I’ve never wanted to be the type of parent who perpetuates the myths common to childhood, like Santa and the reindeer or the omniscient Tooth Fairy.

But I am exactly one of those parents.

I’m one of those parents who loves to see their children’s eyes grow wide with wonder and excitement at the possibility of a winged fairy who compensates children for the pain of tugging out their lateral incisors by leaving money under their pillow.

But sometimes I write parenting checks that my parenting ass can’t cash. Like when I forget, for two weeks in a row, to put the money under the pillow. I am then forced to lie again in order to protect the original lie:

“The Tooth Fairy has Alzheimer’s and we need to be patient with her.”

“She STILL hasn’t come? Well then, we need to sit down right now and write a letter to the American Tooth Fairy Association. In fact, let’s report her to the Better Business Bureau while we’re at it.”

Those are lies I choose to tell to my children and I’m not saying it’s right. In fact, there’s always a painful moment when my child catches me in the lie. Sometimes it’s discovered on the playground at school when one loud-mouthed dream wrecker says “Are you stupid? There’s NO SUCH THING as a tooth fairy!” Sometimes a sibling spills the beans just to evoke a reaction from the innocent victim. Sometimes they just ask with so much desire for truth, I have no choice but to confess my parental wretchedness.

But then there are myths that I perpetuate simply because I’m wrong. For example, the kids and I were discussing the summer solstice yesterday and I blurted out, without thinking, “Hey, today is the day we can stand an egg upright! Should we try it?”

I apparently still retain some credibility with them because they collectively shouted “Yes!!” and flocked around the kitchen counter where I continued to rattle off “facts” regarding the longest day of the year.

I carefully placed the egg on the smooth counter top and adjusted it until it finally stood up on end. We all stood there, amazed, by the freakiness of it all.

Until Daniel, 13, happened upon us and ruined everything with one simple question.

“Aren’t you confusing the solstice with the equinox?”

Um.

“The egg is standing up, Dan. What more proof do you need?”

“I’m googling it to prove that you’re wrong.”

Because Google is my children’s new parental authority and proving me wrong is their life’s goal.

Turns out that Dan was right. Turns out that it is the equinox that sends millions of mothers on the mission to impress their children with the standing egg. Also turns out that the standing of the egg on the equinox is a myth, too. It’s all just a big fat lie.

Considering the lesson I learned today, I think it’s time I confess to them that I was never in the circus nor was I shot out of a cannon. And that scar on my eyebrow…well, it wasn’t from the trapeze bar after all. It happened while I was making the citizen’s arrest of a bank robber who attacked me with his numchucks.

A couple days ago I woke up and sat down to check email only to discover that my beautiful 19 inch flat screen computer monitor had died sometime during the middle of the night. It struck panic in my heart since not only do I need it for work, I just plain need it.

I made the extremely unpopular decision to take the monitor from the children’s computer since I’m not in a financial position to replace the broken one. When I say that it was an extremely unpopular decision I mean imagine the following scene being about a computer monitor:

I kid you not. They experienced the five stages of grief in the five minutes it took me to connect theirs to my computer.

So I’ve got their monitor and they had none. Until Darren realized that he could connect their computer to our 32-inch LCD wall-mounted television in the living room.

32 inches of internet.

This means two things. One, the urgency to replace the broken monitor is now gone. And two, I’m stuck doing my work on a screen that if I squint just so, I can make out some words through the permanent fingerprints left by seventy fingers of all shapes and sizes.

I SO got the fuzzy end of that lollipop.

This morning I thinned the carrots growing in my garden. It was an act done without malice in order to make room for the remaining carrots to come to fruition unimpaired by its impeding neighbor. Most gardeners understand this to be a necessary evil and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it had I not read The Weekly Standard’s article called “The Silent Scream of Asparagus“.

Here’s an exerpt:

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain.

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

According to environmentalists, I am irresponsible for bringing too many human beings into the already overpopulated world. According to the vegans, I am evil for being an omnivore and according to Global Warmists, I’m to blame for dry lake beds because I only recycle when I feel like it. Now I’m supposed to mourn when I inadvertantly trample a dandelion? Is “Ortho Weed b gon” now considered a weapon of mass destruction? If so, then I am the new Saddam Hussein and the Swiss are going to have to invade my garage and bring an end to my planticide.

It seems that my mere existence is offensive to Mother Earth. I’ve been reduced to a boil on the ass of our planet by a country whose greatest accomplishment is, ironically,  a pocket knife.

My knees still get a little shaky every time my deadline rolls around at the newspaper and I still fight the persistent fear that maybe I’ll sit down to write and nothing will come out of my pen. I’ve heard of writer’s block but writer’s stage fright? My mind somehow envisions my little stenographer’s book as the stage and that everyone reading my words will picture me naked.

It’s not easy to write an advertisement for “Business of the Week” when I prefer to focus on the business owner’s children or how they feel about Hannah Montana’s scandalous photos. They seem to prefer me to write about collision repairs and law office history. It’s their dime. I get that.

So when I submitted an unsolicited piece from my blog and learned that the editor actually USED IT IN THE PAPER, I was as smug as Andrew Dice Clay on a New Jersey stage. I bragged to my children, called Darren and my mom and then jumped up and down on my bed for 20 full minutes screaming things like “NO ONE KEEPS BABY IN THE CORNER!!”

And then  came the email with the subject line “ERROR“.

I incorrectly identified the horse show I covered for the sports section. I called one saddle club by another saddle club’s name and the office received calls about it.

Being a woman who feels completely out of her league her this profession , I will most likely dwell on my mistake rather than my success because I don’t know how to tell myself “Everyone makes mistakes.” I can say it to my kids, my friends and family, my husband but my brain rejects hearing it from me or anyone else.

I do know that there’s nothing I can do to change it. It’s history now. I learned the hard way to verify information until I’m absolutely sure it’s correct. Which is why I’ve spell-checked this post three times versus my normal none.

Despite the ERROR and despite the fact that I will punish myself by repeating the word s*** in my head for a while, my work- my real, heart-felt work is lining cat litter boxes, laying on coffee tables and being read by people I pass in the street and I don’t know how to explain just how good that feels.

Almost as good as when I watch this.

I want this song played at my funeral, preferably by Bocelli himself if that’s not too much to ask.

I listened to him sing L’Ultimo Re as the sun rose from the horizon this morning and at the risk of sounding like a total geek, for that moment it felt like the whole world belonged to me.

And then, of course, my children woke up and demanded pancakes for breakfast which made me realize that owning the whole world occurs in five minute increments.

But what a five minutes!