Clothesbombing: The act of deliberately returning your child to your ex-spouse’s house in clothes that are too small, so as not to lose the “good” clothes.

I took my big kid, Franny, to school today to ditch her for two weeks over at her dad’s house. The minutiae of sharing a child are so stupid I can’t even tell you. For instance: clothes. For a while as a single mom I was really, really broke. And then I joined forces with Companion to become…two really, really broke people. We took a lot of walks together.

The point is, for quite a while we were worried about clothes, because just when you have a drawer full of cute, well-fitting clothes it took you hours to thrift, beg, borrow, or steal you take a deep breath and relax. And then a month goes by…and the perfect little pants you scored are now capris that cannot be snapped up. (Lesson: do not spawn with tall people or your child will constantly be running around in tiny pants.) This reminds me, I need to up Franny’s cigar and black coffee intake. Let it not be said that I run an inefficient household.

So there was a lot of stress about clothes disappearing. Many times Franny would leave in something normal, and in well-fitting shoes, and would return in lederhosen, a tube top, and moon boots that were two sizes too small. She has literally come into my house and said, “OH, I need to get these off! They are way too tiny, but my dad made me wear them.”

I cannot do this to her. It pains in my financial place to see her walk out the door in the “good” clothes, knowing it won’t come back for three months (too small) but I am trying to accept it as something I can’t change. He just sent her back in boots that were too small, so I had to shop for her immediately

Adding to the mix, Franny has tag/seam/shoelace sensitivity issues, so I am shopping at Nordstrom for shoes now. She wears Vans and other slip-ons, and boots with zippers. It’s certainly more money than Payless, but they take things back even if they’ve been worn. Which is critical with Franny. She can fall in love with shoes and then decide a week later that they are actually uncomfortable. And then she will stop and adjust them every few feet as we are out on a walk, eventually bursting into tears of frustration. So now I am buying higher-quality shoes that she likes the look of (often only one pair at Payless would “work” but she would reject them on looks), AND that can be exchanged for something else if they don’t work out. The extra money is so worth it for us.

But I really don’t want to see her nice leather Stride Rite boots vanish off at her dad’s, to be replaced by some foam platform sandal clusterfuck that her heels hang off by about an inch (true story). So I took her to Fred last night, and bought her a pair of fifteen dollar Sketchers-knockoff maryjanes, which she will probably wear to school and home where they will disappear into the back of her closet. This is lame, but acceptable.

The word on the street now is that they are broke over at the other house, so there is some agitating about “their” clothes that I am hoarding over here. I make every effort so send her back in the clothes she came in, but I draw the line at a couple of things. 1. My kid does not get sent out in too small clothes that she’s uncomfortable in. She gets cold enough right now in clothes that cover her ankles. 2. I will not send her back in seasonally inappropriate clothes. Recently Franny came in the snow in a pair of (real) Capri pants that they had bought in France on their honeymoon. Franny’s stepmother is agitating for them to come back, but if I send them in a bag with what she’s wearing, then we lose more clothes.

Do you see what I mean about annoying minutiae? And that’s just clothes.

My kid left the house this morning clean, appropriately-dressed, and well-fed. I kissed her at the gate. It’s all I can do.

Once again, like a giant doody bird, I have overscheduled myself for today. I think my past self thinks my future self is faster, more capable, and less likely to scratch delicate surfaces. It’s just not true, past self. But I turn around to punch her, and she’s gone. So I am stealing a couple of minutes to complain.

Holy Fucking Shit y’all, I went to a “parent education” night at my daughter’s school on Thursday. My confession is that this is her fourth year there and this was my first one. D’oh! Things are easier now that my baby sleeps at night and we live two-minutes’ walk from the school.

It turns out I wasn’t missing anything before! The actual parent education part took about ten minutes (and was very interesting), and the rest was “Harangue the Elementary Teacher” night.

It started off normally. The teacher began her discussion of classroom procedures, and the subject came to lunch. She practices the extremely controversial lunch method of “letting the children decide when they are hungry, within a reasonable window of time.” OOOOOH. This is part of the reason I have Franny in private school, because of the flexibility that’s possible there. And because the school is so gung-ho on personal responsibility and making choices and all that stuff you never get to do when you’re the product of a Future-Derelict Factory like I was.

The teacher was promptly attacked for her crazy notions. We heard extensively (and almost exclusively) from one child’s mother, who shall be pseudonymously named “Emily’s mommy,” since she seemed to have no name of her own.

“WELL,” Emily’s mommy started in. “Emily has been having problems with this lunch method. Emily wants to do what her friends are doing, so she brings her food outside. But she has a warm-up, so she can’t eat it all!” Emily’s mommy was making reference to the fact that the teacher also provides a microwave, so the children can bring actual meal-like leftovers, instead of a sandwich every day, and the fact that the children can choose to eat outside during recess. “Children should be playing outside during recess, not eating! It defeats the purpose of recess, doesn’t it?” I could see that her eyes were casting around the room for votes, support, anything.

She went on, undeterred by the lack of support, like a political candidate whose position statement is a breakdown of the moon-landing hoax. “FURTHERMORE, Emily has low blood sugar issues. At our house, we eat every hour. WE ARE GRAZERS!” There were some calmer parents there, like Whippet and her husband, and Wonder Woman and her husband. We were reduced to making the “MY GOD, KILL ME” bug eyes at each other, since there was barely room for anyone else to speak.

It continued on like this on every topic. I could have been at home putting Franny to bed, and reading Half-Magic to her, but alas, now I know more about Emily than I do my own child.

On the walk home, Whippet and her husband were cutting up about the whole thing. “I feel like I know how often Emily’s mommy has sex!” Whippet’s husband snapped. “Not enough, I’m guessing.”

“Poor Emily,” I said. “Poor Emily’s therapy bills.”

I wondered to them why people have their children in a program they obviously don’t trust at all. There was another man who went after the teacher about silent reading. “HOW DO YOU KNOW they’re reading silently?” he demanded.

“I don’t,” the teacher replied. She explained that she moves around the classroom during silent reading to see if any children are struggling, and that’s it’s about practicing reading techniques, as well as learning to read silently.

“But HOW do you KNOW?” he kept asking.

I don’t know. My kid seems happy, I like what she’s doing, and I feel relieved that she’s in a stable environment. But you don’t know for sure. The other choice is quitting your job and homeschooling, isn’t it? And faced with that, I think I’d be nibbling on the wallpaper within a week. So I am choosing to trust the system.