“She’s running. It’s early, it’s quiet. Just the sound of her feet on the asphalt. She likes to run alone. No pressure, no stress. This is the one place she can be herself. Look any way she wants, dress, think any way she wants.”

“You don’t stand in front of a mirror before a run and wonder what the road will think of your outfit.”

“… It will not be easier to run if you dress sexier. The road doesn’t notice when you’re not wearing makeup. It does not care how old you are. …”

It does not care if you breast feed or bottle feed. For the road, meatloaf is just as good as Chipotle for supper. It does not need a ride to the mall and it does not ask for $98 jeans.

The road doesn’t need its diaper changed and it’s never unpleasant because it’s had a bad day.

You can call on the road whenever you feel like it and it is there.

“The only thing the road cares about is that you pay it a visit once in a while”

— Nike ad from “What Women Want” with a few extra lines from Cindy, Mom and frustrated runner

I truly feel like I’ve been on a month-long rant. It’s not because I’m an irritable person and it’s not because I don’t love my kids or my husband or my job or life in general. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

But everyone needs a release…something that inspires them, motivates them, centers them. And a month ago, I lost mine.

My passion is running. (According to my husband, it’s more like an obsession.) I strained a calf muscle and after consulting the great doctors at Ortho Neuro, I was instructed to NOT run for four weeks.

I was crushed. I actually teared up … right there in the exam room.

I went home depressed and distraught. On the way, I saw runners. How dare they be out there, running?! I wondered if they knew what kind of danger they were in with me in my car on the road right beside them.

I think the children were actually afraid of me that night. I snapped at every little thing and succeeded at making everyone as miserable as I was.

Rick chastised me… gently, of course. How can I possibly get that upset about something so minor when there are people that have serious health problems?

When that didn’t work, he decided to agree with me. Of course, I was going to gain 15 pounds in four weeks. I’d probably lose my hair and grow a wart on the end of my nose too.

After two days of whining, I resigned myself to the fact that I had to let the injury heal and decided I would exercise on the stationary bike in the meantime.

That very afternoon Rick broke the bike. I’m not sure what he was doing, but he snapped the pedal right off of it. It must have been the murderous look that I gave him when he told me about it. Because the next day, new pedals were delivered to the office and he had repaired it by that evening.

I have to admit that the bike gives me a good cardio workout and it has kept me from gaining the inevitable (in my warped runnner’s mind) 15 pounds. But it doesn’t give me the mental break or the stress relief that running does.

Running is the time that is mine and mine alone. I can’t hear Jack crying that he accidentally erased his wii game that he’s been saving since Christmas. I can’t hear the girls fighting over who gets to use the flat iron that morning and I can’t hear Lauren obsessing over what the weather is going to be for the day.
My runs are when I plan the meals for the week, schedule the day’s activities, compose conversations and emails in my head, and develop the next marketing campaign for work.

I like to run first thing in the morning when the birds are starting to chirp and the sun is just beginning to peak over the horizon in the east.

Ok… that’s silly. I’m having these romantic notions because it’s been sooooo long since I’ve been able to do it. I really just run early in the mornings so that I can be finished with it before I start my other jobs of chauffeur/hair dresser/chef/housekeeper/nurse/etc.

I do love it though and I’m relieved that I am able to start running again today. Of course, Rick and the kids are even more relieved than I am… for themselves and for the other runners.

Yesterday’s horoscope: “Your loved ones want to help – really they do. But for various reasons, others won’t be available to pitch in as they ought to. If you don’t do it, it won’t get done.”

I’m not sure if the horoscope writers are truly clairvoyant or if they just know their target audience really well. But this one hit the nail on the head.

I was quite proud of myself a couple of weeks ago when I wrote the chores blog. “I’m going to tell the whole world how I have this kids and responsibility thing down to a science.”

Ha! Last week, I got a refresher course in lazy teenager management. I’m not sure if the kids turned into giant tree sloths throughout the school year or if it was really this bad last summer. Perhaps I’ve chosen to repress the memories of the begging and pleading and nagging and crying that I had to do to get them to budge from in front of the computer.

I really don’t want to be an evil step-monster. I really don’t want to yell. But when I walk in from work and am greeted with wet towels and swimsuits on the floor just inside the door, my blood pressure starts to rise.

How is it that kids don’t see the napkin that they tossed in the general direction of the trash can did not make it into the trash can? How is it that they can turn and leave it sitting there… on the floor… beside the garbage? And, you know, if I didn’t pick it up, it would stay there… probably permanently.

I’ve done this as an experiment. How long will these dirty socks lay here on the coffee table if I don’t pick them up? I usually give up about a week in.

The other thing that I’ve noticed is that children do not hear you if you give them more than one thing to do at a time. “Pick up the toys in the family room and put them in your bedroom” becomes “pick up the toys in the family room and stack them on the kitchen table.”

In fairness, they actually do take a stab at their chores. But how is it that Gracie can dust the coffee table, but the magazines are in exactly the same spot that they were when I left this morning? And why is it that the bathroom mirror still has toothpaste on it and the toilet still has a ring even though Susan spent an hour cleaning the bathroom?

I truly think it’s all a ploy so that I will eventually give up, but they don’t know how stubborn I am. My ex-mother-in-law told me how when her son was a teenager, she decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle so she just started doing all the housework herself. I see where that got her: he’s 44 now and she still cleans his house. No, thank you!

So I keep trying.

Last week I had to assign the same task three days in a row: “Go through the clothes in your closets and drawers. Throw out anything that you don’t wear, and fold or hang everything else.” Each day I came home to 936 excuses as to why this didn’t get done. (They did, however, manage to make it to the pool several days and to go through 1362 text messages.)

At the end of the second day when there were still piles of clothes in the corners of their rooms, I took a deep breath … actually several of them, so I wouldn’t yell… and I resorted to threats.

“If I come home one more day to find that you haven’t done what I’m asking, I will take your phones away.” That seemed to work. The drawers weren’t perfect, but the clothes from the floor were hidden somewhere.

They did manage to finish their drawers but they didn’t do the one other thing I’d put on their list. It seems that teenagers not only can not SEE or HEAR when it comes to chores, they also can not READ.

So, the last task on today’s to-do list is to initial each line of the note. We’ll see if their problem is reading or reading comprehension.

As for me, my horoscope today says to spend time with my true friends and enjoy a day of fun. Now that’s funny! What mom can do that on a Monday in the middle of the summer?! I’m going to read Dear Abby instead from now on.

Gracie lay in the dentist’s chair, gripping my hand tightly, tears leaking out from the corners of her eyes. She had put on eye liner and mascara – God knows you want to look good for the dentist – which started to smear a little. I wiped it away and she worried that I’d messed up her makeup.

She continued to hold my hand, vice-like, as the dentist administered shot after shot into her mouth. She made a few peeps here and there. I could feel her muscles straining against the back of the chair… trying not to cry… trying not to shout out in pain. And, finally, the hard part was done. Now… the extractions… four of them.

According to the orthodontist, Gracie has the misfortune of having a very small mouth and needed to have some teeth removed to make more room. I have asked the orthodontist to please visit my home and mediate the sibling “discussions” therein, and he would soon find that Gracie does NOT, in fact, have a small mouth. But, he is adamant that this has to do with tooth spacing, not vocal chords or sheer “birdiness.”

So, this week Grace and I visited the dentist … twice. The first was a false alarm when we discovered a communication gap between the orthodontist and the dentist. The requisite letter specifying the teeth to be pulled was nowhere to be found. I knew which teeth they were, but I wasn’t about to swear to it. These are adult teeth… this is her smile for the rest of her life.

Back again on Thursday evening… Gracie, grasping onto my hand… me, grasping onto consciousness.

This is where being a mom steps in and overrides the body’s desire to shut down and pass out. Squeamish or not (and I was WAY squeamish – the little gray squigglies were swimming in) I was not going to let her or the dentist see me flinch. I looked away and held on tight, for her… and for me.

Four extractions later, I was breathing a sigh of relief at my own wooze management, but she was writhing in pain in the back seat of my car. All the middle schooler concern for decorum was gone and she just needed her Mommy.

We made it home and waited the prescribed half hour with the cotton swabs stuffed in her mouth. She paced, she cried, she flailed about, acting like she was speaking to me in sign language. My normally meticulous little girl scratched out some illegible etchings on a pad of paper … something about killing her brother if he didn’t shut up. I called her dad and told him how awful it was and how I was sorry that he was missing it. She paced some more. Threw her hands up at me… as if I’m the one that gave her crooked teeth.

And finally the time was up. She spit out the cotton swabs and I gave her two heavy duty painkillers from when she broke her hand (another blog story for another day). Five minutes later she was resting peacefully.

The reality is, the whole time, my heart just broke for her and all I wanted to do was trade places with her. I think this is the plight/curse/blessing of all parents. We would happily accept our children’s pain if we could save them from it.

So when I got her text message a few minutes ago, I went to get my purse.

“I sure hope the tooth fairy comes tonight, Mommy.”

The heart wrenching sobs echoed through the cavernous tennis center. Screams intermixed with gasps for oxygen and then more high pitched howls filled the air. The hollow thuds of tennis balls hitting the floor and the swoosh of racquets were drowned out as the wailing went on and on.

Women all around me began to glance up toward the child care room and then around at the eight courts, searching for the guilty mother.

The lump in my throat grew. The ache to go soothe him conflicted with my frustration of the dashed hopes of a little time to myself.

“Certainly he’ll stop soon.” “He can’t keep going for my entire hour long lesson.”

But, keep going, he did.

This was my life. This was Jack.

It was mid winter and my (now ex) husband Marty had given me a tennis lesson package as a Christmas gift. “They even have a day care center so you can take the kids with you,” I remember him saying.

“Oh joy!” I thought. But I was desperately needing some adult interaction and wanted to get back into some kind of exercise program. So, while our oldest was in school, I happily loaded up the 3-year-old Grace and 10-month-old Jack and set off to discover for the first time the reason that so many mothers aren’t able to stay in shape.

I had no idea that having three kids was so much harder than having two kids. But then, having a Jack… well, that was like having triplets.

My pregnancy and delivery with him were textbook perfect. I was never sick. I didn’t gain too much weight. I even did a VBAC and had absolutely no problems whatsoever. We caught on to breast feeding without difficulty and we were off and running.

Well, not running…no running for me. Because Jack would not let me out of his sight.

After the tennis club incident, I gave up my aspirations of being the local mom’s tennis league champ and bought a double jogging stroller. That worked for a few months until I was pushing around two 50 pound kids. (Breast feeding was good to Jack.)

I eventually learned that if I was ever going to exercise again, I was going to have to do it long before anyone got up. If I didn’t make it back from my run before Jack wakened, mass chaos would ensue. Jack would be terrorizing the dog, his sister, his brother and his father and I would likely be able to hear the screams from a block away. (Marty’s… not Jack’s.)

To this day, I enjoy the quiet solitude of early morning runs. I now go a little later since Jack is ten and he doesn’t need me quite so much.

A few weeks ago, due to an injury, my running was sidelined in favor of a stationary bike. (ugh – but it’s the only workout I can do for now, barring donning a swim suit and braving the pool – even more ugh)

This morning I was pedaling away, sweating profusely and listening to Pink at maximum volume to try to get through an intense part of my interval workout. My concentration was shattered with ear-splitting screams coming from the kitchen. Yes, I could hear Jack shouting at his sisters over my iPod. After all these years, I still can’t get a workout without my baby crying.

This is my life. This is Jack.

You know the one… Stacy’s mom, aka Rachel Hunter, from the song and video by Fountains of Wayne. The chorus is “Stacy’s mom has got it going on.” She is the object of an adolescent boy’s fantasy in the song. But in real life, she is the one that makes all of us human moms seethe.

Of course, she is beautiful. Her nails are perfectly manicured. Her hair looks like she just stepped out of the salon even when she’s stepping out of the pool She’s had babies, but there is not a single stretch mark nor extra pound on that perfectly toned body.

If the perfection ended with her physical superiority, I think I could reel in my feelings of inadequacy. But, the prototype Stacy’s mom to which I’m referring is the mom that has everything going on.

Her daughters are impeccably dressed with matching dresses and bows. And somehow, her 6 year old son’s shirt is always tucked in. If Jack is wearing something other than a stained white undershirt, I’m satisfied.

She’s socially conscious and environmentally aware. Since I can never seem to remember to take the plastic bags back to the grocery store, we have a giant stack of them in our laundry room. When I get sick of looking at them and no one else is home to see me, I throw them away in the regular trash.

She lives in the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood. Last night I watched the boys from the fraternity house two doors down throw a couch out from the second story over their fire escape rail.

She has a college degree, probably a master’s degree, maybe even a PhD. She works at some fabulous job somewhere, but somehow she still has time to volunteer at every school party and field trip. I’m lucky to volunteer at one event per school year and when I do get there, I’m about 20 minutes late and don’t know how to get to my kid’s classroom.

She drives the perfect car and it’s clean. How does she fit her four children into a Mercedes instead of a minivan?! And why does my car have pop stains on the seat, sticky half eaten suckers stuck in the drink holders and an accumulation of water bottles, school papers and McDonalds kids’ meal toys littering the floor?

Her children are on the traveling select soccer team, do competitive gymnastics and have taken violin lessons since they were four. We have a violin… somewhere… maybe behind the stacks of Kroger bags in the laundry room.

Her house looks like the cover of “Better Homes and Gardens,” everything in its place even when she’s NOT expecting company. If you ever come to my house, please come to the front door because the foyer is the only place that isn’t embarrassing if I’m not expecting you.

For the end of season athletic banquet, while the rest of the moms stop by Giant Eagle on the way and pick up a bag of chips, she’s the mom that makes the elaborate fruit pizza that everyone devours.

Oh wait! That’s me.

Which brings me to my point.

About ten years ago, I mentioned the “Stacy’s mom” phenomena to my doctor at a routine appointment. (This was before the song was released, but not before I had noticed these mom goddesses.)

I was a stressed out mother of three, 6 months, 3 and 10. I asked him, “How on earth do these other women do this?” He looked at me quizzically and said, “These other women are no different than you.”

His simple statement took me by surprise. It was an epiphany for me. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that these other women were just like me.

There really is no quintessential Stacy’s mom. Each of us, as a mother, has a unique set of merits. Some of us are good at some things and not so good at other things. No one has it all.

Stacy’s mom occasionally argues with her husband. Her kids talk during church service, her dog runs away and she wakes up with morning breath just like the rest of us. And, although she might be a super model, I’ll bet my fruit pizza is better than hers any day of the week.

I’m not sure what got into me on Saturday evening. Maybe it was the summer solstice or maybe it was the “One Wild Night” Zoofari theme. Regardless of the catalyst, I threw caution to the wind and dug “the daisy dress” out of the back of my closet.

I’ve had the daisy dress for about ten years. It’s held up well because it’s one of those outfits that you get out, try on and put back in the closet for another day – maybe a day when you have just a little more self-confidence.

It is a simple green sundress, adorned with daisies – very 60sesque. (At least this is what I THINK the 60s looked like; I don’t really remember them.)

So, that presents the first daisy dress risk: am I willing to wear a dress that looks like it might have been my mother’s?

Vintage is “in” right now (at least that’s what Penelope Cruz’s publicist wants us to think), so I decided that the era didn’t matter and it was a nice outdoorsy look for an evening at the zoo.

The second and slightly more important daisy dress risk is that it is made with stretchy spandex-like material. I’m a mom with teenage girls, so I am in the habit of eliminating all curve-hugging fabric from my home. I’m also 42 years old and, for me, I believe that ship has sailed – somewhere around the time the Santa Maria docked – no, not WITH Columbus, IN Columbus.

But, I was having a “thin” day on Saturday and decided that the curves looked more curvy and less “lumpy” than they normally do. I even managed to find a thong at the back of my underwear drawer that I bought for a shower years ago and forgot to give to the bride. I guess I saved it for just such an occasion.

I rationalized through those first two daisy dress risk factors with relative ease. It was the third that had me trying on everything else in the closet for about an hour.

The daisy dress is dangerously short. The daisy dress is “can you believe she’s wearing that?” short.

The girls have a “rule of thumb” that they have to abide by at school. When they put their arms straight down at their sides, the skirt has to hit below their thumb. I think that it’s actually supposed to be the “rule of middle finger” and they’ve just convinced me otherwise. But I put the “thumb” version to use and passed with flying colors. Do I really let them wear skirts this short?

Then I stood in front of my husband, turning this way and that, back and forth. “What do you think?” “Do I look fat?” “Do I look silly?” “Chunky?” Is this too short?” Do you think my thighs are too cottage cheesy?”

Rick is a professional. He had all the right answers. Although we did have one tense moment over the cellulite thighs when he answered, “Well you can see for yourself in the full length mirror.”

I eventually decided that it would be dark enough and no one would be looking at my middle-aged mom legs anyway.

So off I went to Zoofari in the “just on the edge of inappropriate” daisy dress, knowing full well that if I dropped anything, I was going to have to stand and wait until someone came to pick it up for me.

I’m sure the pet handlers thought that I was afraid of germs or being bitten when I didn’t bend down to pet the kangaroo. And I’m sure that our friends at the next table wondered why I didn’t bend over to talk to them when the music got loud.

As the evening wore on and the wine flowed, however, I began to worry less and less about my hemline.

Fortunately, the lead singer of the Menus did NOT choose to pull me up on the stage when I was jumping up and down, waving wildly for attention. That would have been a Britney Spears moment (albeit WITH underwear) that would have haunted me this morning and every time I send the girls to change into something more appropriate.

It was a warm, sunny spring break day last year when Rick and I set off with the kids in pursuit of yet another Hallmark moment. We thought our kids were a little bit old for the zoo, but they were excited about it, so off we went. We discovered that, in fact, they might not be quite old enough.

Let’s just say that bonobos are oblivious to the ages of their onlookers in their shameless pursuit of the opposite sex. So, if you’re not up for an impromptu “life” lesson with your six year old, you might want to take along a blindfold when you visit the bonobo exhibit at the zoo.

Willing to risk it with the bonobos? Fathers are FREE on Sunday at the zoo.

Other stuff to do around town this weekend:

Inspire your young skaters and attend Skate for Hope, a breast cancer research benefit, at Nationwide Arena on Saturday at 5.

Also on Saturday, Christopher Cross will be at Picnic with the Pops, 8:15 on the lawn of Chemical Abstracts service.

Search for the City of Lost Toys (hey, isn’t that Jack’s room?) Dora the Explorer Live! is at the Palace today through Sunday.

And, of course, Happy Father’s Day to all of the special Dads, Step-dads, and Grandpas on Sunday.

Rick and I are actually going to get to that gardening this weekend since last week was filled with shopping and graduation festivities.

We’re also excited to be attending Zoofari Saturday night at the zoo. If you don’t have tickets yet, it’s not too late to join the fun. Food and drinks from area restaurants are featured at this adults-only fundraiser. Being old enough shouldn’t be a problem for Rick and me. But I’m going to bring a blindfold for him anyway.

At the risk of stirring up a great controversy and riling all of the parents of children under the age of ten that have yet to enter the cell phone stage, I have to admit that I truly felt a little sorry for Alec Baldwin a couple of years ago.

The incident in question is back in the spotlight due to a recent interview. You might remember Alec, imprudently, left a less-than-fatherly voicemail message for his eleven year old daughter.

Unfortunately, the message was released to the unforgiving paparazzi by someone who obviously wasn’t Alex’s friend. The voicemail set off a media frenzy and parenting experts (and plenty of not-so experts) persecuted him as an unfit, psychotic, raving lunatic of a man.

Now, I never condone calling your children names and I certainly believe that browbeating your kids can lead to some serious long term self esteem problems. In fact, for the sake of this blog, I went back and read the entire supposed transcript of the voicemail and I cringed. It really isn’t something that you would say to your child whether you expect that the whole world will hear it or not.

However, what I do understand is his frustration and anxiety with a daughter who won’t answer or return his phone calls.

If you have children with phones, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You buy them a $200 phone. You pay the $30 per month for connection fees, unlimited calling and text messaging. You do this – not so they can text their friends as they sit next to one another in the car, not so they can talk to their boyfriends at 3 am and not so they can text inappropriate pictures to near strangers.

(As far as I know, my own children are only guilty of the first one … maybe the second, but definitely not the last. We told them that their unlimited texting does not include pictures. I think that it does, but they don’t need to know that.)

But, I digress.

No, you buy them phones and pay for them monthly so that *you* can talk to them. *You* can text them and get a response as to where they are, who they are with and when they will be home. You are paying for the phone, after all.

Well, you would think that’s how it works. But it’s not. The kids seem to see their cell phone and its usage as a right, not a privilege.

The truth is, I am lucky to get a “yea” or “nope” when I text one of our three cell-phone toting daughters. It is even more unlikely for them to actually answer if I call them. And it is exceptionally rare for them to call back even when I leave a message.

Last month 14,132 text messages were logged on Susan’s phone. Seven of them were to her dad or me.

I’m not sure how you can even possibly send and receive that many texts. I do know, however, that a few more of them need to be logged in our direction.

No need for any Alec Baldwin dramatics. We’ll just give her phone to Jack, the 10 year old, and see if he can muster more than an “idk” when we ask him about his day.

I am really a low maintenance kind of girl.

Ok… that depends on who you ask and what time of the month it is.

But, in terms of a beauty regimen, I’m just about as down-to-earth as they come.

Having grown up on the farm, the daughter of a Quaker mother, I always was on the practical side. But, when I became a mom, I gave up any aspirations whatsoever of being the pampered girly girl that you see in the magazines and the movies. Luxurious baths, manicures, pedicures, facials, hours with the curling iron – those were never a big part of my daily routine. But, they definitely were out of the question when my time became consumed with diaper changing, soccer practices and heaps of laundry.

Crying babies just don’t wait while you curl your eyelashes. And the kids at soccer don’t appreciate your new French manicure. They just want to know why you are late with the snacks.

So, I have my whole morning routine compacted into 25 minutes:

Shower – 5 minutes
Makeup – 5 minutes
Clothes – 5 minutes
Hair – 10 minutes (and that’s only because it takes that long to dry)

No hair spray, no styling gel, no moisturizing hair spritz… just one hair brush and a blow dryer.

The girls do not share my no-nonsense approach to hair styling.
Instead, they have the full range of hair care products: four blow dryers, four flat irons, six different curling irons, spiking gel, straightening lotion, smoothing milk, shaping spray, ten brushes of assorted shapes and sizes, and a basket full of accessories.

Rick and I have tried desperately to convince the girls that a more natural hair style actually looks better than the over-processed look. “Don’t fight mother nature,” I say. “God gave you thick, curly hair for a reason, Susan.” “And Grace, lots of girls would die for your poker straight hair.” “Learn to work with what you’ve got in a reasonable amount of time.”

Rick and I obviously DO NOT know what we are talking about.

During the school year, alarms are set for 4:30 a.m., 5 at the latest, to allow enough time for Susan to get every strand of hair perfectly straight… and Gracie to get every strand perfectly curled… or to do whatever hairstyle is the “in” thing for that day.

I think we will never get rid of the distinctive odor of singed hair that permeates the upstairs.

You can imagine my frustration when I am rushing to do my own hair and the one brush that I use is missing. The last time this happened, I sneaked into their bedrooms while they were sleeping and took all of their hair styling equipment and hid it.

The next morning, chaos ensued! Where’s my straightener? Where’s my crimping tool? Where’s my hair spray?! I held everything hostage until my favorite brush was returned to the bathroom.

I might not be able to persuade them that they don’t need to take butane curling irons on camping trips, but at least I will teach them to leave my brush alone.

“Do not fill your squirt guns with the bottled spring water from the garage.” — from Steph, mother of four boys, ages 1 - 10