Value wIT

The first three years of my children’s preschool world put me in direct contact with MissingThePoint Mom.  This is the first year since my child was three-years old that I have had the luxury of being free from MissingThePoint Mom.  However, in an ironic twist, once again life placed me in her path.

Actually, MissingThePoint Mom is nice, and most likely she has a good heart.  If she weren’t so off, she could be tolerable.  However, her priorities and decisions epitomize the reason for Value wIT’s existence. MissingThePoint Mom is the core of why I want to move away from America.

To provide a flavor of MissingThePoint Mom, recall the time I went to her gigantic house to retrieve my child from a playdate. Ding-donging the doorbell of her castle, I peered through the glass doors to notice the soulless furnishings and the almost complete absence of décor – even the landscape lacked personality. A $4 million shell that is empty on the inside (foreshadowing.)

MissingThePoint Mom answers the door in some type of dancewear involving a Lycra “car-wash” style skirt and tights. Her hair is damp hair slicked back with gel.  My mind races to place the look. Is she going to a party, taking an ice-skating class or participating in a Dancing with Stars episode? No control over myself, I twist my head, squint my eyes and blurt, “What’s that you are wearing? And why?”

MissingThePoint Mom clears the confusion by saying, “Oh, my husband harasses me about exercising. Before he gets home I put on exercise clothes and wet my hair so it looks like I worked out.”

Bu, of course.

Distracted by the yapping, crated Bichon Friese positioned by the Jolly Green Giant’s fireplace, a second muttering pops out of my mouth, “What? Plastic toes? Why?”  You see, the small dog in the large house was enclosed in a cage and his toes were encased in plastic. Apparently the toenail covers prevent the dog from scratching the wood floors or the kids.  The kids? Where were the kids?

MissingThePoint Mom leads me out of the house past the pool with its various waterfalls and down the hill around the tennis court to the Children’s House,which also serves as the nanny’s house.  The nanny, who in later years will have a title change and be referred to as Teacher, is leading the children in a Popsicle gluing exercise.  My child swaggers over to me and says, “Let’s go.”

Preschool and Kindergarten come and go and MissingThePoint Mom becomes known amongst the school crowd for employing the largest staff of childcare consultants ever known to mankind: daytime nannies, weeknight nannies, weekend nannies, reading teachers, tennis teachers, swimming teachers, speech therapists, manners consultants. In addition to all the women who work at this household in an attempt to raise the children, the children are always at extra curricular classes: cooking class, art class, ABC camp, music school, gymnastics, hip-hop, horseback riding… it’s tiring just to list all those lessons – imagine attending that many classes.

Again, MissingThePoint Mom is nice. That’s not the problem. The problem is that she and her doctor husband have blatantly chosen to ignore every bit of common sense that one should use when raising children.  For instance, the child stamped her foot and refused to eat vegetables or any food with nutritional value.  As a result, the little girl became constipated. Instead of making the child eat some decent food the parent’s answer was to buy a wholesale sized tub of Senokot and make it a part of her daily diet.  Of course, everyday laxatives will cause a person to shit like a pet coon…at inopportune times. 

MissingThePoint Mom is pretty. Not a traffic stopper, but better than average. For some reason, the husband, I suspect, MissingThePoint Mom has spent more than her fair share of time under the knife…gut, butt, eyes, lips. After one major face reorganization, I was so embarrassed to look at her. Meeting her eyes was unsettling because she looked like another person. Seeing MissingThePoint Mom at a school performance, I was rendered speechless and couldn’t maintain a conversation with her as she tried to get her puffy lips to form words.

My children’s new school has been such a relief because the parents are unremarkable. These everyday parents limit my writing prompts, but they keep my sanity in check. However, my newfound calm was shaken when I bumped into MissingThePoint Mom last week.

In order for my son to learn to hold a pencil, it appears the only solution is for him to participate in occupational therapy. In case you don’t know, OT is where you pay for your children to jump on trampolines and squeeze Play-doh. Certainly, if I were a more committed mother or at least a mother with more than 5 extra minutes in my day, I would be able to teach my child to write. However, I know my limitations and have enrolled my son in this handwriting class. Guess who is at the class? MissingThePoint Mom.  Of course, her daughter is getting writing help, which I suspect is not to bring her up to par, but to help her get ahead.

Oddly, MissingThePoint Mom evokes a humble tone. This warmth accompanied by the fact that she is wearing an apron gives her a mom-who-was-baking-cookies-but-had-run-an-errand look. Reread that sentence. I said MissingThePoint Mom was wearing an apron … over her St. John separates. An apron. 

My mouth says, “Why ya wearing an apron?” Her answer, “Oh, I’m really into aprons these days” does not satisfy me.  However, I am unable to ask a follow-up question about the apron because I am distracted by her Invisalign and her eyelash extensions.

It was all too much handle, and seeing MissingThePoint Mom made me tired. I was reminded that while I’ve been lazing around enjoying my children’s new school and its socially unconnected student body, the other school’s moms are still running the race.  Across town children are getting a leg up with movie-making classes while their mothers are getting fresh fetal lamb cell injections to smooth fine lines.

My competitive tendency flairs, and for a teeny-tiny minute I consider enrolling my children in an Architecture for Children class and making myself a Botox appointment. Instead, spent the next thirty minutes watching..."Mommy, watch me. Mommy, look at me. Mom, come see this carnival we made."

This is what I’m thinking – urban development discriminates against family and most blatantly, married (old) women.  Family is the new Black. Remember the days of segregation (well, honestly, are they really over?) when the black family wasn’t welcome in the white neighborhood?  In 2K8, families are in the same predicament with respect to urban living– the land of urban coolness doesn’t welcome the family and hopes that the childbearing woman will pack herself into a box that could be slipped under the bed…in a suburban house, of course.

The Value wIT world headquarters is located in a historic neighborhood a smidge to the north of downtown Austin. Back in the 1830’s when Austin was called Waterloo, Value wIT’s neighborhood was named Original City. So much for history and nostalgia, the new urban development plan has a photograph of a bulldozer on the lawn of Value wIT’s office empire.  Save the protected historic homes, the neighborhood is going with the “vertical, mixed-used” strategy. This means high-rise condos with retail on the ground floor.  Sounds somewhat glamorous, however, practically VMU means shabbily built apartments with abandoned retail slots at street level.

Personally, luxury, swank high-rise living is appealing to me.  Big houses require too much maintenance. However, the urban land, or maybe just the Austin urban world, does not welcome families with small children. Sure, the occasional cute baby sleeping in an overpriced, over-designed stroller is a novelty at the coffee shop or bistro, but honestly, does the cozy café that is used as satellite office for the career set welcome the shrill and chaos associated with investigative children?  Nope. Where’s the school for the urban children? Where is the park – the one with a playscape not a concrete slab with an off-limits shrubbery garden connected to an office building?

Here’s the deal. Once the young, sexy woman gets married and breeds a pile of offspring she is no longer valuable in the work world – she’s a liability, a wildcard, the weak link who will miss work to sit with a sick child or attend a school performance. The same woman who used to be an a happy hour asset is now a spy for the other team – in other words, she might tell your wife, her friend, if you are spotted having an affair with the young office girl. No need for that. It’s off to the suburbs for the mother.

The suburban mother’s job is that of consumer. Buy shit for the house; buy the family a buttload of clothes; buy cars; decorate and re-decorate. Busy work that keeps the woman out of the cool urban land where single people and married people with no children are having a big party. A big party where high-rise living is quiet; grocery stores carry olives and not hot dogs; restaurants don’t have high chairs or chicken nuggets; and coffee shops don’t have a toy corner.

Some mothers love their ginormous house in the ‘burbs, the weekly Bunco game and a Brighton shopping spree. Certainly, the idea is that as a mother, I should move away from the urban coolness, and if I don’t, my house will be mowed-over by a wrecking ball. However, I’m not planning on budging. Furthermore, I love dragging my children into the flashy urban restaurant and feeding them 1/2 price appetizers from 5-7. It makes no difference to me if the patrons at the local coffee shop balk at my children hogging the big leather chairs, and I care not if my child rides his training-wheeled bike down the sidewalk while he wears a costume.

It’s generous to birth a child for the good of the world.  How will the world survive if the birth rate continues to plummet? All the double-income-no-kids couples who don’t have to save for college tuition or pay a nanny should be thanking me for my contribution ….and they should offer to babysit in their immaculately clean high-rise!

Last Thursday one of my frequented stores had their annual Margarita Sale.  The premise behind the sale is that customers come to the store and are served margaritas while trying on clothes that have recently been marked down. It’s incredible how good one looks in anything after a few margaritas. Needless to say, I dragged home a big haul.

On Saturday while enjoying the town I stopped my bicycle at Anthropologie and wiped-out a few racks only to find that my great load of purchases would not fit into my backpack. Had to take the car back to transport the goods home.

This morning as I slipped into my sexy, low-ridin’ sailor pants, I became painfully aware of how much my happiness and maybe even my self-esteem depends upon what new clothes I wear.  Sounds like an 8th grade notion, and quite possibly it is an immature thought process. However, I am willing to bet that there is a fairly sizeable group out there whose emotional temperature goes up and down with a new pair of shoes.

In fact, literally, I heard a presentation yesterday from a girl who announced to an audience that her core belief was that "new shoes bring happiness." Seriously.  Who hasn’t said something seemingly innocuous like that?  Well, this was not a flip statement.  The assignment the person was fulfilling was to articulate  personal beliefs - ever heard National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” segment?  This exercise was based on that production.  Past presenters have expressed spiritual values, hope and divisive opinions. In other words, it was serious.  What was so alarming to me was that this person really and truly valued new shoes.

Yesterday I mentioned the Story of Stuff video with its message about mass consumption and consumer berserkism (my term – don’t steal it). The Story of Stuff video coupled with the “New Shoes Are The Reason I Exist” speech forced me into a baby panic attack as my mind tried to reconcile how I did not want to be that person whose happiness depended upon new shoes. That being said, I think I am that person.

Consuming is a vice for me. Wearing my cute pants this morning wasn’t even enough to get a boost in my happiness meter.  In addition to new clothes, today I felt the need to stop and buy a candle, new note pad and flowers for my office.  Not only does my body need to be lavishly dressed my office environment needs to be filled with new goods.

The Professor is a model consumer – he buys a couple pairs of pants and three shirts every year or so. He re-soles his work shoes three times and every Christmas his mother gifts him a new pair of Nikes.  He buys nothing except for new-used books every few days. The Professor’s happiness is not controlled by new clothes, and I aspire to be more like him.

Here’s the deal. I think I have to give up clothes for a while. No, I am not going to be a nudist, though I can see the appeal.  What if I allowed myself one white and one black t-shirt and one pair of running shorts and everything else I wore would have to be sewn from a pre-determined allotment of black fabric? For office and social clothes I could whip-up a black skirt or dress.  Guess people would get tired of looking at me. Hmmm. Maybe people would stop looking AT me and look INTO me.

This could be a crazy idea, but I’m thinking about doing it.  Clothes and fashion are like dope to me. I think I need to get off the vicious cycle that is ruining the lives of working women in third world countries. I am way too dependent, and as a result, I think I marginalize myself. What do  you think?