Seven Reasons I Need a Clone

July 5, 1996 marked the birth of the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was a sheep, cloned by scientists at Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, and named “Dolly.” The cloned donor cell was taken from a mammary gland, and, as one of the scientists explained, “Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.”

Which just goes to show, I suppose, that you can lead a man to science, but you can’t evolve his thinking.

I remember having serious concerns about the project, wondering if the cloning of humans could be far behind. I tend to agree with bioethicist Leon Kass, who opined back in the 1960s that “the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanize him.”

Still, there are times I wish I had a double to fill in or give a little help during my busiest moments. Ethics aside, I can’t deny the allure of being able to be two places at once, or getting twice as much work done in my limited time, or perhaps training a clone to do the chores I detest the most. For example:

1. Parent-Teacher Conferences: While we only have five kids at home now, those twice-yearly conferences add up. In the past, we’ve tried the “divide and conquer” technique, scheduling conferences at the same time and sending Mr. Wright to one, while I attended another. The problem is, I’m too much of detail-oriented gal to accept “fine” as an answer when I ask how Mr. Wright’s conference went. Details, man! I need details!

2. Sports Season: Has it ever occurred to athletic directors and administrators that having a house full of ambitious children is particularly straining on parents? Having soccer, football and junior high volleyball seasons occur concurrently has certainly made our calendar full, and try as we might, we can’t attend every single game or match.

3. Work-at-Home Mom; Stay-at-Home Kid: I know I’m asking a lot for Snugglebug to happily entertain herself with educational materials while I work on a deadline, but if she’d just stop trying to climb the six-foot fence to get into the pool, I’d get a lot more done. This is where I ask for my clone to have a Mary Poppins gene or two inserted.

4. The 6:15 A.M. Alarm: I’m a night owl by nature, and that alarm does little but tick me off and make me want to throw things—namely, the alarm clock. If I could program my clone to do the morning kids-to-school bustle, I could sleep in, making me a grateful, cheerful mama instead of a cranky, sleepwalking beast.

5. An Extra Lap: When you have kids with Sensory Processing Disorder, you double as a jungle gym. Those sensory-seeking kids need constant touch, and they always seem to be climbing, sprawling, or rubbing on you. Such is my life with Curlytop and Snugglebug, and all too often, fights over who gets to sit on Mama break out. Imagine two mamas, with two laps!

6. Aviation Advocate: Somewhere along the way, I developed an unrealistic fear of flying. A few times a year, Mr. Wright gives me a sedative and pours me into a too-small seat on some enormous aircraft to fly to some wonderful place to attend some important event on his blessed arm. Once my clone arrives, I’ll be sending her. I’ll even spring for first-class seats, if it means I don’t have to get on an airplane.

7. Church Versus Deadline: Due to an illness I’m sure my clone would have been immune to, I had to ask for an extended deadline this week. Now, instead of attending church with my family, I’m eking out this column—and Mr. Wright didn’t spare me his look and oration of disapproval.

I’m convinced… bring in the clones!

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All the Wright Moves

The homeschooling next-door neighbors with six kids and the homeschooling family across the street with six kids laid hands on the huge trailer attached to our Suburban. They prayed for our safety, and thanked the Lord that we were leaving.

Our northern Snohomish County community was nice enough, but we really were the freaks of the neighborhood. Back then, we only had five kids; all of our neighbors had six. We were irresponsible enough to send our kids to public school; our neighbors all homeschooled.

We were preparing to move to the Lake Chelan Valley, and I was protesting the entire plan. No one could understand my resistance, and many asked, “Isn’t your whole family there?” as if that weren’t enough reason for my unwillingness to return.

The truth was, I had a bad feeling about the move. When Murphy penned his famous law, I suspect he had our future move in mind.

Our new house didn’t close in time, but summer soccer practice started right on schedule. That meant getting up with Princess at 3:00 a.m. every weekday morning, making a pot of coffee and driving over Stevens Pass to get to practice in Chelan by 7:00 a.m. There were still a lot of things to be done at the old house before our renters arrived, so after practice we drove three hours home, where I boxed and scrubbed and wallpapered and painted until I fell unconscious.

Our renters couldn’t delay their move-in date, and we had to start moving things out of the house before we actually had a new home to move them into. Mr. Wright rented a storage unit in Chelan and borrowed a friend’s pickup truck to haul boxes and bins over during his inter-county trips between his new office and home.

During a late-night trip over the mountains, Mr. Wright was involved in an accident when another driver fell asleep at the wheel. He wasn’t terribly hurt, but I used the incident as further proof that we shouldn’t be moving.

I was frustrated at having to move everything twice; once into the storage unit, and again into our new house when – and if – it ever closed. Fortunately, someone broke the padlock on the unit and relieved us of many of our possessions, so there wasn’t quite so much to move in the end.

Two days before the renters were due I sat, teary-eyed, in the middle of the living room floor, a gallon of sand-colored paint spilled on the carpet in front of me. I’d only meant to touch up the window sills.

We loaded the last of the boxes into the huge trailer, only to realize there was too much weight, and the tires were beginning to flatten with the pressure. Mr. Wright pulled furniture and bins out, rearranging them, until the weight was more evenly distributed and not directly over the tires.

“The trailer’s too heavy,” I said. “We’re either going to wreck our transmission, bust a tire, or make it on sheer faith.” I called the homeschoolers. Everyone laid hands on the trailer and the Suburban, asking God to provide us with safe travels and mechanical miracles.

We cleared the top of Stevens Pass just after dark. It was all downhill from there, as they say. At the bottom of the hill, Mr. Wright glanced in his side mirror to see a wheel spinning down the road. It passed, crossed in front of us and came to a smashing halt against the guardrail.

“You don’t think…” I began, as Mr. Wright pulled over to the side of the road. I never did finish the sentence. I didn’t have to. We both knew where the wheel had come from.

As we approached the back of the trailer, it was clear that one of the center wheels had come off. We both broke into hysteric, unrestrained laughter that lasted far too long. (Think Tom Hanks in “The Money Pit,” when the bathtub falls through the floor.)

When he could manage words, Mr. Wright took my hand and said, “Let’s go find the lug nuts, Babe,” and we walked and walked up the highway, flashlights piercing the darkness.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rooreynolds/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

4AM in Tokyo

Our sleep routine is all fouled up. We arrived at our Tokyo hotel early in the evening, took showers, made some "instant" peanut sesame noodles in the teapot and planned to find a place to have a drink. Instead, we fell dead asleep, wet hair and all.

We both woke up at 4am, thirsty. I remembered a 7Eleven downstairs, so we tossed on some clothes and headed for the elevator.

As we rounded the corner, I heard a low, rumbling noise, and when we turned, we saw a large man sprawled on his back, open wallet in his hand and cell phone next to his body. He was snoring loudly.

Mr. Wright shifted into EMT mode, checking the man's vitals and attempting to get a response from him while I picked up the courtesy phone, hoping the front desk attendant would understand me. I reported there was a man, unresponsive and unconscious, on the floor in front of the elevator.

Mr. Wright and I stayed with the man while we waited for the hotel staff to arrive. I picked up his hand and held it. It was warm... a good sign. Still, we didn't know if the man had fallen and hit his head, had a seizure, or what.

I patted his hand firmly. "Sir? Sir? Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

By the time the hotel worker arrived, the man was beginning to murmur some responses. The worker called for backup and sent us on our way.

Turns out it was a case of too much sake. Still, we felt like heroes.

Is it Really a New Year? ‘Cause I’ve Been Here Before…

Some of the players: Sunshine, The Gonzo Mama, Mr. Wright and Lulu

In college, I relished nothing more than heading out for a night of “whatever,” and seeing where the universe led me. That, my friends, was years and years ago. These days, I like to have a plan, and I had one for New Year’s Eve.

It was a simple, moderately uneventful one. With all of the kids safely delivered to my in-laws’ home, Mr. Wright and I planned to attend the farewell performance of our favorite Seattle Eighties cover band. You may know the band. They were the house band at Doc Maynard’s for years. In any event, when Mr. Wright and I met, our shared love for this particular band launched us into nine years of cover band groupiehood. We followed the band all over the state, Safety Dancing in our favorite Eighties clothing.

We can dance if we want to. We can leave our friends behind...

Clearly, we had to attend their very last show ever. We’d made arrangements to stay with our friend, Dr. Love, who lives a few blocks from the venue. Our plan also included dinner nearby, but I somehow forgot not only my tights, but also my makeup bag. A trip to the department store provided eighty dollars worth of makeup and hosiery; and we were only forty-five minutes late when met up with our friends, Dr. Love, Sunshine, Big Papa and Lulu.

Somehow, I thought we were all on the same page. I thought the plan was to go to the show, dance our rumps off, watch the Space Needle light up with fireworks, dance some more, and go home.

How silly of me.

After dancing our rumps only partially off, some of our tribe began planning a Belltown invasion. We slipped out the back door of the Armory to watch the fireworks at midnight. Following the obligatory “oooohs” and “aaaaahs,” I found our group had grown from six to nine Bacchanalians, and we were Belltown-bound.

I resisted. “I need to get a t-shirt!” I cried. They were out of shirts. “A tank top? A poster? A bumper sticker? I have to have a memento!” The merchandise vendor shook his head. “We’re out of everything but these refrigerator magnets,” he said.

Seriously... just a another few minutes... I. Just. Need. A t-shirt!

Of course, my refrigerator is aluminum.

Unable to stall our departure any longer, I gave in to the group of friends tugging on my arm and found myself in the middle of a night of “whatever.”

We ran into old friends and made new ones in Belltown before Sunshine announced that she’d obtained the lowdown on a not-to-be-missed party in SoDo. It was 2:00 a.m. I tried to muster some enthusiasm as we caravanned to the shindig, but what I really wanted was a blanket and pillow. “Sure. I’m up for ‘whatever,’” I lied.

This particular “whatever” carried a cover charge of ten bucks per person. We dutifully shelled out multiple bills, with the promise of great music and a big dance floor. The music was there. The dance floor was there. Unfortunately, there were other, less-than-legal party favors, as well. Not our scene. We left immediately. I was secretly happy because, frankly, I could not wait to get to sleep. Our core crew headed to Dr. Love’s, where everyone had parked.

We didn’t arrive alone. In fact, about a dozen other people came through the door in short order. Goodbye, sleep; hello, “whatever.”

I spent half an hour talking to Pinstripe Pete, a nice guy who used to own a clothing store but now works at a vitamin outlet. I made friends with Blondie, who has a sad and overwhelming suspicion that she will never have children. She is, after all, 35 years old and yet to marry. I talked to Big Papa and Lulu – who are considering adoption – about our experience adopting through the state. I kept my distance from Dirty Girl, a questionable character who showed up with The Gallery Owner, a strange little man I’d met before but never really cared for. I talked conservative politics with a moustacheless Rhett Butler lookalike (Timothy Dalton in “Scarlett,” not Clark Gable) – a rare discussion in Seattle, to be sure.

Meet my hetero-lifemate, Lulu

At 6:00 a.m., I surrendered, curling up on the sofa with a blanket and letting 2010 happen around me as I drifted off to sleep with this resolution firm in my mind: I will never, ever, ever try to relive my college days.

Forget “whatever.” I’d like a structured, boring 2010, please.

What’s your wish for the new year? Tell me all about it!

Photos by Lulu and Big Papa

Mommy Masochism: Piece of Cake?

What kind of an insomnia-plagued masochist would work through the night, forgoing sleep and the promise of sweet dreams, baking and decorating custom cakes for four children who probably aren’t as interested in the cakes’ appearance as in the cakes’ taste?

A mother; that’s what kind of masochist.

The closure of Beebe Bridge delayed the birthday celebrations for Curlytop, who turned four on August 19th; Pepper, who turned thirteen on September 3rd; and Snugglebug, who turned three on September 13th. After more than three years, the adoptions for Curlytop and Snugglebug finalized on September 22nd, and Pockets turned 15 the day after.

Clearly, a party of epic proportions was in order, once the bridge reopened and all our beloved friends and family were able to reach our home with minimal inconvenience.We decided on a Saturday, so as not to interfere with Pockets’s football games on Fridays. Pepper, of course, wanted a slumber party. How could we deny her? A girl only turns thirteen once, and if she wishes to celebrate by having seventeen girls stay the night, so be it.

I stocked my pantry with flour, sugar, food coloring, sugar, cocoa powder, and more sugar. My plan was to bake the cakes during the day on Friday, and decorate them Friday night. Of course, my plan failed to allocate time for the appointments I’d scheduled on Friday and the football game that night. As a result, I started baking at around 10:30 p.m.

Curlytop and Snugglebug each needed a birthday cake, of course, as did Pepper and Pockets. What about the adoption? Surely we needed a cake to celebrate the adoption! That’s how I found myself, at 4:00 a.m., baking a fifth cake and mixing up ten pounds or so of vegan “buttercream” frosting.

Curse my vegan principles, which prevent me from using a standard cake mix and canned frosting! After all, why spend all night making cakes I can’t eat?

Deciding on the decoration for Pockets’s cake was a no-brainer: football, of course. I dyed a batch of frosting green, fashioned goal posts out of pipe cleaners, and placed a small toy football in the center. Done!

Pepper plays volleyball, but I had no idea how to draw a volleyball, let alone frost one. In a stroke of brilliance, I mixed two more cakes at 4:15, planning a glorious tower of alternating chocolate and vanilla layers, with strawberry filling and raspberry frosting, with rosebuds creeping from the bottom to the top of the third layer. It took about three hours, and the resulting creation looked not unlike a matrimonial monstrosity.

(Indeed, upon seeing the finished product, one of Pepper’s friends exclaimed, “I want my wedding cake to look just like that!”)

Okay. Maybe I got carried away.

Determined to keep things simple for the “adoption cake,” I brainstormed what I could do with the heart-shaped strawberry cake I’d baked. I mean, a heart is just a heart, right? What can a person do with a heart? Unless…

I turned the cake upside-down, placing the point upward. Two hours later, two chubby-cheeked princesses with pointed hats meeting at the tip of the heart, complete with trailing satin ribbons, resided on top of the cake.

(I have a step-by-step how-to with photos for this cake here)

By 9:30 a.m., the sun was glaring in my kitchen window. The kids were up. Mr. Wright was up. Me? I was on my seventh cup of coffee, covered in flour, with two more cakes to frost and quite a few clumps of frosting in my hair. I covered the two small star-shaped cakes for Curlytop and Snugglebug with pink frosting, piped their names on top, and collapsed into bed.

It’s inevitable that, when I decorate custom cakes for my kids, some party guest will ask me if I’d be willing to make the cake for their kid’s birthday.

Yeah, right.

This special kind of self-torture is something I only perform for my own kids, thank you very much.

By the way, can anyone tell me how long leftover cake can be frozen? Or rent me some freezer space?

Everything I Need to Know About Motherhood I Learned from Animal House

Raising kids is like living in a frat house. There are too many all-nighters, there’s never enough coffee or Top Ramen, the toilets are never clean, it’s no surprise if someone is puking, and you never know who is going to be in your bed when you wake up.

I find myself falling back on old college tricks to survive raising my kids. Convenience foods, acceptance of messy living quarters, questionable laundry guidelines, tolerance for sleep deprivation and development of self-degradation may not be featured on the glossy college brochures, but they are invaluable post-secondary educational offerings for any future mother.

Naturally, I want to prepare wholesome, organic, additive-free meals for my kids, but sometimes a bowl or three of Puffs-o-Sugar is the best I can do at 7:00 a.m. Maybe I’m too tired from a late-night research session for a freelance article. Maybe I’d rather sleep in or actually get a shower before noon. Whatever the reason for not providing my children with a hot, nutritious breakfast, I rationalize it by pretending that I am giving them the gift of autonomy by allowing them to pour their own bowlfuls of chemicals to start their day.

When I’m working on a deadline, I provide the kids with a box of four-for-a-dollar macaroni and cheese mix and don’t even gag when they add sliced hot dogs to it. I have, however, managed to encourage them to add frozen vegetables to their ramen noodles. Nutrition, after all, is the stuff of healthy development.

While we’ve never had a food fight of National Lampoon caliber, you’d never know it by looking at my house. I am arguably the world’s worst housekeeper. The dust bunnies behind the big screen television require their daily feeding, and I hate to think they might starve. I am, if nothing else, an advocate of animal rights. There is no housemother here, though I am thinking of applying for some sort of accreditation so that I can hire one. The Wright School for Wayward Children, perhaps.

The laundry that piles up from seven children is unfathomable for those who haven’t either been foolish enough to collect seven kids or owned a laundry service. Even though I don’t have to dig around on the floorboards of my car for quarters to wash a load of clothes anymore, I still find myself administering the “sniff test” to clothes that might make it through one more wear before laundering. I’ve found, as my boys have become teenagers and my girls have begun playing sports, fewer items pass.

When Mr. Wright and I started out, we had a king-sized bed that all too frequently bore the burden of two adults and five kids molding it into submission. When the kids got too old to sleep with us, we downsized to a queen mattress and, in short order, found two more kids to fill it up. Even now that the littlest ones sleep in their own beds, I can’t get a decent night’s sleep without a knee in my ribs and a foot in my face.

By “sleeping in their own beds,” of course, I mean that the toddlers are placed in their beds at 9:00 p.m., scream for Mommy until 9:30, and are finally rescued by Daddy at 10:00, who brings them to our bed and pops in a Disney video for them to watch. I tell myself that this routine is acceptable, because, as I learned in Child Psychology 201, “routine” is important for children’s development and stability.

If I’d known how little sleep I was going to get as a mother, I would have spent more time sleeping in Professor Drone’s Intro to Theater class my freshman year. If no one is teething or throwing up, someone needs help with a science project they forgot about that’s due in the morning or someone is late for curfew or someone is going to wake me up at two in the morning to inform me that they need a costume for the school play. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with the nearly irresistible urge to rouse each of my kids and ask, “What are you not telling me? Why am I awake? What do you need?”

Motherhood feels, at times, like a particularly sadistic type of hazing. Who else but a mother or a Greek Week pledge would allow another human being to vomit into her cupped hands? Who else would march down Main Street dressed like a clown, balancing a wheelbarrow and wielding a shovel behind the 4-H ponies? Who else would willingly become a slave to a group of boisterous human beings under the legal drinking age?

To those women who have graduated college, only to find themselves with an unmarketable degree and a student loan to rival the national deficit: Take heart! Motherhood is always hiring, and your college experience makes you more than qualified.

Bad Gratitude Monday (on Tuesday)

Bad Gratitude Monday comes a day late this week, as I spent my actual Monday being quietly grateful for sleep, after traversing the country and arriving home at 5 a.m. Poor Mr. Wright didn't have the luxury of sleeping in, but I'm sure he was grateful for something.

Yesterday, I was grateful for:

1. Safe flights to and from Baltimore.
2. The support I received from readers in response to my hate mail.
3. My mother, who stayed with my six kiddos while we were in DC and Baltimore last week.

What are YOU grateful for?

The Quality of Life Calculator and Why I Love Hemorrhoid Cream

When I was in high school, the quality of my life was easily calculated in accordance to the number of friends I had to hang out with. I was a bookish nerd, so it followed that my quality of life was pretty low. College provided a simplified calculator. A cute boy buying me a drink equaled good; not having a date on a Friday night equaled bad.

The birth of my son changed my calculation methods tremendously. Any day that provided time for a shower automatically qualified as a good day, and each baby milestone created a new holiday worthy of capital letters. My calendar boasted such celebrations as First Smile Day, New Tooth Day, and Baby Weaned Himself From the Breast Day. The last, in particular, rocketed my quality of life to its relative highest, due to the fact that I could finally imbibe a cocktail without fear of turning my baby into a drunkard before his first birthday.

The quality of life calculator has undergone many adjustments since then, including some versions that were strictly released for beta testing and immediately recalled, like when I resolved to make my bed every day in an attempt to incorporate a novice level of “feng shui” into my home. I didn’t understand the entire concept, but the back covers of feng shui books that I bought (but never read) promised to greatly improve my quality of life and align my chakras.

I’m no fool. Maybe I didn’t know what my chakras were, but I wasn’t going to let mine become misaligned simply because I couldn’t make my bed each morning. The first day, I spent twenty minutes trying to master the ancient art of hospital corners, and my quality of life plummeted with every curse I shouted.

I returned to college immediately after acquiring four more children. New quality of life indicators included whether I made enough tips waiting tables to pay for textbooks, how many hours I spent at the law library to complete my Legal Research final, how many days per week my kids ate macaroni and cheese and whether I was able to find clean underwear each morning. When I took my dream job at one of Seattle’s top law firms, my quality of life boiled down to how many hours per day I spent in gridlock on I-5.

In 2006, I managed to collect two more children. Two infants, actually. In real life, this blessing might trick a girl into believing that her quality of life has reached a pinnacle of greatness: two babies, no labor pains, no stretch marks. However, this wasn’t real life. It was my life, and there is a distinct difference. I achieved about three hours of sleep per night, which was actually a good thing, because never reaching full consciousness allowed me to pretend that being a mother to seven children at the ripe old age of 31 was actually just a terrible nightmare.

The past three years have streamlined my quality of life calculator. No longer do I obsess over whether my house is clean (it never is), whether my kids are healthy (they were breathing the last time I checked), or whether I have cellulite (of course, I do). Now, it’s all about the amount of hemorrhoid cream I have to spackle under my eyes to shrink the bulging bags that have taken up residence there.

Years ago, I read in a magazine that models sometimes dab a little Preparation-H® under their eyes to reduce puffiness. At the time, the thought of applying a substance meant for hemorrhoids to my face was, to tell the truth, a little disgusting. My opinion changed the day I woke up and realized that I could actually tattoo the Louis Vuitton logo on my bags, and go for a designer look. Today, my quality of life is accurately measured by the size of the application tool I use to slather butt cream under my eyes. My finger equals pretty good; a putty knife equals really bad.

Of course, my quality of life is actually quite satisfactory. It could be worse. After all, I’m still applying hemorrhoid cream above my waist, right?