la femme follette

blue who

We had blueberry casserole for lunch.  Any time we give a dish a pet name, it is True Love.

 

The given name is "Baked Oatmeal," from a not-too-too-long-ago issue of Martha Stewart's Whole Living.  I was going through a stack of magazines from Martha Stewart, looking for the recipes I wanted to archive, suffering page-turner's fatigue, you know, and my eye was caught by a closing/serving instruction to drizzle on with melted butter.  Wait, what again?  Go back.  Tell me now.  Yes.

On the night I sliced all those potatoes, Fifille & Garçon were going through Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian book to find a suitable recipe for a pile of thinly-sliced potatoes.  They were murmuring & reading and I heard Fille say to him, with a sad determination, "I could never be vegan."  I suspect it is about the butter.  I guess it could be about the cheese, but she has a cheese ceiling & no such thing exists for butter.  We are proud of her & so are many of you, I know.

When we were back home, at the legendary and yet prosaic Lou Mitchell's, we told her she could totally manage to spread her 2 pieces of toast on with 3 little peel-off cups of butter.  It was like a chug-a-lug contest.  You can totally get all three on there, we encouraged her matter-of-factly. 

She faltered for a minute when she realized the toast had been brushed with butter on the line.  I helped her out, explaining that was different butter.  "That was liquid butter, this is solid butter.  It's different.  Like ice in yr water."  I mean, fuck, right?  Seriously, come on!  Anyhow, she lathered on her 3 cups and there was a lot of high-fiving.  Just like a chug-a-lug contest.  Yes.   It was only an eighth-inch thick.  Fuck, I've seen people eat 10 times the butter piled on 1/3 the real estate, just because it was called frosting. 

OMG, butter.  How great to have a functioning, athletic, 11-year-old girl who eats butter at appropriate times, who is afraid of no food.  God is good.  Last week she said to me, while we were in the car, this:

All the girls in ballet class think their legs are fat because they jiggle when they jeté.

First, let us all clasp hands + thank God I was not operating the vehicle.  I was parked in the grocery-store parking lot.  Also, her father was there, in the passenger seat, not goading me exactly, but fixing me with a look.  A look that said, You're on again, baby.  Knock 'em dead.  But I was thinking, OMG, I'm so tired!  It was just last week we sat around for a long time, the 4 of us, talking about the NYT cellulite story.

 A long time ago, probably as many as four years ago, Fille saw a store-window advertisement for some Aveda product, the target of which was frizz.  Because some idiot let her learn to read, she asked me later, yk, what is frizz?  I told her it was a wide-ranging definition, but mostly it was marketing.  I reminded her of what remains after she brushed her curls smooth for ballet's bun, how when she let it down after class, she did not care for the resonant bigness of it (having v.t. issues, Reader, bonne chance), and that is what is demonized as frizz.

What came of that conversation, though, how I concluded it, laid the cornerstone for the place where I will dwell during these years she is entering, she with her friends. I told her everyone feels bad about themselves sometimes.  Everyone wakes up some day, everyone, and looks in the mirror & says, Omigod, it's me again! Even people who say, And omigosh with the perfect flawlessness, again!  It is fleeting for the strongest people, who move along from there.  But:

Any time you want to believe in a bad feeling about yourself, someone will be all too willing to help you, and they will take your money for something that they say will fix the problem the two of you have created.  So you have to decide how you want to live.   

We come back to that all the time -- constructs created by marketing, a culture holding fast to expectations no one can meet because people have bought into fantasy images, this kind of unquestioning devotion to unrealistic and unreachable standards. (Ophelia, breathe.)   

It was heartbreaking and insane to read about women in their sixth decade of life who were embarrassed by cellulite.  I mean, really?  The one woman who hoped to one day wear a bathing suit?  Even though Fifille was adorably puzzled & a little tart ("I mean, isn't she going to wear a dress at her wedding?"), I said to her, all grave & everything,  "This is where a woman can end up after a lifetime of believing in made-up problems marketers say she has."

So then, God, it was super-heartbreaking to hear about these 9-to-11-year-olds talking about their fat legs.  I swear to you, not one of these girls is fat, and they are not going to be fat.  We see their parents, their grandparents, all the time in school.  If we could grow them to their final statures today -- like super-speed --  they would all be between 5'8' and 5'10' and all wear a 4 or a 6, except 2 girls, one who projects shorter and proportionally more slender, and Fille, who is her father's child, you all know.

I asked Fille if her legs jiggled.  She said, "Yes! I told them, Legs jiggle because you have skin and ... legs!"  I asked her what they said.

"They said, 'Oh, Fille! You have the skinniest legs!  You're so skinny!'" she told me.  When she said those words, I placemarked the sentence by pressing my hand to Mari's forearm, and told him much later,  That is what I meant when she was 5 and I said no daughter but the one I have with you would dance ballet on my watch.

I reminded her what I told her about the cellulite ladies, about being long toward the end of a road.  I told her that at her age, they are all on the beginning of that road, yk?  Choose how you want to live.  Get your guns out.

Mari was less metaphysical, less bound-up in the deconstruction of patriarchy for sure.  "Tell them," he said, "that they aren't fat; they jiggle because they are weak.  Tell them to get strong."

Fille giggled righteously & said, "I know!" before I got involved, spluttering a little, telling her to tell no one that, and maybe if she does,  definitely tell no one her dad said to say that.  Good Lord.

It was a couple of weeks ago, we were talking while were on a walk, she & I.  It was before the cellulite story, before the heart-restorative story of this little girl, which also took up a lot of time, talking as we always have about the falseness of photographic images -- how the reason that one never sees women or men who look like the women or men in magazines is not because they live on some special island somewhere, it is because they do not actually look anything like that, because the images are not real.

The topic of our discussion, as we walked, was the outgrowth of a pair of jeans she was wearing.  They were already too short, and in my opinion, not enough room in the waist anymore.  She was resisting the latter assessment, which I wanted to address.

"You do know, honey," I started, somewhat gingerly, "you will not just get taller, but you --" I faltered, not wanting to say will get wider.  "You will grow in every direction." 

 "Yes," said she, confidently, excitedly, like a little girl who is still light enough to need to ride in a baby seat & wants desperately to pass that by. 

But then she said, in a still-excited, but more matter-of-fact tone, declarative, even, "I will become curvaceous."

The word she used! The fact that she already knew this! That sentence, when she said it,  blew away a whole raft of worries I had not even ever realized I had for her.  Expecto Patronum!  Yes.  So that was good.  This is a good life. 

Blueberry Casserole
(adapted from Whole Living magazine)

Butter an 8x8-inch baking dish.  Melt 3 tablespoons butter.  Cool.  In yr pre-heated oven (375F) toast 1.5c of almonds (I use pre-sliced ones, but you can do what you like, chopping later) & cool. 

While you wait, mix 2c rolled oats with: 1/3c granulated sweetener; 1/2tsp salt; and 1tsp baking powder.  

To the cooled butter, add one egg.  Whisk.  Add 2 cups milk + 2tsp vanilla.  Mix & mix.

Add half of your almonds to your dry oat mixture.  I have also always added 1/2c of almond meal, also, but you can skip that, I guess.  Mix & mix there, too.  

Pour about 2.5cups of frozen blueberries in the bottom of the baking pan (enough to cover it in a single layer, but x3).  Cover the berries over with the dry oat mixture, pour the milk mixture over the whole thing.  Scatter the remaining (chopped) almonds and another cup of blueberries on top.  Bake for about 45 minutes.  Or so.  You'll get the hang of it. 

I usually cut it into 6 pieces for breakfast, 8 for lunch.  Serve with a couple of teaspoons of melted butter per portion & then have some maple syrup, too.     

shaved

I have always wanted a mandoline, natch, and then I was leafing through one of the Bittman cookbooks where he says you could really think about having one.  Friday morning, I was at TJ Maxx and there was one, a Zyliss: not too spendy, probably not a piece of crap.  I bought it. 

I did not know what to make for dinner tonight, we were out late, the three of us, fooling around in the rain, getting the baby from her workshop in the car ... it was not the afternoon I had planned.  At 7, I realized I really did need to make dinner (this happens every year around this time), but what I really wanted to do was check out my mandoline in the process.

 

Garçon came downstairs.  "Mom, what are you going to do with all those potatoes?" 

I mean, what?  Couldn't he see I was checking out my new thing?  I wound up making Potatoes Anna and a stir fry from bok choy & some kinda green from the CSA box.  Not ramps.  It was so dark out by the time we ate.  I wish I had a cookie.  xox

still, life.

We went back, Friday night, to the museum to take in the van Gogh exhibit, and frankly, should have just gotten a room since the weekend was busy-busy bridge-crossy full of cultural events.  Alors.

Eve accompanied us to the exhibit.  It was nice to see her and everyone played together nicely.  The museum was open until the unthinkable hour of midnight, because the people of the mid-Atlantic region need to see van Gogh, and honestly, my pert complaining about their refusal to accomodate notwithstanding, there are no museums I can think of readily that just grin & bear it with 2nd-shift hours in the waning days of an exciting tour.

It was a nice representation of the work in the period bounded by 1886-1890, roughly chaptered into: Paris; The Wheatfield Era; Clumps of Grass; Sous Bois; Radical Still Lifes. The audio-tour's exegesis used a lot of van Gogh's correspondence, which was very interesting -- he is rarely portrayed as being sociable or having a successful relationship with anyone but his brother.

In the outset, a museum guard was after me to tell me that I could not have my cell phone out during the exhibit, as there were no photos allowed.  I knew there were no photos allowed, which is why I was using the MemoPad function on Mari's camera-less BlackBerry, which I switched with him because my BlackBerry is outfitted with all kinds of recording devices.  I gaily showed her how my phone had no camera and pointed to the notes I was taking on the screen. 

 

I took this photo during Wednesday's general admission in the regular galleries, where photography is, in fact, allowed.  This is extremely representative of what was in the exhibit; also, paintings here & here.

Still Life with a Bouquet of Daisies, 1886.  Oil on paper, mounted on wood.  Vincent van Gogh.  Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequest of Charlotte Dorrance Wright.

 

"I am just using it to take notes," I said. reassuringly, sympathetic to her rigor.  "It is the 21stc, so I tend not to have pen & paper."

She was sympathetic to me, but insisted I put it away.  I asked her, coyly, "Do you have a pen?"  Because I did have a Moleskine, but I did not have a pen.  She told me then that there were to be no cameras, no cell phones, and no pens or paper in the exhibit.  Um, ok, whatever then.  I mean, right?  We had entered the zone of OK now you're just making shit up to be on a power trip.  I mean, honestly.  I got a pen from Mari and took notes on paper freely through the remaining galleries with no trouble at all.  But be warned, because the ubiquitous cell phone has ruined things for compulsive note-takers all over.  I did have similar dust-up at the National Gallery's Gauguin exhibit last summer, though they backed off (reluctantly) when I showed them there was no camera.

Anyhow.  The curation was tremendous; it seemed as if the narrative around which they collected pieces was to put aside this idea -- widely promulgated -- that van Gogh was just a wild maniac who flailed in desperation at the end.  The exhibit ended on a really optimistic note, with this painting, which I had never seen, nor heard the story behind.  Until then, I'd had no idea van Gogh ever experienced even one single moment of joy in his adult life, none of the five of us had (3 of us adults, 1 with a baccalaureate in art history), so that was a really high note to end on, we all agreed.

Again, Garçon was somehow listless & self-indulgent + amiable & civilized, at once.  The same as the time immediately preceding this trip, I let it go.  Just, yk, Whatever, child.  I don't care about you.  Shhhhh.  And all was well.

Things are fine, really.  I read this book a couple of months ago, called Unhappy Teens.  The reason I read it, mostly, was because it was written by a goddamn M.D., not some Ph.D. pretending to have some vast clinical experience, which (as we have seen), means only as much as you are willing to let it affect you.  Also, my care & keeping of a teenager was imminent. The primary thrust of this book was to say this:  By the time your child is a teenager, they know what you expect.  Shut up about it.  They know it.  Every time you talk about the thing, you make it into a thing.  Let the thing go & watch the thing happen. 

Ok, so I have to say that there has been -- in all the years leading up to this one -- no lack of exposition in our parenting.  There is a lot of transparency in our work.  So I think that my child, even more than the mean, is well-equipped to know what the expectations are.  Then when he was 13, yk, I said, Fuck it, good, he can do it himself, I have done all I can.  So that is going pretty well.  Sometimes he tries to get in my face, as is his way, and I just don't care about him.  It's like, "Are you still here?  Shh.  I don't care about you.  I'm reading The New Yorker, you're in my light." 

It is also somewhat helpful to have the maniacal , clusterfucking sideshow of last winter still ringing in our ears, so that when I have to, I can say, "You know, this is the kind of behavior that you have that when we report it makes professionals say that you belong in a mental hospital.  Do you need a rest in the mental hospital?  Think about it."  Because honestly, I do not have the time.

One hilariously adorable thing about him this last few weeks:  Annie Clark.  My son, who cares about nothing, I promise you, was genuinely moved by the accomplishments of little handless Annie Clark & her penmanship award.  Why, just last week, we were talking about Miss Annie Clark, by way of Marcel Duchamp & his poor, shattered Large Glass. 

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923.   Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels.  Marcel Duchamp. Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequest of Katherine S. Dreier.

As we sat right here, Garçon was totally dismissive of my musings that maybe Annie took her inspiration from Duchamp's spirit of persistence and ascribed to her v realistic, logical, laudable steps toward a goal, the sort of which I had no idea he even realized existed.  God bless you, Annie Clark.  Seriously. 

Anyhow.  I miss you, little weblog, come back to me!  xox

              

time can do so much

Due to a confluence of factors, there was reveille en fanfare this morning featuring a medley of The Righteous Brothers and a piano sorely in need of a tuner.  I have been thinking of Ghost ever since.  Ghost, right?  I forgot about that movie!  Holy crap!  But I was enjoined to participate in my own bloggy project et voilà, ok.

We traveled across the river today, since I was feeling better than I have in weeks, with the intention of seeing a major van Gogh exhibit in its final days.  We could not, because I do not pay attention to all of the discrete member mailings & emails from every museum we patronize like I should.  Had I, I would have realized that the Philadelphia Museum of Art treats its members like the general public when it comes to special exhibits with timed tickets.  The Phillips, The Barnes, MoMA, all give the green light to members to go on in at their convenience, whatever, thank you so much for yr fat checks, but not this one.   But whatever, we will endure the drive again & today, we took on general admission ... alors là.

You know,  we are show-goers -- we have to be, to make best use of membership fees and the way in which we can avail ourselves endlessly of our proximity -- and it has been such a long time since we have just loafed around a museum, loafing.  It was really great.  Even though Garçon was kind of inert during the excursion, it was fun.  I actually started to let it get to me & then I remembered this time & yk, even if he is ... Jesus Christ, you know what: it's enough to bring him to the water.  And he is 13, so I have to not care more than ever. 

But even a loafer's agenda needs a little direction.  I decided we should make our way to Étant Donnés, and honestly, I stand by my assessment -- who the hell would ever think to look for it in grimy old Philadelphia?

It is a long trip to the end of one of the wings.  Along the way, yk, plenty of the late 19th/early 20thc.  Fun.  Loafy!

The Large Bathers, 1884-87. Oil on canvas. Auguste Renoir. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Mr & Mrs Carroll S Tyson Jr Collection.

The Large Bathers is one of those canvases that draws me in every time we go here -- partly because of its location (location, location) in the corridors, but also because it is so replete with work and life.

Fifille mentioned today how you can see the girl underwater as you would in life.  Yes.  I mean, Jackson Pollack doesn't care about that kind of realism, but it is quite a thing. 

Cy Twombly would not care about it either.  I felt sad, today, knowing Twombly wasn't here in the world anymore. 

Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978. Parts 4, 5, and 6 of 10 parts. Oil, oil crayon, and graphite on canvas. Cy Twombly. Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of Samuel S White, III and Vera White. 

 

I was happy, in fact, to move into a room of Ellsworth Kelly canvases & remember he is very much alive.  Also, to send a quickie MMS to my pal Alex. 

Left to right:  Barge, 1955, oil on canvas; White and Black, 1955, oil on canvas (Collection of the artist); Study for Atlantic, 1956, oil on canvas, 2 joined panels (on loan from Jack Shear).  Ellsworth Kelly.  Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

Alex!  Speaking of you! 

Étant Donnés: 1. la chute d'eau, 2. le gaz d'éclairage ... , 1946-66. Mixed media assemblage. Marcel Duchamp. Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of The Cassandra Foundation.

This is, you know, when you look through the holes in the door! 

I remember last time we saw this, at the special Étant Donnés: Bits & Bobs exhibit: the security guard was all up in our grills about how we should not let our children see this part of it.  He was nearly hysterical and we were utterly nonplussed, plus all Thank you, but we heard you, now myob, ok?

I mean, isn't everyone's elementary-school kid readied for a weird kind of a mixed-media roadside womanslaughter display?  No?  Then go to more fucking museums already!  Sure! 

But please, please, let us get to what is really important.

Becky!

These are things which are for sale.  I promise you, if the salmon-colored creamer pitcher had been in this inventory, nothing would have stood between me and it.  Or, the turquoise sugar bowl, whichever.  As it was I had to pry myself away from it all.

I hope you are all happy. À bientôt!

 

if I had a hammer.

I flipped the calendar page this morning to see Fifille wrote this.  Adorbs!  High fives to homeschool! 

 
I think she has union gains confused with Gen 2:2.

 

I know, you're like, "Wait, no.  That's not how it goes, honey.  You are usually much more  OMIGOD YESSSSSSSSSSSS HIGH-FIVES TO ME I DID IT!!! than this."

 

Right, but I was like that in January.  We were at Sal's, sacked out in front of his teevee, watching October Sky.  Fille asked, "Why does Homer have to work in the mine?  His dad got hurt at work." 

Then Garçon told her, "Because his dad was management, [Fille], not union."   OMIGOD YESSSSSSSSSSSS HIGH-FIVES TO ME I DID IT!!!

 And don't you just always love Chris Cooper anyway?  Hearts!

Yeah, but high-fives to homeschool, mostly.  Garçon was doing a theatre class with a mixed-age group from 10-14.  He told me that the instructor asked the kids, "What makes a good story?"

Garçon said -- I don't know how many kids answered before him -- "Well, a good story needs conflict.  Your hero needs to overcome obstacles." 

So, first of all, when he told me this story, I thought, Get the fuck out of here!  This child has listened to something I have said?!?  Because that is a stock phrase from my mouth & you know it.  The second thing is, I guess, the instructor was like, WHOA, DUDE!  TOO FAST!  Which made me laugh, a little.

The three of us then started talking about basic narrative conflicts --  Man v Nature, Man v Man, Man v Himself -- I was asking them to name books they knew that used one of these conflicts.  But every time I would say, "Man against Man," or whatever, Fifille would pipe up in helpful concert.

"Or Woman against Woman, or Man.  Or Woman against Nature, or Woman against Herself," she would say, over & over, with some increasing amount of insistence. 

This went on for some time, her interrupting & pedantically revising, before I realized: She has no idea that we generalize with the masculine.  Whoa!  That was some kind of mind-erasing shit for me.  Breathe deep, Ophelia!  Twirl!

So that's mostly what we're up to here, yk, Commies, dismantling the patriarchy.  You have a great night.  xox

quiet endings

We had a graduation thing to go to today, for a workshop session Garçon has been in, lo, these 8 weeks.  There was a paper that came home to me -- how many people, what would I bring, etc.  There was a Sign-Up to Bring Checklist, and I got flustered by it, then forgot about it.  Later, Garçon told me he signed me up to bring crudités + fruit salad. 

I thought that was weird, since the list had choices on it like cookies, brownies ... cheese & crackers, things that people would surely bring that he could not eat in their most common variety but which I could sub with none the wiser.  But, whatever.  Also, fruit salad?  What?  Why?!  Chopping?  Nuts?  Peeling?  Melon??  Still April, fruit salad!

Garçon said, this morning, while I was puzzling around the Costco, "Maybe you should just make the one with the blueberries and the oranges."

I was pert when I reminded him he can not eat oranges.  He said, "Mom, it doesn't matter.  You make so many good foods that people enjoy eating, and I can always eat more of yr cooking."

Flatterer!  Scoundrel!  This comes right on the heels of my bittersweet realization that every year both children are allowed whatever it is they want to eat for supper on their birthdays, and they have never ever asked to go out to eat.  I mean, we go out to eat, and even for special occasions, but for their birthday dinner they always present me with a long, handwritten list of homecooked favorites to eat all at once.  (sweet!) This is another way in which they drain the life from me. (bitter!)

 
 

But the salad is dead easy, definitely in the Make & Take file.  I do not even remember from wherever this knowledge was transferred to me.  Pour one pint blueberries into a bowl, add 1 can drained mandarin oranges.  Sprinkle over a heavy snow of slivered almonds, toss.  Sprinkle with a haze of sugar, maybe a little lemon.  It doesn't hold up for a long time, but it is good while it lasts.  It makes a fantastic summertime dessert.  Or, potluck fruit salad in April.    À bientôt!   

oh, a wiseguy!

Mari told me we were going to see The Three Stooges, sure, but that before the weekend was finished, I would see Wrath of the Titans. I could not believe his super-grouch insistence but whatever, yk, marriage.

Oh, he was driving us to the drive-in!  Surprises! The children did not remember ever having been to one, but Mari & I have not been to a drive-in since the kids were small enough to conk out in their carseats, which was a time that ended many, many years ago. 

When we were in Chicago, the kids had 115 channels to pick from & they were always watching the Stooges. I was so proud.

So most of us thoroughly enjoyed The Three Stooges, Mari saw Wrath of the Titans, and I went to sleep.  Fille & I just curled up together in the passenger seat & zzzzZzZzzzzzzzzzz.  Not at the outset, just after a while when it seemed like we could watch it better with our eyes closed. 

Everyone: happy!  Yk, marriage.  xox

snips + snails

 

My little baby is a teenager.

I don't even care about this kid anymore.  I don't care because he doesn't care. Garçon does not want to hear the benefit of anyone's life experience, and I am tired of being generous with the fruits of my labors.  I will keep my goodness to myself and good luck to him. 

Mari quails every time I have conveyed this to him, but I don't care about that, either.  You know what:  if he were a million other kids, he would be bar mitzvah this year.  The law says that [child] is then responsible for the fulfillment of 613 mitzvot without the nagging of the [father].  So, I am pretty fucking sure my actual kid can handle the fulfillment of the 12-15 chores on the 7-year-old chore chart without the nagging of his mother.  Let him be responsible for his own deeds & misdeeds.  Mari can use up his voice talking, talking, talking so that child can't hear any of it.  I am going to accept the things I can not change.  It's time.  It's acceptance!  It's supposed to be good, right?  Otherwise, they wouldn't say it in the serenity prayer.  Serenity now! 

This is the first day of the rest of my life.  13! 

when morning comes twice a day.

 

I was lying in bed this morning, before dawn, actually experiencing true anxiety about April 1st coming this weekend and my calendar guy here being on the previous month, and what is there to tread lightly around on April Fools' Day and what a day to avoid the whole internet, anyhow, right? Not as if there is anything to say, anyway. Except everything. Every day, there is something new for my head to swim around -- shootings, beatings, fires! -- and what is there to say anyway? Plus, so many have said so much about so many things, and there is nothing to add.

 

 

It's funny: I started shying away from my blog back in January mostly unintentionally -- there were some dirt-world happenings, events & goings-on which I wanted to document, but more abstractly than filing 15 or 18 inches because I did not want to reveal too much about us, in a geospherical way, to the whole wide world. The things which were happening were important, and specific, but I was waiting for my feelings to distill to their true generality in our life. (see: roman-fleuve if never you have.)

Because I never wrote them down, they started to be the things I was talking about, when people were calling to find out what they were. So in a way, for a little while, I lost my voice here because I was using it to whisper right into the ears of the people for whom I write.  During this time, something happened which was eminently bloggable, the actual stuff of this blog since time began. It was nothing, except to me it was everything. It was a precious little flame nurtured along from the speck of a hard-to-find ember that I had not realized was there. I was protecting it so it would blaze into something truly useful; it was a secret, it was private, I had not told Mari, I had spoken of it to no one, and actually I was not confident I had the language to express it as part of a dialogue, without it being accidentally blown out.

 

On the phone with the Israeli, just in a regular send-and-receive catch-up, I opened my mouth & breathed fire. There was no preamble, it was very matter-of-fact, and if I can mix the metaphors, I realized as I started speaking that this is a song we know by heart, he & I. 

So, that was weird. Just to me. I mean, if my husband doesn't know anything about me, he knows that I am secretive, and he doesn't care, but to me it was so strange -- it was emblematic of a thing that does not exist between us at all, so far away from who he knows me to be. It is like I have written before, during a snowy time, how I will think, "Oh, that is how I was," but in truth, this is who I am. But, really it was nothing. I mean, when I told the Israeli, there was no revelation implicit in it. It was like, "Well, of course you did, cookie."  The whole episode & its interplay chewed up tons of mental bandwidth -- the knowingness, the being known, at the same time there was no infrastructure for this part of me in my actual marriage, but oh, so with the guy Mari calls "my other husband" -- and I had to stay in the gym; it was bananas. 

 

February came. I rebelled against everything I know. One morning, I laid in bed, sulky & sullen, filled with resentment. Other people, I complained to myself, do not have to get up in the dark every morning to trip over roadkill and go to the gym and come back from the gym while it is still dark outside just to keep things on an even keel. They do whatever they want. They drink coffee! They eat Pop-Tarts! They never drink water! Well, I am going to go back to sleep!

 

Back to sleep turned into late-sleeping. Days and days in a row of sleeping until 7:30 or 8 and then sulkily indulging myself all morning in the tub. Scandalous morning-naps. This did not make things any better. In fact, as is reasonable to predict, it only made things darker and became a classic case of how people feel so good when they are doing the right things, they forget why those things had to be a habit in the first place.

 

 

Everything felt too hard and the simplest things were beyond my ability. For example, one day I had to go to the bank to withdraw a lot of money (in our cashless society!) to be able to pay our mechanic. Then I had to take public transit to pick up the car on the other side of the county. It was almost more than I could handle: the form-fillerism of dirt-world banking; the taking public transit on a route I had never run; plus the worry of having $1100 in real green cash on my person. Also, the children along with me, blabbering incessantly. But it was manageable. I had faith in myself! We were 25 feet from our house and I remembered I had the dollhouse rent checks back at the house, which I could take to the bank. I paused, and thought about it, but it made me feel like I had cartoon birds circling around my head, so we continued. 

Of course, I had to explain pitifully to Mari why I had not done something so easy. I had to make a second trip the next day to finish the work I could not manage the first. This led to more self-indulgent sleeping, instead of going to the gym. Everything remained too hard, sulking continued. The kids were fine, everyone was fed and things were cleaned, but ugh. Halfway between Charlie, I almost went crazy when Mario got busted and Ah, lunch! I think I am going crazy!

  

  

Then there was Lent and its Action, which had the effect of clarifying things, if nothing else. At the end of February, Mr Fox called to ask me about something. I was putting lunch on the table at the same time I was listening to him. He was not having it, the interruptions I was tolerating while he talked. I protested that I had to feed the children, think of the children! He asked what was for lunch, I told him (soup) & invited him over. He told me he would come over, but put a ban on multi-tasking.

What? Yes. He arrived and I was enjoined to sit in my seat and eat lunch. I would do one thing and that was eat, civilized, no going around, no filling glasses, no checking one more thing.

"It's exhausting to watch," he complained. "You're always doing, like, five things at a time." I mean, really. Exhausting to watch? Walk it off, dude! Every time I started to do a bunch of things at once, he redirected. There was a lot going on. There is a lot to do! But I never realized how many things I do at one time.

At the very end of February, its final days, a sequence of events ended with having some work done at the dollhouse. You know, the dollhouse that is not my project. But anyhow, it was 2 days of work. "Work," I mean, I was not replacing the HVAC system myself. I was on-site to answer questions, shape & guide, and write big checks. But it was like work in that it was an all-day endeavor and the dollhouse is income-generating, and a source that I tend to manage.

 

 

It was tedious, mostly, and for 2 days I had to scramble for dinner and had not seen the kids all day, but whatever just like a billion other going-to-work moms on the planet. On the first day of March, I had to get the kids up & fed & out the door to get to their dentist appointment on time. When we got there, precisely 10 minutes early and not-on-empty, I felt like Jonas Salk, Emperor Xerxes, and Jack LaLanne! At once! I was heroic! This job I do is hard! The way I do it is exhausting to watch! It isn't just that it feels too hard, there is a difficulty about it I have failed to respect!

 

 

 

Why is it -- this occurred to me for the very first time in this way -- that I don't take better care of myself and so eliminate long stretches of sulking in the tub every day? Or why do I not sulk in the tub more often, routinely? And I know, I know, you're like, "You don't eat garbage! You go to the gym! You drink a lot of water every day!" Yeah, ok, whatever. Eating like a bird and skipping meals and going to the gym for two hours before the sun comes up after sleeping for 6 is no way to take care of myself. We all need to remember that I have a complicated and dysfunctional relationship with appetites and stoicism and denial and self-discipline and wanting and self-restraint. For me, for years, I feel like not pouring in a fifth of whiskey and 2 packs of cigarettes and two liters of coffee is award-winning self-care. And it is, if you are a self-destructive personality like I am. But when you see things clearly, you can change.

 

 

 

Change is what that Mayan prophecy is all about, you know. I read about it, at the end of last year. It is not about catastrophes and John Cusack – evidently it is about a paradigm shift, wherein the weak will be strong and the boots on the throats everywhere will be lifted, bonds will be cast aside. Everything will go topsy-turvy! Like, for example, how it is 2012, and Lillo is freed from his psycho girlfriend because she got tired of us texting each other daily about the weather and while she was reading all of his text messages on his phone she saw how I called her a name because of that day she called me & hung up about 87 times.  You know, like what happens when you snoop through someone's things & see someone calling you a nutter because you are acting like a nut where they can see. 

That girl was so odd, like if Fatal Attraction were reprised with her playing all the parts from that movie -- even Michael Douglas's! --  and then Lillo, Mari, and I were in some kind of other kind of movie. Like ... if you could imagine a movie with Jason Statham, Seth Rogen, and, yk, Debi Mazar. So, then, if those two movies were in a mash-up and then it would be just exactly, totally like that. Anyhow, now she’s gone & he is free, is the point. I felt bad about it, for about an hour, and then I was absolved by Lillo, which, ok, obviously because I'm still awesome.  2012!

sopa

I made this soup for the first time about a yr ago: as soon as it came in my Whole Living email.  Fille & I hate quinoa as much as Garçon loves the stuff, but I try to remain open to it.  That is what Fille hilariously says about so many ingredients -- I don't like [whatever] but I remain open to it.  She makes me laugh.

The thing is, though, the soup was awful.  Dishwatery & loose.  The first night the three of us were sampling it, Fille declared it to need tomato paste.  She was right; I knew it as soon as she said it, but testing bore it out.  Tomato paste, what a smarty!

 

Prettier photos have been shot.

I asked Garçon in November, when we were having it for dinner at Sal's (low points!), "How many days in a row could you eat this?"  I know that because of his age he is hungry all of the time, but because of his restrictions, he can't just drink up gallons of milk or eat a billion sandwiches, so that means I am more involved in a billion meals per day than I would like.  I wanted something I could keep in the fridge/freezer, something full of protein & vitamins that he could gobble as freely as he liked. 

"Every day, Mom.  I could eat it 590 days in a row."

Oh, ok, good!  Great! 

Black Bean & Quinoa Soup

Chop an onion.  Also, chop 3 or 4 cloves of garlic and as many carrots as you want.  I like 3.  Also, I no longer peel carrots to put them in soup.  Too busyworker!  Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil and dump the vegetables in with a couple of teaspoons of salt and just sweat them a little.  Ok, a lot.  Poke around.

Add one teaspoon of cumin.  Also, add 2tsp chili powder if you have it.  If you do not, just use 1tsp of paprika or smoked paprika or a smidge of cayenne and black pepper or whatever.  Add 1tsp of oregano, which, if you don't have oregano ... I dunno what to tell you.   Lather in 2 or 3 tbspful of tomato paste.  Stir & stir until mixed up.  Turn the heat down because the sugar in the tomatoes will burn, but when you smell it all caramelly, it's time to move along. 

Add one quart of water or broth or love the one you're with; also one 14-oz can of tomatoes and a chipotle chili canned with the adobo sauce.  I never use that, because adobo usually has wheat or corn or soy or something.  I usually use the chipotle salsa, I just dump the whole jar in, which checks out label-wise for us, but do your own thing. 

Add 1/2 cup quinoa, 2c cooked black beans (which is one 15-oz can + a smidge of the second, I believe, or do it yrself*), bring it to a boil, cover & simmer for about 15-20 minutes.  Garnish with spring onions, cilantro, olive oil, red onions, parsley, chip-strips, epazote, nopales, whatever.  It is soup.  Go crazy.

 

*Cooking yr own dried black beans:  Open the bag & rinse.  Add to a pot with 3qts water.  Add two bay leaves & a handful of cumin seeds if you want.  Maybe chuck in a whole onion.  Boil the hell out of them until they are done.  Hold with cooking liquid to cover in the fridge or freezer.  Easy. 

amber waves

When we were in Washington again, I can't even remember when ... I guess it was the time before Christmas; the mental-hospital/Holocaust-Memorial times (irony!), we took another quick pre-closing look at the National Archives' exhibit, What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?

Eucalyptus can just grow in the ground in North America? Why do we not have koalas?

It was really, really good.  We saw it right after in opened in June, and wanted a second look (because we did not just see the shit out of it the first time), but by then it was Summer in Our Nation's Capital and ugh, no.  Long lines!  Horrible people!  Bleargh! 

Anyhow, one morning while we were lying around, practicing our layabout, life-of-leisure moves, Garçon said, suddenly filled with purpose, "We should finish seeing that food exhibit, Mom!  It's going to close pretty soon!"

Because obviously, you see, he belongs immediately in a locked psychiatric ward.  Oh, am I talking about that?  No, not yet.  Shh.  Shhhhhh.

We set out right in that next few minutes to walk over & do just that.  It was a really good exhibit, really carefully-curated, and not to get into too much endless narration, but the second trip had really high yields.  We had walked the entire road of the exhibit, but there was so much, and we wanted to go back, yk, to absorb.  I like to apply the SQRRR method to museum-going & the children do, too.

Anyhow.  There was no photography allowed, otherwise I would have blogged the shit out of it months ago. 

Why am I writing about this?  Oh!  Right, yes.  Sorry.  (tap-tap-typing-tap-tap)

 

So, Garçon wanted the exhibit catalog (danger! to society!), and also the cookbook.  I demurred the cookbook, ultimately, because I have enough cookbooks; please understand I am in danger of becoming a cookbook hoarder, especially antique cookbooks.  Plus, this cookbook was $30 and I did not want LBJ's corn-dodger recipe that badly.  But!  Perusing the book to judge its worth, I saw there were two WWI pamphlets credited in every recipe that appealed.  They both came from the Office of Food Administration and were, obvs,  of keen interest to me:  "Wheatless Wednesdays" and "Potato Possibilities."

This is what the Library of Congress is for, and lying so conveniently between the Archives and Sal's house, too!  Wonderful!  God Bless America!

 

This is the bread called Oaten Bread.  The recipe is: 2c ground oats, 4tsp baking powder, 1tsp salt, 1cup milk, and one egg.  Mix dry, mix wet, mix together, let rise for 30 minutes, greased loaf pans in a moderate oven for 35 minutes.  I took this to mean a hair over 350F and also used one loaf pan for the whole thing.  I also, the third time I made it, cut the salt in half to no bakering effect.  It was way too salty before. 

It does not suck; it is not pretending to be anything it isn't.  Also, bears a mighty strange textural resemblance to cornbread, I think.  (It's been at least 5 years since I have had cornbread.  I should ask Mari or Fille, which had not occurred to me.)  It is the perfect vehicle for jam, nut butters, and possibly egg salad.  Definitely alongside soup, slathered in butter.  Or with 2 poached eggs and the last of the boczek from Christmas.  Yes.  À bientôt.

vroom

I made cookies Monday. 

I used Elana Amsterdam's chocolate-chip/cranberry/walnut recipe, but subbed in cherries.  I put aside a half-dozen for my celiacky next-door neighbor, but our ways parted before I could give them to her.   

So, it's just me & these six cookies.  Staring each other down, revving our engines.  Hm.

Holiday undecking free to commence, finally.  As already written elsewhere on the internet, on Boxing Day when there were still three more nights of Hanukkah, I was like, OMG, get the fuck out of here, Winter Holidays!  Shoo!  I could have dismantled everything on Dec 29, too, by avoiding this real-life Christmas Day exchange with the children:

"Excuse me, children," then they came on their little floor-slapping feet.  "Why is everyone congregated in the stable with the Holy Family?  With camels, and trunks of precious resins and metals?"

 

(All of the animals were always there, and the Kellies with their hot cocoa were a gray area.  Fille said they were serving in a midwifery capacity, and being a proponent of things-Marian, I let it go.)

They hemmed & hawed, reaching no accord, then shrugged at each other.  Garçon spoke for them both & told me they just put everyone in for Christmas.

You know, I could just take a vow of silence and it would be just about the same to the knowledge base of everyone who lives here, big & small. 

"The Baby goes in on Christmas Eve.  The Wise Men do not get there until later.  Why do you think it is called Three Kings Day?"

Fille wriggled forward toward me like a balletic Arnold Horshack.  "Oh, I know!  Because they were there for the brit!"

It did, as the Israeli would prognosticate when I told him this story, break my heart a little to tell her she was wrong.  But I did get to give them the lowdown on the history of the Octave Day (nerdout Mariology!).

 

Also from the out-of-the-mouths file:

Femme (serving a second lunch to Garçon):  Ok, here it is, but I re-heated it in the microwave, so now it has been irradiated & is devoid of all nutrients.

Garçon: Er, Mom?

Femme: I know,  I know (!), you don't believe that.

Garçon:  Yeah, no, I don't believe that, Mom.

Femme:  And that's fine!  You like machines!  But as your mother, I am obligated to tell you when I believe I have served you food that is void of nutrition. 

 

That is more of an out-of-my-mouth anecdote, you know.

I have been looking for a copy of My Life & Hard Times for Garçon for most of the last few months.  I think he will love it, but no bookstore has it.  And I only met one bookstore employee who even knew who Thurber was.  You either know how this is not a non sequitor or you do not.  Bonne chance!  Do not let me begin the endless narration.  À bientôt!   

 

 

blabbity-blob

I'm not actually blogging because I do not actually feel like the endless narration.

The black cakes came out great, if in need of a little breathing/evaporation of the post-baking brushing of rum.  After the last trip to the pasticciera -- I am not being insufferable using the Italian, it's just that otherwise, in our house, if I just say Going to the bakery! there needs to be qualification, but if I say On my way to the pasticciera! I am only speaking of one place. 

 

Or maybe it is insufferable, for example, if one is illiterate.  But in that case, you were neither invited, nor are you valued generally as reader of this space.  Capisce?

 

Anyhow, after the last trip to the pasticciera, I could hardly stand firm against the wrapped-up cakes anymore and even though I was saving every single one of them for a Dec 24/25 experience, I caved.  It's fine, the lapse in discipline.  I am happy about chewing through a slice, now & then, with a hot cup of tea.  I see the need for the peel I chose against; it's awfully sweet & peel would bring it up in flavor.

See, how the endless narration just slips out?!

Let us cling to the lifeboat of a list, ok?

• I think I could take the contents of all the neighbors' recycling bins and strew them through our house, on the floors, and my children would never notice.  Or, if they did notice ("Jesus, what a dump"), they would never reach down to place anything into a refuse container with their own hands.  OK.
• I settled on $75 for the children's guitar instructor, attending a heartfelt note commending his meritorious attentions to my son, in particular.  Mari still frowned at me, while I was assembling my heartily-overthought denominations into an envelope.  He choked similarly when I gifted Fille with a crisp $20 bill for a perfect-perfect dental checkup.  Honey, I told him then, rolling my eyes.  $20 every 6 months is comprised of a nickel every time she brushes.  This is a similarly-cumulative payout, less than $1 per lesson.  Everyone is happy.
• Am listening to Christmas radio, wondering how "My Favorite Things" became a Christmas song when the context it attends is not and also, trying to work out what would happen if Joe Jackson came upon Katherine Jackson in a clinch with Santa, in fact.
• The psychologist -- we like to call her Dr Vajazzler -- conferenced with us about her report in the first week of December, still recommending immediate inpatient admission for Garçon .  The following day, I went through a long list of every psychiatric facility with a pedes ward in the region and every one of them replied to me -- kindly & filled with the weight of their credentials -- by saying, essentially, This is an inappropriate recommendation for the child in this report.  What the hell?  I called Dr Vajazzler & said, "So, everyone says no to your recommendation & can you reconcile your urgency & their apathy?"  She railed at me for a long time, extremely defensive, super-bitchy, and that was the last I heard from her or anyone in her facility. 
  
  Until I sent an email yesterday which asked, essentially, once you cut through all the duplicitous civilizations of it, Does my kid need acute psychiatric intervention or not?  Are you totally unprofessional, or are you just completely incompetent?  Check 1 for yes, 2 for no.  Write me back!  Then the reply-to-all shenanigans commenced.  If you know, or if you are a close reader in this space, you know that these missteps were like the suediest handbag ever.  There was actual glee, with tiny, mincing, clapping.  Also, squealing.  Then I proceeded to fuck with them.  They must have figured out they were all emailing me in error, because today there is total radio silence.  Wankers.  Also, WTF about standards of care?  We recommend surgery!  Oh, well, but the surgeons don't, so ...  So I still recommend surgery!  I do!  Surgical!  I'm right!  This is your fault because you homeschool!  What?

Oh!  Accidental narration!  A spill!  Argle-bargle!

 

Mari found a sweater in a put-away pile of winter clothes I never wear, up in the attic.

"Is this Fille's?" he asked, reasonably. 

"It's mine!"  I said, snatching at it.  Then I inspected it closely.  It is a Michael Kors half-alpaca, half-merino sweater & I adore it, but have never worn it because it is never cold enough here to have even thought about wearing it.  I must have clutched it to my heart in the store without looking at it, and then somehow purchased it without realizing that it would only fit me if I were to keep my breasts in my pocket.  But my child is cold all the time and we have a similar kind of severity in our fashion aesthetic (french cuffs on the wedding gown, people), so alors.  Bonne chance, pretty girl.

I guess I should get back to comporting myself as a person who operates on a Holiday Open House paradigm, baking & procuring & all.  Hm.  I miss sports-journalism blogging already.  À la prochaine. 

moonlight. firelight.

I hustled my family out of the house on Saturday afternoon, bustling them in hats & scarves down to the highway and then beyond the wall, marching along the Queen of Hearts landscaping to the Ivy-League ice rink.  The weather was clear and crisp and just-right. 

Mari was the whole time shocked by my initiative & leadership role, as passive deferment rooted in a kind of agoraphobic tendency is usually my family-outing way.  It is just that all the other days in the week I am timekeeping & bustling and bicep-gripping, so when he is home & available to go with us, let him ... you know, there is a nautical metaphor that means take charge of it which I want to use here.  Maybe pirate-y, even.  Use it if you know it, because that is what I meant. 

I give all the credit to Twitter.  Sometimes, there are these event-related tweets that come at the right time, right when the mental ground is fertile for the seed of a plan, when anything seems possible.  Right when I will fiddle with my handheld out of nervousness or indecision, there it will be, positively serendipitous.  This is the second or maybe third time this has happened -- I know one of the other times was a call to attend the Executive Order 9066 Day of Remembrance, when all we had on our docket was a trip to Mt Vernon no one was too excited about.  Anyhow.

I shoved the children into their orange Hobey-seats one row behind ours.  "Hockey: it is like football on ice," I told them.  They stared at me.

"She means soccer," Mari explained.  The children nodded, relieved, because they know how to play the game English-only Americans call soccer.  I threw my hands up and turned toward the ice and its warming up + pre-game kibbitzing.

Fifille loved hockey -- which, of course: dudes wielding sticks are smashing into each other and a hard thing is hitting the glass with a scary cracking noise at random moments, producing ambience -- pronouncing it to be one million times better than baseball.  Garçon thought it was fine and fun, which, coming from him, is an accolade.     

It was fine & fun, except things were touch & go for the redhaired, sophomore goalie from British Columbia.

After Princeton tied the game in the last minute of the 2nd period, scoring two goals 10 seconds apart, everyone was so! excited!  Early in the 3rd, the Crimson scored easily to lead again.  Mari came back from the snack bar, asking what happened. 

"The puck went by the goalie," I told him.  "He seems really frustrated."  We were sitting right behind the cage.

"No, but what happened?"

"The puck, honey," I was patient, since my tendency with my mouth is to overly-reduce. "It slid past him on the large portion of ice he left open on his right."

"No way, that sucks."  Then he ate a hot dog.

Halfway through the third period, Harvard scored again.  I think this time the puck bounced off of the goalie a little first, but still.  He seemed crushed.  Crushed. 

 

Lookit how you can see how bereft he looks, even from the rear, even in a shitty cameraphone photograph!  Twenty seconds after I took this photo, Princeton scored and his relief was palpable, even through the plexiglass.  I still felt sad for him, especially in the last couple of minutes of the game, when he went off the ice so they could bring 6 men forward.  Sad! 

I was explaining the ditched-defense manuever to Fifille when "I don't even know you," is what Mari said to me.  What does that even mean?  Before that, he was all not-unlike the first time he found out I could really do math; for example, while I was shouting to the referee heavens not to remand cutie-cute Crimson #13 to the penalty box for holding.  That guy was wholly focused on the puck!  He never even saw the dude who tripped on his stick!  That dude tripped! 

But I do not even see why Mari would say that.  Chicago has a NHL team!  One of my college roommates is married to her Badger Hockey beau!  Just because I am not always going on about something doesn't mean I can't work it up when the cause presents itself!  That is what he should know after all these years. 

Princeton lost, in the end, but it was a highly-enjoyable game.  Harvard has a formidable team; it was a pleasure to watch them skate & shoot.  This concludes my sports-journalism blogging.  You're welcome.

Speaking of one ought to know and sporting:  someone has finally figured out she can use the banister on the 2nd floor landing as a barre. 

 

Goodness, I got her this book.  We are now in our house on a first name basis with Agrippina Vaganova.  As in, "Agrippina says that your knees should always be in line with your toes during [whatever zzZzZzzzz]." Or, "Do you know that Agrippina says that when you practice so that  [whatever zzzZzZzzzZzzz] your arms will become automatically so?"  This is all a kind of excited honing & polishing in readiness for her audition.   

 

 

She still made time to visit with her BFF and eat gobs of candy.  Sunday they had kits from IKEA + the inventory procured during a $9 trip to the supermarket with the bulk-candy bins.  I made royal icing in my new KitchenAid mixer which, I am happy to say, is not better than my former Sunbeam/Oster stand mixer of 16 years, now bequeathed to Mr Fox.  But I will get the KA meat-mincer attachment and then it will be better, empirically so. 

You know there is a lot of candy-consumption when you go and find a new toothbrush in the cabinet so you can make your child and her guest stop playing and brush their teeth.   

Holiday weekends are for entertaining!  Mostly. À la prochaine.

AIDS is not over

It is World AIDS Day, you could know. 

My children & some other neighborhood children -- Commie homeschoolers, every one of them -- performed a small show they cooked up while (& since) wrapping on their Big Show earlier this month.  In it, they each brought forth a brief, somber, monologue representing different children from different groups around the world who were infected with HIV.

 

I had seen a couple of dress rehearsals squeezed in on a couple of mornings & thought I was tough, but in the end I was only happy I'd worn a handknit, heathered-brown wrap, instead of my regulation-black pashmina.  If you have a child you know nothing shows up better on black than snot.  Then while I was surreptitiously wiping myself off on my winterwear accessories, an elderly gentleman from the agéd-living facility where they were presenting gave me his hanky and FORGET ABOUT IT, I just could not even.

Thirty-one days until 2012.  Maybe fewer if you think I'm walking around upside-down.  Good night.

  

wetwork

We were in Washington for the holiday, visiting with friends.  It was nice, I hope the same for you and your family + friends.

 

Jupiter has been on such an unbelievably bright display all month.

Before we left -- like while I was sitting in the freaking driveway, idling -- the nurse from the hospital with whom we had been dealing called.  She had seemed sensible right up to this moment, when she called to try to renege on a previously-set meeting date to get us to come in sooner for a meeting.

As discussed, all around, everything is cake right now on the Garçon front.  I don't ask him to do anything except take care of his own self and he doesn't destroy anything by throwing it at me.  E-Z. 

The kids had a hippie homeschoolers' participation -- Garçon had a huge role, in fact -- in a community theatre production that ran last week, then we had the holiday, obvs, and now we are turning our fullest attentions to The Nutcracker and this weekend's run of 6 shows in 3 days.  Wonderful.  Exhausting.  And, frankly, all of it using up all the time we had for Extra Anything.

As to which result, we told these hospital people that unless he was hearing voices (which she had intimated he was & then recanted while I stood in the cold on Mari's cell phone in front of a mental hospital that could not screen him nor see him, asking her holy what the hell?) which he revealed only to them (entirely possible, sure) our first availability to dive back into their obviously disorganized waters was the first full week in December.  Because we are reasonable, see, plus also organized and they are obviously needful of a lot of flexibility while they sort things out as they go, so we wanted to make sure our family calendar is clear enough to sop up their freaking bullshit.   (Fool me twice, shame on the Luiseño.)

Anyhow.  On the phone, the day we left, Nurse Ratched was demanding a new date for the meeting with the two of us, the doctor who sent us on a wild goose chase, her resident, and the senior person in their department.  That date was earlier by a full week than what I told them represented our first availability, after which there was a meeting already set.  We thought.  No backsies!  So I told her no, while leaving, "WTF don't you understand English?" unsaid.

Because I am a fucking classy broad.

Then Nurse Ratched persisted, telling me that the senior physician in their department was available on this day but not on that day and our son needed to move forward with this care, blahblahblah, and after a while of exchanging sweet-yet-firm conversational demurrals, I cut her off.  The end.  I mean, seriously.  Because when do you want to die?  Tomorrow?  The day after tomorrow?  Bitch?

"You know, I don't have to go to work, but what I do know is that if the day should come that my husband needs to be at a meeting because he fucked up the lead direction on a project, he will not tell anyone he doesn't have meetings on this day or that day, no.  He will make the meeting happen when the  people want to see him. 

"Also, let me put this to you bluntly, because I have implied it without elucidating it:  I don't care at this moment what any of you think about our son's care.  Your outfit has lost the privilege of professional discretions due to the colossal disaster engineered by you just last week.  Let's get all on the same page, in the same room, and my husband and I will evaluate whether or not you are the professionals we want leading the project of our family.  Then maybe we'll be happy to go forward.  Hmm?"

So Mari was sitting in the passenger seat, kind of shaking his palms-upturned hands back & forth, as if they were pans sauteing at a high heat.  This is a gesture we cribbed from the preschool Fifille which mostly conveys a silent astonishment akin to Wait, what is happening?  Why are flaming chunks of the ceiling falling down all around us?  Whoa! 

I mean, I made the case clear to Mari weeks ago that we had to come out swinging with the hospital in every interaction because they have the weight to go to the state and claim we are neglectful and fuck that since they are not bowling us over with their qualifications.  However, Nurse Ratched had -- in all previous interactions -- been not a pain in the ass.  Until this phone call.

I made a show of gazing past Mari's gesturing, wrapped up the call with the nurse and rang off.  He asked me why I'd had to be so mean.  It was an accusation.  In my ongoing work to create my Wife of the Year portfolio, I did not respond to the bullshit in the charge, but instead looked at him, pitiably, and said, benevolently, "She told me that sometimes when she has an appointment, she just takes an early lunch.  Maybe you could just do that, is what she said."

I mean, first of all, how incredibly ridiculous, to offer such kindergarten, junior-intern's advice to any grownup person at all who has made clear that they are not available?  Secondly, what the fuck?  I should have my husband adjust his work schedule so we can meet up with you at your workplace?   Get yr client-service priorities straight!  But then, the killer is, as you are likely to know, to offer that as yr homespun, R.N.'s solution to the man in my husband's position?  OMG.

Anyhow, Mari barked up laughing around a mouthful of orange juice, immediately revoked his charge, and snickered intermittently all the way to the big bridge over the river.  I mean, right?

Then, we had pre-Thanksgiving, erev Thanksgiving, and actual Thanksgiving.  A zero-makework turkey, slathered in butter, roasted itself without fuss or bother while we took in the National Museum of the American Indian, which we thought was the place to be on Thursday.      

NMAI is my favorite museum, ever since they showed me Fritz Scholder and he stole my heart.

Also, James Luna. 

James Luna, The Artifact Piece. First performed in 1987, San Diego's Museum of Man.

 

If you can only know one piece of Luna's oeuvre, it has to be this.

 

But even probably without those guys, it would be my favorite, most important museum.  I forget what we were looking at, exactly, when I looked at Mari and said, "Every time a child tells me Indians used to live here long ago, I want to ssssssssslap them across the face."  It is so true and the only thing that stops me is that I know they are never told better, but OMG, does no one have parents?

 

Friday, we were at the American History museum, sitting in the cafe, visiting with Selene and checking in at intervals with our four at-large children at intervals, meeting up in Julia Child's Kitchen.  Speaking of no one having parents. 

 

I just desultorily chose the Child's Kitchen exhibit because it was close to the museum cafe, easy to find on the map, and hard to miss,  but I was drawn in, a little. 

 

Mostly, I was drawn in by the hordes of people who were so excited to be there.  Their excitement was contagious!

  

Then I got an email from another g.d. hospital professional -- the lead psychologist.  What the hell?  It is like they love the abuse.  I read it aloud to our table and Mari said nothing, but Selena chimed in with a fat lot of what to say about an experience in her family with a silly behavioral health professional.  Later, Saturday morning, I sent a perfect, perfect email which reeked of gasoline, one which came right up to actually calling her incompetent without actually saying, "OMFG, wtf are you so incompetent for?"

It did feature the accelerant-perfumed sentence, "Do you even know what you are doing there?" and the underlings whom she had copied on her outgoing message were included on my reply, so, yeah.  Because right in the email I gave her a matter-of-fact chapter & verse recap on how she fucked up.  Then, in a metaphorical way, I reminded her that she did not want me to strike any matches. 

It was a literary thing of beauty and even if you have known me for 20 years or more-- and seen me in nuclear action over & over, just laying waste to shit & going back to salt the rubble -- you would still say "Jesus Christ" when you read it.  And then you might have to sit with it a little while, admiring.  Honest.

The thing is, her reply to me was so fucking beautiful and the smartest thing she has done yet, wherein she came right to the fence of saying forget about it without actually writing "OMFG, Jesus, fucking forget it."  So things might be looking up, with that!  I think we are learning so much about one another in this dynamic.  Yes!

 

Oh, also, this, speaking of what is said & unsaid, omigod:

I was leaving the Willard Hotel on Friday night, on my way to get a bowl of Corner Bakery's fabulous lentil soup, and the man in his sleeping bag on Pennsylvania Ave-- on the sidewalk at the edge of the pool of the Willard's exterior lights -- stopped me & asked if I could help him.

"Sir, can I bring you a bowl of soup?" was my rejoinder.  He said yes, so I proceeded to take his order for dinner.  He flip-flopped on a sandwich and told me plaintively he could not get warm.  I assured him I would return shortly.

I did, with a large bowl of soup, a grilled-cheese sandwich, and a hot chocolate.  I set all of it carefully next to him and went inside of the hotel.  A while later, I was waiting outside for Mari to come with the car, nursing a cup of hot tea from the Starbucks on the opposite corner.  A doorman from the Willard approached me and said something I did not understand, mostly because he was finished talking by the time I realized he wasn't uttering some kind of boilerplate obsequiousness.

I invited him to repeat himself.  This time I heard him fine.  He said, "You gave food to the man?"

Reader, it was an accusation. 

I was thinking a lot of things, but said nothing.  I mean, if they didn't want dude laying on the sidewalk soliciting assistance and possibly picnicking then why the fuck didn't they man up and call the police on him?  At the same -- possibly incongruous -- time I was thinking OMFG I'm sitting in front of this 4-star hotel blinged-out like Carmela Soprano and an employee wants to get it on with me?  Is the world still turning?  Uh-uh.   

I stood up.  Doorman wanted to be in a confrontation and so I rose to meet it.  I said to him, only, "Yes.  I did."

Then I stood there, placidly.  I did not even raise my eyebrow in that come-and-get-it-I-dare-you invitational gesture you know I love to do, because there was nothing else to say besides Yes and  I did.  I waited, silently, while the light of rightness shone from my fingertips and my eyelashes and the ends of my hair, blinding him with the truth of humanity.  He said nothing more, which is too bad, because besides all the truth and the light and the rightness, I was thinking, deep inside, Say something else.  Anything else will do because brother, I am going to blog about you.

Then he walked away.  Because there was nothing for him to say.  And this is the lesson in which Roosevelt competently instructed us:  Speak softly and carry a big can of gasoline. 

     

the night's a girl

When we were at Arlington, we noticed this engraved granite quoting JFK, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds," etc.  I espouse a variation on that sentiment all the time:  If you display your weaknesses, your enemies will exploit them.  Oh, hahaha.  No, just kidding.  I mean, of course I say that, too, I say it all the time!  But the variation of that sentiment I am always repeating is Good behavior is its own reward.  

It was nice to see it, yk, there.  So I could say, yk, See, other people believe it, too.  They were important.

In another tale of deference to the witness of others:

Fifille is bummed out about performing in The Nutcracker.  She has expressed just wanting to be at the barre, doing what she is supposed to be doing, instead of all this costuming, making-up folderol.  The girls in her class are split between Omigod, Nutcracker Show! and Oh. Already? I seized upon this NYT story from this morning and gave it to her.  You have the love the work; performance is the glory for having the love of the grind.  There is nothing wrong with wishing for cast-in-Nutcracker backsies, especially at 10.      

 

Oh!  Remember when I said I was hoping someone would get to the other 30ish% of the patriarchal deconstruction required for Penn State Coverup Processing?  And if I saw it, I would be sure to let you know?  Here it is.  It's brief, like, yk, it's an introduction.  He gets right into it and pins you up against the wall and piles all yr hair in his hand and breathes on yr neck, but then he's all done.  Like, "That's it?  Aren't you going to stick it in?"  But, you know, Sunday Review space constraints and you get the idea.  Someone else can work you over.  Like on the late-late date, hello?

 

Speaking of late-late date.  Saturday-nite Drive-By Truckers! 

 

There is ol' Patterson Hood, getting ready to tell us about how he did a whole buncha crazy, stupid shit.  Hearts. 

We wore earplugs this time, which seemed (having never done it) like it would be totally uncool.  Opposite.  Best.  Hearing=great today.  Love.

Doctors and one senior hospital administrator were, late Friday, taken to task by me in a way which reminded my husband of the young demolition expert for whom he fell.  He was in love with the whole show -- starting with my chiding them for sending us someplace that could not accomodate us -- Even the lousiest, 2-star hotel makes sure they send you to a restaurant that is open for dinner, I said -- but particularly enamored of the way I detonated the building while talking to them about an example of what normally happens if professional discretion goes sideways due to a fuckup, as did ours with them.

I get that my husband's job is different from yours -- for one thing, as it pertains directly to national security, his job is important, I said, sweetly, sympathetically, before going on with just stuff & bothersomeness about very reasonable expectations for cleanup & accounting and how I very reasonably and sweetly expected this all to be addressed, and with some great amount of haste.  After the holiday, of course.  Because I am reasonable.  Also, sweet.  Until I am not, but, you know. 

I am enjoying the BloPo of Becky and her sister, Amy, this month.  Check it out.

Amy's story of a precious child in the air reminded me of a time with on my way back to Madison from a boyfriend's surgical conference one winter.  I already had a pretty loose grip on things, facing the dread of flying as I was when -- while sitting on the tarmac -- a baby started wailing from the back of the plane.  My beau hardly noticed: his specialty was pediatrics.  I noticed, but determined to cope, I gripped his arm and asked him if he could apply himself quickly & with his masculine ease to getting me a teeny bottle of rum.

He strode down the aisle to work his beautiful-person magic on the stewardess.  Next thing -- next thing -- I was whisked -- whisked! -- into first class.  He calmly folded himself in next to me, ignoring my questioning gaze, and handed me his great-grandfather's chronograph.  We'd discovered the week before on the flight to Miami that I found its heft settling -- its weight in my hands, the shiftiness in its bracelet's links, the way the steel's clinking sounded.

Once in the air, I finally asked him directly what happened.  He shushed me.  The stewardess fussed over me at intervals in an elaborate fashion.  I would ask him every time to tell me what happened, what did he tell her?  He refused me, in every language, and I sulked until I fell asleep, bored of my own petulance, cozy with my first-class airline blanket.

On the ground, in Chicago, checked into the O'Hare Hilton after retrieving his car from long-term parking, I asked him again. 

I told her you just miscarried and we could never sit by that baby. 

I was shocked, surprised!  No one ever knows anyone!  I protested, burbling, until he put his mouth over mine and that was that.     

prescription: lobotomy

It is hardly ever -- as in almost never -- that I make a new dish which is not a dessert and both children receive it with enthusiasm.  One might gleefully review the dish and the other will say, "Well, I ate it because I'd rather not starve."  Or they both will express concerns about some strain of flavoring/texture and offer advice on its next execution.  But this, this they loved. 

You could make it, too. 

Beautiful people are all, yk, What is up with Garçon?  And I make a grimacing mouth noise and say I don't care.  Which is really the key, the not caring.  I was talking to a beautiful gal on a ship-to-shore call a week or so ago and she posited that she often wondered if she could "do it all again" with her kids, she wondered about what she might change.  I said, "I would send my children right into the arms of a professional caregiver and have a wonderful job. Good-bye!  Take what you can, give nothing back!" 

More or less.

I was not thinking in the front part of my brain about her wonderful job and hired assists when I said that, and then she laughed and said she'd thought about homeschooling and staying home.  I told her that was nonsense. 

But I thought more about the question, since the time we talked, and I think that what I do think is that if I could do it all over, I would focus less on the long-term with him -- because what in the bloody fuck do I care if he has meth teeth?  We have insurance!  Never brush! -- and more on just having a pleasant day every day.  Which was of course unthinkable when he digs his heels in about everything, but now I don't give a fuck what he does with his days.  Demands are as goes:  chore chart; positive fucking attitude.

It's funny because people often react as OMGHZ, chore chart!  Abusive, horrible, Cinderella!  Perhaps they are boiling their children in brat juice. 

The children's chore chart is just:

• make bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, wash up after breakfast. 
• fold household laundry (dishtowels, napkins, etc, which I have laundered) and put away.
•  practice musical instruments. 
• tidy up playroom and/or bedroom for a quick 15-minute pickup.  go around the house and find yr belongings you have left laying around in common areas and put them away. 
•  Help wash up after lunch and dinner. 
•  Shower, brush teeth, wipe down the sink, tub and mirror after yr ablutions.  Go to bed. 

Three times each week they are called upon to do their own laundry, one of those days weekly involves changing the sheets on their bed.  Once a week, I ask them to together climb around on the kitchen floor, each with a brush, and scrub it clean.  Our kitchen has less than 100 square feet of flooring, so whatever.

Maybe it seems like a lot, but they are here all day, with time, oodles of time.  So, it is all self-care, toward the mastery of which all children should be applying themselves, but especially those who are in their own home all the livelong day.

Anyhow, so as long as that is all taken care of by the end of each day, and no one hits me or thrown anything at me, or destroys my house, I'm fine with it.  He is free to play with string or whatever other analog pursuits he enjoys.  Whatever.  He can read and write better than most adults writing commentary on the internets; he can solve for x.  Good.  His long-term is not my problem, because his adulthood is not my concern.  It has been relaxing and removed the endless tension under which we all labored from the house.  Things have been remote for all that time, but it beats bared teeth on both sides. 

 

A few weeks ago, in the used bookstore, I saw a copy of the David Kiersey book about the Myers-Briggs/Jung temperament sorting.  I paused and remembered how we came across the book in high school, all of us testing and temperament-sorting, in our junior year, memorizing each others' types, chiding or lauding one another for being so SJ or rather NT, or whichever.    

Mari and I differ by one letter (J/P), the qualifying of information endemic to each causing a lot of confusion in our newlywed years.  The book -- picked up at the library because I spotted it and remembered it being a gas -- cleared that up quickly + permanently, to our great delight. 

After all that positive memory, I realized that maybe some of the issue with or son was one of native temperament this book could illuminate.  I mean, I am tired of him, but leave no stone unturned.  I administered the sorter thingy, during which time he surprised both of us with his immense capacity to be self-reflective.  Um, excuse me:  All of this child's letters are backwards from ours.  Who sent this changeling to us?

 

But that in no way explains everything and in the way that we leave no stone unturned, we took him for a new evaluation by a group of pediatricians he had never seen in this capacity.  Yk, the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory of Pediatrics, over the river.  I mean, you know, he has been evaluated long before this, at children's hospitals, with no outcome other than purple-faced people outraged that a child stonewalled them (I understand) or a different sort of pert appreciation of his sly refusals combined with his great appeal (am familiar with that, too).  Not to mention all the aborted therapies, which may or may not be his fault but in any case mystify me because what kind of social skills group expels a child for acting like Helen Keller?  I mean, did you want to only rehabilitate the easy children?  Unprofessional.  Like that stupid twat we wasted our money on this summer.  But OMG, listen to this.  Crazy in a new dimension.

 

We took him in for a regular, old, boilerplate psych evaluation.  It was billed as a Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation.  In August -- after everything with the running away, etc, the stupid twat, etc, destroying, there was a lot going on -- I made the appointment.  November was the first date, don't you know?  (Whatever.)  In the meantime, I crafted my new I Don't Give A Fuck method of childrearing (this child).  It has been peaceful here.  There has been talking.  Most of the time, expectations are met after one reminder, instead of 17.

We showed up, prepared for our 4-6 hour exertions, everyone mostly sunny, fine.  We filled out our parent questionnaires, had lunch with Garçon, sent him back, met with one of the purviewers and our completed forms.  We gave her a little history, way back to preschool, but mostly told her our concerns boiled down to [this], and the rest you know.  (Or don't, if you are a hideous, lumpen jackal of a voyeur.)

Things were winding down and Mari & I were sitting with Fille in the waiting area, wondering what we would do about dinner, when we were called back for the day's closure with the entire evaluating team.

"We absolutely agree with your concern and we think that he needs to be taken in to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation and possibly an admission.  You need to do it now," is what the lead psychologist told us.

Ok, so you already know (unless you are a hideous, lumpen jackal with her hands in her panties right now) that I wanted that to happen.  That during the summer I called around to hospitals to find out who could admit him.  He can keep it together pretty fine for a 4-6 hour evaluation:  he is a lovely child when you want nothing from him, but I thought that over time, things -- the kind of behaviors about which I raise my hands heavenward -- would become clearer to professionals. 

So, that part was fine with me, like, Thank God we could try for some answers.  But what was weird -- and it was Mari that intercepted this -- was the way she was so urgent -- You have to do it now.  Do it today.  Go here.  DO not stop at home, do not collect belongings nor $200.  Now.

Mari asked, "Did he threaten one of you?"  She said no.  So I asked what was it that came up in the eval that created such a immediate concern.  She was vague in her response.  You know, concerning things made her concerned.  And also, things beyond her ken, more in the field of psychiatry. 

I kind of shrugged, yk, because OK.  Mari had some more questions about remanding his son to an inpatient psychiatric facility and then I asked questions, most of which were procedural and about the facility. 

I specifically asked if they would have a bed.  Those words actually came out of my mouth.  "You want us to go here, but will they do the intake evaluation even if they do not have a bed, because if we are going right there, I want to be sure this is where we should go."

Go, go now.  Go.

Whatever.  We weren't doing anything anyhow.  You know, except eating dinner and planning for a long weekend of Nutcracker shenanigans.  So we went.  It was actually quite near our house, on the other end of the world from the Children's Hospital.  We were nervous, but OK.  I feel better about committing my child while I am not super-fucking pissed-off at him, because this way it is a hospitalization, not an imprisonment; assistance, not exile.  While we waited for the valet to take our car, I texted Mrs Israeli to let her know.

 

 

The hospital to which we were told to go, go now -- even after we expressed mild procedural concerns -- go, go now-- even after Mari expressed a wanting to know of a vague idea of some kind of hint about the DSM, some shred of information that might bear us aloft on this trip , even after I checked & double-checked that we did not need any paperwork from the one hospital to go to the next -- go, go now-- OMG, DO YOU KNOW THAT A. THE FACILITY DOES NOT PERFORM PEDIATRIC INTAKE EVALUATIONS and B. DOES NOT HAVE A BED FOR THIS CHILD IN THEIR PEDES WARD, EVEN IF THEY DID??????

And the admissions director was super-great, even as he was stupefied by who sent us here and why the hell without calling to make sure there was a bed and what the hell because anyone that answered the phone would have told anyone who called to make sure we could get in there that they do not do pediatric intake?

He asked us to wait, mostly so that he could figure out how & where to straighten this psychologist out, and also because why not?  He was most perturbed by the fact that we had no idea what her findings were that sent us to him.  I offered -- in an uncharacteristically diplomatic way -- that it seemed reasonable to me that she did not want to make a psychiatric diagnosis, as she was not a psychiatrist.  Mr Admissions Director scoffed.  I shrugged.  He took the appropriate numbers from us to investigate and invited us to sit in the reception area.

I spent the next few minutes asking Garçon how things went at the other hospital, during the eval.  He said he did some puzzles, did some math, nothing happened.  I took out the Parent Fact Sheet she gave us while she was telling us about the urgency of remanding him tonight.  I asked him if he said he was going to hurt himself, or any one, any of us?  He said he had not.  I asked him if he said anything delusional or talked about wanting to die or feeling dead?  He said he had not.  I gave him the Parent Fact Sheet, entitled, In A Crisis, with the homicidal/suicidal, delusional, depressed/anxious bullet points, and I said, "Honey, did you say anything that would make them think any of these things?"

He was like Beaver Cleaver.  "No, Mom.  Why would I say those things?"

Time went on, the sun set, finally Mari was on the phone with the psychologist.  She was telling him about how she has just -- since she got his beleaguered voice-mail message -- made arrangements (fool me twice, shame on Tallahassee) for us to go to a different facility, four towns over.  I saw what he was writing and said nothing.  He asked me, cupping the phone, if I had any questions for her.  I asked him if she told him what it was that had her so spun up about him.  He frowned & shrugged.  "Not really," is what he said.

I vowed to get an answer from her & held out my hand.  He said later he knew it was on when I stepped outside.  I asked her why on Earth we were there, when they can not service us, because of all the reasons they could not, when I specifically asked her questions, the accurate answers to which would have prevented this waste of my time.  She told me -- same as she had Mari -- that since Mari called her she made arrangements with this intake person at another psych facility, and I cut her off. 

"You need to tell me why it is you think he should be admitted and you need to be specific, because I am not driving all over tri-state, based on your vague concerns.  I gave you the courtesy earlier and now I am wasting my time, and you blew it."

I swear to God, sometime in the next two minutes, the words "Seeing as he is not at this time in crisis" came out of her mouth. 

What did you just say?

I mean, really?  Since we have been home, I asked Mari, did I hallucinate the part where she told us we had to go right away?  To have him evaluated right away?  He said, waving the Parent Fact Sheet at me, "It says In A Crisis right at the top of this!"

 

Man.  I swear to God.  I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba. 

"You are telling me he is not in a crisis, which is something we already knew, because we live with him, but knowing that, especially, we took you at yr word and believed that something dark was revealed which was truly awful and now I am out here, wasting my time, and we are all tired and my daughter is dancing in the goddamn Nutcracker in two weeks and Thanksgiving is in a few days and we should all be in bed and you think this is going to help our family thrive?  Are you serious?"

She tried to turn it around on the facility to which she sent us, and told me that she could not believe that they could not accommodate us.  I was so mad, it was like, yk, Incompetent Boob, please meet PMS. 

"They do not even have pediatric intake eval here.   Even if we'd had a psych eval done in your office before we set out -- they do not have a bed in their facility at this moment.  They are full.  And we are not having a crisis!"

I mean, it was like she prescribed prime rib and then sent us to an ice-cream parlor.  What the hell?  Then she started with a lot of bluster about this other facility and their policies and blur blur and mercifully, because God is so good, Mr Admissions Director came out to smoke a cigarette.  And I said, "Would you like to talk to him, Dr?"  and she said, "Yes, because I had information from -- " and I cut her off.

"Don't tell it to me, because I don't care about it.  Shhh, good-bye."

Then I gave him the phone.  They sorted it out, procedurally, and we are going to have Thanksgiving and The Nutcracker and then rendezvous with the psychiatric hospital.  We are going to do it civilized, with a packed bag and things to take, and pick some time where we can come visit a lot.  Garçon has never even spent one night away from us.  And then we will see.

There is so much more, but honestly, we still have telephones in this world.  

Remember back when I wrote that every fucking time we collide with one of these "experts" fucking it up, it is a galvanizing shot in our collective arm?  Yes.  So that is good.  People are prowling around the house, feeling a little quiet glimmer of camaraderie.  Good God.             

vetted

We were in Washington last week for Veterans' Day -- in defiance of the Nutcracker's rehearsal schedule! -- and went to Arlington National Cemetery in an early observance (because Friday was going to be too-too packed!).

Here are some photos of things we stopped to admire.

 

 

 

Here, we met an older couple who -- in our exchange of pleasantries with them regarding our mutuality in appreciating the vista -- revealed they were there to have attended a funeral.  I was left wishing I were dressed an eensy bit better -- just everything the same with the viscose blouse and newish flats, but with trousers, instead of just my fancy jeans.

With that in my mind, I was saying to the children, while we were driving back to Sal's, that while I did enjoy the rambling, high-points adventure, it felt funny to me to just be walking past all these people's headstones with nary a worry about who they were, and not too much of a way on the ground to find out.  I thought the trip lacked focus, which detracted from our desired countenance of high-minded propriety, which one is endlessly counseled to achieve, all over, by the signs. 

It was Fifille's idea that we find someone to commemorate, as is the programme at The Vietnam War Memorial.  We wondered and murmured about who and Garçon volunteered the idea of finding who among the 442 Regiment is finally resting there. Hullo, homeschool! You are who I am talking about!

People are talking about homeschool here, too.  I wish I had more time to talk about all that here, but parenting is mostly driving. 

What I will offer is this:

 

All of these children, sprawled out on the ground, disrespectfully gawking at the Sentinel on duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?  Visiting with a school group, every one.  Socialized is hardly the same thing as civilized.  

The funny thing is that one of the topics I worry is woefully lacking in our homeschool curriculum is this kind of practical-civics stuff.  We never say the Pledge of Allegiance before breakfast or anything.  But my children know enough to not splay themselves out to leisurely watch someone else work, because that is fucking rude.  They learned that here, at home.  I mean, they spend enough time here, they might as well learn something. 

They also have learned enough in all their time here to make it easy to explain the Penn State cover-up to them.  Good, because it was all the grownups wanted to talk about, in a round-robin of completely scandalized tones -- one person would talk until their mouth locked in the fallen-open position, able to talk no more, then the next one would pick up -- and we were tired of tiptoeing around them.  Half of our usual At-Sal's group are alumni of a school with a zillion-dollar football program and a Women's Studies department, so we were not too shocked by the motive and able to seek out the right salves.  We simply cannot imagine how the rest of you are coping in this time.  How are you? 

Maybe you could read this woman's higher education take on it, because it is incredibly good, and comes out to about two-thirds of what I think needs to be said.  When I see the other one-third somewhere, you will be the first to know.  Because of all of this, I have fallen into regrettable overuse of the word outrageous. 

We are having some neighbors over for coffee + cake, I guess I'd better get on that.  Gros bisous, à la prochaine.   

  

 

cockpit

Hello, blog. 

Man, all that endless talking to neighbors was a. exhausting, but also b. by the weekend, while I was sitting in the car, letting Mari drive, staring out of the passenger-seat window, thinking about i. how I had not updated my blog since ... when? and ii. what had I been doing all week? ... Oh.  Talking to people in real time with my mouth.  Like, while standing in their living rooms.  Yes.  It was a good series of thoughts to think.

Anyhow.  That was all over today, after I filed our intentions with the correct administrators at the proper meeting, and phew.  Concerns were aired.  Support was pledged, etc.  Residents who do not run in the same neighbor-y cliques as I marveled at my surgical charm.  While I knew our close neighbors wanted to stay focused on the Serious Business of Zoning, I v much sensed they wanted to bust out of there, getting down to some A-1 speculation about why it was that Fantastic Mr Fox was driving my car, yk, around, even with me riding delicately + with languid femininity in my own passenger seat. 

It was only because I had an official-paperwork exchange to make before the hearing.  It was in a sector with no parking, so he looped around in the car until we caught up again out front.  Magical!  Like having a Tuesday-Wednesday husband!  Or, a driver!  Clapping!

Additionally, what the fuck did I care?  At day's end, the car belongs to someone else.

Not to be all emotional about moving on in automobiles, but our car has had a great run.  Kind of like Iris.  The writing has been on the wall for years, that this car was not going to last forever.  We were so fucking spoiled by that Legend, its 170,000 miles with not a single fucking issue, other than regular wear & tear.  This car was fussy and kind of lemony from the start.  Car-people have tried to placate us -- Oh, blahblahblah, it's off of Audi's assembly line!  Ok, and I have to say, I have driven Audis and it really is the exact same damn car -- sometimes people do not believe the trouble we are having with a VW so I tell them it is really an Audi & they relent -- but anyhow.  The car doesn't work.   

Maybe something went wrong in the making the circles into lines.  Bleh.  This last summer, the transmission started to have major difficulties, instead of the eccentric, finicky demands of the last 4 or 5 years.

When I say "major difficulties," I mean that it would sometimes go in reverse while in gear to drive. Monday night I could not get it into reverse and, while attempting a 3-point turn, almost ran into a large sign on a masonry footing. Most of the time, with city-driving, I would be revving the engine at 35,000 rpms to get it to second gear.  See what I mean?  Not good.  The trip down to South Carolina was without incident.  Wonderful.  Great.  Goodbye, car. 

I have spent so much time sitting in this seat, for the last 11 years.  122,000 miles does not seem like enough.  Thank you for the good times.  For all the naptime driving we did up & down the 6-lane county highway when Fille was new & Garçon was 2.   

For all the late-night, twisty, singalong driving I have done with yr sunroof open; all the ridiculous 2-lane highway travel all across the American South and Ohio's coastal highway; yr zippy responsiveness that time the dude lighting the cigarette came close to creaming us.  I will really miss your luxe interior, with its heated seats and genuine wood trim.  I will not miss yr broken glove-box hinge, yr mysteriously vacuous windshield-wiper-fluid reservoir, nor the way you blow hot engine air into the cabin.  In fact, I will not miss any of yr (frankly) inexcusable cabin-design flaws.

I will miss yr stereo + 6-CD changer most of all.  Most of all.

 

Yet I am on to a new adventure.  It should be fine.  It is funny, because everyone who knows cars is super excited about this car that is twice the age of ours and twice the mileage.  Everyone except Kowalski, who was adamant in his counsel that we just buy a new car.  Fuck that.  I am not going to pay $30,000 for a car and also pour $3000 in gasoline into it every fucking year.  No!

All I care about is not being stuck in first gear at a green light, honestly.  Mari says if we get 15,000 miles out of this car, great.  Then we can be on to the next $1100 car.  We have a new rule, though:  there is no goddamn eating in this goddamn car.  I mean, of course we will, but we can aim high, right?  I want to get the windows tinted and drive around pretending to be deposed royalty!     

I have a blister on each toe from my stupid high-heeled shoes, which I stupidly wore bare-legged and bare-footed.  I was whimpering, a little, after the hearing, on the way back to the car.  ("This grouuuuund is too haaarrrrd!")  Fantastic Mr Fox offered to carry me, and I refused, still a little whimpery.  No, because Mari will be mad if you drive our car and drive me around in our car and then also touch me plus while rescuing.  But thank you.  I meant all of it.

When I called Mari to dish about the whatsits and wherefores, I mentioned this exchange to him.  He agreed it would have been a little much for one day.  I know!   

Oh, anyhow, no, wait, I remember:  I was going to say that I was thinking, yk, Oh, blog, casting it in the light of all the richly-textured face-to-face relating I had been doing.  But then! messages and missives began pouring in about the yogurt cake's deliciousness + success!  Even from 3/4 of my people who did not know what from Italian plums!  I thought that was pretty neat, too.  Gros bisous!

screw

All of my gym clothes are too big, which, yk, go-go gymgoing, but anyhow.  One morning a couple of weeks ago, I did not make it to the gym because my pants would not stay up on the walk from the car.  HauteLook had a Marika feature a day or two later, so good. 

 

As proof of how get it over with I was about it, Fifille said to me, while I was taking my back-to-school photo here, "Er, Femme?  Are those butterflies on yr pants?"  Yes!  I don't know!  It's fine!

Omigod, the EarthquapocalypsssssszzzZzZzZzZzzzzzZzzzZzZ.  What?  Omg.  People are calling, people are texting, I have no idea about their outpouring of love + concern -- Are you all all right?  -- for the first five or six missives.  You know, I was thinking this morning that Santos prob has 5.9m earthshakes all the time & she never talks about it & I never hear.  Here is my Earthshakey, True-Life, Non-Events Account. 

I was sitting in the dining room, closest to the back door, waiting for AAA to come winch my car out of Sal's driveway.  I heard the tow truck approach.  I realized it was not a tow truck.  I wondered if Pam and Addison, next door, were getting their floors refinished.  Why hadn't Pam mentioned it when I saw her?  Exciting! 

But, it could not be a floor sander.  Our floor was noisy all over.  Oh, it's just trackw-- Er, the Metro doesn't run under Sal's house ...   

Here is the only interesting thing about the earthquake.  As I began to realize -- and this was all very rapid-fire thinking, I think the whole thing lasted a minute? -- that what was jouncing the house was not mechanical vibration, I sifted through to my next conclusions, which were in this order:  a. terrorists, (no. no, that can't be right) b. Ohhh, earthquake.  (Earthquake, what the eff?)  Terrorists first, though, you see.

It is also, I think, worth noting that if I had never sat though a similar event in Los Angeles as a child (I thought it was mechanical vibration almost till the end then, too), I never would have concluded earthquake on my own.  I mean, Jesus, Sal has a tensionless, oversized, venetian blind propped up on a dining-room windowsill that unravels, clattering all the way to the floor, if you bang the door too hard.  It stayed firmly-fixed in place all the while.  And honestly, I thought these people in Washington couldn't shut up about snow. 

Let us now call, on this rare, leisurely morning, the roll of honor.  Oh, I am in receipt of yr other emails, yr voice mails, piling up around me in drifts, with their accusations of "slipping that in."  Yeah, I've got yr slipping it in right here. 

1. What's up with the boozing?  Do those 5 words look familiar?  I wrote them, last week, in that order, which is the very definition of not slipping it in.  After I wrote a love note to a long-lost cocktail.  I was not trying to get away with anything.  Things have been a little grim on the inside here.  Grim.  My choices were a. have a drink or b. have sex with strangers, but never c. drink a fifth of whiskey plus have sex with strangers.  That would be overreacting.  Grim!? you say.  Honey-bunny, cupcake, do tell!  Obvsly, in dribs and drabs, as I process, I'll write it here, like I have been for years.  Unlessssss you refuse to stop reminding me you are data-mining here.  That makes me shy, you know.
   
   
   
2. The Fantastic Mr Fox.  Again, I wrote all about it.  What else is there?  Hubba hubba.  Remember for all the long years we have lived in this nominal college town the joke has been building about my Fantasy Grad-School Boyfriend?  He was going to be old-enough so as to be interesting, tidy, there would be no cartoon characters carved in the butter at his well-appointed, grownup's house.  There would be no Legos on the floor to stab me in the bare feet, a claw-foot tub, the walls papered with pages from the Kama Sutra.   Oh, hahaha, how girlishly we embellished this hilarity, the kernel of which -- as I recall -- was a throwaway line about how I do not care for young men.  Well, it is like we dreamed him and he came to life.  And he is sssssssssssmart.  So let me press myself against halacha in this matter and never be alone with him.  For starters.  Also, cling to what is good, because if we all think back, we can remember that in times of despair, I only have sex with strangers & he is not one!  Phew!  Mostly I reflect upon 2011's Lenten action to avoid saying anything stupid.  I already did say something stupefyingly stupid, though.  It was pretty awesome & right up there with the Amazing Freudian Slip for Lillo of 1997.  But since then, I have applied myself to the lasting lessons of privation, again.
   
   
   
3. The weekly appointment with a team of cleaners.  Ok, I did sneak that in, a little.  But not on purpose!  Because it is a lot of writing and I was placemarking.  Plus, I am still working through a lot of it, in addition to just completing the work that I have hired them in order to be able to do, because they are not supposed to be a permanent staffing solution.  I can keep my own house clean, in normal circumstances.   
   
   
   
4. The baby, Fille, going to the beach with almost-total strangers.  Yes.  She made friends a few weeks ago with a same-aged girl from the only other truly-granola homeschooling family I have ever met in real life.  Coincidentally, I finally met the patriarch of this family a day or two before she met the girl -- they are outstanding civilians in our town, I have just never met them.  I do not cultivate people, you know.  But I liked the dad -- he is distractable, yet sharp, and he talks about everything as if you already know it, which is fine by me because I like to pick up as I go.
   
   Fille & the eldest girl (there are five) got on strong and when they called about 18 days later to invite Fille to the beach with them for the day, I said yes.  It was funny, when I stopped round to their house later, the girls' mother told me she'd told her husband before he called, "You said she seemed shy, she doesn't even know us!  She's never going to say yes!"  And all of that is true, but they did not invite me and Fille is not shy.  Also, these 2 kids of mine are old enough now that they can judge what makes them comfortable, they are big, and they have a lot of liberties.  A lot. 
   
   Which reminds me of a funny, idiotic presumption Dr Bombay made -- Omg, you are with them all the time.  Am not, neither!  Less & less every minute!  Why, every day this summer -- except for driving to ballet class and/or guitar lessons -- they have been at the pool, or the library, or the park/playground, and I have been right here at home, getting shit done.  They experimented with public transit!  One time this summer, one of my kids was out past 10p.m. walking home from the library 6 miles away & he got a ride home in a police car! (We will never let that go, the surprise in that suburban hike & the realization that no matter what, if he could do that, at least some of our job was done.) They feel appropriately-agéd and everyone is happy.  Anyhow, Fille had a blast with her pal and I was glad we have made their acquaintance.  Especially a house full of granola-homeschool girls.  OMG SQUEEEE. 
   
   
   

Speaking of the roll of honor ... I will write down this neighbor story in league with Becky, who is who she says she is and stands by her words.  (Obvsly, but she seems to have to explain it a lot.)  Is it the reporter's problem if a subject's profile makes the subject look ridiculous?  No.  If you did not know that, look it up.

So, pursuant to the topic of Quotidian Freedoms, no one else's great, big children are going anywhere by themselves, or even with siblings.  I get that.  The people in Ballet Town recoil in horror when they find out the children have been trained up on commuter rail-riding.  Whatever.  You know ... people can chauffeur all they want, but we bought our house on this side of the county line so that we would not have to drive children around like the King and Queen of Siam until which day we just gave them a set of car keys. 

All the publicly-transporting is new, but on the ground in our town, our kids are on their third blissful summer of free rein.  It started out with baby steps four years ago, but by now it is just two feet and a wristwatch, go with God, be where you say you are going to be, follow the route we work out, be home at [whatever time].  Old news. 

Last week, the kids wanted to go to the park and I said it was fine, sure, be home by x o'clock.  Then they nanced around on the block a little more, nancing the way they do, yk, getting distracted, running in & out of the house.  I told them to let me know when they were Actually Leaving & went back to what I was doing inside.  During the Nancing Period, they got mixed up with their pals who live across the street.  Presumably, there was more nancing.

I had to rebuild this from an amused debrief, but it seems what happened is that the Follette children said to the Neighbor Kids, "We are going to the park. Want to come?"  (The Neighbor Kids are the same age -- 12, 10, set of 8yo twins)

Neighbor Kids, or a representative, whichever, whatever, went to ask their mother, Ms Mixed-Up, who said fine, good, whatever.  This was at the same time as Fifille ran back here to shout through the screen door they were leaving.  Good riddance. About an hour later, I was in the garden, swearing, and Ms Mixed-Up drove by.  She stopped, and called through her passenger-side window.  "Oh, is Mari home?" 

No. 

"I mean," chuckling self-consciously, "of course he's at the park."

Mari is in Washington.

"Are the kids here?" 

 No, they are at the park. 

"But one of them, yr kids ... are my kids here?" 

[blank look, says only,Ne comprends pas.]  What? 

She got out of her car, and frankly, in retrospect, she was a little aggressive toward me, considering she was the dope who didn't know where her own kids were.  "My kids said they were going to the park with you." 

I thought about this for a minute, then responded.  "No.  Your children must have said they were going to the park with my children.  I'm here, at my house, obvsly.  My children are at the park, possibly with yours, it seems." She processed this, quailed, raced back to her car & sped off.

See, Ms Mixed-Up has had this problem of chaperone-presumptionbefore with me.  It would seem to me that when she heard my kids were involved, she would think to double-check the situation were supervised to her liking.  Jesus, yk, hers are the same damn kids who came down one day a couple of years ago to play thinking I was hosting an indoor playdate.  No.  Children belong outside, playing.  Especially six of them.  I gave them a pitcher of water, all the outdoor toys + games, and plastic cups.  They live across the street!  And then Ms Mixed-Up --  now that this is all rushing back to me, I remember -- hovered around outside between our houses, who knows why.  So I invited her in for coffee, and when she accepted, I let her in and firmly shut the door behind us.  Ahahaha.  I thought of it as a Queen of the 70s intervention.  Ok, that was a little bit mean of me to do to her, but honestly.  It still makes me snicker.   Anyhow.  That is just a little something I slipped in with fullness.  Ok, that's racy!  MmmmMmMmmmMmmmmmmmm.

Ahahaha!  À bientôt!                   

gen 2:2

I just read an assertion somewhere, I can not remember where ... I guess it could have been in a crazypants comment section somewhere about one of those kooky Republican girls, but the assertion was that Catholics do not study Scripture, and I think it is probably a sign of early-onset dementia that I can not recall where I was reading, because I opened & shut my mouth like a carp for probably about 9 minutes.  I guess that depends on who schooled you. I mean fuck it, it would have made my reading load in high school a lot lighter, that is for g.d. sure.  But being from Chicago, as I have long known, is not like being Catholic much of anywhere else.  Except the rest of the west coast of Lake Michigan.

Anyhow.  For yr persual:

 

Lounging, squeezily.

 

 
 

Chard in the standard Eggplant Dish. (Excellent!)

 

 
 

Hairs cut!

 

 

 Relaxing, spa-backyard, pebble-walking!  For health!

Fille said a funny thing on Friday while I was getting her settled into the big pedicure chair -- long before she told me she thought Ballet Town's salon pedicures better (and I agree!).  The owner had already indulgently brought her a cup of water and turned on the chair's vibra-massaging function.  I was getting a magazine for her to read and, after rifling through the options, handed her a big, current issue of Bazaar.  "Here, this one has a lot of photos," I told her.

"Oh, good," she said.  "Because the worrrrds in all those magazines always are like [whining voice], Blah, blah, blah.  Why do I think I'm so ugly?  Blur, blur, blur." 

I am pretty sure that is 100% nurture.  I just want to keep her with us forever, even as we know she is too excellent to hoard. 

Hoard.  Good God, I watched an epi of Hoarders on Netflix-Insta yesterday and oh, man!  Heartbreak!  Squeamishness!  I hope people everywhere are finishing off a relaxing Sunday. If you have insiders' information on Monday, please do tell!  xox 

chains, gang.

I do not have the heart to tell Fille that her eggplant might not come true.  She is so pleased to have acquired it at the plant swap in May, but she is a little lacking in the consistency of watering department.

 

You can see the backyard in the background there.  We had it done over in June.  Simple, plain.  I plan to get the container plants out on the gravel to soften it up & make it less like a prison yard. 

 

It will fit for now, though, because we are getting this: our big next step.  I mean, yk, we always used the straitjacket when he was younger, and of course there are the bed restraints we've used -- shut up, they are humane restraints, it's right in the name -- and then since he has been older, bigger, I say, yk, Hey, babe, just head outside & cool off.

But if he is going to be running away ... not cool.  Measures must be employed.  Plus, it is modular & built to specs, so we are having it built big enough to put the bicycles in at other times.  Excellent in every direction.  Yes.

À bientôt, j'espère!  xoxo

I tried to be less awesome, once.

Things are OK.  It occurs to me that I started this little weblog to be a readalong companion for my sweetest + dearest friends, a lot of first-responders, with whom I could not move past the conversational triage of, yk, charlatans and liars, headbanging, destruction, flight, elective mutism, sourpusses, plus unhelpfulness.  Like, it was designed to be a place for me to record all the quotidian + normal things we did in a day here -- for a lot of you, if you know, you know -- and for Mari, who often felt conflicted about keeping his really great job even as it meant "abandoning" me with our son for sometimes-long stretches of time. 

 

Also, in some ways, it was supposed to be for me, so that I did not blow my head off or drown everyone, you know?  I mean, and things were ok in large chunks, big enough to write about.  Fifille -- whom everyone already loves -- got to be the star of the weblog, because she is topical, and parenting her is something relaxing and enjoyable, something that feels like relationship-building, instead of marking time.  That's just the luck of the draw, but I always feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

It is funny to me, because a lot of people who do not know our whole story will accuse us of favoring her, of shutting him out, of blahblahblahblahblah ... so I start bringing Garçon along with me to their house with us, accepting gaily every invitation, and after a very short while they shut entirely the fuck right up.   

But, so the thing is, to get back to my first point -- is that this blog was about the things that I did, we did, that were not like being in a warzone.  That in spite of what seemed like my first priority to first-responders, my child's life had not subsumed the rest -- I could still knit, make mischief, go the gym, manipulate unsuspecting admirers, shop, play swords with Mari, enjoy Fille, and there were even good times everyone could see where there Garçon was, too. 

After a while --  a couple of years, maybe?  -- we kind of got a break, things started to feel more normal, and as a result, Garçon took second-billing here.  Maybe he was even a co-star, I can not say.  I kept blogging, and people kept reading, for all the reasons I first wrote about -- supplemental text for my nearest + dearest.  During those years, also, old friends & past-life colleagues started reading.  Maybe only reading-ish.  I do not know, I don't give quizzes, and I did not mind, for the same reasons I wrote about alongside the supplemental-text outline.  After everything, I remain myself; nothing will surprise these once-loved, always-fondly-remembered people.   

But after those years, very recently -- maybe in the past 18 months -- things stopped being OK, stopped resembling normal, and went back to being fucked-up -- in different ways, but similar.  Kind of like how a sunflower shoot does not resemble the flower in bloom, but you can see how this gargantuan thing grew in the place you put that little, stripey seed while you were watering + tending + not reading the seed packet super-closely.  Kind of like that.  And there are people who wonder, reasonably, Why did you not employ a gardener?  

Because it all goes like this last bitch, is why.  This new benchmark in our oral history is right up there with the other Greats:  Oh, banging his head during tantrums to break mirrors and windows?  Obvs because you have a new baby or It doesn't matter what he does at home; it only matters that he cannot do it in our clinical setting or It's troubling because he insists on singing Thursdaaaaay's circle-time song on Fridaaaaay.  It is a highlight in a decade of low, low conversations with people who are not paying attention and/or not helping us, or both.

I mean, she was actually pretty weakling-par, which we recognized as soon as (like I said before) we brought the kids in and she turned dolly-dolly-chalkmark insipid.  So, while we knew we were going to have to tell her she was not a good fit -- not least of which because both children had deemed her interactive ministrations completely lame plus also were calling her Dr Bombay because they found her so puerile -- it was funny when she asked us, earnestly, after a long, passive-aggressive, assholey buildup, "So I guess I am puzzled, because [insert a lot of stuff we all 4 told her frankly with our mouths, not some Grand Psychological Insight] and I do not understand why you homeschool."

Of all the excellent reactions from friends indignant on our behalf I and/or we have received when we get to this part of the narrative, the best was Lillo's ("Did you snatch out her eye?  Does she still have an eye?"), with its clear harkening back to the Kill Bill movie, which is always exactly how these lazy-assed crosspatches make me feel -- Bitch, you can stop right there, you don't have a future, when do you want to die, splendid, etc.  There is always a point with all of these "experts" where they say something so fucking stupid that all we can do is boggle, and wonder why the fuck they are saying this to our faces and are they fucking serious and are there not questions they might like to ask first? 

Jesus. 

And it is so typical, right?  I mean, if you know, you know:  all of these "experts" get all bossy and ride their horses down to the shore and boss us onto their freaking boat, assuring us they know the One True Way and we should let them, blahblahlahblah, they pride themselves on their tight ship, their results, their mastery on these waters, etc.  So we get underway and 5 miles out, the blubbering and weeping starts. 

"Oh, this isn't water!  This is not the sea!  This is ... blood?  Is it milk and honey?  Could it be lava?  Green tea?  We have to turn back!  Ohhhhh, whiner-whiner, boo-boo!  Baa-baa!"

Then the four of us peer over the railing & shrug, because whatever it is that is what comes out of the tap at our house.  Call it what you want, this boat is afloat, come on with the come on! 

No, no.  For this endless pool of whiners and weaklings, this is too-too hard.  Over and over.  Then we have to sail the weakling-baby's fucking boat back to shore for him/her.  All the time.  Except for that one speech therapist, and she only made it until she zeroed in on a relevant issue of her purview which did not worry Garçon.  Then he was all done with her, too.  That is what harpoons are for.

I totally want to remember to read Jaws again.   

God, anyhow.  This time, I did not say one word, because what I really was thinking (not helpful) was Are you fucking kidding me?  We've paid you almost $1000 and the best you have is some regurgitation of shit we told you plus also Why don't you send him to school?  Bitch, I can get this kind of impotent, unsubtle counsel from frustrated, angry, know-nothing bitches on the internet.  Do you think this is motherfucking eHow?

Waa-aa-aaay less Beatrix Kiddo, way more Samuel Jackson.  I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker.

So I just kept knitting my 2x2 rib, as if it were the most complicated eyelet lace pattern ever, frowning and holding each stitch up to the light.  Mari waited, and I knitted.  He took a breath, then paused.  I knitted.  I paused in my knitting and looked at him.  I smiled, expectantly, lovingly, before returning to my knitting. 

Mari folded.  Then he broke out his Arvin Sloane's work-voice.  Oooooh, j'adore.  Yes, yes.  He first very softly + patiently explained to her, slowly, that she had made a great leap to the erroneous conclusion that we would in fact, be able to make him go to school.

Dr Bombay went totally rigid, like a deer in headlights.  Ne comprends pas was written all over her lined face.  I knitted, wondering by which methods I would screen our next attempt, if indeed we feel like wasting our time again.  Because this stupid bitch was a total fail. 

Mari went on, still patient and slow, using great detail and a number of specific examples from our son's rich institutional history to explain why he does not go to school.  In my opinion, he went a little bit overboard, since we arrived there planning to tell her good-bye, but whatever.  I was not the one talking. 

At one point in his careful recitation, she made a guttural noise (so out of her depth, again), and when he was finished, after he coasted gently to a full narrative stop, she said, "Oh."

After a long pause, Dr Bombay offered she'd had no idea.  He kindly pointed out that was because she never asked.  My man.

I sat there, relishing her obvious + excellent discomfort for a minute before I pointed out to her, quietly, following my husband's example, the rest of the flaws in her plan:

1. Sending him to school is not an answer.  We do not have a school problem, we have a relationship problem.  Sending him to school against his will does not solve our problem, not only because it says, We deport you now from our richly-textured family life, outlander, but because also it gives him a fresh, fertile ground to make new problems in every direction.  We have been down this road.  School is not Las Vegas.  What happens in school comes right to you, via a conduit flush from a gushing spring of phone calls and parent-teacher meetings during which it is presumed that your home life is the problem anyway.  So, let us just keep it at home, because

2. it is poor stewardship to put a child like Garçon into a classroom where he is going to drain classroom resources from children who want to be there, whose parents want them to be fully-directed.  I pointed out to her, grimly, that if Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris had been homeschooled, we would not even know their names.  Although, as Kowalski pointed out to me, we have all heard of the Menendez Bros.  Well, whatever, maybe we're willing to take it on the chin (in the back of the head?) for the Greater Good. 

I kid about Columbine, but only a little.  Because it is not actually something we do for the Greater Good.  I mean ... that is an abstract concept that is in there somewhere, sure, but the fact is just what I already wrote, what Mari & I know: can't make him; anyhow, have a parenting problem, not a school problem.  I mean, what might be useful is having him move out -- goodbye -- but we can't do that, either, since it is not legal.

Speaking of legal, you know, it feels like the grimmest foreshadowing that the only people, the only experts we have dealt with in a decade who recognize anything, who are helpful + reverent + compassionate,  are experts in the juvenille justice system.  It started way back 4 years ago with the boring chick who came by because my eavesdropping, ear-straining, childless neighbors are fucking douchebags, where the caseworker who finally showed with her appropriate Fourth Amendment credentials was v unimpressed by the realities behind what she disparaged as the allegations of know-nothings.  That went in a different direction into a paperwork problem after I pissed off a different administrator, but whatever -- I was never in trouble for hollering or bicep-gripping. 

Then, the young patrolwoman who came to take the report when he split last month also heard everything I have ever told, but she heard what I was saying for what it is, for what it means in the world, not something we can uselessly attribute to an acronym for continued, useless spending.  The patrol officers who brought him home hours later also jacked him up a little about crimes of passion + how he should understand that discretion can be the better part of valor.  That was before they invited Mari & me to press charges, which I voted down with a tiny gesture not unlike when Ashley Judd's character advises that of Val Kilmer in Heat.  They then talked with him of real consequences, boys' homes, misdemeanors, restitution.  They all three have dropped by since to see what was what and how it is.  Fine. 

Kowalski, a couple of nights ago, asked why we did not send Garçon to military school.  I had to explain to Kowalski that this is not the 80s, old guy.  Military school does not want the loser kids and rejects any more.  Military school wants top dollar to turn out a high-achieving, motivated, college-bound student, like every other private school in America.  Plus which, I am pretty sure that no boarding school would take my kid because of his allergies.  It has made sleepaway camp needlessly difficult to sort out, especially since an accidental exposure to a couple of his allergens will turn him into a rage machine.  (Bad stewardship.  Not fair.)

 

Apparently, Dr Bombay thought we were a couple of homeschooling demagogues -- We don't want our son mingling with! We are controlling the influences! We blahblahblahblah!  I mean, maybe a teensy bit, as far as the maintenance and non-assault of our little Ophelia goes, but if we were so concerned with that kind of perfect environment, we sure the fuck would not have our son & daughter here together, since he is exactly the kind of disruptive prick no one wants on their kid's playground.  

I mean, Fille has got her eyes firmly fixed on what homeschool's flexibility allows her -- she does her work, she meets expectations of time-management and self-care, she applies herself to her obligations and devises productive goals of her own for the rest of  her time.  She has a terrible, internal situation right now where she feels as if she is wrecking the curve & showing off, grinding her brother's head beneath her heel, every time she is just herself.  I fully expect her to take her dance education, her art projects, and her careful documentation to a ballerina boarding-school program in a few years.  We will wish the best for her when she goes.  And we will miss her.

I started out writing (not really having sat down to write any of this, god) that I never meant to write about Garçon here, that it started while lulled into a period of relative ease with him during which parenting him started to resemble regular parenting.  It was nice.  Ice broken, the writing turned in tone as a. things did not stay aloft and b. my despair started to overfill our capacities to chat about it, plus also my willingness, as for the most part, I am sure tired of making my mouth say all the words.   

I do not especially want to write about this here anymore, but having opened it up along the way, I feel a little trapped with his chronicle here, not unlike I feel trapped by him in our real life, like I have given over so much of my power to his rule.  I do not know what to do.  I mean, the next step is clear, but it's a doozy to consent to it and also how many things do we have to agonize over only to have the people be weaklings some more?  Because is that necessary?  For what?  It is never fucking helpful.  So maybe I should just sleep with the Summerhill book under my pillow.   I wish I were kidding. 

And here is the thing that makes me really angry about Dr Bombay's douchiness, and it is important, so I am going to bold it so that even if you lack attention skills and study habits or have never experienced having to read in entireity for content (in case you do, I'm saying), you will see it, for it is important:

We told her from the beginning that we were not feeling antagonistic toward him -- I mean, sure on the inside, but we were willing to squash that with a game face -- that we were not interested in tattling on him for past [whatever].  We told her that we all play a part in this dynamic and what we wanted was to have a professional to assist him in crafting his account and creating a space where he would be free to tell his side of the fucking story, because we want to hear it.  Obvsly he thinks there is a reason to act as he does, so what is it?  Tell.

 So the thing that was so ridiculous is that she was so not-listening and creating this crazy bi-level of nonexistent power in her attention and then, yk, the kids decided they hated her and a great, big 12-year-old boy (12!!) took all of her business cards off of her credenza and drew on every single one of them.  Which was shocking, until the day I realized they both hated her and at least thank God they did not pee anywhere on anything.  Or smear feces.  Jesus, God.

However, in an effort, ok, not to end on a suicidal note, I have some things to offer!  Going back to my nautical metaphor, it is true that after every 3-hour tour, we wind up in a unified position, like our little team is ready to start training for the America's Cup, motherfuckers!  Did you see us?  Did you?!, etc. 

I mean, that is a metaphor, obvsly.  But we are in an anti-Bombay allegiance, with another heaping helping of Fact: Another doctor says, based on what we all know to be an accurate report of your everyday behavior, that there is something wrong with you.  Also, I emerged from my profound, reverbative despondence with the recurring realization that Jesus, God, this kid has never been hired out and we have come so far and that is because of my relentlessness.  But, while I felt really energetic in the beginning of this, mostly,  I just feel sleepy.  But I also want to say that while I regard him as essentially a DIY parenting project, I never feel like I am doing this alone.  You are good people, and if you know, you know.  And if I have not said it, if you have not received yr physical artifact spelling out my regard for you -- thank you. 

I was kind of surprised when I looked over the years for that 5th anniversary post I did last week or whatever to see how many fun times there had been.  It was nice to remember -- for as I recently recited, I could not recall -- and it has been part of my reparative strategy in this helpless time -- Do you remember what Garçon said to you when you were so heartbroken about having the sharkmouth?  It was really the perfect thing, honey, what you said to her, do you remember?    For an example.

Dr. Bombay called a couple of days ago to follow-up & refer.  After I got done making fun of her ("Did yr tummyache go away yet?") I told her we would yes be thinking hard about doing something similar but different, and for which we don't need her administrative gate-pass.  She said, "I don't think that is a good idea."

"Well," I told her, "you're not a big thinker, so you don't get a thinker-vote."  Scha-wing!  Two times in one call!  Heaven!  Applause!  Clapping!    

There is this also just this one little thing.

 
 

He has stopped biting his nails.  This is huge, enormous, and something no one else could do for him.  As a former child-nail-biter and a decade-long chainsmoker I know this is something of an accomplishment.  I will sometimes, while we are sitting around, hold up his hand in front of his face & remind him of this, wonder to him of what else it is he is capable that we have not yet seen.  It is the bellwether of something, but who can say what.  Maybe he is just growing them to better snatch out my eye.

lemon melon

I know, I know.  But things are really busy & what I have time for is a late-July still-life. 

 
 

It reminds me of when the kids were babies -- they must have been one & three -- riding in the back seat, when Garçon sadly handed the watermelon paleta I had given him over to Fifille -- I can't eat this, Fifille, it has lemons in it.  There used to be little bits that burned brighter.

Alex & I were talking a couple of days ago -- so retro to each have the other's voice coming out of our texting device.  I told him I had to go back & write about this kid stuff, but that was like three weeks ago already.  We agreed that, ideally, blogging is just for going forward, man.  Like a shark.  Keep eating, keep moving.  I wish I were an octopus, instead.

Fille is reading Animal Farm, which I am pretty sure is going to take the same shape as Garçon's reading of Old Man & The Sea.  It will seem like a book about animals, chatting.  Like the Arthur show, but with backstabbing.

diamonds. castles. woods. the sea.

 

Weekend.

1. Saturday night was a great night for baseball.  But when we got to our little County Stadium, the crowding was intense!  The excitement was palpable!  Ears open in our 1st-baseline seats for only a few minutes & all was revealed: the farm team directly to the south had two MLB players in rehab at this game.  Sweet.  It really changed the whole landscape of the game, especially when (a) the pitcher with the effed-up elbow reached over & snapped up a low-fly ball from the mound and (b) the shortstop switch-hitter with the strained thumb had the home team's pitcher all wacked-out and afraid to pitch to him.  Obvsly why that dude is not throwing for the Yankees just yet. 
2. Harry Potter was consumed.  I liked it well enough, even as I feel it would have been improved 999,000% by casting Harvey Keitel  in the role of Aberforth Dumbledore.  Yes. 
3. In the ensuing discussions of HP's adaptive fitness I feel like I should have studied for the screening.  It was a long time ago that I read it, you know.  But:  even I remembered that Nagini's death was not so cinematic.  I quite liked the little scene of the Malfoy family stealing away from the castle.  I always felt that Lucius Malfoy's increasing ambivalence was much more boldly-interpreted in the films than the books, even as it was there to be read, certo. 
4. I was totally excited to realize I was about to get to see Helena Bonham Carter playing Hermione pretending to be Bellatrix LeStrange.  We just recently re-screened an episode of Bewitched in which Elizabeth Montgomery plays Samantha pretending to be Serena, not to mention infinite memories of Jeannie's bad, brunette sister, and so I am in love with this twistiness. 
5. The weird thing about the adaptations as they wore on was that I felt like the romance between Ron and Hermione was rendered so unbelievable by virtue of the fact that Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe have such knockout screen chemistry.  Not that this could have been predicted however-many years ago in casting.  Also, the actress who plays the Weasley girlfriend ... see, I can not even think of the character's name, much less the inert young lass who is playing the girl who is supposed to have seized the heart + loins of the Boy Who Lived, plus also I can not remember how I intended to end this sentence, she is so zzzzzzZzzzZzZ in the role, which seems like direction, not her fault, but WHY?

Bits & bobs.

• Fille is going to start her Phase One orthodontic treatment in a couple of months here.  September, I guess.  I mean, they have just announced they are ready to jump now, but I told Fille she did not have to go under until corn season was over, which should pretty much work out. 
• Last week, on our way to Ballet Town, I realized I forgot to pick up our CSA share and could not be both (a) in Ballet Town waiting for the ferrying home and also (b) in our town picking up our veg box.  I told the children of the situation and informed them they would be taking the commuter rail back to our township.  Fille had been the obstacle to this next phase in their independence, but she agreed cheerfully.  They did it, it went perfectly, and now it is a tool in our box.  Two days later, Garçon took the bus home from his guitar lesson.  Great, great + they are pleased & proud.
• After the Harry Potter movie, I nipped into the mall's Anthropologie store for a minute to idle the time waiting for Mari + the kids to get in & out of the Barnes + Noble.  I waited hardly at all, because Mari was so motivated to get me out of a leisurely shop-feel at Anthro.  Ha-ha!  He was not fast enough to keep me from snapping up this perfume plus also falling completely head-over-heels for a planter.  Waking up even these two mornings after, I still feel I must have it.  It is not on their website, boo.   




• This is the final week of ballet's unexpected (+ tiny-bit grueling) summer session. I am trying to figure out how to stay all the freaking guitar lessons all around for a 2-wk break so we can, uh, have a little break. Jonas is easy, but Garçon's instructor frowns upon any kind of breakage in his ministry, which is why we put off starting w him last summer until the fall.  But seriously: summer, come on.  This state is bordered by the ocean.

another day, another updo

I know, some of you are still waiting for yr fullest accounting. Hang in there, bijoux, hum that one Bette Midler song to yourselves. Bisous + watch yr mails/messages. xox

 

make lemonade.

Fille had a lemonade stand with Emily and Allison, Emily's sister.

 

 

There were also Toll House Pan cookies the sisters made and Rice Krispie treats from Fille.  It feels funny to write that, that she is a great big girl who can make her own bake-sale goodies.  They sold out & made $60!  Then they came to our house to eat lunch, play water balloons, and just basically hang around increasing our little-girl inventory by 300%. 

 

We went to see the psychologist today and she said she can not help us.  On the one hand, it was good, because it saved us from having to talk about how we did not think she was a great fit.  On the other, we have taken our son to so very many people in just about the past decade and not one of them has been useful to our family, ever.  Oh, no, that is not true: he had a speech therapist about 5 years ago who worked with him on the TH sound.  That was useful, because at least now he does not sound like a retard while acting like a vandal.  Clapping!

Anyhow, spanking him & withholding food is free anyhow.  Maybe we'll start that.  If I could die, I totally would.  Like, if I were in an accident, there would be no reason for anyone to say, "Whoa, she's really a fighter!"  I would just cave and code.  I might feel better tomorrow.   

I grilled a butterflied leg-of-lamb tonight, but then was too sad to eat it.  So maybe that will cheer me up tomorrow.  Mari said it was really delish.  Obvsly, he is not taking things too hard.  Or he is and so needs to keep up his strength.  Idk.  Ciao.

x4

 

I guess she comes by it honestly.  Nature + nurture & all.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for some progress in this horrid-child situation I have going on with Garçon.  I mean, yk, prob not, it's been so many years already.  Which is the point.

You might know, if you know -- and a bunch of you who would ordinarily know may well be hearing this for the first time (because it was too many words for my actual mouth to get out there) --  that in May we started seeing a family counselor.  It started off just Mari & I, basically laying out the same boring (zzzZZzzzzZzzz) deets we laid out for our stupid pediatrician last year.

Yawn.

That is pretty much where I am with this kid.  Yawwwwww-awwww-awn.  As is, I am sure, everyone who has to hear me complain about my Life as Patty Hearst with him. 

This situation reminds me of every dumb broad I know who married a dude that was a sadist. (Look, I get it: sadists are a good time when you are in that mindfuck of late-late-stage adolescence and you feel uncertain about your parameters when you get away with murder.  Yes.  Liz Phair wrote a whole collection of songs about it and put them on her first album.  But you do not marry a sadist.  You put on yr pants & you go home.)

Nevertheless!  There are ladies who will marry a sadist, even after he has long revealed his sadism.  Then, during their interminable marriage & her unending misery, plus also his obvious, cannibalistic glee, he reframes it as his helpless weakness.  Well, for God's sake!  How can she take steps when he is obviously so fragile?  Then they will stay and complain about his sadism for the next 5, 10, 15 years.  Endlessly + ad nauseum. 

It is fucking boring.  Also, now that I wrote all that down, I realize that there are men who act like that, too.  Jesus.

Sadly, here is my problem:  I can not divorce my son.  I would, if I could.  Well, except the conundrum wherein if I could divorce him, he would be my husband and not my son and I would not divorce him because I would be bound in a different sort of contract, obviously, plus also chose him freely and so would I not know what that meant?  Anyhow, this is probably why you can not divorce your children.

Anyhow, I am just saying, I know, the unremitting reportage about the mechanics and transactions of the relationship -- it is dullsville.  I once listened to someone complain about her husband for almost a decade, and ... when I one time said, "Hey, you know, you say all the time he unfairly complains about this thing that he says that you do, but ... I'm actually going to point out to you how you are actually doing it right where I can see.  I don't care, but he does, and you do."  When I said that, I then never heard from her again.  This is because some people like to complain, obviously.

I do not like to complain.  I am from the American Midwest and I like to do what needs to be done.  Divorcing my wretched child is not a thing I can do -- and I have to say, in the face of this child & his whole situation, over all the years, the only reason I stay with these children is for the sake of my marriage -- but initiating a relationship with someone, a professional, to examine our effed-up dynamic and see where we all put our feet in to play this hokey-pokey of perpetual dissatisfaction in this child is a thing I can do.  After all these long years, we are fossilized in our characters at their worst -- Mari browbeats, I hector + loom, Fille taunts + rejects. So, I found someone and we went.

Here is the thing:  it is a waste of our time.  It is boring, and irrelevant.  I started out in good faith, but now I think she is dull.  When we three met over a period of long weeks, she was charming and relevant.  She seemed to understand our complaints, the dynamic we brought to her, the cultural references we used to explain it (mine is Patty Hearst, mostly).  Things were hopeful.  We were hopeful.

Then, we brought the kids in and she turned insipid.  Last week, we were supposed to play a game which involved talking about going on a dream vacation?  Ok, whatever.  We allowed it, even though the children hate it when people pander, and all four of us would rather not talk about things that are pointless, which is certainly equal amounts of nature and nurture.  It was pointless, and no one was really enthusiastic for her trope. 

That session ended with the three adults going into an adjacent room to talk about our scheduling -- which, again: my calendar is not a secret from the children; WTF is with all the staging and Great+Terrible Oz-style mystery?  While we were there, Garçon pulled out all of her business cards, which were the only paper in the room, I guess, and drew cartoons on the back of each and every one of them.  How can he even be fucking serious with this nonsense?  They were sitting next to a bookshelf full of children's books.  Garçon had himself brought along a book for any boring/waiting parts!

Mari was viciously angry with the child.  Crazily.  I have rarely seen him like that.  I quietly + benevolently and in a martyred way spread my hands out for Dr Kung Fu Pander and said, "This.  This is why we are here.  Now you can see."  Because he is fucking twelve.  If he were four, he would still be in trouble, but if he were four, we would not have left him alone.  Jesus, God.

So today, the children had an appointment with the doctor, just the shorter part of the family.  OK.  Never mind that when I told the children this is what they were doing this morning, they stoically rolled their eyes and quietly pronounced it Completely lame.  Let's let that go.

She had the children for 50 whole minutes, during which time she had them draw.  Say what?

Each child drew a person, a house, a tree, and then whatever they wanted after that.  Then they answered questions about it.  For this, I paid $125.  Does anyone have any idea how much waxing that buys?  Not a lot, actually, like ... it only about covers a full-leg and the tip, plus also the aprés-depilation iced coffee + parking.  But still!  That is a monthly expense we have been forking over weekly!  For art appreciation and improvisational narrative!  Non!  

My children are not retarded, nor pre-verbal!  Whither the conflict resolution!?  The skills-building in accountability?  What in the fuck are we paying this bitch for?  I skated through the obligatory Psych 101 and it was a long time ago, but I am pretty sure not v much was required of we 101 students.  So, perhaps I am unable to grok her great wisdom.  Fine, I can get down with that.   

But, even so, even when we have been there with the children, as a foursome, there has been absolutely no facilitation of communication.  Am I supposed to draw a picture with the children when things get hairy?  Oh, Garçon, if you would not mind getting up from the floor where you are having a great big tantrum because I asked you to participate in your own life, that would be great.  Let's draw a house, a person, and a tree.  Fille, honey, you draw one, too.  Never mind about how we are trapped into stasis by your brother's refusal to move in a forward direction, draw with me!

Like Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest's midnight-scrubbing scene.  Draw with me!  Nothing is clean!

I wanted to remain open, because obviously we do not know what we are doing, but fuck a bunch of that.  I told Mari today what the children reported & he was immediately on the same page as me, saying, "If she is working towards something, she needs to work faster and stop trying to trick them into something, too."

Agreed!  We are meeting with her alone this weekend and I told him, "You handle it, and might I suggest to you that you do so from the beginning.  Don't let me get one heavily-midwestern-inflected word in edgewise."  He already knows that the first thing I will say to her, sweetly, with daft disappoinment and spurious surprise is, Wait, weeee aren't going to get to draw any pictures? 

I mean, there is not any reason to stab her to death smilingly before she even gets a chance to explain.  Jesus Christ.   

You know, even 100 years ago, no one had to deal with a child like Garçon at this age, because by now he would have been eaten by a bear.  Or chewed up in a large piece of industrial machinery.  Or slipped into the fiery mouth of a volcano, with his last words -- I thought you meeeeeeeeeant! Ok, I am boring even myself to death now.  Bisous.

independence

This weekend is all about declaring what we want. 

No, we don't want to come to yr barbecue.  No, thank you, we don't want to see your township's parade.  No, we have our own pool we are avoiding, due to the excessive gaiety, but you have a good time, thanks for calling.  No, I am a little bit like a worrying puppy, in that children with sparklers and drunk people with roman candles freak me out.  Thank you.  Thank you all.

Last I checked, Mari was napping, Garçon is at least not destroying anything, and Fifille is reading the entire Laurence Yep oeuvre.  I am alternating between still knitting, still re-reading Of Human Bondage.  Also, still baseball, obviously. 

 

Ok, so, actually, what my son is purportedly doing is reading from a large stack of biographies I dropped on him last week at the library -- Spielberg, Bill Gates, Jim Henson, Walt Disney.  You read these -- good God, this child, où est mon auréole? -- these life stories of people whose work you know and admire, and you tell me the minute you find the part where someone handed everything to them, where someone said,"Omigosh!  I'm so happy, you were just lying here on yr bed doing nothing and resenting everyone who asked you to do anything!  I wonder if I could prevail upon you to take over this barge of my hard work and steer it into the grand port of success."  Then you can tell me about how your father and I are wrong.  Start reading. 

Right?  I mean, and then of course, I bit my lip, because shit!  There was a Walt Disney bio in there!  Laughing forever, but it was very sanitized and they skipped over the part where he was a cheater and a thief.  Oh, Uncle Walt. 

There is more, with him, always more with him, but for now, yk, as long as he isn't bothering me I am perfectly happy to treat him like the roommate who never pays the gas bill and drinks all the fucking milk without ever replacing it.  Yes.

I did point out to him last week that in his weakness -- parenting catchphrase #9,236,762 If you display your weaknesses, your enemies will exploit them -- he has put himself in a position where anyone can destroy (or break, gobble up, use without permission, etc) absolutely anything in our home and then blame it on him and he wouldn't have a leg to stand on, because no one would believe he had not. 

"Why would they do that?" he wanted to know, very sincerely baffled.  Oh!  Everyone!  He is so young!  And it is so hard to remember that he is a child, when he acts like a monster, but Jesus, God.   

So, I asked him, "Don't you think that ever yr sister might like to have some bad behavior?  And better, to not get into trouble for it?"  I mean, she would never.  Not yet.  I can see her wheels turning, and who could blame her? 

While I could tell he was processing this, I asked him if he remembered the story of Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla -- that there are people who feel v strongly that Edison stole the light bulb from Tesla.  (Mari and I are two; it is one of the things that he overheard me say that made him go, "That girl is completely hot, excuse me.")  He did.  I asked him if he knew how Edison was able to be able to be in a position to steal the light bulb from Tesla. 

"He said he made it and everyone believed it, because everyone knew he could make it," he told me, unselfconsciously.

I affirmed, and underscored that yes, inventing the light bulb was completely within Edison's capacity.  Then I asked him, Would you not rather have the sum of your actions add up to people believing you could obvsly do something amazing than something obvsly wretched? 

They say, in goofy, old Waldorf education, that when the lesson is spread out before the child, your job is to shut it.  So I shut it --even though, I mean, if you have kids, you know, it is so tempting to rattle on & on .. "Blah, blah, blah, integrity, blah blah blah, who you are starts with what you do, blahblahblah."  But I zipped it.  :|

But Mari, who was in the next room, was already texting me, OMIGOD, did you just do that on mommy improv?

Yes.  I parent my face off with this kid, never actually thinking more than idly of that page from Joe Kennedy's book where is the lobotomy lesson.  Où est mon auréole? 

Have a happy birthday, K!  (Shhh! xoxo)