la femme follette

will not star Natalie Woods & Steve McQueen

I spent close to two hours on the backwards escalator thinger at the gym, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, since "ER" was playing two episodes at a time on the TNT channel, and the Sirius Classic Alt guy was churning out a fun playlist, but I can hardly move now.  I almost did not make it to the not being able to move, for when I left the gym, all spaced out on endorphins and Oingo Boingo, I could barely keep it together and almost crossed the (busy, downtown) streets against the light three different times.  I was reading them wrong, or something.  I made a few cab drivers very angry with me. 

What I was thinking about, which was the bulk of my distraction while I was kind of wobbling down the street on jelly legs:  Weird Science kicks Superbad up and down the block.  Twice. 

I have been watching a fair amount of teevee while at the gym, since every little cardio machine has its own television display.  Mari and I were thinking, for several months now, of maybe getting satellite teevee service, but I had to tell him that I have been watching television and there is nothing on it but a bunch of crap.  Just! a! bunch! of! crap!!!  112 channels at the gym and the most compelling things I have found to watch most days are 1. episodes of a medical drama six years out of date (at at time that the show was 4 years past its prime) and 2. Japanese baseball games on IFC.  For this we should spend $60 each month?  No way.

Besides that, we would have to get a new television, since our 15yo teevee set a. does not have what it takes to adopt modern-day auxiliary and b. is about to blow its picture tube any day now.  I just five minutes ago finished up a teevee market survey and I have to say that when this television set goes, there will not be another one.

It is the same predicament -- "predicament" -- we were in 12 years ago when we were married.  We each had not a television set and then got married and still had not one.  People were astonished by this, and frequently reacted as if we had told them our home lacked indoor plumbing.  We would defray the endless examination of this anti-establishment choice by coyly reminding our inquisitors that we were newlyweds, and so had more interesting ways to pass the time.  This was not entirely true.  I happen to think that watching paint dry is more interesting than watching what passes for acceptable broadcast entertainment. 

Eventually, a friend of ours upgraded his television set and gave his (still really brand-new) set to us.  We took it, and we use it to this day, but that is how we got a television set.  Before that, there was never a chance we would actually spend money that we worked to earn on something as crazy as a magic box that would help us waste a bunch of time.  Occasionally, we would find ourselves in a store that sold television sets -- Sears, Target, wherever -- and we would get distracted by the shiny flickerings of the television section.  Then we would start to think that maybe we could get one, it wouldn't be so bad, we did miss watching rental movies, etc, etc, and then we would see the price tag and straighten up and get the hell out of there.  $200 for ... what?  No way.

I still feel the same, browsing the Electronic Superstore's website now -- a friend had mentioned that to replace our same old 19-inch set, one with a boxy countenance, would be "dirt cheap" -- I just cannot bring myself to part with any amount of money to have ... what?  My son endlessly harassing me about whether or not I will let him watch a program on PBS that is for children half his age?  Or haranguing me about letting him rent The Simpsons on DVD?  I would not spend 50 cents to ensure such torment, let alone the cost of three brazilians! 

God, all Garçon wants to talk about is television, and he is a child who is lucky to get to watch as much as three hours of A-V entertainment every month.  He wants to discuss television and also the jokes he heard on the television shows he watched.  It is like living with Quentin Tarantino, if Quentin Tarantino were crushed-out on Fozzie the Bear.  Mari and I considered that maybe if he had all the television he could hold, he would become sated with television and then we would no longer have to hear about it.  That may be true, but I cannot bring myself to purchase a ridiculous television in order to find out.  At least with this one that we do have, its value long-fulfilled, I can fantasize about the day we get to throw it out.  I hope he grows up to have some exciting performance art about the deprivation of culture, but probably, he will just be a sullen delinquent who watches a lot of teevee.  As long as he moves out, I don't care. 

turn-on

I turned the heel on the sock.  Short rows were so exciting!  I felt like Betsy fucking Ross!  Amazing!

This sock weighs a ton, which is fine because they were supposed to be hiking socks, but anyhow, a ton.  I made a mistake when I got to the heel, which was that I am impatient and had no reinforcing thread to strand with the yarn.  I mean, some mercerized cotton shit, but nothing strong or sturdy.  I did have some Rowan Kidsilk Haze in stash, leftover from a project, so I used it. 

Um, duh.  Kidsilk Haze is light for yarn, but way too heavy for thread.  So, I think it bumped up the gauge on the heel enough that it is less "drapey."  Not that a sock is to be drapey, but just the same.  It did not seem to increase the gauge enough to make it a problem for the size.  Even if it did, I am sure Kowalski would live.  I asked Mari if he thought it would be terrible to have a sock with a heavy  heel (and toe).  He said, "I am sure Kowalski will find a way to deal." 

I do not know if he was talking about the non-issue of the gauge or of Kowalski's legendary stoicism.  Whichever, I guess.  I have tabled the sock, though, because I am thinking of ripping back and going at it again with thread.  I would have to get thread first, I suppose.

heavy

For a week, this book order has been piled up in our living room, right between our entry hall and the sofa.  I cannot seem to make myself pick it up, mostly because that Shelby Foote tome weighs about 15 pounds and also because we are out of room on our shelves.  Also, that I kind of just like the piled-up disaffected intellectual look of it there.  Ha.

I knew this day would come someday; I've written about how I have done everything to armor myself against its arrival, its brutal rending of my heart.  Today, all of us were walking to a restaurant to eat, and Fillette sidled up to me to hold her hand.  I held her hand for about ten feet, then reached down to scoop her up.  She complied, then after a block or two, said, "Mama?  I think I am too big for you to pick me up.  I just wanted to hold your hand, so will you put me down?" 

I held her hand and we walked behind Mari and Garçon and I cried and cried while we walked along campus, in this awful, silent, strangled way that made me feel so alone, which amplified my misery exponentially.  Besides feeling alone with my reaction, I do not even know what I was feeling, why there was so much crying.  When we got to the restaurant, and Mari was all, "Um, crying wife?  Is this about Springsteen?"  I whispered to him behind my menu what had happened and kept on weeping.  I excused myself to the ladies' room so I could cry some more.  When I came back, soggy and quieted, I mouthed to him, "She doesn't need me any more."  But that is not it.  I do not know what it is, why I am so upset.  Not upset, no -- sad.   

What I do know is that I wrote here, in the winter, that I hope that when she gets older and wants to complain about some perceived slight or failure in my mothering, that someone tells her to get over herself, that I carried her around until she was six years old.  I also hope that when that day comes, someone would also point out to her that when she said she was ready, I let her get down.

come to jesus

I had a billion things jingling and jangling through my head today and I wanted to write about how I am sick of summer fruits (sssshhh!), gluten-free doughnuts (zzzZzzz), three really excellent emails I got this week (shhhh), amores perros (it does not matter what I think of a 7yo movie!) & Mexican cinema (more zzZZZZzzz), and Mari's sartorial splendor (zZzzzzZZ) but I felt really unsure about how to make anything GO, especially with all the dissonant photographs I had to anchor the way-too-busy week and also my surly countenance of late and then I saw this over at glittergoods and thought about how I could stand to stand my ground a little about what I am supposed to be writing about, really.

This morning, if Mari had asked, "What is the purpose of your weblog, Femme?" I would have said, "To document my crafts and those of the children!" Then mid-morning I sent an email to a long-lost, fondly-regarded acquaintance and I described it as something entirely different, which after answering these questions, it looks like it actually is.

1. Do you promote your blog?

No. I am probably the Emily Dickinson of the weblog-writing world. I think writing a weblog is like being the girl who puts out -- the people you want know who you are & beat a path to yr door, there is no need to blabber. 

If I knew that I had An Audience, the whole thing would feel like work to me, anyhow. But, I pretty much try to walk a line between not being inviting in my narration and not excluding anyone who stumbles upon this & wants to keep up, for whatever reason. It is not a secret, but I am neither pimping myself.  There are links in the world.  There is a feed.  There is google, uh, harvesting? 

I guess when I have seen the conversational back-and-forth or (sometimes) the needy, harrassing solicitations some weblog writers get into with the You of the The Audience in the meat of the meta, it does not appeal to me. Because next thing, someone says, "Bah" when they should have said, "Boo" and then it is all, "You're mean, reader!"  But, who was all "Read me!  Read me!," hmm?  Also, the cross-talk?  Between non-authorial writers in comments sections? Discussing controversial topics?  (Meli once linked me to a blow job one that went on for weeks and weeks and weeks of fisticuffs)  Fuck that shit. Go to a bulletin board, already.  Or don't, like Alex says.

2. How often do you check hits?

Weekly or such -- as often as I update. I enjoy seeing which depraved google search terms hooked up with the search engine's malapropist to deliver the wrong traffic. Which is another reason I do not promote: I have seen the inner desires of these people on the onlines & what they seek. Yikes.

3. Do you stick to one topic?

A roman-fleuve is a chronicle of a family over time & I deliver what I promise, through my own  selfish lens.

4. Who knows that you have a blog?

Pretty much anyone who knows my maiden name has a free pass to it, should it come up. Usually it happens that I have been minding my own business about it and someone (in the know) will say, "Oh, I wish I had more time to talk about that project you worked on" or "I really miss yr writing, will you ever again," or something else of the kind of deep, connective baloney none of us have time for any longer, what since we have eighty billion children and 160 spouses among us, plus all the miles. Then I will sort of shyly confess it. But, really, whatever.  Also, anyone I know who has a weblog themselves, because I feel that it is only fair.  Even if they do not read it. 

5. How many blogs do you read?

The ones on the left. Mostly, they are people I know or have had some meaningful offline contact with.

6. Are you a fast reader?

Yes. I have also turned into an internet skimmer, since I realized that very many people fail to use their close-reading skills on the onlines, plus rely v heavily on their projector to light up what they are necessarily missing.

7. Do you customize your blog or do anything technical?

I have an extra page full of Garçon's non-text books for his continuing educational advancement. I have the typelist of tiny book reviews. I was thinking of a banner, but I have too much knitting to get crafty with pixels.

8. Do you blog anonymously?

Yes. I have changed everyone's name and been cagey about all the rest.  I make liberal use of red herrings.  I am tight-lipped, but not secretive, about where we live, as it surely is no secret to anyone reading who knows of our town.

9. To what extent do you censor yourself?

I keep foremost in my mind that anyone in the world can read this, without my permission or knowledge and without leaving a trace. Within those boundaries, I think that what I write is fairly confessional, in my own coy way. Because traffic way outpaces the population I know to be reading -- and because of some emails I have gotten from people reading of whom I have not heretofore known -- I think the whole narrative has this very lurid quality to it that keeps readers quiet, lest I realize I have company & bolt.  It is probably a voyeur's paradise.

10. The best thing about blogging?

I get to put it out of my head. Also, when I feel like I am getting nothing done, it is all in down for the ages -- the books I read, the books I read to the children, how many holiday gifts I knitted, over which ennui I prevailed.

Also, it serves as a supplemental text for my dearest friendships. I mean, there is no way that -- for example -- the Israeli and I are ever going to get around to a meaningful discussion about Kershaw's last book or about my stomachaches over ballet school, what with the kindergarteners on crack racing around behind us in our respective homes and the trying to sort conversational triage on the topics front and center -- our spouses, current events, the chicken pox, parents in health crises. This way, he can sneak in late at night and then send me an email that says, "You are so weird -- cumbia. Plus, why didn't you bring the whole case up that time? Don't hold out on me, cookie!" If Fillette or Garçon do a piece of something that is exciting, I can photograph it and then say to Meli or Chickie, "oh, cute mermaid drawing. check it at the weblog."

Mari gets to check in on our days while he is away. I can go back and check on the details of past projects or yarn I used or dates of germination or whatever. Also, I cannot be coy about this -- it forces me to write, which is the thing that I do.  It will always be satisfying to me to distill a swirl in my mind down to its nugget of conflict, then dispatch it into the ether, a contained thing, a memory. 

lonely pilgrim

I knew logically that a beginning drawing class at an old vanguard of the sort at which I enrolled was going to be Necessarily Mathy, but while I was doing my first homework assignment -- which was to grapple with some perspective nonsense -- I just got all flustered and decided to quit. There was a good half-day of hand-wringing involved, which kind of came down to why did I start all this just so I could give up? Then after a couple of hours of that, I just said fuck it, I quit. I mean, I only get about 10 hours without my kids every week, and I am supposed to spend them feeling helpless and confused? No. I mean, how many more lines were there going to be in these spacey cube guys? How was I supposed to keep them all separate? Also, draw lines without a straight edge? Whatever! Not today! I quit!

My permanent salve has been the email from Nick, which read, in part, that kind of class is not necessary, and art is not about making the illusion of 3d on a flat surface anymore. hello jackson pollack? we don't care! I had been googling images the night before I went up against my homework assignment, looking at a million Contour Line Drawings and Still Life Drawings in 4H pencils and thinking, "OK, but I do not want to learn this exactly." 

The irony is this:  I am always going on and in an irritated kind of way about how the New Education lacks the foundation of just knowing some shit.  I am a big fan of dates, names, outcomes, consequences, etc, mostly that whole thing about the past being a prologue, but also, just know some shit, please.  When was the Civil War?  Who is Zapata?  Where starts the Nile?  Evian, not just the name of water, true or false?  etc.  Kaylie told me that she read an article in some newsmagazine lately that said the reason no one cares about this any more is because information such as this can be sussed at wikipedia (I swooned where I stood).  Algren told me that no one teaches Descartes anymore, instead using The Matrix (I still pray he was overstating to amuse me).  But when I was done with my little one-point perspective drawing, unable to remember or see which lines to erase?  I thought to myself, Oh, but you can just get software that does this!  I was a little ashamed of myself.  At the same time, I am not in this for the whole story, but for the sidebar.  If it were Fillette telling me she would get 3-D design software (she actually would never), I would give her the cold shoulder.  But me?  I quit.    

Additionally (I have no shame), I quit because I am shallow: the day before Homework Frustration unfolded I had a pair of ne plus ultra foxy knee-high boots arrive by post and the dress that will look best with them would be better served by me doing more time in that Strength! and Agility! class run by the sadist & featuring the medicine ball. I cannot waste a bunch of time on drawing homework. Gravity is no one's best pal. There will be time for proper learning & embarking on a new chapter of education when I am in the home, puttering around plus succumbed fully to old gravity.

But, soothing to me always: the excellent energetic redemption of a quit. I have been feeling awfully quitty lately, which may be the psychic reverberation of last year's excellent quit confirmation, during which I got to commit fully -- with confidence and unforeseen kinesis -- to an incidental quit from years back. It was so excellent. There was a moment in it all where -- to turn a phrase from old Alex -- I felt like Jonas Salk, Emperor Xerxes and Jack Lalanne.  An active quit can be quite a bit of a thing.

This is a good time of year to quit, generally speaking.  It is perversely oppositional to quit when everything is just getting started. I wonder while I knit Kowalski's socks if these are not a passive quit; they are going so slowly that I have so much time to think about it, and I think my logic is as follows: He wants the socks. The socks are from me. If he has the socks, he will no longer need me. The longer I think about it, knitting around and around, the more it just makes perfect sense. I think there is some sort of evolutionary midwestern quality to this: one must not want to be stuck all winter with the thing they just hate. Or, the person who has the especially-irritating acumen to be able to reach right over and put his thumbs right in the middle of a bruise I was trying to pretend I had never noticed and press really hard.

On the one hand, I hear that a guy who can get someone else's wife to knit him a pair of socks has got -- at the least -- some nominal mojo. On the other hand? I am -- as always -- trying to hide and be sullen and he is always gabbling on about what he knows. Knows! Then I get all sulky and scowly, and it does not matter how many Guy Clark songs he sings in repair, I am no longer feeling friendly.  Just only friendly enough to knit the excellent achievement of socks that will distract him from my absence.  Like a crafty, Bobby Fisher-y Dear John letter.  It feels genius, from under the mantle of peevish resentment.  It is probably a bad idea, but the fact remains that I am not the only flawed person in the whole wide world and I do not need the other flawed people of the world hounding me about my flaws. 

I have been able to sustain some kind of equilibrium by listening to Springsteen in a provocative blend of compelling selections from Tunnel of Love and Nebraska while I hurtle along at 80 minutes of cardio work at the fancy society gals' gymnasium.  This has the potential, if not carefully monitored, to backfire in a grave fashion.  At the beginning of 2005, I listened nothing but Springsteen's complete body of work for about 3 months. That spring, Robert Creeley died, and I read all of his work for another 7 weeks (The memory/gathers like memory, plan/I thought to remember). It was just months and months of me bursting into tears in the shower -- not a little weepiness, but big, fat, raindrop-sized tears and sobbing -- then Mari coming in to find out what the problem was with his wife and all I had to report was that "Thunder Road" is just a really, really sad song, and anyway, why does dumb old Billy Collins get to just live?  I cannot risk that kind of fragility again.

I quit because I just cannot get it on to go on. I am not like my daughter, who sees what she needs and knows what she wants, then muscles it up and gets over. I am like my son, who looks at the mountain and says, "Oh, that town over there. I've never been. And that mountain looks high! I'm good. Pass." There is more to my avoidant aborting than his, obviously -- the difference between pass and quit, for one -- which is fine until people just will not shut up about it.

Last night, I was whistling through a new yoga instructional recording I have, then slowed into a kind of hesitant broaching of the topic of eka pada rajakapotasana with my left hip.  The physiologically successful execution of any left-hip asana never fails to make me burst right into big, fat, raindrop-sized tears.  Since this ridiculous discovery c. 2002 I am permanently averse regarding real-time, peopled yoga classes and at best leery of countering one of these poses even in the privacy of my own home. It is so anti-yoga, this resistance and clinging and fearfulness and control; I know it, I know the details of my faults and their derivations, but I just cannot be better. 

Nonetheless, while I was hung up on navigating this emotional contortion -- gingerly tucking my legs in opposite directions and scowling at my mat, half-waiting for all this confounding weeping to erupt, half-hoping it would never --  Media Yoga Chick reminds her unseen congregation of the relationship between the body and who we are -- open hips, open heart. I scrambled up from the mat like it was on fire. No fucking way! No way. In this terrible, treacherous world, who can risk that? I quit.

field of dreams

We were away for a few days.  Last night, while I was talking to the neighbor who had our spare key, in case of anything happening, I looked in her yard at a familiar-seeming plant.  Then I looked away, guiltily.  The plant was actually several stalks of valerian.  Oops. 

I planted valerian a few years ago in my front garden, alongside an angelica, a catmint, the yarrow, and two lavender plants.  Since, I have done nothing except watch it go to seed every year, because I cannot be bothered with getting it together to tincture the roots.  Salves and infusions?  No problem.  Comfrey and plantain are always working hard in our herbally medicinal home.  Steeping and sampling?  Bah.  First off, I can buy that stuff at the health food store.  Also, I need vodka to make it work, and I quit drinking long before we ever moved here; I am not at all sure where to get liquor.  (It is not made easy here.)

Today, walking around the neighborhood, to my nominal embarrassment, valerian sprouts are all I can see in anyone's garden.  Valerian is literally everywhere.  I am the Gaetan Dugas of the neighborhood's valerian epidemic.  I knew it was invasive, but I thought that meant invasive for me.  Oh, well.  Seedier than I thought. 

I need to deal with is laying about in my own yard so no one can trace it back to me.  So first, I have to buy a bottle of booze.  I cannot decide which is actually more troubling to me from this -- that I have set a plague upon my fellow gardeners? or that I do not actually know where to buy a fifth of vodka in this town?

endowed

I have three projects on the needles right now.  I do not usually spread myself so thin on knitting, but they are so different from each other, they each have their own production space.  At the top is a capelet for me, knitted in the round with Manos, for which I took direction from Mari on the color changes and am now having regret.  On the left, a sock -- from the Interweave Favorite Sock [or whatever] book -- knitted in a really soft worsted merino from Malabrigo, but which I have recently begun disparaging as my "miniature project," because it is so small and fiddly and I also keep misplacing the 4th needle, plus also have trouble keeping all 56 stitches on the needles when it is in storage.  I know, I know, those stopper thingies.

On the right is a tea cozy, for a stranger who gallantly rescued Fillette and me from a terrible NYC story.  It is knit in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, from a pattern in Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.  I think my gauge is off, but ask me if I care.  It is hard to go back and forth with it because its knit stitches are through the back loop and so anyhow.  I should buckle down and finish it this weekend, if I have time.

I start school tomorrow.  I have been trying to stay quiet about it because it is a little weird, but finally, Mommy gets to go to art school.  It is a joke in our house whenever I get a little fixed on a craft or a costume or a party.  We say that the themes to all of the children's last four parties have been: Mommy never got to go to art school.  It is just the sheer number of exciting!, over-the-top!, fussy, little appointments that are featured.  Like the up-all-night cupcakes from last year's Hallowe'en party or the time that for the birthday party goody bags, I folded 200 origami paper stars and 30 tiny cranes, plus made a raft of little cut-paper flowers.  There is something about me that is not -- how to say? -- properly-exercised.  Maybe exorcised is the better word.

There are a number of reasons I wanted to take a visual arts class.  1. Garçon / Fillette are asking me how to do technical things beyond my scope; 2. I have not been in a creative environment for months and months.  Consequently, that part of my brain has been turned off and I am finding it not only difficult to remember how to write poetry, but am somewhat confused by the fact that I ever have;  3.  The next step -- were I to remember how it worked -- in the writing of poetry would be to forget the workshops and go for the residency, but I can't get 3 to 6 weeks away from the children at this moment, consequently, see nos. 2 and 4.  I have to get out of here, sometimes, god. 

Anyhow over the summer I cast around and decided on a little beginning drawing class that would be challenging but not demoralizing.  I received a classical secondary education that was a little heavy on the arts and so left high school knowing the techniques of basic draftmanship, lines, composition, chiaroscuro & the color wheel, plus my way around a photographic darkroom.  The rest is art history, which I thought was so dull & dry I might have died circa 1988, but ever since, I have been glad to have learned it.  Last month, I settled on a little offering from a nearby school of which everyone has heard, that deals with ink, charcoal and graphite, the figure and still-life. 

I felt silly about it, like Carmela Soprano looking for something to do, but whatever.  Then the packet came from the school and I was a little surprised plus uneasy to realize that I wasn't just taking a little class, but that I had unwittingly matriculated at a post-secondary institution of the visual arts.  I feel too old & boring for this.  Also, not old enough.  One of the things that happens when I go out into the world to receive instruction -- whether it is recreational or academic -- is that I am the only woman my age there.  The other women are usually younger, unmarried & childless.  The rest of the women are much older than me, their eldest children my age, everyone out of the house, the husbands either capable of heating his own meals after 40 years of marriage or dead.   The men in the group will span all the ages, but at my age, they admit to having 3 or 4 children in the house (with their wife), and everyone -- when they find out I have two children and how young they are -- gasps aloud and asks where the little tykes have been stowed.  I say, "With my husband, you know, their father."  And everyone acts as if this is some novel idea, some trailblazing solution. 

It makes me tired and a little bit sad, plus I never fail to feel like a big, spoiled baby, who just can't suck it up and love being with her children, her man, and her house ALL THE GODDAMN TIME like everyone else.  Anyhow, that whole internal affair starts afresh this week and this time I will be wielding a charcoal vine, too.   

torpor

I could never have imagined I could find something as nominally simple as switching ballet schools to be so fucking exhausting, but there it was.  It was a Big! Deal! and whatever, it is done now.  Fillette is going to a school that is serious about process and not at all about the pornography and slick packaging of performance, which was the case with the previous school, which sent a letter to parents a week ago letting us know that there would this fall be A! Second! Expo!  In the middle of an ordinary day, the mail came, I was downstairs opening it, Mari was upstairs with the children, and then suddenly, all he heard in our otherwise-silent house was me, repeating the word fuck in various combinations for 15 minutes.

Mari and I could barely cotton to the school last year, what with the stage moms and the starfucking.  Even Fillette talks about "those moms and their hollering & hairspray," and she is six.  It was a serious drag.  But this second Expo, well it was just over the top.  Even Fillette, who is six, said when I asked her about how she felt about the performance of last year's production of The! Expo!, she said, "Well, I thought it was fun," then after a pause filled with careful consideration, she said, "but it did not make me a better dancer."

Fillette may be the world's most process-oriented 6-year-old.  I know that Mari and I, as people, respect process, we do, yah, sure, and we talk about it and it shows and we are slightly frumpy and dull and old-fashioned as a result, but this baby girl of ours is something else.  For one thing, Mari and I are adults and have come to respect the drudgery of discipline over a lifetime.  Fillette is a child that was born focused on the love of the grind.  When she was 3, she made a list of things she would accomplish when she was 4 -- she actually came to me and dictated a list.  They were big things for a little girl, huge.  1. Weaning, 2. stop wearing pull-ups overnight, 3. stop having tantrums and start using words, plus 4. something lost in the mists of time at the moment. 

I made the list and it hung out there for 4 months, at least, and the week before she had her fourth birthday, she had a meltdown for a week, filled with anxiety -- how could I almost be four?  how could I have squandered all this delicious three-ness?     how would I cope in the new world of four!?!  with no milk and no pull-ups and all of this self-control???  All of this, rooted in her self-imposed expectations and Mari and I just watched.  In horror.

It was really terrifying, because as much as I love the process, I am a tremendous kind of a slacker.  I mean, I look very disciplined and methodical, but really?  I am the Emily Dickinson of life.  People can figure out what I have really been up to when I am dead.  I am not a performer or an announcer or much of a producer, really.  I do it right the first time because it eliminates the chatty-chat of the do-over.  Mari much the same.  So, we for days resisted the very visceral urge to cut her loose from her little prison -- baby, it's ok, you can skip it -- and instead threw our hats in her ring 110%.  We were behind her.  If she was sad about no milk:  we could put her in the pouch! (until she is 6 and as tall as I am!!)  If she felt nervous about bedwetting:  we could wake her up before we went to bed ourselves!  If she was having a hard time with her tantrums and her words, we could hold her until she got a grip or give her time in her room!  We are behind you, baby!

Jesus, she is exhausting.  Honestly.  But, that was the first time she had a focus, pushed herself and pulled it off and she keeps doing it.  Now that she knows we will get behind her, she will ask for what she needs.  She asks for it.  It is so wild to me.  So, when I said last week, "I hate everyone and everything about your ballet school!  Let's talk!" she talked to me and we found out that she didn't really care about being on the Big Stage for the Big Expo, anyhow, because she said, I mean, Mom, I don't even really know how to dance, why should I be on the stage?  With all those people watching?  Oh, I clutch her to me.  My sweet, old-fashioned, frumpy doll.  Then with a choice between two schools, equally rigorous in instruction and with none of the distraction of early-onset pageantry, she chose the one that has zero performance at her age, aside from a nice, on-site parental observation at the end of each semester.  Phew.

But still, unexpectedly exhausting.  Mostly because it means that I have to put my mileage where my mouth is and now I have to commute to a child's activity, which is not really the kind of thing I am into much.  But whatever.  I act like I have to go far, or to uncharted territories, when really, I have to drive 25 minutes to cross the city limit; to a neighborhood I frequent for a great many household errands.  It is worth saying that the last @&*!@%#*@ school was just a nice 18-minute bus ride on those days when I thought that even the 8-minute drive in the car was too much chauffering & spoiling.

All this triple-plus irritating, parent-culture wake-up-call turmoil has put me in some kind of a sulking mood that is only soothed by a constant playlist from my junior year of high school.  The Bangles, The Police, Bad Brains, and Black Flag.  Yaz, Yes, Joy Division, Bon Jovi, U2, and Human League.  The Violent Femmes.  Midnight Oil.  The list goes on and I have no shame.  Garçon has picked up all the words to Nitzer Ebb's "Join in the Chant."  Yesterday he came down after dinner while clad only in a too-small pair of turquoise Powerpuff-Girl panties and carrying his guitar to tell Mari and I that he planned to work for PETA when he grows up.  I mouthed to Mari the refrain of our favorite joke -- so much poon, dude.  That kid is so foxy.  We will never be ready. 

One of my pregnant friends had her first baby the other day.  I told her Congratulations; welcome to Hell.  I meant it the best possible way.  I mean, not like a Snake Church Hell.  Not even the kind where Virgil shows you around.  More like the kind with Estelle, Inez & Garcin.  The kind where you need TSOL to cope.