February 17, 2007 / Perspective / Parenting / Smartmom

It’s that time of year again

By Louise Crawford

The Brooklyn Paper

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Snow was in the forecast. Valentine’s Day was coming (it’s Hepcat’s least-favorite Hallmark holiday). And in the middle of everything, Smartmom found out that one of her paying projects has been substantially downsized.

Smartmom has the blues and she’s got ’em bad.

Yeah. Yeah. One door opens and another one closes. But try telling that to Smart Tuition when it comes calling for the $3,500 she still owes for Teen Spirit’s Bay Ridge Prep schooling.

Not to mention the stack of bills on the dining room table mingling with last night’s dirty dinner plates that she couldn’t bring herself to clean.

And Buddha forbid that Hepcat pick up a dirty plate and take it to the kitchen sink (forget putting it in the dishwasher — that would be beyond the beyond).

And don’t even get her started on OSFO or Teen Spirit.

She’s asked them again and again to remember to clear the table. But far be it from those entitled sycophants to be considerate of Smartmom on her worst night in months.

Obviously, Smartmom is feeling very Rodney Dangerfield-like at the moment. She don’t get no respect from her kids or her husband. Truth is, she don’t get no respect from nobody. Life sucks and she can’t take it anymore.

Slow down, Smartmom. You’re getting a little carried away. It’s not like anyone is having such a good time these days.

Take Mrs. Cleavage. Last month she was laid off from her job as an executive assistant at a high-powered non-profit.

She sobbed all the way home on the 2 train.

“What a nightmare. I hate public displays, but I could not keep it together,” she told Smartmom over white chocolate cake at the Cocoa Bar.

When Mrs. Cleavage, a single mom, got home, she called her therapist. “He now stands even less of a chance of being paid for his services. I sobbed through that phone call.”

Then there’s Smartmom’s friend, Tall and Lanky, whose daughter was injured in a school circus arts class and had to spend two days in the pediatric ICU with a spleen injury.

And Divorce Diva’s life makes Smartmom’s travails look like a day at Canyon Ranch. Last month, she broke her foot walking down the stairs and has been on crutches ever since.

Then, she discovered that she and her daughter were infested with head lice. After two $300 visits from the Orthodox Jewish Ladies Lice Brigade (www.licebusters­nyc.com), they are lice free. To make matters worse, her daughter contracted pinkeye — from her stepsister no less.

Just when she thought things were getting better, her 10-year-old cockatiel, Jackie, got deathly ill.

Saturday night after midnight, Divorce Diva placed Jackie in her grandmother’s sewing basket and took Eastern Car Service to the Animal Medical Center’s emergency room in Manhattan. The beloved cockatiel was dead by 11 am.

Rest in peace, Jackie.

So Smartmom should stop her bellyaching. In the scheme of things, it could be worse. She could have a broken limb, a head full of lice, a child with a spleen injury or a hysterical crying jag on the subway.

But life is not a game of comparative misery. We all get to be as nasty as we wanna be. No matter how bad or good the reason.

And Smartmom really doesn’t have a good reason. She’s got two great kids — who refuse to use the hamper and leave their clothing on the bathroom floor.

She’s healthy — even if can’t bare to look at the bathroom scale anymore and seems incapable of going running in the park.

She’s got a wonderful husband — who comes home late from work, walks straight to his computer, and continues working until the wee hours of the morning. Plus he probably forgot to give her a Valentine’s Day gift (really, what’s so hard about going to the Clay Pot?).

Lastly, she loves what she does — but she’s not making enough money. And she needs an agent. And she has all these aspirations, all these goals and sometimes she doesn’t know how to go about meeting them.

Truthfully, the best thing Smartmom has going in her life right now is the new high-definition, flat-screen TV on which she and Hepcat spent too much money and on which she watches re-runs of her new favorite show, “Scrubs.”

Yes, all is right with the world when Dr. Perry Cox, the curmudgeonly, caring, and wildly funny John McGinley, rants about everything that’s wrong with his life, the residents he oversees, and the quality of care at the surreal Sacred Hearts Hospital.

Smartmom can relate. Life sucks. What can you say. “Scrubs” is a really great show. You should watch it sometime.

Louise Crawford is the writer of “Only the blog knows Brooklyn” and the keeper of the “Park Slope 100.”

©2007 Community Newspaper Group