Introducing, the amazing LBD …. you’re welcome

I’ve been missing from the blog lately … And, to be honest, from my life. I have a book due … Well, it was due yesterday, which was when I was writing this blog. So I there I was, frantically trying to finish the book when the alarm popped up that I was supposed to blog today. Yep. I panicked.

I have nothing to blog about. And, to be honest, deadline isn’t a great time to be blogging. Nothing makes you feel less successful as a wife and mother than when you’re working ten hour days and are completely distracted. Weeks like this, it’s all I can do not to collapse in a ball of panic and fear.

I suspect that Robyn could back me up on this, but she’s on deadline, too, so I’m guessing she doesn’t read this.

Since I’m lacking in all forms of parental wisdom, I will give you something else. Something better. I’m going to introduce you to the best web based show around, The Lizzie Bennett Diaries. It’s a vlog retelling of Pride and Prejudice. If you watch TheLBD already, you know how great it is. It’s funny and sexy and emotionally complex. And it’s currently my favorite rendition of P&P. Yeah, you heard me. I like this more than both movie versions. (And I didn’t even get struck by lightening when I wrote that.)

In short, if you’re a fan of Austen at all, then you need to be watching this. It’s the most fun you’ll have without cracking open a book.

Do you watch The LBD already? If not, do you watch any other web shows?

I’ll give away a copy of The Farm–my new YA–to one person who comments.

Emily McKay loves to cook, bake and play with her kids. When she’s not on deadline, she also gardens, composts, follows celebrity gossip, and practices yoga. When she is on deadline, she … well, she panics, and does all of those things with more nervous energy. She lives in central Texas with her husband, two kids, two cat, two dogs and four chickens.

Complicit Companions

About a month ago, my baby boy turned five. I love my son. So much. (You guys are parents. You get it.) He is handsome and charming. So sweet and cuddly. Just a real love bug.

But, he’s getting older. They all get older, eventually. <sigh>

Generally, with my kids, older has always been a little better. But last night, something not good came along with “older.” For the first time ever (that I know of), my son lied to me. I mean, an open, bald-faced, doe-eyed lie. Here’s how it went down:

(To set the scene, Sunday we were a birthday party. The party favor was bags of candy and other sweets. I had told the kids they could eat a little each evening after dinner.) So last night, I’m making dinner. The kids are playing upstairs. I see my boy walking past with the scissors. He’s heading upstairs.

Me: Hey. Where you going with those scissors?

Him: Upstairs.

Me: To do what?

Him:  Cut paper.

Me: That’s all you’re doing? (he nods.) You’re going to clean up your mess? (he nods.) Okay.

Then today, I’m upstairs collecting dirty clothes and find the scissors and a whole stash of candy wrappers. I’m no fool. Clearly, he ate a lot of candy. And clearly, big sis was involved too. I know how her brain works. Hey, I’ll send baby brother down for the scissors. He always looks innocent. 

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t the first time they’ve gotten in trouble together. Far from it. But this is the first time (that I know of) that they’ve lied to cover for one another. That they’ve been complicit in an overt lie.

The overt lie part bugs me. The pairing up against me bugs me. And it also bugs me that there’s some tiny part of me that is happy about it. And sad too.  My inner mom is split in two on this one.

On one hand, lying is bad. (There was a much longer version of this post where I justified that comment. Then I decided that I probably didn’t need to sell you–fellow parents-on that idea. So let’s just agree. Lying=bad.) I don’t want to raise kids who sneak around. I want to be the mom who has such a great, open relationship with her kids that they would never lie. My friend Skyler is like that. Her daughter is a freshman in college and can tell her anything. That’s what I want with my kids.

But, just for a second, let’s pretend that whole lying is bad thing doesn’t exist. If I look at the lie in a different light, it’s kind of a good thing.

My sister and I are super close. I feel so lucky and blessed to have her in my life. Even when she’s driving me crazy. (She’s my sister. Sisters do that sometimes.) Whatever else happens, there are parts of me that only she will ever get. She will always be there for me. Bottom line, she has my back. No matter what. I’m lucky to have her.

And that’s where–maybe–this lie my son told me is a good thing. As much as it bugs me, it’s a sign of how close they are. Right or wrong, they were in it together. They were a pair. They were sneaky. But they were sneaky cooperatively. I’m kind of proud of them. And sad and worried too. Sad because this is a sign of days to come. I’m sure there will be many a time in the future when they team up against me. My sister and I did. Geez, we still do sometimes.

For now, they both got a stern talking to about the lying thing and I got a reminder that candy needs to be kept under lock and key. I also got a glimpse of the future that is both scary and wonderful. I hope they never lie to me again. I also hope that they are always this close.

What do you do when your kids lie to you? Any advice on creating one of those great tell-you-anything kind of bonds?

Awkward Self-Examination

Part I — My crazy-cheap grandma

My grandmother–bless her heart–is the cheapest woman in the world. She’s one of those grew-up-during-the-great-depression types. You know the kind, right? The kind with a jar of string labeled “String too short to use” and a drawer full of used, washed, flattened aluminum foil. That’s my grandma. Even among her generation, she’s crazy-cheap. I know this because I’ve compared war-stories with lots of other people. This is a woman who monitors the use of toilet paper in her house (one square per use) and who uses the same water to boil vegetables day after day. She was buying in bulk long before it was cool. Her basement used to be full of boxes of cereal labeled things like “Post Toasties — July ’94.”

My grandmother is 95 and I feel so blessed that she’s lived this long. However (there’s always a however, isn’t there?), throughout my life, her crazy-cheapness has been a source of amusement and embarrassment and chagrin. While I love her, I’m not gonna lie. On more than one occasion, I wished I had a normal grandmother. Someone who would just bake me cookies instead of lecturing me about the value of the stamp. (Not even joking on that one.)

Part II — Yeah, I know I’m crazy

So here’s the awkward part. I’m a little crazy. Not in a cute writer way either, but in an annoying OCD way. My particular branch of crazy is related to the environment. I’m super aware of ecological issues. We recycle. We hang our clothes out to dry. We compost. We have an organic garden. We have chickens. We … you get the point. Yes, all of that stuff is fun and most of it is easier than you’d think. And I enjoy it.

But I’m also aware that my total devotion to all things green borders on the obsessive. Sometimes it’s on the normal side of the border. Sometimes it’s on the obsessive side. Some moms worry about germs. I worry about our carbon footprint. I know I’m a little OCD about it. I try to keep it under wraps, but I am aware that my ecology isn’t a sign of my emotional stability. I know I can tip over. I try to keep the crazy under wraps. And somehow being OCD about green stuff, allows to let other things go. It gives a focus to the crazy. It makes me feel like I’m in control. I can’t stop global climate change, but I can hang my jeans out to dry. For me, it works.

Part III — My awkward Self-examination

This weekend as I was composting chicken poop — yes, I know. Obsessive, right? — I had a light bulb moment. Yes, I’m crazy-green. But I’m also crazy green. Maybe my Grandmother is the same way. Maybe she’s not just crazy-cheap. Maybe she’s also crazy cheap. Maybe her obsession with saving every penny is her way of managing

Me with my grandparents when baby girl was little.

OCD.

In case you think I’m sounding judgmental here, I don’t mean to. Just the opposite, in fact. This realization has made me feel more … sympathetic, maybe. In the past, her cheapness has (sometimes) bugged the crap out me. Sometimes, it’s made it hard to even be with her. “Ugh. I need to mail XY&Z to Grandma, but I know she’s going to harass me later if I mail it Fedex. I just won’t mail it.” Which then leads to: “Ugh, I meant to mail her XY&Z. I don’t want to call her because she’ll harass me about that.”

Thanks to my new understanding, I can approach it differently. Now I can think, “Okay, doing it her way may be a pain in the ass, but I understand now. It’s not just cheapness. It’s something else. Something I can relate to.”

Now, will my new understanding lead to greater peace, contentment and acceptance in my relationship with my Grandmother? I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so, because I love her and enjoy her company when she’s not getting on my last ever-lovin’ nerve. How great would it be if my own form of crazy leads to a deeper relationship with my grandmother?

So how about you? Do you have a touch of OCD? Do you have family members who drive you crazy? How do you handle it?

Accidental electrocution, freak accidents, chicken poop and other irrational fears

When I was a kid, I was terrified of the following bizarre freak accidents:

• having giant hoop earrings ripped from my ears while riding on a roller coaster
• standing in water in the bathroom and being electrocuted
• riding in a car with my arm out the window and having my hand chopped off by a passing 18 wheeler
• falling asleep and drowning in either a hot bath or a hot tub

I had all these fears because my mother. She would brandish these stories anytime I did something dangerous. “Be careful! I had a cousin who was killed (or maimed) doing <fill in the blank>!” As a result, I terrified of taking hot baths and even more scared of getting out of them. In high school, when other girls were primping in the car on the way to Six Flags amusement park, I was nervously massaging my ear lobs to make sure I didn’t have earrings in. In fact, I’ve never even owned a large pair of hoop ear rings. And I don’t even ride roller coasters! And don’t even get me started on driving with the windows down.

As an adult, I’ve decided that all of these fears are pretty irrational. In fact, I’m not sure these things happened to anyone my mother knew. I mean, yes, she had a lot of cousins (her father had eight brothers and sisters), but still … that’s a lot of bad mojo for one family. Despite that, I’ve held on to my fears and even passed on a few to my own kids. I’m mixing it up a bit though. I anticipate my kids’ list of crazy fears will look something like this:

• walking with some thing in their mouth, tripping, falling, choking to death
• being poisoned by bad mayo
• being poisoned by food bourn parasites, bacteria, etc.
• being crushed by large furniture

Last night, as I was making dinner, my son stared at the cutting board, a gleam of maniacal fear in his eyes.

“Is that raw meat?” he asked in hushed tones.

“Yes.”

“i knew it!”

I let my kids do a lot in the kitchen. Generally, touching raw meat is not on the list. In fact, last fall, when I made wedding soup, I let my daughter help make the meatballs. She still talks about how fun that was. “I got to touch raw meat,” she’ll say with a note of nostalgia. Then she’ll sigh and add, “Once.”

It amuses me that she remembers the event fondly, since I scrubbed her down afterwards like she’d been exposed to radiation.

The funny thing is, despite my fear of salmonella and other food  bourn illnesses, we have chickens. My kids touch them all the time. If they’re going to get something nasty, it’s probably going to be from them. But, for whatever reason, I don’t worry about that. I just make sure they wash their hands.

I guess the thing about irrational fears is … well, they’re irrational. And no one means to pass them on to our kids, but we can’t help it. It just happens. It’s a product of trying to keep our kids safe.

So what are your irrational fears? Do you try to protect your kids from them or do you just let the have it?

Bring a book Saturday – I love you the Purplest

 Today I’m featuring one of my favorite children’s books, I Love you the Purplest by Barbara M. Joosse. The story is simple. A mother takes her two sons fishing one evening. The story highlights the different between the two boys’ personalities. At the end of the evening, as she’s tucking them into bed, each of them asks her which she loves more. Her answer is beautiful and prefect. She tells one son she loves him the bluest and the other that she loves him the redest.

Barbara M. Joosse’s simple prose highlights the complexities and delights of loving children, their naturally competitive natures and the cleverness it takes to parent them well. This is the perfect gift for an child who is about to become a sibling for the first time, or for your own kids. My sister wisely gave it to my daughter when my son was born and we just love it. I haven’t seen it at the bookstore very often, because it’s over 15 years old now, but it’s still in print (which is a sign of how great it is). But you can order your copy today. I’m sure you won’t regret it!

Emily McKay loves to cook, bake and play with her kids. When she’s not on deadline, she also gardens, composts, follows celebrity gossip, and practices yoga. When she is on deadline, she … well, she panics, and does all of those things with more nervous energy. She lives in central Texas with her husband, two kids, two cat, two dogs and four chickens.

Brownie Baking madness!

Every year around the holidays, I go into a baking craze. I absolutely love to bake, any time of year. The holidays are just an excuse to bake day after day. Usually, I bake three or four kinds of cookies and maybe a batch of white trash. It’s all yummy goodness. All the teachers and neighbors and bus drivers get a nice box of cookies.

This year, I decided to go a different route. About a month ago, when I was at the dentist, I saw an article in Ladies Home Journal about all the things you can do with a box of brownie mix. They had nine different mix-ins you could add to spruce up the mix and a lovely picture of nine brownies. I was hooked. For a crazed baker like me, it was a challenge I had to accept.

A week ago, I bought and baked a box of Ghirardelli Brownie mix. Normally, I make brownies from scratch, so I wanted to make sure I liked the brownies plain. They passed the test. Unfortunately, one box wouldn’t be enough for my purposes. I had twelve people on my brownie list. So I would need to do double batches. Just to clarify. That’s nine double batches. That’s eighteen boxes of mix. That’s 36 eggs (because I like the thick, cakey brownies). And I wanted to do them all in one day, because brownies can go stale quickly. (Did I mention this was madness? I think I mentioned that, right?)

Monday was the day. I started at 8:30 as soon as I got home from dropping my boy at school. At first, I was writing while the brownies baked, but quickly realized I would never get them done if I wasn’t prepping while they baked. Then I realized I need two pans in the oven at a time. Then I realized I needed my husband to pick up take out for dinner. And put the kids to bed while I slugged it out in the kitchen. Finally, I fell into bed after eleven (and still had three pages to write for the night!) Then I was up again 5:00 to slice and box before  sending my darlings (the brownies, not the kids) off to school. I mentioned this was madness, right? Please, this episode will come up if I’m ever on trial and my sanity is called into question.

They were beautiful. I took pictures to prove it. See?

But then, a funny thing happened. I walked with my daughter out to her bus to give the box of brownies to her bus driver (who is possibly the best bus driver since Sandra Bullock). He gave me a big smile, thanked me and said, “You know, the best gift I ever got from a parent was that letter you wrote me when she was in kindergarten.” He smiled again as he drove off and I stood there for moment, stunned.

See, that first day of kindergarten, I was terrified to just thrust my tiny daughter onto the bus. I’d never ridden the school bus (but my husband rode one every year until he could drive), and all I knew of buses I’d learned from John Hughes movies. I was terrified to send my daughter. But our bus driver is so great, I knew with in weeks that he’d take good care of our kids. We live on a tricky road and he’s so cautious. He’s just a good guy. And at Christmas that first year, I wrote him a long note telling him that.

When we send our kids off to school, we’re trusting other people with our kids. Great people. I’m thankful everyday for the wonderful people who care for and educate my kiddoes when I can’t (or am not qualified) to do so. No amount of crazy baking–or heartfelt letters–can express how grateful I am. Not just do these wonderful people educate my kids, teaching them valuable life skills and knowledge, but they teach an even great lesson–that there are wonderful, caring people in the world. People for whom making the world a better, brighter place is more important than making a buck.

In short, teachers are amazing. So amazing, there literally are no words for how grateful I am. And I’m a writer. Words are my bread and butter. I should be able to whip up a letter of gratitude in a snap. But the truth is–it’s so much easier to send a whole day on my feet, baking 9 double batches of brownies. The brownies may be yummy, but I took the easy way out.

If you’re a teacher (or former teacher) leave a comment telling me the best gift you ever got. Then email me at Emily <at> Emily McKay <dot> com with your snail mail adress and I’ll send you a free book. (Check out Amazon for back list and I’ll see if I can get one of your choices.) If you’re not a teachers, let’s sing their praises! And I’ll pick one of you to get a signed book too!

Emily McKay loves to cook, bake and play with her kids. When she’s not on deadline, she also gardens, composts, follows celebrity gossip, and practices yoga. When she is on deadline, she … well, she panics, and does all of those things with more nervous energy. She lives in central Texas with her husband, two kids, two cat, two dogs and four chickens.

Bring a Book Saturday

I thought I’d try something new, here at PB&K. (We could all use something to brighten our day, right?) When I think back to the first few years of motherhood, one of the biggest challenges (or maybe one of the most frustrating challenges) was finding good books for my kids. Before I had kids, I had hours and hours to browse at the book store. I could wander. I could still and read every book in the kids’ section if I wanted.

Then, I had kids and trips to the book store became episodes of torture. Kids (mine) running around, tugging books off the shelves and slobbering on stuffed animals I didn’t have the money or intention of buying. Worse still, if I asked the local clerk what she recommended, she (or he) would point me toward the newest Pinkalicious book. (Bleck.)

Most of the great books my kids love (and I could stand to read night after night) were the ones other people either bought for me or physically put in my hands and said, “This is good. Buy this.” (And, no, not Pinkalicious. Sorry if you love that book, but I just don’t.)

So, here’s my plan. I’m going to help. From now on, if there’s nothing scheduled to go up on a Saturday, I’m going to throw up a quick book recommendation. Something my kids have loved and I can stand to read. Other PB&K Moms, join in whenever you want. And, hey, readers, if you want to shoot me a recommendation, I’ll put those up too. Let’s make this fun. My goodness, we love books. Kids books, too. Let’s share!

The book I’m bringing today: My Penguin, Osbert

In this heartwarming story, Joe asks Santa to bring him a real, live penguin. Joe is very specific because Santa has misunderstood in the past. He gets the penguin he asked for, but the consequences are not what he anticipated.

What I love: Penguins! Christmas magic! Whimsical humor!

My favorite moment: After several days of playing in the snow and eating creamed herring with his penguin, Joe writes a letter to Santa admitting that maybe he should have let Santa choose for him after all and says, “And it turns out I don’t have frostbite after all.”

I love the simplicity and specificity of this book. And did I mention it has a penguin in it? I love penguins. This is one of my favorite Christmas books!

The downside: Well, if your family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, this won’t be the book for you. Otherwise, I can’t see a downside.

So what’s your favorite holiday book?

All a flutter

Yesterday, The Farm, my first single title young adult novel was released. Since I come from a background of short series romance novels, probably the most common question I get is, “Huh? Why’d you switch? What’s up with that?”

Lots of people are genuinely curious. Some are a little bit horrified by the premise of the book (monstrous vampires wipe out most of America and teenagers are farmed as food). I think there are even a few people think I made the switch because I saw YA as the-next-big-thing and jumped on the bandwagon.

I figured, here, among friends, I could explain. I’ve gotten the question in interviews, but there’s never really enough room there to think through on paper what led me from charming romances to blood thirty monsters. And no, it wasn’t that bandwagon thing.

When I first fell in love with reading, a *long* time ago, I read a lot of scifi/fantasy. At some point I discovered romance novels and I just really loved those. That was my first choice for reading for probably since I was about 11. I still read some scifi/fantasy, but mostly it was romance. So, when I first started writing, romance seemed like a nature fit. This was almost 20 years ago now. There was no paranormal romance, no urban fantasy. There was only hard-core scifi, high fantasy, series romance (like Harlequins) and historical romance. I picked what I loved to read and what I seemed most qualified to write.
I’ve also loved post-apocalyptic novels. The Postman is probably in top five list. I just love it. So for a long time, I had this idea in the back of my head that someday, I might write a post-apocaplyptic novel.
So, when I had this idea about vampires taking over and farming teens for food, I thought, “Yes, this is the right idea for that!”
The really beautiful thing about YA right now is that the the genre is still very open. It’s only beginning to be divided into sub genres. You can have a book with paranormal elements, and sibling relationship elements, and scifi elements and romance elements. In some ways, this book couldn’t be an adult novel because the editors would all say, “Well, it’s not really urban fantasy and it’s not really paranormal romance, so I can’t buy it.” No one would say that about a YA.
Plus, to me, this is a world best seen through the lens of a teenager. It just fits, you know? I was thinking about this the other day. I couldn’t write this book from the POV of an adult, certainly not from the POV of a mother. This world of mine that I’ve created, this world in which monsters are real and some of the humans are worse than the monsters, that world is super scary. I couldn’t put a mom in those shoes. I just couldn’t do it. But a teen can be blissfully unaware of things. From the POV of a teen, there’s plenty of scary stuff. Some people even call it horror, but it’s not truly horrifying.

Besides, I think there’s an underlying optimism to a lot of post-apocalyptic novels. The very idea that there will be a post apocalyptic, that there will be an after, is very uplifting. And romance is the most uplifting of all genres.
I’ve loved writing romance and I think everything I’ll ever write will have that in there somewhere, but in The Farm, I got to do romance, plus action, plus monsters, plus sisters. It was crazy fun!

Piggybacking, deadlines and dirty Kindles

Subtitled: In which Emily shamelessly piggybacks on Ellie’s totally awesome post about the tragically short lives of Disney moms. (You did read it, right? Because it’s awesome.)

Why is Emily shamelessly piggybacking, you may wonder. Well, I’m on deadline. And I’m doing tons of promo because my book, The Farm is out one week from yesterday. One week!!! Yikes!!!! (Deep breathes. Deep breathes. Deep. Breathes.) So there’s all that. Plus holiday stress. (I swear this is the year I’m finishing my freakin’ shopping early.) But I’m always piggybacking on Ellie’s awesome post because it reminded me of something funny that happened recently.

I was traveling with my friend and fellow writer/mom, Tracy Deebs. We were in Dallas for the fabulous Readers and ‘Ritas weekend put on by Fresh Fiction and somehow the topic of the tragically short lives of Disney moms came up. I admitted that my children have no idea how Bambi ends. They think that there’s a fire in the big woods, everyone is scared, but they live. And that’s the moment in the movie when I lunge for the remote.

But sitting there in that hotel room in Dallas, it occurred to me that maybe I’m not doing my kids any favors. After all, look at Phoebe from Friends. Her mother never told her how Bambi ended and she resented her.  So I decided right then and there that I’d show my kids the ending of Bambi. They were old enough. No more beating around the bush. (Or the dead deer as the case may be.) I was going to rip aside the curtain and reveal the horrible truth.

My conviction lasted about five minutes.

You know what? I’m okay with my kids not knowing how Bambi dies. There is plenty of real death in the real world for them to deal with. The real world is harsh. They will have to deal with all kinds of crap I’d rather protect them from. For now, when it comes to animated deer, I’m going to stand between them and the ugly truth as long as I can.

Of course, I don’t want a Phoebe situation either. So Tracy and I made a pact. If I die young, it’s her job (after an appropriate period of mourning) to sit my kids down and tell them the truth about Bambi. And in return I promised that if she dies young, I’ll dig around in her closest and find and destroy some pre-husband love letters. I have another friend whose Kindle I’m supposed to find and destroy just so her hubby won’t see all the erotic she reads. Man, the things you’ll do for friends. But thank God for them, right? I don’t know about you, but I sleep a little better know that if the unthinkable were to happen, there will be other moms out there to step up to the bat and help raise my kids.

I wonder if that’s why women form such strong friendships … because we know we’ll need these people in our lives for a long time!

 

Licemare on Elm Street

Three weeks ago my home was invaded by a horror few can even imagine. Monsters that are relentless and nearly impossible to kill. And they were feeding on our flesh!

Lice.

Now I don’t want to imply this is the worst parenting challenge I’ve ever faced … but it was pretty stinkin’ bad. We’ve been through stitches and trips to the emergency room. We’ve done pneumonia and crazy high fevers. We’ve done falls from the monkey bars, toddlers wandering out to the road, and lost-in-the-store. All of those parenting challenges were scarier than lice, but when it comes to the creep factor, to pure ickiness, lice wins hands down.

Besides being creepy–they live in your hair. In your hair! <shudder>–lice are insidious monsters for this one simple reason: they revealed me for the big fat liar I am.

Yes, we all lie. It’s part of parenting. I’m an old pro. Here are some of my favorites: “No, there are no more Snickers bars.”  ”Honey, Santa doesn’t allow kittens on the sleigh.” and then, perhaps my favorite, “Yes, that’s the end of Bambi. That fire in the thicket is the big climax. And, yes, it is the shortest Disney movie.”

I’ve told all those lies. I didn’t suffer any guilt, because, I knowingly told them. I knew I was lying.

So, here’s how the lying/lice thing went down at the McKay house:

For weeks, my daughter had been scratching. I kept looking for lice and not seeing them. She was worried about them, so I let her start using a lice defense shampoo. Since I was looking and not seeing anything, I wasn’t too worried. “It’s probably because of the change in the weather, honey.”  (No, that’s not the lie. Wait for it.) See, this was early October. In Texas, that means we’d dropped from 105 to about 95. That’s our “cold” front. So I really thought she just had dry scalp.

But finally, one Sunday, I dragged her outside, in the sunlight, with a magnifying glass and I finally found the little buggers. Actually, on her, I only saw the nits (the eggs), but off we trotted to the store to buy the treatment. My poor daughter was visibly upset. So I said …. (drumroll, please, ’cause here it comes) “Honey, it’s no big deal. Everyone gets lice at least once when they’re little. There’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

Flash forward four hours. Her lice treatment came with this little comb. Out of curiosity, I combed my hair into the bathroom skin. And I. Had. Lice.

Lice!

<shudder>

So picture it, okay? My daughter, in the living room at the computer, blissfully playing while she’s got her lice treatment under a shower cap, convinced that it’s “no big deal.” From the bathroom, I call out to my husband in a quavering voice, “Honey, can come here for a second?” He comes in. I’m in tears. Head buried in my hands. “I have lice!” I wail. “I’m so ashamed!”

Seriously. That’s what I said. Or rather, wailed.

I look up. My kids had followed The Geek in. My son runs over to the sink to look at the creepy crawlies. My daughter looks at me with an expression of utter betrayal. Obviously, I had lied. It was a big deal. It was a very big deal.

Okay, it’s still really not.

Lice don’t hurt you. They’re just creepy. And a pain in the butt to get rid off. I won’t bore you with the details of how to actually get rid of them. You can find that info on line if you ever need it. Suffice it to say it involved burning anything that might have come into contact with your hair in a giant bonfire in the backyard like that scene at the end of The Velveteen Rabbit. Just kidding. Sort of.

But we did have to buy all new hair care stuff. And lots of scented oils that lice don’t like.

I’m not 100% sure my daughter has forgiven me for my blatant lie. We still go back and forth about who got them first. I try to tell her it doesn’t matter. But that lice are common at schools. She’ll eye me suspiciously and ask how close I get to those other women in my yoga class. “You could have got lice from one of them,” she tells me over and over. Me, I’m convinced they didn’t move over to my head until she started using that Lice defense shampoo.

And from now, if she uses the shampoo, so will I.

I truly believe that I would do anything to protect my kids. I could be one of those crazy strong moms who could lift a car off her child. I would fight off demons. But I’m not getting lice again for her. That’s where I draw the line.

So what kind of lies do you tell your kids?

Emily McKay loves to cook, bake and play with her kids. When she’s not on deadline, she also gardens, composts, follows celebrity gossip, and practices yoga. When she is on deadline, she … well, she panics, and does all of those things with more nervous energy. She lives in central Texas with her husband, two kids, two cat, two dogs and four chickens.