So yesterday, I was having a day. I snatched the little angel right off the school bus and drove twenty miles to get her to a make-up ballet class, for which she was not dressed or hairdressed. We hit every red light in the Kansas City metro area, and while I was shoving her into her tights, I gave them a huge run. Then her hair wouldn't stay. She'd been crying most of the way to class because she didn't realize she'd have to go and was worried because she didn't know anyone there or the teacher. And we were twelve minutes late. And the teacher turned out to be the director of the entire school. And I'm not sure she was even marked as being there. And while I was going down to the waiting area to silently berate myself for such a parenting fail, the strap of my shoe broke, rendering it impossible to walk.

While we were driving home, I saw one of those BMWs that looks like a Corolla. I've never understood why one would want a BMW that looks like a normal car -- maybe someone can explain that to me, because there may be some epic German engineering even in a tiny four-door -- but it was clear this car owner had bought the BMW because he or she always wanted to say "I drive a BMW." And the reason I know this: the vanity license plate said "BMR."

And my brain thought: BRLY

And I laughed and laughed until the little angel asked me what I was laughing about and I had to admit I was just being mean in my head, and I should really stop. It's not BMR's fault I had a bad day.

Last night, I was reading my book at my daughter's gymnastics class, listening with half an ear to two other mothers talking about their children's extracurricular activities. This year is the first year we've had the girl in more than one activity at a time (swimming lessons being the exception -- swimming lessons trumped everything for us), and it's tough. We've already had to make a hard decision to keep her from trying out for something in ballet she really wanted to do because of a family conflict, and I look forward into the middle school and high school years and wonder how many conflicts will arise if she does any organized anything -- sports, band, speech, theatre, choir -- any of it.

So anyway, this women had two kids, and she was telling the mother with three kids about how she'd just been at karate for an hour and then had to tag team getting the karate kid and taking him home so he could get to bed and coming back to gymnastics for the gymnastics kid. And the other mother said how all three of her kids take piano lessons and she ends up going to this house three times in three hours or something like that, and I found myself doing mental calculations of how much all these lessons must cost and how much driving that must take, and I must've looked up in shock, because suddenly they were both staring at me.

"Um. I have one kid," I finally said, laughing awkwardly.

This was followed with both, "Oh, you're so lucky," and "My sister-in-law only has one child and my husband told me we absolutely had to give ours a sibling so I ended up with three."

There was a time, earlier in my parenting experience, when the latter statement might have reduced me to tears. The woman clearly -- from her expression, anyway -- meant me no harm. Yet she'd just insinuated to my face that I had somehow scarred my daughter for life by not giving her a sibling.

It's tough, not offending people, and I've loosened up a lot. I don't believe at all most people mean to offend each other, and sometimes I think we collectively as a society need to cut each other a hell of a lot more slack and assume good intentions. There was a time, earlier in my parenting experience, when I would've gone home and cried for two hours and worried my daughter would grow old hating me and wishing she had brothers or sisters. Compound this event with the fact earlier in the day Beloved and I made a classroom visit and one of the kids asked if our girl was an only child and I almost asked if anyone else in the class was but stopped myself because what if nobody else was? Would that make her feel even more different than being the only one in the class with red hair?

I have spent a ton of energy worrying about her only-child status. I write about this now because I am so comfortable in that status. She may be upset with me someday, but if it weren't this, it would be that. I have heard plenty of times from friends who are only children they don't really like the caretaking role as their parents get older, but I've also heard plenty from friends who have siblings who don't do shit, so it's really a toss-up, at the end of life. You just never know. No sense in killing yourself worrying about it.

Obviously, if you read this blog, you know I still worry about every other thing under the sun, but I do believe I've put the only-child shame to bed.

One thing I've noticed, though, is that I revel so much in my small family that I have to check myself when I talk to other mothers of onlies. Some families aren't small because the parents wanted it -- sometimes there's a fertility issue or a divorce issue or some other thing that held back the size of the family, and I'd hate to ever hurt another mother's feelings by crowing about only children if her heart is breaking for five. It's such a loaded thing -- but it's such a frequently discussed thing. Almost every time we meet new people as a family of three, the fact my girl is an only immediately comes up, and their feelings on our choices are often written on their faces, and it's frequently, well, shock.

But last weekend, I was in Lawrence with my best friend and her only child, which she had with her only-child husband, and we ran into her graduate advisor and his wife and only child. And it was pretty fucking awesome to not explain anything to anyone.

So, if you're out there, and you're considering stopping at one, I'll say it loud and again and over and over, because I needed people to say it to be over and over before I could override societal messages telling me I had to have more kids -- you don't. You can stop if you want. And if people ask if your child is an only, just say, "Yes, she is!" and give them a huge smile. Because I've done this many times, and it's like you see the other person consider the follow-up question and realize how rude it is ... and stop. And then we change the subject, or I ask if they have kids, too, or something else, but it takes the spotlight off me and my daughter (who is inevitably standing right there listening to the whole exchange with her eight-year-old ears).

Repeat after me: "Yes, she is!" NO EXPLANATION.

I'm told I should start a Tumblr blog for these pictures. I'm too lazy to do that, so I'm creating a new category: Scenes I Walked in On. I'll try to go back and find all the others and tag them so they're in one place. I can't bear the thought of tracking more than one blog.

A few days ago, I walked into the living room after the little angel had gone to school and found this.

It reminded me of some horrible movie I saw in the eighties in which all the people were wrapped up by giant bees or spiders or something. With more than a little trepidation, I lifted the blanket.

And then I saw this.

So I did what any logical person would do. I tweeted the Nelson Atkins museum. We were just there. Looking at mummies.

Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at the @nelsonatkins last weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/

— Rita Arens (@ritaarens)

Which is funny, because I always feel so dumb at art museums. While talking to the front desk folks, I forgot the word "sarcophagus." Then I got into an extended discussion  with a docent about a pieta in which I screwed up art terminology. I thought a pieta was any piece of art depicting Mary and baby Jesus. It's so not. It's Mary and dead Jesus, which is really much sadder than Mary and baby Jesus.

But he'd never heard of it either way, so I guess there's that.

Then the little angel asked me if it was okay to think art showing Jesus was really ugly, and I told her I thought the real Jesus would not be upset if she didn't like art created before people discovered foreshortening. She was extremely relieved. I actually remember having the exact same question about her age. They should really go through these things in church.

Lo and behold, the museum tweeted me back!

sarcophagus bears? “@ritaarens: Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at @nelson_atkinslast weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

@nelson

Send her over to help w/ our installations :} “@ritaarens: @nelson_atkins I think so. Otherwise, the Chinese bed with the drapes. #art”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

So then, just as I'm securing funding to send my little art genius off on her future career, I learned the truth. When she got home from school, I asked the little angel what up with the bears.

"Oh," she said. "They're sleeping. The light hurts their eyes."

Damn.

We need each other.

Yesterday a Twitter friend tweeted about his kids sobbing at preschool drop-off. I was back crouching under the window in the door at the Emerald City in a split-second, listening to the little angel screaming for me and throwing her little body against the door. I'm on the verge of tears at the memory, just the memory.

Then this morning, I read a post on BlogHer about the advice people give when your toddler has sleep issues, and my body had a visceral reaction. My body remembers the feeling of walking through water, the dimming of my hearing, the sometimes tunnel vision of extreme, prolonged sleep deprivation. Ever since my girl had her sleep problems, I can now feel the exact moment I fall asleep. It's a tingly feeling, and I've been jerked from sleep just as my body started to tingle so many times I now treasure that feeling. I've always needed a lot of sleep, but I never clung to it as much before motherhood as I do now. I cling to sleep the way some people cling to chocolate. I am in love with sleeping and what sleeping the right amount can do for my health, my mood and my intellect. Sleep gives me hope again.

I'm at the midpoint right now -- that period after my child can wipe her own butt and toast her own bread and before the tweener hormones and puberty kicks in. It's like the second trimester -- this period between five and nine when the sun shines brightly and she learns to ride a bike and she likes to cuddle and she writes the best stories and she wants to hug me all the time. The pause in the climb when you secure your footholds and check your ropes and notice the view is dazzling up here.

I take pictures on my phone of the evidence of her play and keep the sweet notes she leaves for me almost daily and record her stories on this blog in case the feeling of her arms around my waist isn't as powerful as the feeling of shame and the overwhelming desire to protect and the obligation of needing to go to work I felt crouching below that window at daycare. Sometimes the bad feelings linger longer than the good ones, and I squirrel away every sign of her love for when the day comes that she shouts "I hate you." When that day comes, I will try to remember how overwhelming hormones can feel and how confusing it is to be an adolescent and how much I needed to push away everyone I loved during my own teen years. Her adolescence may not be as rough as mine was, but I was a firebrand and I have every reason to expect a steep climb to her twenties.

So when she screams, "I hate you," I will look at those pictures, and I will read this blog, and I will cuddle her old stuffed animals and I will concentrate on that feeling of the little arms around my waist. And then I will probably cry out to the Internet for some parent with children a little older than mine to tell me it will be okay again. That this feeling, too, will pass, and that the view from the very top is worth every minute when the wind blew rain in my face.

{BOOM! Thanks, as always, for tolerating my extreme desire to pay down debt and work toward a new kitchen floor. Every penny counts toward the Arens debt calculator. We are making progress!}

---

I think I need a vacation. While the Labor Day weekend was air-clearing for me, my brain feels dried up. This morning, I thought it was Saturday and started muttering to the little angel to go find her blue leotard for the first day of ballet. I was halfway into three projects at work when Beloved forwarded me an email and I realized one of us was going to have to stay home from scheduled trips to Iowa for my cousin's wedding shower or my daughter's sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa A because the Kansas City Ballet Nutcracker auditions are that weekend for those who wear blue leotards. And the girl who never wants to do any sports activities at all wants to be in the "real" Nutcracker this year. (braces self for rehearsal schedule, kisses social life goodbye)

Summer feels over even though it's still 95 degrees outside, mostly due to the ridiculously packed schedules of everything starting up again. The engines are already coming in hot every night. And I have one kid! Who doesn't do that much! How is everyone juggling their dual-income, three-kids-in-soccer schedules?

I feel like I might suck.

I feel drained, already, which freaks me out because it is barely September and my girl is already thinking about Halloween costumes.

Just a little vacation. Just a few days.

But when?

[Editor's Note: This is political. I understand if you don't want to read it. My politics have always been very clear here -- someone once tried to get me fired from my job because of them. But I have to write this, because to say nothing might be interpreted as disinterest or agreement.]

The little angel appeared before my side of the bed. I didn't look at the clock.

"Mommy, I'm trying to stop a bad dream from forming," she said.

This has happened several times in the past few weeks.

I climbed into her bed with her and put my arm around her. We both fell asleep.

I woke up this morning thinking about my girl and how much I wish to protect her from everything scary in the world. I just read Margaret Atwoods' The Handmaid's Tale this past weekend. The daughter Offred loses would be eight. The little angel is eight.

"What's the matter? he said.

I don't know, I said.

We still have ... he said. But he didn't go on to say what we still had. It occurred to me that he shouldn't be saying we, since nothing that I knew of had been taken away from him." - p. 182

I'm not pro-abortion. I've never had one. I never wanted to have to make that choice. I understand the pro-life stance, maybe not some of the methods used to drill the message, but the message. In a perfect world, no one would ever need to have an abortion. Being pro-choice doesn't mean thinking all pregnancies should be aborted willy-nilly for whatever reason. Being pro-choice means wanting safe, affordable options for pregnant women who were made that way against their will or who will not be able to provide adequate care for a child or for whom a pregnancy is a health risk. Being pro-choice means wanting pregnancy to be avoided in the first place via safe, affordable birth control and sex education. Being pro-choice, to me, means wanting to ensure girls and women can avoid that, the most horrible choice there can ever be, from ever arising in the first place.

We're humans. The women have the babies. If it were any other way, if instead of genders we had blue and green and sometimes blues had the babies and sometimes greens had the babies, I don't think there would be this issue. The way it stands, the women ALWAYS have the babies; it's just the way our anatomy works. And because of that, it makes individual rights very, very tricky. There really is no comparison for the other gender, and I don't blame men for that -- it's not their fault they don't have the babies any more than it is women's fault that we do, or we can. That we are capable of doing so.

But we are not vessels.

There is no way an egg can get inside a man to be fertilized with the sperm, leaving its existence or nonexistence up to the man or to a government that wants to have a say in that fertilized egg's existance.

If a man is raped -- because that totally happens, too -- the government has no say in how he deals with the fallout. A man can get a disease from rape -- all sorts of horrible things can happen to a man -- but the government can't pass an amendment to the Constitution to force him to keep a pregnancy resulting from abuse against his will. I'm not even talking about a child -- I'm talking about a pregnancy. At a certain point one becomes the other, and we can agree to disagree on when that is, but the government is not trying to make amendments about born babies, so to me, it's a moot point.

I realize completely there is really no point in arguing about whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, because such stances are deeply personal and all we can do is disagree civilly and vote to support politicians who we believe will treat us with respect.

It is the respect part I keep getting stuck on this week, any week, when it comes to this issue. My uterus is in early retirement. I don't plan on using it again, have taken steps to insure against accidents. I'm not worried about the government legislating my uterus, because I benched it.

The Handmaid's Tale is a book about a society in which women are valued only for their fertility due to depopulation and a government takeover by a highly religious society. Atwood, in her ending "A Note to a Reader," wrote this, in 1986:

"The roots of the book go back to my study of the American Puritans. The society they founded in America was not a democracy as we know it, but a theocracy. In addition, I found myself increasingly alarmed by statements made frequently by religious leaders in the United States; and then a variety of events from around the world could not be ignored, particularly the rising fanaticism of the Iranian monotheocracy. The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except in time and place ... It is an imagined account of what happens when not uncommon pronouncements about women are taken to their logical conclusions. History proves that what we have been in the past we could be again."

I am a spiritual person. I have my relationship with my God. But God isn't writing human laws, people are -- people who are interpreting God. We don't know. We won't know until later. People are fallible, can take things too far, can take their beliefs to unwanted logical conclusions.

I sat in bed for a while this morning, thinking about everything I've seen and read in the past 48 hours regarding abortion and women's health and women being denied services and "legitimate rape," and I, too, wanted to stop the bad dream from forming.

I have a vote, and I have a blog, and this is all I can do. As Atwood also wrote in an interview in the back of my library book:

"After all, this is the United States and it is North America and it is a pluralistic society and we have many people with differing points of view. A number of people would not take this lying down."

We have to keep talking about it. It's important. My daughter is only eight, and she has a whole life of experiences -- good and bad -- ahead of her. I want her to have her rights intact to move forward through life as she sees fit. She is the best thing I've ever produced, but I am more than just her mother. She is more than her someday fertility.

Women are more than that. We are more than one-half of the population. We just happen to be the half that has the babies.

---

I’ve loved amusement parks pretty much my whole life. I was very cautious as a child, so I don’t remember riding roller coasters until young adulthood, and I think I’ve been making up for it ever since. When BlogHer and Cedar Fair offered me the opportunity to review Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun for free plus some money to spend in the park, I was all in. (And my family was pleased, as well.)

I grew up in Iowa, and thus I’ve been spending summer Saturdays at Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun my whole life. I remember packing up the car and making the journey to Kansas City – the thrill of the roller coasters and the big hot air balloon with “Worlds of Fun” written on it coming into focus on the flat highway. Ah, bliss. “I wish I LIVED in Kansas City,” I would tell my parents. “I would go to Worlds of Fun EVERY WEEKEND.”

Ha!

Now I do live in Kansas City, and we go to Worlds of Fun two or three times each summer. Usually we do the twilight pass, which saves you $10-$15 and the heat of the day. If you’re local, you’re probably good with five hours of amusement park, especially if your kids are younger (mine is 8). Normal rates to get in top out at $45/person at the gate plus $12 parking.

So that’s the past, and now we go on to the present. This summer, the Arens family went to Worlds of Fun!

The little angel wore her special coordinated-sunglasses-and-earrings set.

Beloved made sure to insure important items against water rides.

Note: We got there at 10:45 on a Saturday morning. The gates opened at 10. Note: GO EARLY – there are fewer lines early in the park’s day. True, I went early in the season, but in my experience the park really starts to get busy right after lunch.

One of the things I like about Worlds of Fun are the roller coasters. It’s smaller than the Six Flags parks, but there are still nine aggressive thrill rides in Worlds of Fun and two in Oceans of Fun (read: roller coaster equivalent). This is a picture of my new favorite, the Prowler.

The Boomerang is interesting in that you do the whole coaster forwards and backwards.

The Boomerang has several upside-down turns, as well.

My second-favorite coaster is the Mamba. The first hill is the best.

Despite her love of every roller coaster her 52” self can get herself on, the little angel’s favorite ride is the one that was my favorite when I was a kid: Le Taxitour.

She likes it for the same reason I do – she gets to be the driver, for once.

After we rode the rides, we decided to try out the games, since part of my compensation was some money to spend in the park. In my experience, if you have a small child and you ask the game wranglers where your wee one might win something, they are generous with their information about “everyone wins” opportunities in the park.

Sorry, Worlds of Fun, but the plastic vuvuzela is perhaps the worst prize I have ever seen, on many levels.

We were not that thrilled with the inflatable bats, either. But we kept trying!

When we walked in, we saw some huge stuffed gorillas. The little angel was sure we would win one. The game: Rebound. You had to throw a whiffle ball at what looked like an artist’s easel with a stick balanced on the bottom tray and land the ball in a box at the base of the easel without knocking off the stick. Truly a bizarre game. The little angel tried. She missed the first two times.

And then …

She won. OMG.

The best thing about this gorilla, which we named “Tiny,” was the reaction from the other park goers as we carried her out of the park. One guy mentioned we might need a truck. One teen tried to give us $50 for Tiny. But the little angel won her all by herself, so alas, capitalism didn’t prevail.

There was a tense moment in the parking lot.

 

But we did, at last, get Tiny home. The little angel triumphantly showed her off to the entire neighborhood.

 

Just for yucks, Tiny wanted to sit in Vicki the Convertible.

 

At the end of our exciting Worlds of Fun adventure, the little angel tucked Tiny into bed.

Pros and Cons to Worlds of Fun

Pros:

• Lots of coasters
• Fast Lane available (though we didn’t use and didn’t really need, due to our timing)
• Availability of Subway if you don’t want to stuff yourself with theme park food
• Games your kid can actually win
• Planet Snoopy has a good selection of rides for the wee ones so everyone can have fun
• Ride conductors are comedians
• Rating system for rides makes it easy to determine if you want to go on them before you get in line

Cons:

• The fried food was a bit greasy for my taste (but hey, it’s fried theme park food)
• Not as many misters as there could be for a park in the hot, steamy Midwest
• Many of the lines aren’t shaded
• No hand sanitizers near rides or food (at least that I saw)

What’s your favorite amusement park memory? Ours is definitely the little angel winning Tiny (though I wish she were a little tinier).

Last night I found out about an unexpectedly large bill. I'd just returned from CVS, where I spent twenty-five minutes combining coupons with weekly deals to save $23. The pointlessness of blowing all that time to save a few bucks only to find out a mistake had cost us hundreds totally deflated me. And it was 107 degrees at 7 pm.

I sank to the kitchen chair. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I think I'm going to throw up," I said.

I sat there, breathing deeply, trying to calm my anxiety, when my daughter appeared at my side and handed me the teddy bear that lives in her room but was mine when I was her age.

She patted my arm and went upstairs to shower.

Wow.

The neighbors are out of town. They've asked us to water their flowers since it will not rain in Kansas City again before the Mayan calendar runs out. We said, "Sure!" 

The first night I went over to water, I found the hose in back to be already on with a device attached to the top. It looked like a quick adaptor, but when I tried to put the nozzle in, it just shot water all over me. So then I decided to take the quick adaptor off, because WTF?

BAD IDEA.

As I watched water come shooting out the sides as I attempted to unscrew the adaptor, I remembered my neighbor saying something vague about the hose in the back never turning off.

Huh.

I watered everything while growing more concerned. I couldn't leave the adaptor off for a week, but if I tried to screw it back on, I was going to get even more soaked. And I was wearing my glasses, and I really hate it when my glasses get wet. It wasn't until I had the adaptor almost on that it occurred to me I could crimp the hose to at least slow the avalanche of water currently drenching me from head to toe.

No, I'm not known for my common sense. Thanks!

Fast-forward to last night. Saddened by the knowledge I have to do this every night this week because I am the only one home, I headed across the street. The little angel trotted along behind me in her skort and cowgirl boots, because that's all she wears ever since she read that is Taylor Swift's favorite outfit.

Me: Want to help me water the flowers?

Her: No, I want to go play.

Me: Okay, so what are you waiting for?

Her: I wanted to watch you get drenched first.