Empty House: The Twilight Zone

For the past week I was given a taste of what it is to be an “Empty Nester”. My husband took the kids to go see his father on the East Coast. Bound to my work, I stayed home.

The build up to my family-free week was amazing. I had dreams of lounging in my pjs every night, eating in front of the tv watching highly inappropriate shows that are not suitable for young audiences or even ears for that matter. Boy did my bubble burst.

On the first night home, I settled in from work – turning on music, starting up dinner and all around enjoying an evening free of sibling fighting and picking up after everyone. After dinner was finished, dishes washed and episodes of Mad Men consumed I headed to bed. That’s when it hit me, cue music, it was just too quiet. I felt like I was on an episode of The Twilight Zone or the movie 28 Days Later. Was I going to reach for the bathroom light and be assaulted by a flesh eating zombie or would I wake up the next morning to an eerie silence since everyone in the world vanished?

I cannot count the times that I or one of my parent friends has wondered out loud what it would be like to not have a family. After this experience I can tell you that its too creepy. I love the noise, the bickering, the physical bodies that take up space. Each night they were gone my fear of being eaten alive diminished, and my longing to hear my kids voices (even if they were fighting). It took a few days to get used to them being gone, and I never got around to doing everything on my kid-free list, but for all its worth I am happy to welcome them back into the house.

Now ask me in a month and I might have changed my tune and will be begging for a day off from being a parent.

Fear Factor: Will My Kid’s Lunch Kill Someone?

I have learned over the years there are many ways to make yourself feel like crappy parent. Locking your baby in the car along with the keys in the front seat… more than once. Rolling up the windows on your child’s hand. Laughing at them when the cry. And the one I just can’t shake the habit of, mocking them when they are whining. All equally can add up to some way tarnishing your child’s emotional development, but I just say “add it to the therapy bill” (because I am tough as nails!) But what if you kill your child’s classmate?

Accident waiting to happen or just an innocent sandwich? Image by http://www.skiptomylou.org

Not in a Dexter kind of way, but by packing something in their lunch that causes the kid to have an allergic reaction.

This is my biggest fear. That one day my daughter will reach into her lunch box and pull out a banished food item that I have totally forgotten about (etc. citrus), and the kid next to her drops dead. And my kid is watching the whole thing go down, traumatized.

According to the CDC  4 out of every 100 kids suffers from a food allergy, and out of that number nearly 90 percent of food allergies are caused by milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat. That is just mind boggling to me. There is death (well if not death at least a mean case of the hives) lurking in every lunchbox.

If you have kids you know where this fear lies. Every classroom at my child’s school has a sign declaring if it is a “Nut-Free Zone”. We have been to birthday parties with egg-free cupcakes. And not to mention the “talk” at every back-to-school night about proper lunch items and what is not allowed.

Normally I am really good about this. I happened to grow up around people with food allergies and I am not one of those crazed parents who is going to create an all out war on the kid with the nut allergy because I am inconvenienced by getting creative when it comes to a bag lunch. So today when my 7-year-old daughter came home an lectured me about the nuts that were in her leftover Chinese food I felt like a crappy parent and automatically went into a mental freak out of how I have once more harmed my child’s mental growth by killing off a kid (0r kids) in her class. I my mind I had basically murdered a child in front of my own child. God help me!

But in all reality nothing happened… this time.  In the end I figured this is one more reason my daughter should pack her own lunch. She would not willingly off one of her classmates, like her absent minded mother would. And it helps takes one more thing off the list of being a crappy parent, now I can peacefully go back to mocking her while she whines about how her little brother getting everything and is loved more.

Bay Area International Film Festival

Bay Area International Film Festival

Hello my name is Tara and I am an animation junkie!

Response: Hello, Tara!

If you are looking for something to do with the kids this weekend in the Bay Area I highly recommend heading over to Alameda and watching a few of the international shorts that have made the cut for the annual Bay Area International Film Festival. 

The morning starts at 10 a.m. with a collection of animated and stop-motion shorts for kids of all ages, then a feature film. The afternoons are geared for kids age 6 and older with shorts beginning around 1:30 and the day ending with a feature film. Saturday’s (Jan. 26th) morning feature film will be LOTTE FROM GADGETVILLE, Heiki Ernits and Janno Põldma, 81 minutes, Estonia, 2006. The afternoon feature film will be ZARAFA Rémi Bezançon & Jean-Christophe Lie, 78 minutes, France/Belgium, 2012. In French with English subtitles – so make sure your little one is up for some reading. A one day pass is $15, or a weekend pass for $20, children ages 3 and younger are free.

I look forward to watching this short about a dinosaur who learns to fly. Or this one about a cute little cloud.

Google announces 2013 Doodle Contest, $30K scholarship

Does you kid love to draw? Are you a Google junkie? Need money for your kid’s college tuition? Why not combine all three in this year’s Doodle 4 Google Contest. Google will start taking entries for the annual contest on Jan. 15th. 

As a writer Google is an important piece of the creative process, plus I love to spend hours there farting around looking for cute pictures of sloths. If I think about it in a workday I must spend about two hours on working on some sort of Google search. So whenever they have a great doodle I take notice (I still think Les Paul’s birthday was the best). Each year Google announces an art contest for kids which includes a great scholarship package and not to mention their artwork becomes the Google doodle for the day. Last year’s doodle was amazing!

This year’s theme is “My best day every..” The winner will receive a $30,000 scholarship package, $50,000 technology grant, and other “cool” prizes (let’s hope one is at least a Google polo). Four runners up will receive a $5,000 scholarship and a trip to NYC. The art contest is open to kids in kindergarten through 12th grade, and must  depict the them around the Google logo. Click here for entry form. 

Doodles will be judged by Google employees. The deadline is March 22. 

Good luck!