Slow Down Bunny Season: A Momoir

By Rachael Carnes

Trawling the dark recesses of the author's sleep-deprived mind for amusing tales of woe, 'Slow Down Bunny Season' delivers a powerful punch of self-deprecation in sassy style. Motherhood, pulled off its pedestal, is reduced to the profoundly humiliating, and utterly rewarding, task that it is: cooking, cleaning, running errands, planning, organizing, baking, navigating the ins and outs of siblings... If a mom does it, it's talked about here, along with the great joys of faking your way into selling mortgage insurance, and trying - and failing - to lead a Girl Scout troop. Author Rachael Carnes candidly embraces the poop-up-the-back-of-your-baby's-neck Reality Party that is becoming and being a parent. Especially when you're parenting a kid who goes through stints of insisting on calling you 'Carole Mellow'... Explore the depths of exhaustion with a veteran of the Dawn Patrol. Throw out those books that shame you into thinking parenting is all about being perfect. This is where sh*t gets real.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachael Carnes
• Release date: Nov 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310252662

Rachael Carnes

Rachael Carnes spent her early years on the mean streets of Chicago, where she chewed a lot of bubblegum and rode her BigWheel everywhere. After moving to quiet Eugene, OR, she dedicated herself to the fine art of lying on her stomach and eating cereal from the box in front of the TV. After attending Reed College, Rachael wrangled Butoh performers in Seattle, started a business selling dance to parents in NYC, had a baby of her own, moved home, had another baby, and did more stuff. And ate more cereal.

Book preview

Slow Down Bunny Season:

A Momoir

by

Rachael Carnes

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Rachael Carnes

All Rights Reserved.

Part One: WORK, TRAVEL, HEAD LICE

CHAPTER 1

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO MAN UP AND ACT LIKE A LADY

When she was about to turn nine, my daughter Jane left a note for me on my pillow called Some words I don’t understand. On a carefully bullet-pointed list underneath, she had written:

• Passive aggressive

• Solar Plexus

• Befuddled

• Spongecake

As proud as I am every time my children slump a little further from the primordial soup, and a little closer to their own apartments, it’s still a kind of sad to see them grow up. Like the day Jane said waffles instead of wah-wahfs, or when it clicked for Hugh what words were really for, and he spent the rest of the day insisting that I address him as Chuckie, the Flying Horse.

Children get a pass if they’re not quite up to the rigors of modernity. After all, when we were young we secondhand smoked, and spent our days lying on our stomachs, watching cartoons and eating cereal from the box. We were so carefree. It takes time to feel a shred of confidence in this grown-up world – getting more grown up by the minute. Now babies have iphones. I don’t get it, but I see it happening. Like a child learning to use the right word, I’m not there yet.

So, luddite that I am, I mostly hide in the kitchen, and I mostly spend my time wiping the counters. All day long, liquids, crumbs, jelly – the holy trinity of goop – finds its way into the nooks and crannies, like behind the coffee maker and under the fruit bowl. And if the counters are clean, then the floor is scattered with chopped onions or dog food or those little plastic clips that tie bread together, and if that’s swept up, then something in the freezer has upended itself and drizzled down the wall and puddled and frozen again, or the produce drawer is full of blood. As you can surmise, I stay pretty busy.

As a grown-up, I spend most of my time in the kitchen. And when I have the opportunity to visits the other rooms in my home I’m always pleasantly surprised. It’s like I’m on vacation, like I should bring a camera to photograph our living room. I am aware of the living room, vaguely, but I’m more familiar with our family room, because it is right next to the kitchen, and it is where my children can usually be found playing, and also where they usually are when I have to yell at them. Of course, to yell at them, I stay in the kitchen. I yell at them from the sink. Because the sink is always full of dishes. I might set up a bed in the kitchen, or a futon, or a cot. I might get a hammock.

They say that the kitchen is the heart of the home, that the kitchen is where people congregate at parties. But guests are not in the kitchen because anything good is going on in there, it’s just the most familiar room in the house, the most normalizing. Heading to the kitchen at parties is an instinct, like avoiding gas station bathrooms, and foods with names like s’rimp or k’rab. At parties, we end up in the kitchen because that’s where we know what to do. People also feel at home in bathrooms, but having a party where everyone ends up in the bathroom together would just be weird.

Since the kitchen is the heart of the home, everything seems to find its way in there. Our refrigerator bears the pages of marching orders from this or that: invitations, schedules, permission slips, calendars. Cross-referenced calendars: I can’t keep up. And my kids’ stuff is everywhere. Toys, yarn, pens, rubber animals. I came into the kitchen the once to find Jane’s latest fundraiser sitting on the kitchen table: a glass pyrex dish, submerged in murky water, within which floated a blob of green modeling clay that had been formed into an odd oblong shape. It had feet, eyes, and a small nub of a tail. A sign next to this read,Touch the baby alien floating in water, one nickel. Pick up the baby alien, 50 cents.

I poked the poor creature, and held it in the palm of my hand. It was cold, and hard, the way lab animals in biology class have lost their spring.

It’s only clay, I thought.

Pay up, said Jane.

I gave her 55 cents. They say one’s born every minute. And they’re not talking about geniuses. I know this, I live this, and still, my kids bilk me:

I once found my son Hugh on the stairs, with a pile of rubber bands on his head. I didn’t know he had rubber bands on his head, because they were covered up by a bright red turban with a long red sash that his grandma Alice had brought him back from India. I knew he had rubber bands on his head when he began to sing Rubber strings for sale!

A classic marketing ploy. This is the essence of how to sell anything. Hide anything good under your turban, and then sing. It worked. I bought four. (Four of my own rubber bands, mind you.)

We think kids don’t get it, because they think a car and a candy bar are worth the same. True enough, ask any young child how much something costs, and they’ll tell you Three thousand dollars. It’s as if this is the only number they know. Once in awhile, children will say that something is Eight. But they won’t say eight what: Dollars? Drachmas? Gilders? What? They don’t care. Money is useless to them, the way it is to most Statesmen, and dictators of Africa. Whether you’re being driven around in a new Lincoln town car, or a brown 1974 Mercedes, you don’t have to buy a gallon of milk. You never run out of milk. If I was a dictator, I would opt for the fez, and I would imprison and probably kill anyone who ever let me run out of milk. This might seem harsh. As I’ve said, I’m clearly missing some basic socialization, but take me to the Hague, put me in front of any War Tribunal. You think they’re going to find fault with me condemning to death my people if I have a bowl of cheerios, and the carton of milk in the fridge is essentially empty? Who leaves an empty carton? Villains. They should be purged!

We think children are innocent to the ways of the world, like they think fairies are in charge or something. Yes, really little kids are pretty checked out, and it’s adorable. I remember the Christmas when she was two, my daughter told me all she wanted for the holiday was Pencils, and beans.

Kids are innocent, but they’re not stupid. They understand. Jane asked me, Mom, does this skate world ticket still have power?

If I had invested my allowance, I’d probably be rich by now. And as a rich person, I’d have a special shelf for my wallet. I’d be so rich, I’d have a butler to carry my wallet. And another one who would sign the check. And a third, his only job would be to pull those stupid inserts out of magazines. But when you’re a kid, you’re not thinking about compounding interest. You’re thinking I want gum.

I’ve never loved any one thing as much as grape bubblegum.

I used to walk down to the corner store in Chicago to get gum. I remember the whole transaction like it was yesterday: Me, so tiny, waving hi to the pretty ladies on my West side block. (My mother later explained to me that these ladies were really men, but I suggested them to her as potential role models for her fashion and cosmetic efforts.) Then I’d go into the dark little market that smelled like old chicken, and find the HubbaBubba in the stacks of candy. One quarter. You could buy gum for a quarter! And I’d chew four pieces before getting back to my apartment. My head was small, so those four pieces were like an adult chewing an entire Christmas ham at once.

But when we moved from Chicago to Eugene, OR, I couldn’t just walk down the block to get gum. Life was more complicated. I was in the suburbs. I had to get rides. Suburbs sound nice, but children living here really never actually have to engage their quadricep muscles, except to climb in the minivan.

When I first arrived, I was sad not to be able to walk to the corner store anymore, but the new neighbor girls befriended me, and they had a Barbie Dream House they let me play with, and they took me every Wednesday night to church. This was the beginning of the split, from the primacy of Gum, to a more complicated, grown-up world, where I wanted to play with Barbies, and was willing to go to some strange church I didn’t belong to to do it.

We had never been to church before. My parents weren’t into that, and like any quasi-hippie child of the 70’s, with no middle name, probably because my parents didn’t want me to turn to a life of crime, I agreed to open myself up to the church experience, because these same nice neighbors always went to Taco Bell for dinner before heading to services. And let’s get real: Taco Bell’s beans with the cheese on top are just delicious.

It’s an old chestnut: deny the person the one thing that makes them feel safe and happy, like gum, and see what happens? They’ll turn to faith, and more importantly, to re-fried beans and cheese. They’ll be in your kitchen, like lost sheep. They’ll eat nachos, they’ll crack open a beer. Maybe gum was my gateway Baby Alien. But in second grade, I’d make collages for Jesus if it meant I could drive Barbie’s hot pink Corvette and get a weekly chimichanga.

In church, they made us make a star chart, a little table with things a child could do to be helpful down one column, and a place for all the little stars across the rows. They said something about how Jesus would want us to be helpers, but I could never really track the lessons due to my Taco Bell indigestion.

One morning, my star chart completed, I showed it off to my mother, who was drinking coffee. I pointed to the star next to ‘MAKE YOUR BED’.

When did you make your bed? she asked.

In the middle of the night. I woke up, I made it, and I went back to sleep.

Clearly, church was not working. Church was turning me into a liar. My father started rifling through a baby name book, looking for middle names that went nicely with Rachael. Surely, he pictured me on the front page of the paper. Rachael Lee Carnes, wanted for church deception and Taco Bell heist.

I moped back to my room, star chart in hand. My gaff illuminated, the star chart now taunted me. With its drawing of long-haired 1970’s Jesus, with his wide moustache and kind eyes, the star chart now seemed to bore into my soul. I wanted to tear it up. I wanted to burn it. But I was only seven, and not allowed to play with matches, so I did the only sensible thing I could think of: I crumpled it up, went outside, and put it under the neighbor’s azalea.

In order to pick up the Baby Alien, I had been willing to change my beliefs. I’d been willing to settle for friends who never ever let me use the elevator in the Barbie Dream House. What was that about? I had lied to my parents. I had lied to Jesus. Worse, I had eaten enough Taco Bell that I didn’t even really like it anymore.

Still, I wasn’t scared straight. I started to lie about more things. I didn’t fess up to trying out my aunt Bonnie’s make up from her make up drawer, even though she caught me with beige liquid foundation all over my face. I told my friends weird things, like that I had parents who I had adopted, that lived in France, and that my cat had six toes. Once, I told my parents over dinner about how the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders had been at our elementary school that day, and had tried to recruit me, For the future.

Whether it was gum, or