peeks between her fingers to make sure she still has an audience. If I've left the room, she stops crying (Cut!), comes to find me, then commences crying again (Action!).

A dingo ate my hairdresser.
(Source: rottentomatoes.com)

This movie also reminds me of Zoe because in it Meryl plays a mother accused of a crime she didn't commit. This gels with Zoe's prosecutorial style, aka how she wakes up: Why's my blue sippy cup with the red top lying unwashed in the sink? You should've washed it by now. I have a witness who places you in the kitchen at 7:55 P.M. last night washing your coffee mug, so clearly you had opportunity. Did you just not care? You are guilty of being a terrible mother. (Bangs gavel.)

Sophie's Choice

You'd think I was asking her to choose who should live and who should die the way Zoe reacts when I ask her which of two shirts she wants to wear. Every choice is pregnant with future bitter regret. If she chooses the pink toothbrush rather than the blue toothbrush, what are the ramifications? What untold suffering that cannot be foreseen?

On the way home, should she sit in the stroller or should she walk? Wracked with indecision she jumps on and off, forcing Mommy to stop and start. That's not frustrating for Mommy. And who has time to think about her anyway? Getting home only means facing another weighty decision of what cartoon to watch.

The Devil Wears Prada

Just do what I say!

The Iron Lady

Just do what I say with a British accent! 

Regarding Meryl and her accents. Zoe is a master at this as well. Though I don't recognize what country of origin Zoe's accents are supposed to represent. They seem to be wholly her own.

What can't Meryl Streep do! Here she is as a building.
She trained for the role by spending a summer
as a newspaper kiosk.

Zoe likes to shout orders in strange, made-up voices, or yell things that sound like orders but are just extreme imitations of me or her teachers. She's been doing this since she was around two and "imitated" me changing her diaper.

Knowing how she exaggerates my treatment of her for dramatic effect, I kind of assume her teachers are not constantly screaming at her and that a particular little boy is not hurting her as much as she claims. At bath time, she works out her stress in little vignettes, randomly letting loose with: "I'm NOT telling you again" or "If you don't stop talking, you go straight to the office. Ha!" or "Stop talking or I won't read the story. Ha!"

I don't know what the "Ha!" thing is about but she tacks it to the end of every sentence when she's in acting mode.

Naturally I'm her favorite to imitate. Picking her up from day care once I must've rushed her to get home saying I had a lot to do because almost every night now she launches out of the stroller, plants herself at the top step of a stranger's house, turns and shouts: "I've got tooooooo much stuff to do! Ha!" Then she crosses her arms and levels a disarmingly shrewd stare at me.

I am tempted to point out that her behavior and stance are the exact opposite of how a person with toooooo much stuff to do would behave but that would only raise the curtain on the next act.

Mamma Mia!

People didn't know Meryl could sing, but she can. Zoe knows she can sing. Because who's gonna tell her she can't? You can't develop that kind of confidence. You either have it or you don't.

Silkwood

So many parallels:

Zoe acts like she's being psychologically tortured but I think it's really me.

I try to point out blatant safety violations, but she refuses to heed my warnings. However, if I bump into her accidentally, she claims grave injury and that she is bleeding (she is not bleeding) and demands a Band-Aid.

Because I once gave her a Tic-Tac to settle her stomach on a long car trip she now believes it's medicine, and so when she sees Tic-Tacs suddenly her stomach hurts. She cries when I don't believe her.

Two nights ago she showed me a paper cut. Although she called it a book cut. I said, Yes, books have paper so that's why it's called a paper cut. It's a book cut, she said. I sighed.

"It's bleeding," she continued. (It had been.) "A lot." (Barely.) "The biggest." (Biggest what? Whiner or liar?) I got her a Band-Aid.

Another thing Silkwood-esque: Zoe refuses to wash her hands after using the potty unless it's bedtime. Then she wants to wash as if she's been contaminated by plutonium.

After seeing what she did to the potty,
I welcome death. (Source: movieclips.com)

And finally. . .

The Hours

Sometimes, with Zoe, what "the seconds" feel like.

Zoe: 62; Universe: 0

*I may be making this up. There's nothing natural about Carrot Top.

Zoe vs. Barbara Walters

Zoe is like Barbara Walters: When she asks questions, someone ends up in tears. Usually me.

Grown-ass men sobbing. When we return.

I am Zoe's usual victim interviewee. Her questions fall into one of the following three categories.

1. Questions with the Same Answer

Each day starts with these. Where are we going? School and work. Who's taking me to school? Daddy. Who's picking me up? Mommy. Who's putting me to bed? Three out of five weekdays the answer is Mommy. 

Same questions. Same answers. Still she asks

As I'm putting on makeup: What's that? Eyeliner. Can I have some? When you're older. Or, if I'm feeling all Teachable Moment: Eyeliner is one of the few Things That Cannot Be Shared, like a lollipop that's already been in your mouth. 

Why? 

Because it's unhygienic. 

What's eugenics? 

. . . It's when a bad guy says that all the questions should have the same answer.

She thinks for a moment then says, "That's silly." Isn't it, though? 

At night on the way home (regarding a random person): Where is he going? Home. Why? Because everyone's going home now. Why? It's dinnertime. 

2. Questions with No Answer (or at least not one that satisfies)

At night on the way home (regarding a specific person): Where's he going? Home. 

Then when Specific Person walks up to a door: Why's he going there? I guess that's his home. Why? Because that's where he lives. 

Sometimes this leads to the third category (see below) but sometimes, just to be perverse, Zoe says:

"No, he doesn't." 

 "What do you mean, 'no, he doesn't'? 

"He doesn't live there."

"We just saw him go in."

"He doesn't live there."

At this point I sputter that we'll have to agree to disagree. How do you explain the obvious? Especially when you don't really care.

Jerry keeps pressing for a bathroom
break but is soundly ignored.

Another example:

She wedges one toy inside another toy and then needs help getting it out. On the edge of tears but gamely holding them back to underline just how well she is bearing up under the full scope of the tragedy, she comes to me for help. 

With some finagling I finally remove the toy. As I hand the consciously uncoupled items back to her, I say, "Now don't do that again." Zoe asks, "Why not?" What can be said to this that wasn't evident from all that preceded?

3. Questions That Lead to More Questions

One of Dante's Circles of Hell must have its circumference paved with the questions of preschoolers.

Let's say we're going on a car trip. . . .

Where are we going? Who's going to be there? When are we coming back? Can I take the largest most unwieldy toy with me, the one with multiple tiny parts that never stay on and will end up being left behind causing untold emotional anguish or, at minimum, regretful pining? Why not? Now that we're ready to go, and I said I wasn't hungry the twenty times you asked me before, I am now, in fact, hungry, so how about a grilled cheese sandwich? How come? Can I take a squeezable yogurt with me in Grandma's car? Why not? Is Grandma coming with us? Where are we going? (Return to start.)

Those who coveted the Play-doh in life, must separate
mounds of it into their constituent colors in death.

So far I've managed to dodge embarrassing questions, like why is that person standing within earshot fat? But she's come close.

One day she asked me "Why's that kid so short?" as we passed a man who happens to be a dwarf. 

(His size, by the way, had nothing to do with why she called him a kid. She often calls adults kids. Or boys and girls.) 

I don't think he heard. I'm always awkward around this particular dwarf because he's sort of a neighborhood fixture. He can be seen at Christmastime dressed as an elf. For the St. Patrick's Parade, he's a leprechaun. Sometimes, for no obvious reason, he's decked out in a top hat and tails.

The reason for my awkwardness is that before Zoe was born he and I lived in the same building, and every time I saw him he would reintroduce himself. Now that we are no longer living in that building, I'm even more doubtful he remembers me. 

So all this noise is running through my awkward brain when Zoe asks why he's short, but I just say, He was born that way. 

Why? 

Because he's a dwarf. 

I immediately regret using that word, not for any political-correctness reason because I've kind of lost track of what's the proper term (midget? little person? height disadvantaged?), but because I'm afraid she'll now associate him with Snow White and her seven companions and so I'm way ahead of her when she asks, Where's his beard? (He has a mustache but he is bald.) 

He shaved it, I say. 

Why? 

He was hot. 

This seems to satisfy her for the moment.

If You Were a Tree, What Kind of Tree Would You Be?

Barbara Walters was famously mocked for asking this question of Katharine Hepburn, even though Hepburn herself opened the door to Walters asking it. 

As a mother, I know how this feels. I often find myself asking questions I never expected to ask another living soul, like "Did you lick your shirt?" and "Why are you trying to put that toy in your butt?" I know something about context and being misunderstood and how if you make one mistake there's always a person standing just behind you who will never let you forget it. "Mommy made a mistake." (Statement, not question.) 

If Zoe asked me what kind of tree I was in the middle of the usual chaos, I'd be tempted to say the Giving Tree, from Shel Silverstein's eponymous book, y'know, the tree that gave and gave till nothing was left, not even a stump. Do you know what a martyr is, Zoe?

Go ahead and sit. If I could only provide shade,
but someone chopped me down.

Last night I asked Zoe what kind of tree she was and she said, "A leaf tree. No, an apple tree. No a bean tree. No, a big one...." Why did I ask?

Zoe: 61; Universe: 0

Zoe vs. Catapedaphobia

Catapedaphobia is not the fear of cat feet, which is what I first thought when I heard the word. But then who would be afraid of cat feet? They're so fluffy and cute.

Until you touch them and the cat swipes at you with her claws and you're bleeding.

So now I have a new fear.

But it's not catapedaphobia, which is the fear of jumping from high or low places. 

Zoe may or may not have catapedaphobia. In any case, it's the closest word I could find to describe Zoe's antipathy to bouncy castles.

Ablutophobia: fear of bathing.

There are a lot of unusual fears out there, and many of them get their own words. For instance, did you know somniphobia is the fear of sleep? Maybe that's another fear Zoe has. It would certainly explain a lot.

Ever hear of iatrophobia? That's the fear of going to the doctor (another one Zoe may have). Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive. But who doesn't fear that? Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the fear of long words, which sounds like some pscychologist's cruel joke since people who suffer from it can hardly self identify.

But back to catapedaphobia. Over the past two weekends Zoe confronted her fear of bouncy castles and, eventually, conquered it. 

Let's start with two Saturdays ago when she went to her first kid's party, a boy's of course. It was at an indoor "play arena" where the revelers could enjoy several different bouncy castles. Some had slides, some had climbing, some had both, and some were just for bouncing.

Zoe did not want to slide or climb or bounce. She wanted to go home.

The horror of watching children play,
or pedophobia.

Maybe it was the size of the structures themselves (megalophobia). Or perhaps the bright colors (chromatophobia).

Whatever it was, I had to hold her for the whole two hours of the party. On the positive side, this alleviated my own social phobia. I was too busy with Zoe, alternating between psyching her up and then comforting her when her socked foot touched the entrance to the inflatable structure and she jumped back into my arms, to worry about small talk. She was a 36-pound conversation piece. "I guess she's afraid." "She just doesn't want to." "Whaddaya say, Zoe?" "Look, the birthday boy is doing it." "Kids, huh?" 

Zoe has a history of taking her time warming up to things. She was that way at an amusement park we visited earlier in the summer.

In Phase One she'd say she wanted to go on a ride but then she'd stand and stare at it in silence for several minutes, her hands pressed to her cheeks.

Was it tachophobia, the fear of speed?

Or kinetophobia, the fear of movement?

How about neophobia, the fear of new things?

Phase Two was her getting on a ride, then crying to get off before it started, then standing outside again, watchful, waiting for an explosion perhaps. 

Phrase Three: the carousel. She went on. She stayed on. Progress.

Considering her obsession with coin-operated horses (the gateway drug of rides), I knew the horse part wouldn't be the problem. (She is not equinophobic, thank god, because I was afraid of that.)

But in light of the fact that I'd never been allowed to put money in the ride (mechanophobia?), I wasn't so sure she'd be okay when the carousel started moving. However, my fears proved groundless and she ended up loving the carousel.

Therefore, at the bouncy place I figured she just needed time to warm up. I was right. Apparently that time was seven days.

In this picture, how many things are there
to fear? a) 4 b) 5 c) a + b?

Last weekend we went to a block party, and they also had a bouncy castle. As I had the week before, I stood at the entrance to the anxiety-inducing inflatable holding a serious Zoe, who played with her hair, a considering frown on her face.

Again we went through the false starts. She'd say she wanted to go in, I'd place her on the castle's foyer area, and then she'd scuttle back into my arms. Foyerphobia?*

I'm not sure what finally decided her. Maybe it was that while she was busy ruminating, her friend, who is a year younger, had bounced all over like a curly-haired pinball and gone down the slide umpteen times and she wanted to join her.

So Zoe goes in and I follow her around on the outside until, lo and behold, a smile. "Mommy, I like it!" Miracle!

This bouncy castle had punching bags erupting from the rubber floor like stalagmites in a clown cave, and the bigger kids were knocking into them. At one point Zoe got hit with one and went down. A moment later she bounced up, saying, "I'm okay." 

When she finally came out she told me, "I loved it."

So when trying something new, Zoe's action plan is: 1) abject terror and resistance lasting about a week, then 2) grim acceptance, followed by 3) like quickly followed by 4) love then 5) obsession as evidenced by nonstop talking about it forever plus infinity.

Bouncy castles do not foster equanimity. 

I was glad she'd gotten over her fear and enjoyed herself. And I was glad none of the kids had eaten before bouncing, because if they got sick, that would've triggered my emetophobia, fear of vomit. Can you picture it? Bouncing vomit. Vomit getting on socks. Vomit in hair.

If you feel queasy, maybe you're emetophobic too. You should probably seek help.

Zoe: 60; Universe: 0

*Okay, I made this one up. But I can't be the only one who hates that moment when you first enter someone's house for a party and everyone looks at you.**

**Scopophobia: fear of being stared at.