The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from Midlife Mixtape

By Nancy Davis Kho

The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from Midlife Mixtape is a collection of best loved essays on family life by Nancy Davis Kho that originally appeared on her blog, Midlife Mixtape. Parenting, school days, home life, pet ownership: Davis Kho tackles them all with a sharp eye, self- deprecating wit, and the occasional '80s music reference.

Whether it's laying down ground rules for elementary school play dates that include the 50/50 rule (if you'll only believe 50% of what your kid reports back to you, she'll only believe 50% of what they've told her happens at your house,) the household mysteries her family is spared from knowing (from which closet does toilet paper materialize, anyway?) or the day she realized that she'd been usurped as Family Tech Support by her eleven year old kid, Davis Kho mines the funny from the mundane and comes up with gold. Well, at least pyrite.

Given that Davis Kho came of age alongside Music Television and thinks almost exclusively in song lyrics, the eBook also contains a playlist inspired by the essay collection, with links to watch the back-to-back videos. Just like when you used to watch MTV in high school, minus the acne and social anxiety.

This eBook is the first in a three part series: the Music Mix and the Modern Life Mix arrive late fall 2013!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483507422

Book preview

img2.png

Rules for Playdates – Elementary School Edition

Yes, back in the olden days of my youth, kids got together to play without needing a special name for doing so. But playdate seems here to stay, so let’s accept it and move on. With the school year underway, it’s time for an update of the guiding principles of playdates in our home, as applied to the K-5 set.

Don’t expect me to report back on your child’s every action for the time they spent under my roof. Half the reason your kid was invited over in the first place was so they could distract mine while I hide in my office, finishing a story on deadline. Unless I hear screams and/or dishes shattering, I tend to stay out of sight. That way I’m as surprised by the baking soda volcano in the kitchen as you are!

If my kids aren’t allowed to say it, neither are yours while they’re in my care. Be advised: sucks, hella, crappy, and shut up will be called out and shut down.

Snacks will be provided, with a ratio of 1:1 healthy to unhealthy content. It just doesn’t seem fair to offer carrot sticks by themselves when there are perfectly good Newman-Os sitting in the cookie jar. On the other hand, if they happen to walk through the kitchen as I’m wolfing down a brownie and I have to pretend that I was actually just about to serve it as snack, I pledge to force feed them some blueberries too.

Recognize that we have a dog, and expect that he will jump around in excitement for the first two minutes of the playdate before retiring to his bed to sleep for the remainder of it. If you are the parent of a child who is terrified of dogs, and yet like a moth to a flame can’t restrain herself from saying, Here Achilles! Come here! Come! and then screaming as said dog approaches, let’s just agree not to do this.

Spontaneous kitchen dance parties do break out in our home, particularly when the iPod hits a spate of Black Eyed Peas songs. Send your child in stretchy clothing.

We are a no-video-game-console family. (Why do you think my kids always want to come to your house?) The default setting for the TV is off during a playdate, but if the kids have finished homework, kicked a ball around outside in a game that resembles Quidditch for Muggles, played a round of Dream Date (pick the nerd, trust me!), built a Lego fort, and eaten two snacks, I may break down and let them fire up a video. Tell me seriously: would you not?

Grounds for immediate termination of the playdate include: physical violence, swearing, bullying, or saying Shut up, your crappy music hella sucks.

Grounds for my begging to extend the playdate into an overnight or to have your child return the next day include: jokes I haven’t heard before, unprompted placement of dirty dishes into the dishwasher, good sportsmanship (especially as directed to a younger sibling,) a request to play with the dog in the back yard, incisive book recommendations, and a bear hug as they say goodbye.

We abide by the 50/50 rule here. I will only believe fifty per cent of what your child says about you if you’ll only believe fifty percent of what he or she say about me.

I trust and expect you to hold my children to a similar set of guidelines in your own home, the stricter the better. Anything to help make us look good by comparison is appreciated.

Of School Auctions and Self-Flagellation

Every year on the eve of our school auction, the main fundraiser for our childrens’ public elementary school, my husband asks if we can just send a check and stay home. He’s generous: the amount he names would cover not only the amount we normally spend, but also the sitter’s fee and the cost of auction tickets and drinks. Wouldn’t that just make more sense? he asks.

He’s absolutely right. The auction is a lifeblood-sucking monster, and I’m not even one of those selfless few who volunteer to organize it.

It starts as soon as school is in session, with a Mark Your Calendars! announcement in our back to school packets. Already, before you even know which teacher your child has, you’re asked to solicit local retail establishments for donations, set up or check out on the day of the auction, and purchase your tickets in advance to the event, which is held at a swanky local country club. This year promises to be the best auction ever, if only you people will get up off your butts and make it so.

Meanwhile, the auction committee pushes on parents, hard, to donate: professional services, sports tickets, airline tickets, expensive bottles of wine. I suspect that when people receive a gift during the year that utterly misses the mark, they secretly think: YESSSSS! Auction donation! Parents also band into groups to host highly coveted group dinners – the Crab Feed, the Cocktail Crawl, the Photo Safari – that cost at least a month’s private school tuition to host.

Then the kids are dusted with Auction Fever by that most irresistible siren, the Auction Fairy. This good natured volunteer stands, resplendent in fairy wings and a wand, before an audience of rapt children a month or two before the auction, displaying plasticky detritus from China. She tells them that for every bunch of auction raffle tickets sold, they’ll earn a jar of Mars Mud, or a plastic telescope, or the Holy Grail for elementary schoolers: the Lava Lamp. The kids come home, frenzied, with sheaves of blank tickets for their parents to buy, the $500 Visa gift card prize for the raffle winner a possibility that starts slim and moves quickly to none. Once your own wallet is emptied, you’re pressed into service to push tickets on unsuspecting neighbors, family members, and co-workers.

On the morning of the auction, while volunteers arrange the treasures on tables arranged carefully around the country club, stress runs high – this item lacks a tag, and that tag lacks an item, who was supposed to show up with the helium balloons and where are they now? That club policy prohibits denim contributes to everyone’s anxiety, since we volunteers must create festive arrangements of the goods while wearing uncomfortable pants. Then you rush home to shower and change and feed the kids before the sitter arrives and you have to rush back, because all your daughter wants from the auction is the Gingerbread Cookie Party with her beloved teacher and there are only six slots.

To gird yourself for the inevitable elbow-throwing and pen-hoarding of battle, you down two stiff drinks once you arrive back at the auction and hope that your shoulders will soon unhinge from your earlobes. Of course, two drinks in, all that crap you set up earlier in the day starts to look more appealing, and soon you possess a new sewing machine, a Mexican beer stand, and a restaurant gift certificate for which you accidentally bid more than face value, as well as an exasperated husband.

I am certainly not going to talk about the panic you feel when someone overspends on an item you’ve donated. The amount of work and worry you’ll have to put in for when you actually host the Egészségédre! Hungarian Dinner Party for Twelve that your fellow parent just bought climbs exponentially as each new bid is called. It’s hard to resist the urge to stand up and yell at the tipsy bidders, It’s not going to be that special of a night! My goulash is substandard!

And I won’t mention the buyer’s remorse you feel when you wake up the next day, head throbbing, and discover a giant wicker basket of Semifreddi’s bread and a gift certificate to an estate planning seminar strewn with your handbag, earrings, and shoes across the kitchen table.

So why do I wheedle and cajole my husband to take me every year?

In part because I’m curious to see how the other parents clean up. We’re used to seeing each other in the school hallways clothed in the Harried Parent uniform of sweatpants and fleece. But on auction night, all bets are off. Every once in a while someone will trot out what looks like an old bridesmaid dress, and there was a year that one woman was a dead ringer for a Flaming Red Hot Cheeto – orange from her roots to her shoes. But for the most part it’s nice to see the moms and dads who trouble to put on a dress or suit, spritz on a little cologne and wear something other than sneakers. It’s like running into an old ne’er-do-well college friend who, you’re glad to see, turned out okay after all.

But the real lure is the camaraderie when the rumor of how much we’ve raised starts to circulate through the crowd. How much so far? They think it’s at least as much as last year, and they haven’t even auctioned off ‘Principal for a Day’ yet. Could you BELIEVE how much the Brazilian Dinner party went for?

Suddenly all that crazy-making auction prep begins to have tangible meaning: field trips and hands-on science experiments, symphony concerts and daily gym class, computers in the classroom and teacher aides. It means providing all the things to a school that the state school budget should cover, but doesn’t anymore. It means that our PTA can even make a donation to another public school in our district, one where the parents don’t have the means (or aren’t crazy enough) to throw an auction.

It means that even when jobs are scarce and funds are low and everyone carries economic worry with them like a low-grade fever, you’re part of a community that still puts public education first.

And that, to me, is the ultimate auction treasure.

Lunches on Autopilot

Next week is spring break for our kids. We’re