la femme follette

the slip

First off, I am loving this mix at old 8tracks.

It is dark in here, wow. Last winter, I went on a lamp-acquiring spree, which was hard because I like what I like and only that + do not want to overpay or any kind of off-the-rack furniture,if you know what I mean, so it was hard but I was successful. All summer, I felt like everywhere I turned there was a damn lamp in my way -- where I wanted to set the mail, a stack of magazines, a vase of flowers, gah! But now that it is dark at 5:45, they are all turned on and they recede -- the big, lumpy lugs -- into the background.

 

I was talking openly last night with both children about how our life with Garçon mirrored the intense, resentment-incubating self-indulgence of the Wild Things movie.  Only, I said (mostly to her, because he is not my friend), instead of him coming home when he decided he'd had it with all those stinky monsters and their tantrums and their new friends and old friends and boring grudges and playground disputes, and he said, "Oh, I'd rather have a mommy than be a tyrant, I am going home --" Fille interrupted me.

She said, No, he could say, "Oh, I have to go to the bathroom!  Oh!  Now I'm on my ship, sailing away, bye-bye monsters!" And then he would be gone!  She is precocious, my girl!  It was brilliant, like when Romy pretends her shoe fills up with blood. I was so proud of her!  The memories of stealing away from some guy's apartment before dawn and then pretending none of it ever happened when he would finally days or weeks later catch up to me are coded in her DNA! 

Anyhow, I had a chance to talk to my son about his guitar instructor today.  The problem with the guitar instructor is that he is always late, frequently reschedules at the last minute, and will sometimes drop off the planet for a few weeks at a time.  It was not really such a big deal until a couple of months ago, when our schedule turned double-plus inflexible because of the second day of ballet.  Also, Mari & I do not really think it is fair to have Garçon ready himself for a meeting that is as likely to happen as not.  Additionally, for all of his other lassitudes, Garçon has long made a demonstrable commitment to his instrument, practicing energetically for a minimum of 30 minutes every day.

This represents, frankly, time that is being wasted by his instructor's lack of attendance.  Anyhow, this all came up at once -- one card and the house started to fall -- when the instructor called me at 11:50 last Wednesday to tell me he had known all week he would fail to make our 12:30 appointment that very day, and additionally, he was just reflecting on how Thursdays might work better entirely.  Whatever, dude.  

Then, I left him a message that said, "No, Thursday will not work, Tuesday is better, and anyhow let me know when you will come this week, as soon as you can."  I have not heard from him.  Then!  Yesterday!  I left a message that said, "You know, it is difficult for me to convince the child he should work at A+ power when you might not even be here.  I think his work needs to be more data-driven.  Let's talk about how to work this out."  I have not heard back from him.

In his cute, thick way, Garçon had never considered the iniquity of being abandoned by his very own instructor.  Once I started asking him about it -- if he would be willing to switch; if he thought our concerns were valid; if he thought his time would be better spent with a more attentive instructor -- he was amenable and interested in the pursuit of a new employee.  He said, "Right now, it's like buying vitamins and taking them once a month.  It's kind of a waste." 

He is fisty & infuriating, but very clever, that one.

So, I said to him, what would you like me to do?  I can wait for [Our Steady] to call me back to see what he says, or I can find out about someone new while we wait for [Steady] to call us back.  Or, I can just call [Steady] up and tell him he is fired.  What should I do?

He said, first, this 10-year-old boy, "You called him?"  I confirmed that I had, indeed, about this very issue. "Well, Mom, I think you could just find me a more reliable teacher.  Don't you?"  This from the child who cannot read his own books about the Salem witch trials. 

But this child, also like his sister, is speaking my language.  He is ready to move on, just like it never happened.  Superb.  When we got home from our walk, I picked up the phone and made a date with someone new.  It was easy, once I got down to business.  I think that we can get in, check this new guy out, and see what we think before we jump ship or do anything hasty with our Missing Guitar Dude.  No sense rushing into anything.  We can tell the new guy as we leave that we will call him soon.  Maybe it will be true!

happy hloene

 

Last night, we were unfortunately caught up in Ballet Town's Hallowe'en hoopla.  Fille & I dawdled after her class, having dinner at the Uzbeki place on the main drag.  When we came out, it was dark, and down the street we saw ... a throng of people, led by searchlights.  Also, the main drag was lined with spectators.  Holy hell, we have to get out of here!  I told her and we hustled it out.

I had a book to drop off at Ballet Town's library, but when I got to the parking lot behind the library, that it shares with the municipal building, there were cones & a group of bystanders.  I pulled over to the side of the road to get out and information-gather from the natives.

"You can't park there," one of them said. 

"I know that," I said.  "But you are cordoning off my usual parking space.  I have a book to drop off and --"  That was as far as I got before they started piling on with unhelpful suggestions, every one, no one getting to the answer to the question I parked my car to get out & ask.  "Are you ever going to let me talk?"  I asked, with no eyelashes.

After that, I found out that the facing street was not one-way heading on the grim course to Ballet-Town Parade, which was the confirmation I had sought.  Going around the town & coming back on Library Road, I again pulled the car over in front of the (closed) library to dump the book in the drop box.  Some Halloweeners were coming down the street with cats & bumblebees in strollers. 

"You can't park there," one of them said. 

"Why don't you mind your own damn business?!"  is what I asked him.  God, enough, Ballet Town!  Twice each week is enough of you!

 

Fille (sexy ghost!) is on her own tonight, with Mari & her best pals.  Garçon did not get to have Hallowe'en, which is baffling to all of us, but this is what he chooses.  He fell behind on his school work in a battle of wills (with whom we are not exactly sure), and Hallowe'en was at stake.  Well actually, it started out with Astro Boy being at stake, but then came into the week facing Hallowe'en, still with him stonewalling & alternately trying to get himself out of the weeds, and by the time he got down to business last night, he just did not have enough time to complete his work.

He worked somewhat feverishly today, my son, and then at 3ish (our Hallowe'en parade -- park where you feel like it! -- starts at 4) he came to me with a sad + unacceptable attempt at his last two assignments -- one-page wrap-ups of relevant extra-reading .  "This is really the best I can do with this, Mom, I'm serious." 

Mari & I had to explain to him that the truth was that this was the best he could do in the half-hour he had left, and the fact is that if a person is going to wait until the last minute to meet a deadline (never mind that putting me into the last minute for reviewing when I was trying to get my other child out the door is unacceptable, but group lead-time is not a concept we have worked on), they had better make certain they can crank out work that meets the standards in that last minute. 

So, I am home with him while Fille & Mari wind their way back from the farthest reaches of our route.  Then (!!!), Mari told him that if he were to complete his revisions, he would take him out when they returned (spoiler!), but no.  My son is upstairs in his room, right now.  Ok.  Whatever.

This is obviously larger than trick-or-treat, or homeschooling, or whatever.  People are quick to say, "Send him to school!" as the problem manifests itself aroud his schoolwork, but it is not a schooling issue, this is a parenting issue.  It is very trying and I am never sure what to do, or -- this occured to me a couple of days ago, while I was stewing over this latest -- maybe there is nothing to do. 

Much is made of how Fille is all into ballet & we go along, because it is her thing & not ours, but ballet still requires that we do something.  Maybe our job with Garçon is to do nothing.  He does not at all do anything in a way we find logical or sensible or anything.  Mari & I (and Fille, to boot), do not do things the hard way.  We choose what we want, we set the goal, find the most direct route between A to B , get in front of what we can and try to stay loose for the rest.  A. Eyelashes or B. Mind Your Damn Business, it is your choice when you get in our way.  I think that our flexibility is key and also, ironically, the thing we are not using to its best advantage with our son.

But the ballet thing was making me think -- Fille has a thing she wants to do, and it makes us go "???" but we do it for her, because she wants it, it is part of her being -- but again, it requires that we do something.  Drive the car, write the checks, think about performative gender and stereotypes & inhibitions and pervasive cultures!  Fend off stage parents!  Buy tights a lot!  So even though her way is mystifying, the doing & the direction is very familiar.

Our son is not so.  We are trying to sort out a lot lately how much of this is us and how much is him and what to do about it, or if there is anything to do.  We make our expectations very clear and we also are deconstructors and simplifiers and a lot of our previous conflict with our son has been about the fact that our feelings are so hurt because we try to make things clear and easy to achieve with him, but he blows it off, insists on doing his way.  Also, we do not get our way with our son, which is troublesome to us, and also, because we are Doers, we want to find the way to get our way.  Mari and I most certainly relate strongly to the child's will.  Just having to do with him, we feel like as he grows older, the stakes get higher, the things he will lose out on more valuable, but at the same time, he is only 10. 

Also, so what about our way?  Who can say that anything is right about it for our fin de siècle little boy?  Maybe he will develop some interesting + important method we cannot even yet conceive of!  Time travel!  Or something!  But not if he does not make it through the 5th grade.  See?  I am narrow-minded, but I am sorry!  How is this happening?  This child!  

I was talking to a girlfriend of mine the other day -- she has one daughter, who is 30.  I am not the kind of person who pretends that everything is just great, unless I think doing otherwise will bore you to death or give you social poisoning.  So, she asked, and I was halting and a little hesitant, but I told her more or less what was going on this week and how it was relevant to the whole of him, as a piece of it.  She said that we could not do more than we were doing.  So, all we can do is deliver the consequences, but we cannot, like, make him see that the consequences will be so awful before the consequence comes down. 

 

Obviously.  Anyhow.  This is way more intense than I thought it would be.  It is all that wiccan self-reflection shit in the energy of this time, surely.  If you have made it this far, internet, I salute you! 

good enough=good enough

I was representing at an important Bake Sale today.   There is a bake sale now + an auction thingo in the spring.  I am just so grateful that we do not have to fuck around with those little sheets, selling gift wrap and horrible-tasting nuts & seeds that I will go along with anything.  For the auction, I usually knit up something cute, but Bake Saley is not really my area.  Custom cooking makes me resentful, a little. 

I happened to get a load of Becky's Slacker Fudge recipe. Problem solved. 

Start with one pound of creamy peanut butter and a one-pound tub of chocolate frosting.  Do not try to gussy this up by using some organix shiz from the WFM, ok?  Please, you are into deeply bollocksing territory here.  Admit it, and move on.  I used store-brand peanut butter & Betty Crocker frosting. 

Open each tub, remove the foil seals, and microwave each for 20 seconds.  Dump them into a bowl.

 

Mix & mix.

Put the bowl in the microwave for 2 minutes.  Stir & stir.  Keep calm & carry on.

 

Pour the entire mass into a 9x9-inch pan.  Let it cool & firm up.  Wait & wait. 

 

Do not act in haste, it is not tough & crumbly like real fudge.  It is slick & plasticine, like polymer clay.  But then, one neither needs a candy thermometer.

 

I cut the pan v carefully into 24 squares, then finally cut each square into halves before popping both into a regular-sized muffin cup.  

If I were to do it all over again, I would not use a nonstick pan, and instead use glass.  I could have used the razor-sharp scraping utility of a metal spatula to get the mothereffing stuff out of the pan. 

It sold out.  There is no accounting for taste, I will tell you.   

tupelo honey

I am more thrilled than I expected or imagined with the National League's Championship Series so far.  I was particularly stricken by the internal poetry of today's game: it was so much like a regular season game -- a day game!  3 up, 3 down, easy! -- in such regular-season weather in Los Angeles, and then the 8th inning came and swept everyone away.  In the turnaround, I remembered it is the postseason and we are in the Northeast; here, it is fall.

 

Tonight, we had a little bit of a conflict with our Strong-Willed Child.  According to my new paradigm, in the face of his staunch defiance, I genially suggested he take a time out.  He refused, and I pulled up a chair and asked him to have a seat.  He refused again and I called to my husband to open the front door.  Then, I picked him up, which was a mighty surprise to him, and carried him out to the porch.  Then, I came back inside, leaving him outside for his cold, rainy, dark time-out. 

"I'm setting the timer for ten minutes!"  I called over my shoulder, very reasonably, as I walked to the kitchen to do just that. 

Then he got into a rumble with Mari because he banged the screen in the screen door until it separated, and wow, did that make my husband angry.  So, that was between the two of them, and when he writes a weblog you can read about it there. 

Mari had approached the door & found out about the destruction only because he was taking the child's shoes to him.  I was going to let him be on the porch in his sock-feet, for this reason:

After Garçon got chewed out & got his shoes on, he called out, "Don't even try to stop me!"  And then he was gone from the porch.  I was not worried, because it is about 38 degrees outside + raining and he was wearing a t-shirt and some khakis and he has zero stamina (o, but he is all will), so I knew he would be back & soon.  Nevertheless, I felt compelled to find my husband and say to him, "Hey, you dope.  What'd you give the kid his shoes for?  Now he's gone."

I mean, on the heels of Balloon Boy, who can take another crafty son? 

Anyhow, he was out there, lurking in the shadows -- a skill that surely is to serve him well in life.  He returned to the porch and blubbered and then, when his time was up, I went to the door and asked him if he wanted to come in & do the dishes or if he needed more time outside to think about it.  Yes!  This was about a routine household chore!  This is the way in which he is horrible!

He said he would come in & wash the dishes.  Then, as he set about the chore, he sheepishly apologized for his refusal.  It sounds crazy, but it works!  Go, Yankees!

no cowboy

Fille & I went to a party on Saturday, one of those day-into-night affairs, with children & adults running on parallel tracks. I love the family whose party it was, but I am not really much for the partying. I had to sit & chat amiably with a woman who would constantly use the word “urban” to sub in for “poor & non-white,” and the whole thing made me feel skanky and exhausted.

She is a pastor’s wife -- her husband leads a Lutheran congregation -- and my rather strict Catholic upbringing made me feel as if she should behave better (although the whole problem is that Martin Luther could not hack the requirements, right?), and about the time she started in on how she could not let her 9yo take the school bus because it picked up three blocks from her house, and the boulevard led to/from "a ghetto area" two towns over, I just could not take it any more. “Fear is the opposite of faith,” I told her, crossly, which is something I am pretty sure I believe + also act upon, daily. I don’t know. She was mighty tiring.

I wished that Mari had been there. We were all four supposed to go, but then Garçon defied logic & threw out a test of our resolve, the consequence of which was that he could not go, and since he is too young to stay home by himself (especially if he is disgruntled + we are 50 miles away), so I took the baby by myself.

Fille had a great time, fell asleep in their driveway as I was backing out, and I got to drive home in the dark & the rain burning up the miles with a provocative medley of Lyle Lovett, Bill Withers, and Drive-By Truckers on the car stereo. It was nice. I have not had the car out for a run in a good long time. Longer still since I have listened to Decoration Day, which in portions was so relevant as to take my breath away.

We caught up on some real, live teevee when I got home. Well, the internet’s teevee. It is a source of endless amusement for Mari that I can hardly resist any a/v recommendation from Phil Yu, at Angry Asian Man. (He has never, never steered me wrong.) So, I broke a streak of more than a decade without watching fresh, serial teevee to take a gander at the premiere of FlashForward.

It was pretty good, I thought, but now I am left with this wondering What will happen next to these people? Which I kind of cannot take, that I am not able to just pop in the DVD and get the rest of the season under my belt. I think I will be over it soon, anyhow, for the thing I think in equal measure with, “But why didn’t John Cho see anything?” is “Didn’t I see this show already? It was a movie with Sandra Bullock, right?’ Oh, yes.

Oh, and speaking of Phil Yu, man. I would have missed out on the whole story of Annie Le’s murder entirely if not for him. It’s too sad, and then I found out some more last night, via some clicky-making from his blog (I will not link to it, and if you want to go out in the world and clicky-click, do not blame me), and I was just so sad about it all. It was already sad, and then to find out that her mother could not even see her one last time. God.

I had to inform Mari in a despairing tone that the world is not sexy! Then I went off to bed in hideous sweatpants to fret myself to sleep. Too bad, it was kind of an anniversary.

gabble

I am here to confess that this has been my breakfast every day this week.

It has been kind of a rough week.  I mean, "rough." It isn't like I am on Death Row or anything. But the weather has turned so that it is 79 degrees in the hottest part of the day, instead of 97, and I am not longer able to leave the children at the pool.  They wish not to go.  They say, "It's too cold."

Weaklings!  This is the sort of thing an enemy will exploit, this kind of 80-is-too-cold weakness!  What the hell?!  So, anyhow, they are around here, all the livelong day, well, I'll tell you what:  cleaning.  If they want to be here, they can certainly for goddamn sure get the dust bunnies out of the backs of their closets and throw away all the wrinkled & crumpled copies of Ranger Rick all over their third floor.  Ce n’est pas un hôtel, mais non!

That said, 18 degrees is a lot.  Why, it is the difference between a balmy 30 degrees and a just-right 10F.  I am serious. 

One of the things I realized, with the summer in the cast and all, is that the invisible work I do is work.  And it is not just invisible to my family, it is invisible to me.  Meaning that I do not give myself credit for it.  So, lately, I have been doing brave things like: after finishing my brownie breakfast to start upon a morning of paperwork and phone calls and explaining to people why this is not a hotel, I make myself a little snack, something with protein, like a hard-boiled egg and a Ry-Krisp cracker, and then I have a seat and eat it, and then I leaf through the New Yorker for 15 or 20 minutes before I carry on. 

In the past few weeks, it is not unheard of for me to do this kind of thing 3 or 4 times in my 18-hour days.  Today?  I took a little liedown, right at 2:30.  I just laid right down on the sofa and shut my eyes for 25 minutes.  Seriously!  Talk about weaknesses, ready to exploit!  I cannot say what has come over me!

So, anyhow.  Brownies for breakfast, with raspberries.  I eat it all along with a cup of green tea.  Naps in the afternoon. Watch out right in this space, for any mention of the hiring of a pool boy.

Oh!  Also:  remember a couple of weeks ago, I was all maudline about how I was not happy with the blogosphere?  Well, I was not, because at the time, it was all a. people promoting their work, which just reminds me of this disconnect I feel from adult humans with gainful employment, or b. women who mother most of their time in lieu of paid work outside the house who are matchy-matchy liars or total sluts who have no compunction about revealing kind of a bloody-knife-licking kind of psychosis. (hullo, for example, Ayelet Waldman.)

Ok, so I found this lady's delightful weblog, which is jaunty and true -- frenemies!  counterfeit money!  girl crushes and shopping! -- plus also had me laughing until I cried, nodding with total understanding when she reported her delightful evening spying on the baby down the road.  Not even her baby down-the-road, the down-the-road baby of the pal she was visiting.  I myself might be crushed-out. 

Mari and I have a next-door baby.  She cries a lot.  I am not kidding when I report that I wake up at least twice a week -- What the heck? Is the baby crying?  I thought I was dreaming ... wait, we don't have a baby, wait ... what?  Oh, yeah, the baby neighbor, zzZzzzZzzzzzz

Her mother -- in her response to the email I sent that said, "God, that baby is EPIC today, I would be happy to take her out strollin' if you'd like a little break" -- told me that she has just "discovered her voice and is talking"  and that is a fine attitude, but holy moly, if that is true, then this baby has nothing nice to say, I promise.  Her mother is going to need a lot of rests. 

first things first

Fille was gone today, at a playdate the length of a workday, eating Swedish Fish & watching SpongeBob with her awesomest pal.  As far as I can tell, my son spent the afternoon voluntarily contemplating the error of his misdirection.  I made a cake from beets.  With beets, maybe, is more accurate, but anyhow.  I have no comment, except to report that all beets have been used up in the endeavor.

Then I got busy with a wagonload of Etsy shopping, which was all for stuff I had been meaning to acquire to beautify our life in meaningful ways, etc, but I cannot usually be bothered to sit down & pick + choose and etc.  I succumbed to a mighty 4-strand rose quartz bracelet, a total impulse buy that fumbled its way across my path.  I have been wanting a bracelet for some time, but the last occasion I had to linger over them at a shop, Fifille said, "You have a bracelet tattoo, why do you want a bracelet?"  At the time, it seemed a reasonable question, but since then, eh.

This evening, I spent a little time assembling this at the old 8tracks, a paean to my American childhood in the 70s, with parents who were total party animals that ran in a crowd that all had basements remodeled with wet bars & hi-fis that had speakers facing outside for the backyard in summer.  After we raced around catching fireflies, we would sit as quietly as we could, not even daring to slap at mosquitoes, creeping around in the shadows of the yard -- edging between the margin of the horsehoe pit where our fathers were, and the patios where our moms were, in their halter-necked maxidresses and turquoise jewelry -- so that we could hear everything our parents had to say.  Everyone's father was in law enforcement; there was a lot to overhear.  Fille is a grownup-conversation-listener and I sympathize, but she has to develop a method of stealth, honestly.    

 

Tomorrow, I see the orthopedist.  I do not feel hopeful.  At the same time, I do not know how much of the stiffness I am having is from 6 weeks of immobilization and also the attendant wasting of my right leg.  At at this point I do not care so much, except I cannot drive, and that is weeks away, since my range of motion is about 10 degrees in either direction. 

Walking is great, though.  I am so agile on crutches that if I am not back on two feet very soon, I am going to NYC on two sticks.  It is that good.  My biggest problem is going too fast.  If I get going at a good clip, and the crutches get hung up behind me ... it is the cruelest demo of physics in the land.

So, in that way, I hope I can get free of the things before I kill myself, but otherwise, o, how I laugh at all the times over the winter I fretted about picking up the pace on my upper-body routine.  Hahaha.  I realized today probably for the first time in my life I have a shot at a pull-up.  !!!  I sent the Sadist a little note to the gym last week letting him know that his one-legged deadlifts have never been more appreciated.

beet it

I have let us all fall behind on beet consumption, which we can only stand in small doses, so that we now have to face a mountain of them.  Ugh.

My son's ghastly constitution is foremost in my mind.  He actually informed me yesterday that he thought that Mari, Fille and I should do all the upkeep & forward-moving around the house so that he could have fun.  Is he insane?  This seems like the part where the newsmagazine cameras will come to my house after he is arrested for lurid sociopathic crimes & I will have to talk about this moment in which I knew and I tried to discipline him, but after a while, I just decided it would never make a difference and so I prayed instead.

Maybe he will grow up to be a serial killer.  If so, I will be sure to leave the house to him, just give it to him, so that the neighbors will finally get their comeuppance, if not as victims themselves, as people who lived next door to someone who filled up the cavernous house with cadavers.  Then they will know why I was so screamy.  Nosy fucking felchers.

I would really love to be able to spend about 2 hours at the gym, just marching grimly on the Gauntlet for the length of a feature film, but with my immoblizing infirmity obviously I am unable.  Maybe he will spontaneously combust, humanly spontaneously combust, as I once saw as a child on That's Incredible!  That would solve just about everything, spit-spot.

accounted

 

Last week, all we did was cure sunburn & shop on the internet, but this week, boy-o!

• I harvested lemon balm, started process of making tincture.
• I made new chore charts with the children heavily invested in content and their graphical design, which I feel increases the likelihood they will interface with it & get the work done, for the love of God.
• Introduced The Addams Family to the children.  Creepy!  Kooky!
• Listened to this song 12,389,476,237 times at the behest of my sweet daughter, who is so very interested in Madonna, undoubtedly because I introduced her as the World's Richest Ballet Schoolgirl.  Ha.
  
  
  Madonna - New Music - More Music Videos
  
  
• Saw a long-lost neighborhood pal at the pool, which was a refreshment.
• Visited with a non-lost old friend, who was sweet enough to marshall the children's forces to get our trash out to the curb.
• We started on our bird project, finishing the sculptures.
  
  
  
• Fille passed her deep-water test at the pool, which means she can play in the diving well with her pals.
• Also, Fille made jello popsicles.

The other interesting & time-consuming thing that happened this week was that I got into confrontation with neighbors meddling in my parenting, which, jesus christ, go home, people.  Or, in their case, It is upsetting to hear you yell at him, he is a child, and I was a child, and because I have not had children myself, I have not been forced to move past a psychic childhood, meow meow meow, blahblahblah. Shut up & get an iPod, because that is your problem, not mine.

Besides counseling them to invest in something they could stuff into their ears, or maybe just their mouths, I explained to them that while it is true that parents are bound to a minimum duty of care, and I believe bystanders are ethically obligated to intervene if it is not being met, the indisputable fact is that I meet it, I surpass it, and if I want to scream at my son when he chooses to defy instruction after instruction, well, that is my business. Screaming, at the point at which he participates fully, my son, in engendering a climate of bad feelings and zero respect, well ... it is the tool I am choosing to use, and in the aggregate, it does not diminish the infrastructure of my fulfillment. 

It is the tool, actually, which Garçon chooses to be used against him, since after living with me as his mother for a decade he knows that expectations are clear and easy to meet and cheerfully parsed into smaller assignments.  For my son, this is not good enough.  What he really wants is to balk & dawdle and sulk for so long that we run out of time & it becomes a burden for the next day.  The fuck if I know where he gets such a dumb idea, since I have always & ever meant what I said, and always + ever delivered consequences as detailed.

Whenever he chooses to defy me over and over and over in the same area for most of a week, and then regarding one task for all of one afternoon, there is much in the way of top-of-lungs shrieking.  Oh, there are checkpoints in the road, I point to the mile markers along the way, and despite these promises and reminders -- also encouragements and warnings -- the final outcome is always a recitation of the inventory of his offenses + the editorial input of my grave dismay.

I feel this is a reasonable lesson for a child to have:  when you push against someone constantly, they will eventually lose their temper in whatever way they do so.  Screaming out the narrative of infractions leading up to the point where the screaming started is mine.  It is quite thorough and I am extraordinarily loud about it.

Is it perfect?  Probably not, but am I human?  Yes, and it is no one's business to tell me that my parenting falls short of their ideals.  I mean, what nerve!  That is between me & my husband & my children.  Parenting happens inside of a family, and it has its own context and weight and lexicon, which is meaningful to the people who live inside that home.  There are multiple dynamics and ways to interact -- I react to Garçon not in the same way I react to Fille, they respond to redirections & instructions differently, Mari handles things differently from the ways in which I do (although not by much, not with our infuriating son), and the children each advocate for themselves differently, with each other, with their father, or with me. 

A lot of this is cultural. In the East, as much as we can see, there is much more indulgence of children expressing themselves & running the house. Frankly, they are somewhat bratty. Mari & I are from the Midwest, and children are not leading the way of the house. Some of it. The rest is that I do not like people getting in my business, under the auspices of "helping," when really they just want to boss & judge. My middle finger is not broken. In some words spoken this week to an old pal which he then rebroadcast in his milieu, "I am not bossable."

When I was a young woman, 27, with 6-month-old Garçon, I was in the crowded elevator  of a medical office building.  He & I were on our way to see his pediatrician for a well-baby check & I had walked from our apartment with him riding in his sling on my hip.  Babies who ride in pouches strapped to their moms benefit mightily from her body heat, so he was dressed lightly, it was in the high 50s, it was fall in Washington, DC.  I was dressed cozily, but sparingly, to accommodate the burden of shlepping a 20-lb child whom I was wearing swathed in an additional layer of fabric.  He and I were both wearing hats.

While we were riding in the elevator -- I had since entering the building removed his hat -- one of the women asked me why he "wasn't dressed."  I politely answered that he was warm enough, since I was quite warm from my brisk walk, so warming him, and he seemed comfortable. 

The women conferred with each other, "But he isn't wearing anything at his throat."  I ignored them and faced forward, watching the numbers light up, aware of everyone else stealthily watching this inquiry. 

The woman then had the nerve to repeat herself, "Miss, why isn't he wearing a scarf?"

I could have outlined for her all the reasons that led me to my decision, all the resources I consulted along the way, the advice I had sought from people I respected or hired, the thermodynamics of youth, the relative perception of weather and how my husband & I wanted our son to not think 32 degrees was the end of the world, like all the softies not from New England, the Midwest, or Siberia.  I chose not to.

I turned to stare and then hissed at her, "Because I am his mother and you are not."  She shrank back and everyone pretended not to look.  "Does that answer your question," I asked.  She said nothing in response and I said, "Good." 

Honestly, people.  Mind your business.  Get your own kids and then do whatever you want.

do it for Johnny

Oh, my baby's shoulders used to be so beautiful.

They are resting today in our makeshift sunburn ward.  Chagrined by the pain & consequences of their carelessness, they rather glumly offered that they would like to stay home from the pool today to recover their skin.  I tend to overtreat everything anyhow (when Fille got her ears pierced, I banned all sugars and made her take a nap every day for 6 weeks, "so she could heal"), so am glad they want to lie around & listen to audio books (Mrs Piggle Wiggle's Farm) & put icy compresses on each other just so. 

I am grievously annoyed by this. How am I supposed to run an infirmary on two sticks and one foot?  Anyhow, this is like being in some kind of MASH unit, the way everything is kind of balanced in the room & all the ice for the compresses has been brought up in a cooler.  By one of the patients!  This is no way to get well!  For any of us!  What kind of infirmary makes you fix yr own lunch?  I feel like we have to draw lots to see who can rest next!

gratia plena

Our children are on a long leash.  I do not know if I would describe them using the au courant term free-range kids, but they are definitely less hamstrung than their peers.  I think a lot of this is because we have more time, because of our domestic dynamic -- more agrarian in style than post-industrial -- where we have the luxury of time with them for homekeeping and the other tasks of salary-earning support.  They are right within 10 yards of me nearly all the time, which gives me clarity in assessing their strengths and readinesses for independence.  Also, the things they are allowed to do independently mirror things they have been doing all along.  It is like independence training.  Small steps.

This summer has been a huge change, maybe not as baby-steppy-intro as I would have liked, because of my brokenness.  This will be the summer they remember, whether as good or bad, time will only tell.  For example:  today they both got a bad sunburn while at the pool.  Bad.  I mean, in my opinion, it is not the world's worst sunburn, but I am not the one lying wanly on the fold-out sofa with icy compresses on my back. 

How did they get this very first sunburn?  Well!  I told them this morning to get themselves ready for the pool & also do not forget sunscreen.  They did not, but they each failed to ask the other to do their back and so their shoulders are not well.  Burned.  They will definitely remember it and are unlikely to ever make this error again.  Is time to live & learn, babies.

Garçon is cooking!  He has long been aching to cook, and I just could not.  While I am happy to engage the Socratic method homeschool all the livelong day, cooking is too, uh, at once technical and also boring to me.  Or something.  Trying to oversee the child cooking, just, ugh.  Some of the conflict comes from him not wanting to be corrected and me not wanting him to get hurt.  Then, reasonably, comes the point in the face-off where he postures that if I know so much, I should just do it myself, and I of course say FINE, because who has been doing it all this time anyhow?  I am never happy with the way these afternoons end, and knew something would have to happen to bust up the dynamic.  Or, just bust up my ankle, har har. 

So, today, it was his job to remove a baking sheet from the oven, turn the vegetable patties, then return it to the 400-degree oven.  He somehow found himself (I was not in the kitchen) juggling a half sheet pan in one hand and a spatula in the other, in front of the hot, open oven, and burned his thumb.  Oh, well.  He assures me he will elect more carefully next time.  The funny thing is that had I been in the kitchen, I would have said, "First things first!" and he would have grumbled and I would have complained, and status quo and anyhow, the burn on his little thumb has been majorly upstaged by the sunburn.

I can not detail on the interwebs for just anyone to see without a trace the things the children have been doing out-of-doors, the privileges and accountability they have been granted -- exciting things!  Important things!  Things none of their friends get to do!  Things about which Mari & I have said, "Will you two be comfortable doing [this] alone?"  Every time it is something they have been doing all along right alongside of us, so they know how it goes, but now they will have the challenge of doing it while managing being by themselves in the world.  And their faces go quiet & nervous before they agree, hesitantly, and then they leave together, cautiously confident (and always hand-in-hand, like Hansel & Gretel) before returning all LOOK AT WE DID IT!  OH WOW!

Mari and I would be more excited if we were not in the back of our minds afraid that some meddlesome know-it-all would call the authorities because in America, children must be endlessly supervised by a parent or nanny or school administrator within arms' reach at all times until one day they are given a drivers' license.  It seems so silly. 

The point is this:  no one in the family wanted to see the third stupid Ice Age movie, except my sweet boy.  We were sad to tell him that really, we just ... ugh.  No.  He came back a little while later, "Mom, do you think that I could go see it by myself?"  Oh, um, och.  Uh ... no?  I don't know.  Um.  Ask me later.  Again, ok?

Today, I was lying around at the pool after my attempt at a suitable working out (AquaJogging round the diving well for one hour is not any kind of replacement for my usual grueling sorties, broken foot or not) and thinking about the burn from cooking & all their little errands and how much my little boy very much wants to see that blasted 3-D movie, and in a theatre we know quite well and in our neighborhood, in fact, and I want him to be able to see it, if only his sister wanted to see it, also, they could go together and stay together...

What came to me of course (of course!) was Frank O'Hara's delightfully nervy and daring and sharp, "Ave Maria," which of course starts plaintively, Mothers of America/let your kids go to the movies! and ends with don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice/ and the family breaks up/ and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set/ seeing/ movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young.

I have long  wanted to love the poem for its shocking verve, but was at the same time never really sure of what to think of it!  Now that I am here where it is relevant, it makes me laugh and also surprises me that it makes me say, "Yes!"  Mari scoffed, because of all the poem says in the middle, and pointed out, "You don't let Garçon use the men's room by himself." But the poem does not say I should let him go to the men's room! It says "go to the movies" and that is what he wants to do! Convenient, that, and I say yes! Now is the time! Always with parenting him, not Fille, but always him, where to go next always feels sudden to me, but also always certain & sure.  Like falling from a bike.

cinema. cereal.

I was complaining the other day that Easy Rider made no sense to me.  Surely it is because I am too young.  I know that recently I was mapping out for my husband ("mapping out" is an overstatement, he is not stupid, but I cannot think of a lesser term) why Kids Today do not grok, and moreover are horrified by, Heathers.  ("Columbine," I said to him.  "Sea change.") 

Anyhow, the point is that my Pilates trainer has a son who is just 18, who I see frequently because the studio is in their home.  He always seems nice and deferential, but something was always not-quite-aligned, and then the very last time he and I encountered each other, I realized Omigod, he hears the bamp-chicka music when he sees me!  Ahahahaha.  I'm old enough to be his mother!  Ahahahahahaha!

Then I was thinking about how funny & ridiculous that was, but then also not, because he does not see me as old enough to be his mother, even though I am twice his age, because his mother is 20 years older than I am.  All his friends' mothers, too, surely.  Then, then, I was thinking of how in a few years, The Graduate will be somewhat puzzling -- at least in the Mid-Atlantic states, since it seems the kids today have parents who are about 60 already when they graduate from high school.  So, yeah.  Wild! 

Also, so many from the 20th-century of entertainment are just falling down dead!  Karl Malden!  Michael Jackson!  Farrah Fawcett!  Fred Talaveras!  Ed McMahon! I wonder who will be next, for time marches on.  (If you were ever on The Love Boat, watch out!)

My own son is catching on and growing up and maybe someday soon will be very politely ogling acquaintances of mine many years his senior.  Right now, I would just appreciate him marching on, which is a skill we are marshalling, this ability to follow instructions without a lot of cheeky backtalk and hairsplitting. 

His disobedience reminds me of the scene from The Incredibles, when Elastigirl is all "DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW," and Violet is all, "But you said that I would know better than you what we should do in an emergency, so I am going to TALK AND TALK AND DEFY YOU AND KNOW BETTER THAN YOU UNTIL THE HELICOPTER GETS HIT." It is not that we are being attacked by missles, mais non, but of course I am also not reneging on house rules. I am nothing if not a model of consistency in parenting. Hence, the shouting and maternal resentment. Honestly.

Oh, children are exhausting.  Good god.

But, now Garçon can make granola, and that is why we have decided to let him live here a little bit longer.

For a long time I searched for an acceptable granola recipe.  Oh, plenty of them were acceptable for homemade granola, but none of them were good.  I wanted to make granola at home like the stuff I bought in the store, but not like the stuff I bought in the store, because it was not homemade.  (I am aware of the fact that the sentence prior makes me seem like a goddamn lunatic.)

I wanted a granola that was sweet and toasty, a little clumpy, and also fatty, without being greasy.  Kind of like Cracker Jack, but wholesome, like hippie chicks might feed their kids for breakfast.  I used everyone's recipe, from all of my books -- Mark Bittman, Nigella Lawson, Mollie Katzen, Joy of Cooking -- I tried recipes from the internet pointed out by girlfriends, and while every batch of every product was surely edible, it was never what I wanted.

The last thing I did before I rode my bicycle to my destruction was make a batch of granola from Alton Brown's recipe, more or less, which I had long known about, but had not used, for how many disappointments must I bear?  I noticed, though, sifting through stuff on my desk last month (before my crash, I was very summertime-busy for a major reörg/redesign of our home), that there was not any toasting of the grains and nuts prior to the mixing & the baking.

I think I might have come to this, eventually -- the not-toasting -- on my own, if I had any tolerance for playing mad scientist in the kitchen, which I do not.  Or, I might have come to it in a fit of refusing-makework pique (because there is enough to do!).  Not toasting makes perfect sense for turning out the product I sought, though not for one reason I can articulate.

After one hour, it turned out very close to what I had always wanted, and I left it out to cool and rode off to crash my bicycle.

If the recipe were accurate in its estimation of time, my ankle & foot would be whole today.  (I would just fuck it up some other, less-convenient time, surely.) Within 5 minutes after I left, it was pouring down rain, and surely would have taken the car to the farmers' market. If the recipe were accurate in its estimation of time, my son would not have had the challenge of granola put to him.

It is a perfect recipe for a baby-learner in the kitchen, for it is just opening the right bags of ingredients and measuring them out.  The baking part is perfect-novice stuff, too.  Opening and closing the oven to take out the sheets and stir the cereal gives good practice in standing clear and making a habit of arming oneself with oven mitts.  A 250-degree oven is hot enough to burn, but not the worst burn ever, and also is not so furnace-of-hell punishing to stand over and reach into.  If the worst should happen -- he should burn himself, or have carelessness sliding the sheets in and out -- the upset of a tray full of cereal is not the worst cleanup this house has seen. 

Granola, for teaching a 10-year-old to cook.
(adapted ever-so-slightly from the recipe of  Alton Brown)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Combine 3 cups rolled oats, 1 cup slivered almonds, 1 cup cashews, and 3/4 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut with 6 tablespoons evaporated cane juice.

Whisk together 6 tablespoons maple syrup and 1/4 cup coconut oil.

Add oats & nuts to syrup & oil.  Mix and mix.

Pour onto a half sheet pan lined with parchment.  Stir every 20 minutes or so for about an hour, or, as Mari hates to see any recipe read, cook till done. 

Remove from oven; layer in one cup of dried fruit/fruit pieces.  (We like cherries.) 

If you are a grownup person, you can throw in a handful of chocolate chips before pouring on the milk.  Explain nothing.

voodoo woman

This may be what I was dreaming of when I decided to keep them home for the summer.  It may be, in fact, a dream from when I found out I was pregnant with a second child. 

In Charlotte's Web, there are passages describing sweetnesses between Avery & Fern; not an overt partnership like these two have, but something similarly companionable and team-spirited. As a girl, I read them wistfully, and now at least they have this.

I remembered in the shower that I was the bad-behavior story from ballet's observation this year.  Shocking, I know.  In the locker room, after class, I was keeping Fille on task & chattering with a mother of one of Fille's classmates from a prior year.  I excused myself from her for one second and called out to a classmate from Fille's current class.  "Great leaping, Louise!"  I gave her a thumbs-up.  "Good job!"

Fille said, when I was done, "Was I a great leaper?" 

"Your leaping was good, sure," I said to her, matter-of-factly.  "But Louise!  Did you see her?"

"No, I didn't see her."

"Too bad, honey.  You missed some great leaping!"

Now, the woman with whom I had been talking, a former dancer herself, did not seem to think this was at all strange.  The rest of the moms in the locker room could barely conceal their disbelief.  Whatever.  Were they blind?  Louise was the best leaper in the room!  My kid?  She was kind of a sucky leaper, I would have thought, except that a. what do I know about ballet and b. she was about on par with the other girls in the class.  But Louise was something special, leapwise. 

I have planted every plant and seed and transplanted seedling that needs to be planted and since then it has been raining steadily, for which I am glad.  This year there are zucchini in the front yard again and about 10 borage plants on our teeny lot all around.  Please, bees!

I am really sad about Koko Taylor dying.  80 seems too young, particularly for a super-duper badass like her. There is the loss of her, what she represents of my hometown -- it feels rather like terrorists drove a plane into the Carbide & Carbon building -- and also, there is the sadness for the people who will be deprived of her excellence going forward. People in the world who had yet to see her perform!

I saw her perform over & over, but only in Chicago -- where the chances of her singing attended by Buddy Guy on the guitar and in the pipes were increased mightily -- so I cannot say how she was received in other cities, but we all loved her at home.  Personally, "Nitty Gritty," and "Little Mixed Up," added for me a great & sentimental depth to old Kowalski's excellent & epic day-and-night serenading & blues-harp blowing, and "Wang Dang Doodle" was the first grownup song little three-year-old Garçon knew. 

Well, "knew."  Instead of Razor-Toting Jim, it was raisins, toads & Jim, and Abyssinian Ned, it was rabbits, zinnias & Ed, but we all knew what he meant.  Somehow Butcher-Knife-Toting Annie hit him clear as a bell, and he realized the importance of knocking out the windows & kicking down the doors until daylight, having a heck of a time in a melee, and o, I was so pleased, my little guy.

buttery

 

Last April, for National Poetry Month, I featured one of my favorites, “Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death,” which is genius, genius, brilliant, brilliant, and exactly the kind of poem I love.  In December, I received an email from the poet, Christopher Kennedy.  Evidently the version I typed in, from the 2004 AWP-panel handout, was different from subsequent revisions and a stanza had gone lost until I (unknowingly) hosted its resurrection.

What is significant about this exchange is that the minute I got an email from Kennedy writing about his reunion with his prior revision, I immediately went scrambling through the internets to get back to the weblog post where I affixed the poem.  I knew there was some amount of damage to assess & control, because I knew I had written frankly about my appreciation of his countenance.  I was quite relieved to find that at least I had refrained from using the word “beefcake.” 

This is a very good example of the kind of trouble I can get into with my eyelashes, the avoidance of such trouble and mixup was a little bit behind my oath to forswear sweet talk for the duration of this last Lenten season.  Only a little, though.  I mostly I find that people do not take offense at flattery, particularly if it is sincere.  The potential for confusion is there, but easily deflected by my forward, girlish glee, as opposed to furtive, childish backpedaling.

The point is none of this, but anyway that I have been thinking of Kennedy's fittingly-titled poem, The Genius, endlessly, what since I do not love my son anymore and the feeling seems to be mutual, more or less.  When did your mother stop loving you?  Was it when you were ten?  This is where they are formed, the hard & insoluble nuggets of meanness, and I have to remember there are two sides to each story. 

I want to some day -- when I am thinking about poetics -- examine how very many poems get me in their third stanza.  I know that my own work tends to have something akin to a bridge right about then, but ... well, no just thinking right now about poems I find myself murmuring to myself, no, it is just a coincidence that the nuggets of meanness are to me as relevant as sympathy being mistaken for love, which is also a good reason to curtail sweet talk in this confusing, mixed-up world.  

Anyhow, make the clicky.  The Genius, by Christopher Kennedy.  My columns are too narrow to present it properly on this page, but it is not long to load or anything.  You might take as long as you like, for it is mighty swell. 

Kennedy is a genius and also quite loaded with what is politely referred to as charisma.  He has three books of forthrightly grim prose poetry – Nietzsche’s Horse, Trouble With The Machine, and Encouragement for a Man Falling to his Death.   A fourth, Ennui Prophet, is due in 2011, I have read.

While this year was awful for the monthlong mix tape of poetry -- I mean, when people look back at 2009, they will say, "She was borne aloft by Frank O'Hara, Paul Violi, and Christopher Kennedy!  And she watched Heathers five times in the first quarter alone!"  -- I have been very mix-tape productive at old 8tracks.  Starting with what about Kay and moving along through all the rest.

Most recently I have patched together a little something to salve against the pain of sons and their heartbreak proficiency. Garçon is some kind of heartbreaking prodigy, because my other girlfriends with animals for sons have grownup-men teenagers. At the moment, for me, it really boils down to the perfect balm of BB & Lucille going on about the thrill being gone. Yes. That is my narrative, for now.

cabbage patch

It has been so warm here the past few days.  On the other hand, instead of whining, "meeeeowwww, so hooooooot!" I just have been thinking, "Well, this is three days in a row I have not worn long underwear."  But anyhow. 

I am still in love with the ranunculus.

This one looks like you could pull a baby out of it.

I know a 10yo baby I wouldn't mind shoving right in there.  It is my wedding anniversary today, but all I can think of is how unlikable our son is.  Soon I will be wishing I had never met this man!  It is that bad!  When did your mother stop loving you?  Was it when you were 10?

this picture is only seven words

  

ham
with a face &
cartoon hairdo

Alex, who I sometimes let influence me a little, was on me about Nat'l Poetry Month & my own poetry, not just the appreciation of others' work.  To that end (never mind that I hate poetry), I was going to zip through a whole 10-minute poem (if anyone can remember those) but then got distracted by an image from Boogie Nights zooming into my head for some reason & now I cannot possibly write a love note to my turn-of-the-century little boy who is now ten years old. 

Any old way, when I choose incongruous words to describe anything (ham w face, cartoon hairdo), it is because they are the right ones to string along.  I just know they are because there is nothing else I could possibly say.  Like in the serendipity of writing poems or the wacky improvisation of parenting, it is just plain. 

I did once write a wacky-o post-postmodern poem about parenting, Alex.  I mean, I was writing about Kowalski (as always) and took a left turn and when I was done, there it was. 

Poem #7

The truth of tomorrow
is oxygen and sugar,
drunk from the cup of
snails come down from
California. Bridges of
crickets took rides on a
bus to drop away. Exactly
the instructions if
Saturn's condition is reborn.

The gap of your right
mind is always
a big blunder, filled
with mercury, pounds
of gold, tractors, homes,
the Chicago Seven.
The presence of the
contents of truth will
heighten their yield. Your
heart will see the glory of
the coming of the Lord. Can you
see? Look into the light,
look along the horizon, into
the very idea that runs along
behind him. You are heroic, you
are speeding, you are a summer reborn.

Being Fille's mother is not quite so quick & clear to me.  This is why my Garçon is my favorite child.

art-o-matic

When I was in school, I did a final project for a photography class that was a lot of skulking around the Art Institute of Chicago for some long time, snapping photos of people inadvertently imitating the art in the fore- or background of the frame. 

Blurry kids, Monet back.  I was about to delete the file and then remembered, then loved.

It was yesterday when the four of us headed on across the river to the old Philadelphia Museum of Art, because free or not, one can only look at the nation's preëminent collection of photography so many times. 

Ok, there were 5,374,983 people there to see the Cézanne thingy, which is about 5,074,980 too many for me to deal with.  I almost could not deal with it, honestly.  I just ... when Chickie & I were at MoMA a couple of months ago, the joint was jumping because of the van Gogh exhibit that was there.  I had never seen an art museum so packed with people and then when we sallied into the van Gogh exhibit itself, we were both astonished that so many people could be allowed into a gallery.  For insurance reasons, firstly, but also, fire codes? 

The thing that exasperated Chickie was everyone was clustered 16 wide and 6 deep around The Starry Night, which, hello?  If ever you did a bong hit, it was under that poster, christ.  Plus, it is part of MoMA's permanent collection. Meanwhile, you could swing a leopard around in the room where Starry Night over the Rhone was mounted.  That painting is a. knee-weakening and b. generally in Paris.  Chickie is an easygoing sort; I do not think I have ever seen him so fuming.  While I saw his point, I was totally all, Hey, more room for us, dude, my god, would you look at this?

Similarly, well, anyhow.  zzZzZzZzzzz.  Suffice it to say that yesterday was a little frustrating.  It happens all the time.  I was also reminded of when I went to the Spanish Painting exhibition at the Guggenheim with Fille & Algren and everyone was clusterfucking around all those Dalí, which zzzZzzZzz, and the three of us were free to frolic around with all the room in the world looking at the sweetest Picasso india-inked Passion miniatures.  Not to mention the awesomeness (the fucking badassness) of the Fontana show.

Any old way so, yesterday it seemed like a nightmare, but once we got past the entry-hall bottleneck -- shepharded by my awesome husband -- the galleries were pretty empty, surprisingly.  Then, once you make it past European art to the Modern Art Collection, forget about it.  It is the definition of desolate. 

PMA has a mighty mighty representation of Berlin-Köln-Paris-NYC Dadaist hijinks in their permanent collection and only a small part of it on view.  Hissssssss.     

While I was still fearful & trembling from the crowdedness of getting into the place, I lost the baby. I mean, "lost" and "baby," but she had been with me -- Mari & Garçon elsewhere in the wing -- then she was not.

This girl.

forsythia forthwith

The children are pretty convinced I have lost my mind because I went out last night, armed with my garden shears, and came back with a large grocery bag filled with some old sticks. Then I set about arranging them all around the house, using up all the mid-century pottery I own for the task.  They are too sweet to say anything, but I can tell they have given up on their high-spirited, lunatic mother. 

Obvsly, they are forsythia branches, clipped from what my on-the-corner neighbor refuses to prune back so people either have to walk in the street or get whapped in the face.  I did not have to go all out in the night, under a cover of darkness, dressed in black with charcoal smudges on my face. (Exaggerating a wee bit for fun.)  I only did it like that because in the absence of sweet talking, I was craving a little tension. 

Speaking of tension & the children, which I just was, the children are vegetarian, which I have written about before.  So, when they ask me (and they have, many times) about the fish oil capsules that go into their mouth every day, I have always lied to them.

Oh, no.  Don't be silly.  It doesn't come from fish, it's like ... does baby oil come from babies?  Rubbish.  Now come on, take it & then eat breakfast.

This is not the shrewd asked-and-answered tactic exemplified in a story from Kowalski's own childhood.  As a child, he went to Mother Kowalski and asked, "Ma, what's VD?"  (I guess at that time, in the 60s there were televised PSAs for avoiding such?)  She very brilliantly, gloriously, and heroically replied, "Venereal disease.  Do you want some ice cream?"  No, it is no longer like that, I am aware.  I am a liar.

In the interim years, this has progressed, under further scrutiny, to me saying that fish oil is like baby oil in that it is something that exists naturally for the purvey of fish.  Kind of like deer pawing the earth for salt ... you know?

Today, I might have folded, when Fillette came to me (and it is always Fillette, with the questions, her) very specifically, holding the bottle in her hand, and pointing to the ingredient label, reading aloud, "It says, oil from anchovies and sardines, Mommy." 

I swear upon everything holy to me that I might have confessed right there, but for that I have been reading this Nina Planck book and while I find it to have the kind of hysterical urgency I do not really wish to countenance -- I am so weary of nutritional emergencies, honestly.  Since the day it was revealed that my son & I are allergic to just about everything on the planet, any kind of intellectual parsing of diet just seems so luxurious & spoilt & silly -- she does spend a lot of time going on about the necessity of DHA, which is easily gotten from fish sources and which -- she says -- can not be manufactured in the body from vegetarian sources: the flax, the borage, etc.

Whatever.  Again, I do not know if it is actually true (plus, she is a milk apologist, and also, no time for, well, whatever), but what I read was convincing enough for me to hold the line this morning.  By telling the kind of magnificent lie that I hope will be forgiven later by the children just by virtue of its spectacular, balls-out, improvisational creativity. 

Well, no ... it's that you know, fish get the oil for their bodies, you know?

(Child is not going for this.  Face scrunchy, very suspicious.)

And so it is found, you know ... where they are.  So, like, that is oil they got from where there were anchovies & sardines.

(Still scrunchy.)

Like, the schools of fish?  That travel?  And they know which fish they are, and where they were going to use the oils --

"Oh!"  she says, "I get it!"

Yeah, it's just a totally natural product. 

I am hoping that the miracle of the sticks blooming with little yellow flowers, as well as my other prolific aptitudes and endowments, will bolster my credibility while I take a little time to research the biochemical credibility of this DHA hysteria.  Although it occurs to me while typing this that I could just put fish-oil capsules into a different EFA-providing supplement's bottle.  Eureka!  Mother Kowalski, be mine! 

hale. hearts.

This "snowy" day on the slopes is already a distant memory.  Thank you to the Facebook's photos, the children now know why the weather here in the midatlantic region fails to impress Mari & me.  Garçon, who in this might be displaying the development of a bit of homeland resilience, said, "Well, even if it wasn't a real snowstorm, at least we get to go sledding."  Excellent.  My guy.

Speaking of the Facebook & distant memories (which I just was), I was extracted from a situation in our perilous modern world.  Yes!  The guy with the gorgeous daughters dropped me from his Faceworld.  Good, because there had been way too many people asking why he was on my list of Facebook People.  Over and over in NYC, when the conversation headed to the old gang once again in constant, all-day, daily contact, the very first thing that happened was a hot breath sucked in and a hiss, "Hey!  Why is _______ ________ on yr Facebook?"

I would explain I had no idea why they were asking.  Then, we would get over the hump wherein people who know me well, have known me long, have to establish that I am not using "why" and its companion, "I don't know" as a surrogate for "I do not want to talk to you about that right now."  Finally, they would realize I was all the way serious & then clam right up.  It was making me quite cross that no one would tell me.  All I knew about this guy was that I dated him & then I did not.  Did we get secretly married?  Did we give a daughter up for adoption?  Had I been in a coma?  

I let it go -- just as I had months ago let go of the pressure I felt to know who he was more fully; I sent him a message early in December that said, essentially, "no idea; keep on rocking" -- but started to be more concerned when the Israeli went as far as to say, "I gotta say I'm not surprised to hear you deleted his file.  But you're going to remember, and when you do, you're going to wish he wasn't hanging around watching video of yr kids' hijinks."

Um, ok, great.  So somehow, I unknowingly confirmed a Facebook request from Joseph Mengele?  Was this it?  Joe Mengele, MD, the guy I dated when I was 19 for an unmemorable amount of time?  I mean, I never thought Joe Mengele would be my type,  but the way everyone was acting about it ...

I should have been suspicious from the start, months ago when I realized we had once dated, but could not remember totally so well (ok, at all) who he was.  I just could not get it to line up, the way it should, everything seemed underwater and/or with static on the line.  I called on the phone & probed Streaky to get the goods.  There was definitely something about the way Streaky was so cagey, but for the first, Streaky is notorious for his discretion.  Additionally, Streaky was the one who introduced me to old Joe Mengele, and I do recall as much as when it ended, I rather blamed him a little (maybe quite a bit) for getting me into this mess.  But that is about Streaky and me, not so much about old Unmemorable Mengele, so the mystery persisted.

Since November, a pebble in my shoe, this who the fuck is this guy? & the why can I not remember?  Gah!  One night two months ago, I was idly looking at a photo of his daughter and it was all on the tip of memory's tongue, in this extremely visceral way, and then the second I turned to stare, *poooof* it was gone. 

Not so on Sunday, when Mari and I were sitting around reading the newspaper.  A photo of a shirtless Michael Phelps sneaked into my peripheral vision and it reminded me to remember something, like the tickle before a sneeze ... buy Wheaties?  Find my swin fins?  Wait ... Holy shit & whoooosh.  Joe Mengele had that body when he was about that age, much like he had that gaze of his little girl's, but since I was no longer watching so intently to uncover the truth, the secrets of my memory were revealed in a steady and tidy stream of internal .avi files. 

It was all very swooshy and sudden, but also uninteresting, very ordinary, boilerplate kind of stuff.  One thing I remembered --  one unbearable sweetness that had come to me apropos of nothing in the grocery store before Christmas that I had been able to neither reconcile with a. the guy time pronounced wholly forgettable nor b. the Joe Mengele of my pals' collective memory -- came round in its contextual entirety and I was stunned again.  How had this been lost to the whateveritis and then eclipsed by the substance of whomever came later?  (The interminable orbit of first a pediatric plastic surgeon & then old Kowalski, I had presumed.  Not so, as it turns out.)

"Zomigawd!"  I banged my teacup down on the table.  Mari looked up from horrid old Deborah Solomon, eyebrow raised.  "It's _______ ________," I told him.  "I can remember everything.  You know what I remember?  He was a Collector!" 

Mari scoffed at this.  I have a highly-developed Collector-Detector.  I explained to him, reminded him, remembered aloud all at once:  My god,  _______ ________ said something to me within minutes of our introduction that let on that he was a Collector.  But, that I had known his very excellent, super-charismatic brother years before, and also it was Streaky who remanded me to his nominal supervision.  It was a party where I was unintentionally cockblocking Streaky, and when he complained, I complained back, "You made me come here and I don't know anyone else!"  ______ ________ was at about four o'clock and hasty introductions were promptly made.  Streaky and the brother were good men, spectacular in character, both of them, and _______ ________ slid by on their creds. 

No wonder all I could remember about the end was being so very infuriated.  "No wonder," Mari offered, "that no one wanted to be the one to remind you."  Egads.  At least it was over by the time I realized, for the Israeli's prediction would have surely come true, and lo, sadness would have reigned over the Faceworld for me.  As it is, I am happy that it happened with him, before I stumbled along into the new year with a confusion of benign face/name recognition for something like goodwill, at the least.  If not for him, I would have a bunch of dull (and also unmemorable) girls from my high school hanging around. 

So another time, again, once again, magically (!!!) I am just like Marion Ravenwood!  Forces more than myself swirled around, I was oblivious, eyes closed, the foxy archaeologist(s) worried for both (all) of us and in the stead of me, and in the end we found ourselves alone, a little rope-burned & tousled by the wind, with just piles of important relics -- baby photos, family recipes, inside jokes, candy hearts.  Purrfect.  So fine.  Awesome.  Ask me.  Always.  All mine.  

Let's kiss! 

crowded

Garçon came this morning to pile up in the bed with Mari & I, the cat, his sister.  In the last year, what used to be the growth spurt harbinger of Second Breakfast had turned to Morning Nap.  They get up, get dressed, and lie back down again. But not in their bed, oh, no.  Morning Nap must take place in the Big Bed, preferably with me lying with them.  Which, fuck that; I have stuff to do.

He complained of not feeling well, about which I was sympathetic but uninterested.  But it is nearly 10 and there he still lies, snoring.  Mari said, "Like Goldilocks."  I think he meant Rip Van Winkle. 

que lo que aun no fue

The children are a little bit obsessed with Shakira right now, one song in particular on repeat hours every day in the playroom.  It is ok with me.  I prefer others of her songs, but I do like old M. Jean whenever we can get him.

Recent events, which include the Shakira-obsessed children plus a five-hour playlist of Bossa Nova at RDB, and a slight return of conversational Italian have just depressed me into the realization that I am completely incomprehensible in four languages.  Writing in English is my only salvation and so now emails for everyone forever. 

I have actually been thinking about this, growing crankier every day about it, since we met up with Meli & her sweet girl in June.  Before that, I had been thinking of it while considering v strongly that I was just losing my mind.  On the trip, sweet girl and I had a real oh-I-feel-you moment about being the born-bilingual and feeling the say-what stupid.  I do not know.

Alors, the  knitting.

Falick/Nicholas Stay-on Booties in Koigu Kersti #503 on 7s for a 6-month-old baby.  I adapted the pattern a little, shortening the sides to 14 rows instead of 20, and leaving the rest of the pattern as written.  The hat is the Hello, Yarn Gnomey Hat in Mirasol Peru Sulka -- a gorgeous wool/alpaca/silk bulky weight -- on 10.5s and I cast on 55 stitches instead of 50.  

Nine is funny.  After a tiring morning of listening to the frustration of growing up, growing older, assertions and rejections and individuations, I will walk past the playroom and find him crammed in the doorway, curled up like a toddler & playing with Legos.  It was not the Legos, but the one-shoe-on squat that left me slain.

Also, he is always blurry.  Stay still.  So I can see you.  Because we are almost out of time.   

 

from the city of kings

Yes, they were lima beans.  Lima beans are situated in the pod in a funny way that made the word "bean" as used to mean "baby" make sense.

They are so wastefully packaged, though.  All that detritus of the pod!  The bowl holding the shelled beans barely holds 10 ounces.  Fillette & I shared them, they were xx-delicious.

Oh, man.  Yesterday, where to start ...

Ten years ago, more or less to the date, I found out I was having a baby, a boy who once born would most closely resemble a ham with a face and a cartoon hairdo.  I rarely write about him here; people who know other of my work have remarked that if you read there, you would hardly know I have a daughter, but in this space, it barely registers I have a son. 

Suffice it to say (and I have said, have written) that I feel my relationship with him more on the inside than I do the mothering of Fillette. She has her ways, though, I say of her, "She could not be the firstborn, so she made sure to leave a scar."  But everything about her is very external, very on-the-job training, very scarring.  With Garçon, I have always felt this parenting, like a heartbeat, like a thing I can hold in my hand.  

Parenting is like customer service.  When everything is fine, it is easy to be good at it, but when the shit goes fucking sideways ... you have to step up, there is no other way.  When Garçon was three years old, things started to not be fine.  The story is long, I dare not start ranting, but I can summarize carefully. 

In the beginning, Mari wanted to do what we were told.  I did not want to do what we were told.  I very rarely want to do what I am told.  In many ways, this was the dynamic of our marriage at the time, a lot of polarity.  In the middle, I relented, very reluctantly, and let the evaluators recommended by our pediatricians take an analysis of him.  Not only were they a. wrong and b. not useful with their analysis, but our son, my baby, stopped talking to us for most of a year after this incursion.  Which had been the well-documented source of my apprehension & resistance. 

Garçon is the way that he is because he is that way.  It fails to impress no one that a 3yo child stopped talking to his family.  Just went mute with rage at our betrayal.  Mari threw up his hands and vowed to never railroad me again on this subject and I, while not satisfied with any of this, was at least relieved to know this would not happen again.  I applied myself, I read big books written for special education professionals, I sought counsel from people who knew, lots of people that I could trust, who knew about which they spoke.  I apologized to him, one day, for letting those people inspect him.  He warmed slowly over the next 5 months.  We have a lot of really good friends, and in this matter of our son, I have not been too shy for the letting. 

boundlessly

So, I was never optimistic about the success of the green bean project. I think there are no green beans, but I have seen the tiny sweet flowers. Today it occurred to me that this is the Where's Waldo of the garden, yes?  Green vines, green beans.

Genius. Actually, I do not care enough about the endeavor to get out there and go blind looking for beans. Perhaps they will soon become large enough to be seen? I have no idea. Next year, I will grow plants with yellow or purple fruit. I sort of hate when the garden makes me feel dumb.

The CSA box today made me feel not exactly dumb, but I have in the face of its massive glory retreated from thinking that the dearth of beans, zucchini, and cucumbers and plus the relative lack of tomatoes -- this all in our personal garden -- is somehow weather-related, as this is clearly not the case for other local food-growers. Mari says that this is all a sign of the pending apocalypse, holding up as his best evidence our eggplant, which are fruiting miraculously, or as he points out is said in common vernacular, as if there is no tomorrow.  Sure, honey, whatever.

(The CSA pickup was a box + a bag.)

semiosis

I have been fooling around on the 8tracks a little.  Browsing the main of the offerings reminds me that very many people do not understand the delicate science of music mixing.  The songs need a relationship to one another more compelling than Oh, I like all these.  This is how a 3yo gets dressed. 

To be fair, I have seen a great number of 3-year-olds in fabulous and gutsy combinations, but typically, they are somewhat stripes + dots, textures askew, wrong boots, etc.  The music needs thematic synergy or artistic complement, or, say, all reliant on the cowbell or a banshee's wail; sometimes a jarring and gutsy polarity can work.  Something.  Time signature, even.  But there are a lot of really nicely-arranged offerings.  This one here is sah-weet, seamless and kinetic.  A good music mix should take a person by surprise and be over way too soon, like the luge. 

Also, I have been in the Twitter.  Eh.  It is a funny little widget, because I so love the text messaging, am totally into the faux-retro silliness of it, as if it is something from my actual adolescence for which I am nostalgic and guiltily indulging.  I have dragged all these grownup people, many friends, into texting relationships with me. 

Basically, it consists of them being willing & responsive text exchangers and then next time I am on the line or in their view, they say, "Come on with this.  Are we 12?"   Then I collapse with hilarity.  The Israeli will not text.  He says that it is counter-revolutionary, a wireless telegraph.  ("Thing is, now, we have a telephone," he says.  I laugh and laugh because he is the funniest of all.) Twitter is like texting to the whole world.  It is so excellently over-the-top and fin de siècle in its modish whimsy.   

Anyhow, about the Twitter:  I don't know.  At first, I thought this wasn't love, but then the kids came home from camp and my son started to try to kill me.  I am interested in the concept of micro-blogging, mostly because I tend to be something of a macro-blogger.  I do not always have the time to sit down and compose something that says everything I wish for it to say (which is generally an embarrassing amount of too much), but at the same time I do not want this space to go so long.  Also, I think that condensing myself is ... it is a restraint I do like to play with, mostly because I am so florid.  I have had a tendency to be somewhat grim on a short slate, but there is something so wacky about texting that it is a little electric. 

As for example, the whole anti-hero of mine-working, low-rise-wearing Ponytail Mom would have remained a part of my rich interior self-reference on any other day.  I have not yet decided if that is for the better.  Additionally, I have recently faced up to the fact that people are reading this guy and I might be hiding a little behind some meta-tastic texterism while I kind of work that out.

(God, talk about macro-blogging.  Blahblahblah.)

 

This operation makes me sick, frankly.  Not a bug, a worm.  Not a worm, a worm with legs.  Then it goes all catatonic and then it gets all mummified and on the inside turns to goo and it is just the grossest thing ever!  Gross!  I am a girl from a town where the river was filled with the runoff of slaughter and I do not care.  But this butterfly endeavor!  YUK!  It is more gross than I can believe.

This operation makes me sick, also.  My son is more than can be believed some days and I get it, I know, he is 9, ok, but he would be enough to drive Richard Gere to take a job in a Chinese prison sometimes.  This was one of those days.  In his own words, he "made a mountain out of a molehill," and at its apex smashed a set of vintage Pyrex bowls.  My own words mostly started with the letter f.  

Before he smashed the bowls, it was pretty much under control, as the term holds weight in the prison-riot sense.  But then after that, there was nothing left for me to do but take the confiscated belongings of his, the privilege of which had been at issue, and drive over them with my car.  Yes.  My neighbor (also a mom), who saw the whole thing, except for the part where he ran in and smashed the bowls (and when the F-word seriously commenced in about every permutation), said that she would have just dropped him off at the police station. 

I think that sometimes he could do with a nice turn in the nice, institutional public school facility, but I know that would actually be my washing my hands of what is with him not so much a tutorial responsibility, but a parenting imperative.  It would then open the door to a whole handwashing facility -- a carwash of handwashing, even -- which I am pretty sure would end with him in a nice institutional penal facility in about 10 years. 

Be that as it may, whatever.  When I was a young girl and going out with Kowalski, I could never fathom how it was that the woman I thought of as his long-suffering mother could have him as her favorite child, when she had so many from whom to pick.  Lately, I find myself convinced that maybe the best I can hope for is a son who after the Navy and a nickel in a federal pen, moves close enough to home to visit me every month or so, lend a hand with anything big, but is gainfully employed, lives in his own house and if I ever need to visit him, he cleans up real nice, and puts away his weed.  I mean suddenly it all makes sense to me, and does not any more look so grim.  It rather looks like a perfect outcome, even though the process is with this also more gross than I can believe. 

tulip birthdays

Garçon's birthday has come and gone and now my sweet little baby is nine.  I remember when they handed him to me in the hospital, all ten and one-half pounds of him, and he was like a little ham with a face and a cartoon hairdo.  I looked him over and handed him back.  As with everyone I have ever loved madly, in our first meeting I was not entirely impressed.  He is my favorite, in so many ways; of the 2 children, he is most familiar to me.  Mothering him is what I was born to do, the purpose for everything leading up to him. Fillette requires that I grow with her, which is a formidable challenge for the rest of my life, but makes me tired and peevish, even as she has wooed me into the ranks of her considerable fan base over the last 7 years.                              

Both children had an ugly cake.  I know that I have a very lazy attitude about baking and birthday cakes, but jesus christ these cakes were ugly.  Also, not delicious, though the rest of my family liked them, proving that there is no accounting for taste.  I did not make the same ugly cake twice.  I baked for each child an ugly & terrible-tasting cake.  Nigella!  You!!

Mari got the child a brace and bit for his gift.  I did not know what this was.  It sounded like something of which I might have availed myself in my girlhood, for a Saturday-into-Sunday kind of lark with the right fellow, a latex dress, and a lot of good liquor.  In reality it is a kind of manual drill for Garçon to use in his next woodworking efforts.  Garçon has already hammered together an excellent workbench down in our basement.

(Our basement is centenarian-plus and is totally grody.  It is dry, at least, but I swear someone is buried down there.)

When I was a little girl, my (s)mother's idea to wake me for school was to bang my door open and switch on the light.  I have all my life been photophobic so that this was like the torture of the martyrs as far I was concerned.  Never again has anyone been so cruel.  There was one guy who would sit on the edge of our bed in the mornings and sort of pin me while coaxing me with about a million tiny kisses.  This reveille was my favorite and best, not to mention the method by which I now in this life have always awakened my children.  Anyhow, today is the day he was born and I would bet he had a cartoon hairdo, too.

Happy birthday, guy.  Many happy returns to you. 

transition

Garçon's new guitar came late this afternoon.  His first guitar was a silly little thing I picked up on a whim, a kid-sized piece, something nicer than a toy, perfect to see if he would take an interest.  So it seems that in the last six months, he has spent quite a lot of time being interested.  His instructor told me we should grade him up to something in a 3/4 size.  Sure thing.  I ordered Fender's Squier MC-1 Classical.

It is so pretty.  I can barely breathe around it.  The rosette kills me.  Never fly on a small aircraft, my baby. 

stitch and bitch

I knitted some little fingerless mitts from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting over the ... weekend!  I like the idea of that book much more than I have actually knitted anything from it, though I have been feeling much more knitty confident lately about abrupting actual patterns and their technical instructions in order to get what I want instead of just writing my own pattern based on an idea using the simple techniques I already know.  Well, and my technical knowhow is expanding necessarily as I go along.

Anyhow, I do not like them.  I mean, whatever.  They are fine.  But I would have liked them to be longer on the wrist edge.  They were fast, about 4 hours for the two and that includes a. distracted knitting and b. knitting the first one on black needles.  Dumb.  Dumb!!  I'll just keep tugging on them until they get longer on the wrist edge.  I used a worsted weight wool/alpaca blend from Nashua.

Yesterday I stopped by the LYS near the children's afterschool program and had a go at Agressive Knitting Chick who works there.  She wanted to have a unsolicited discussion about gauge.  These people.  I mean, I know there are people who always use the yarn used with the pattern in the book.  I know there are and go with god, little knitters, but I cannot.  It is hard for me to describe what I am after when I decide on fiber or whatever, but I want what I want.  I can feel it. 

In this case, I wanted to use Debbie Bliss's Baby Cashmerino to knit the legwarmers in Weekend Knitting.  Largely because the color was just exactly right.  AKC came up to me in an accosting way and told me I could nevah use that yarn because it would never be the same.  Well, what?  And why are you talking to me?  I mean, these are legwarmers for Fillette for her dancing endeavors.  I wanted them to be serious and also year-roundish (she currently does not study in the summer, but I pre-emptively rue the day) 

AKC was very concerned on my behalf about the product of the Falick pattern and the Baby Cash.  I could tell that AKC has never never frankensteined a pattern in her life, mostly because when she said, "this knits at a gauge of 25st/in and the pattern calls for 18st/in."  I said, "Um, on 3s?  I plan to use 6s or 7s?"  In the end, I did not feel like the microfiber (of which Baby Cash is 15 or 18%) issue anyhow, because it is a great deal spongier than I felt I could predict, although this is hardly the only pair of legwarmers I see myself ever knitting for my tiny dancer.  So, I ditched the Baby Cash for an xf merino with a label from Sublime (though I suspect it is all milled by Rowan.  Rowan is like the Anhauser-Busch of yarn). 

While still holding the Baby Cash, I did have this very satisfying exchange with know-it-all AKC:

Me:  well, I don't see what you mean that the gauge will not be the same; this yarn has the same specs as the yarn in the book.

[I frown at the yarn specs in the book -- 145yds/2oz]

AKC:  [pertly] Fifty grams is one and three-quarter ounces.

Me:  [unable to suppress an eyeroll]  Cha, I know.  [more frowning]  That means the equivalent yardage for a 50g ball is ... one ... one hundred twenty ... seven?  Point ... seven?  Five-seven?  Is that right?  [AKC shrugs]  Well, that's too bad for you, huh?

I actually wasn't sure about the .757, I just was being an asshole.  Hahaha.  Actually, I wouldn't swear to those numbers at all, because math in my head, but just from eyeballing it falls out between 115 and 128, most definitely.

Alex, I wanted to use y0ur line:  This is why no one loves you.  But maybe that would fall within your moratoria for 2008?  I must disagree on one thing regarding customer service, because it is my favorite complaint:  Fuck a bunch of self motherfucking checkout.  If I wanted to be a cashier, I would get a job as one.  Also, the very least a company can do is have someone available to take my money and thank me!  The very least! 

There is not an advantage for me to ring my own purchases, all it does is save the company on their labor costs and what do I get in return?  Heckled by the person whose job it is to assist.  Fuck it.  I do not care about standing on line, that is what the tabloid magazines are for.  Also, the knitting of tiny things like socks, mitts, and legwarmers.      

exhibit a

Wednesday it "snowed," which is to say that there was something in the air, but what landed is not even enough to bother scraping from my car's windshield.  This is why a car is equipped with a windshield wiper.  Whatever.  While it snowed, Fillette and Garçon crowed and wished and hoped for "real snow," which has entered their lexicon as our children.  Whenever they complain about the "cold" or exclaim over the "snow," I vow to take them to Siberia.  They used to be afraid of it, but lately they get excited.  The thing is, Mari does not want to go to Siberia.  "It's cold there," he says. 

The funny difference between he and I is that he does not miss the weather back home.  He scoffs at the simulacrum of winter here, but at the same time he is grateful that he does not have to haul out his cojones and face weather well below 0 for a quarter of the year.  This is why every winter I am wracked by a tubercular homesickness and he just steps around me where I am prostrate with longing so he can cheerfully get into the car and enjoy the driving off without scraping.  He cannot fathom that I would want it to be 5 degrees below 0 just for old times sake.  Not to mention -40 just for a lark -- just in case we go soft. 

We just straightened this out, he and I, because Fillette was expressing a wish to learn ice skating.  I told her that it was not possible.  Mari interrupted and pointed out the indoor ice rink on campus.  I stared, speechless.  Surely I have driven past it a million times and never once equated the Indoor Ice Rink Building with, uh, ice skating.  Because, I explained to him, that is for hockey and also, Olympians, obviously. He laughed at me, while I sat there, stubbornly trying to reconcile "indoor" with "ice skating."  It seemed pitiful to me.  Much as an indoor swimming pool must seem to people from Southern California.   

I explained to my deprived child my life on ice skates.  When I was a girl, growing up not so far away from where her father was a boy, I went ice skating nearly every short afternoon all winter long with an assortment of cousins and neighbors and pals.  The park near my house then, very much like the park near her house now, had a large depression in its landscape.  The fabulous Chicago Park District filled it with water every year and we skated, all the time.  This was in the late 1970s, when even young children in big cities were allowed to go outside and play without the smothering of constant caregiving. 

I was as old then as Garçon is now, and he is barely allowed to play in front of the house with his sister.  Not because I think it is unsafe, because I do not.  They live here.  It is perfectly appropriate.  They are not the heir and heiress to a vast ketchup fortune or anything.  The problem is that the culture says that children must be smothered by my constant vigilance every minute of every day.  So, it is a good thing that the ice skating is indoors where one needs to pay admission, for her father can take her.  Indoor ice skating would certainly break my heart.  Plus, I still think it is pathetic. 

In the area of burden of constant supervision, there was a heinie-showing incident last week at Fillette's afterschool program.  I sure do long for the days when age-appropriate developmental sex play used to mean a box of condoms, a latex dress, an innocent affect, & a fifth of Wild Turkey.  Life was so simple then.  Now there has to be handwringing.  Parenting is so difficult, not for the snap decisions I have to make.  I handled that fine, even though she made her confession while I was trying to read the Sunday magazine section (unfair!  so unfair!) and have a cup of tea.  I could not have been less prepared, unless it had been Garçon, really.  In her words:

Mama, last week?  When I was in the bathroom at [Coyote Ugly]?  My friend [Exhibitionist], showed me her butt.

[I do not hit the ceiling, but instead have spurious reaction of raising one eyebrow while not looking up from newspaper, so she goes on, gathering steam.]

Then she said I had to show me her butt back, I mean show her my butt back.  I told her it was bad behavior, but she said, uh, she told me that no one would find out and I wouldn't get into trouble, so I did.

Then I had to say something.  That is my least favorite part of parenting, the part where the child is waiting and I have to say something. No staging area!  Also, I was minding my own business, reading the newspaper.  Go talk to your father!  I mean!  I settled for saying her name in that way that mothers have, that Garçon imitates so excellently when she is on her last chance with him, all the syllables clipped off and the last long vowel taking a whole breath to get out.  She tucked her head down, "I know, I know!  I am sorry!!"

God.  Anyhow, she got a calm chatter from me about how she already knows that the least she can do to keep safe is to keep her self to herself.  Plus, "no one will find out" is the biggest flag that waves to warn of big trouble ahead.  Also, that she is at the start of a very long road of telling her friends "no" to things that she knows are bad behavior.  Last, that I know it is hard to say no to friends, that it takes great courage, but if she is brave enough to confess bad behavior to her newspaper-reading (!!) mother, that she is way brave enough to say no to her friends, for god's sake.

Her consequence was simple and direct: she could not attend her program for a week.  It was the same consequence -- albeit a longer sentence -- with the same explanation -- children who cannot take care of themselves do not get to be by themselves -- she had for the clothes-on offense of sunburning herself with delinquent sunscreen application at camp last summer.  I did not feel like I was overreacting.  My whole thing about this was to keep it simple.  Upbeat!  Sex-positive!  Which was not my midwestern nor catholic childhood experience at all.

This is why although things are good in my own home, I may be a little rolly inside.  I feel all feeling-y because yesterday, while picking up Garçon, I mentioned to the program director that there was a little heinie-showing incident.  She asked me with who and I said, obliquely, waving it away, "Just girls.  In the bathroom."  But when she asked me who a second time, I caved and gave up the name.  I have no experience in this arena of dealing with administrator types, I tell myself, I told myself.  But a cursory glance at any of my behavior with other "administrators" and "experts" even in the recent past reveals that to be a pretty fat lie.  I ratted the kid out. 

After we left last night, I heard the program director calling the girl's name across the hallway.  I felt so bad.  Because I really want to believe -- I really do believe -- that this incident is not a big deal.  I think that the issue with Fillette is not about heinies, but about her being able to resist the considerable lure of peers.  The complementarity of my children is thus: Garçon wants to please no one, at the expense of himself, and Fillette wants to please everyone, at the expense of herself.  I am much more worried about her long-term resistance to peer pressure than any kind of showing her butt.  This incident was hardly made about bodies at all, except for the larger issues around safety and secretkeeping. 

I have a terrible feeling that this child's mother is not going to see this in the same way.  I am trying so hard to keep my upbringing out of my children's life, but I think I just served it up to someone else's.  This is one of the great misgivings of parenting I think that people without children have -- this idea that one raises their own children, in a deeply-personalized fashion, and no one else's children are any of their concern.  Which is complete bullshit.  Parenting operates within a culture, just like all the rest.  Mari and I have opted out of so much -- institutional schooling, television programming, toys that get on my nerves -- and still, we get hamstrung and caught up by ballet and ten hours a week in a recreational afterschool program.  I can no sooner say that no one else's children affect my parenting choices or my children or my life than I can walk down the street sneezing on people and not expect it to influence my lifetime rate of contusions received.

But whatever.  Judging from the reactions we get on the regular, Mari and I are at the far reaches of still-civilized parenting, verging on the feral.  We let our children call us by our first names.  !!!  So, I guess Ratted-Out Child will have to bloom where she is planted.  I did, once.  I do wish the weather were cold enough to be purgative.  Then I wouldn't even need snow, no.  Just a nice dry day's high in the low teens would suffice.  But!  I am still less homesick than I typically am in these conditions, inside and out.  It might be time to go to the gym, anyhow.  Finally. 

          

puerto rican girls. dying to meetcha.

This trick-or-treating dress-up kidstuff is so boring to me this year.  I just want them to be old enough to hang out and have a witchy little new year with me.  We found a dentist who will buy their candy for $1 per pound.  Thank god they are into money this year, because they are on it.  I confiscate half of it every year anyway, then they can't eat most of the rest.  Allergies! 

I am not one to scrapbook other people's material, but Meli put this out where I could see it today and it made me laugh until I cried. 

I am perfectly aware of the implicit sexiness of Fillette's Halloween costume -- dressing her like a grown-up goth --  but I refuse to get involved in some kind of prissery over how she wants to costume.  I can't really do anything about its perceived bullshit sexiness, since the fact is since so many supermodels and other icons of glamour have the bodies of 6-year-olds. so it doesn't matter what she wears.

She is frequently sexy in grubby old clothes, because she is a beautiful girl with a culturally-idolized, pre-pubescent body in an America that sexualizes children in a way we will never ever be able to come back from.  So, I am trying to keep her covered & not stigmatize her by having a lot to say about it with pursed lips.  I am having a hard time finding the right kind of scary face makeup, the too-light foundation, I mean. 

I am concerned about the tulle skirt, because last year (two years ago?) she almost set herself on fire on someone's jack-o-lantern.  It was more spectacular than that, as I recall.  There was a kind of tripping over her skirt and tumbling down the stairs and knocking over the jack-o-lantern as she fell so that the whole thing was a big open flame next to which she was sprawled.  I think that I am going to have Mari carry a bucket of water.  Honestly.  For a ballerina, she is a little klutzy.  She doesn't get it from me, because my klutziness is rooted in too-flexiness and she is not overly bendy. 

Garçon is dressing as a Whoopee Cushion.  Because he is that kind of boy.  The good thing, I think, is that when he is about 12 years old?  We are going to be very best friends.  Now he is too fisty and oppositional, but I think there will be a sweet spot in there where he still will love Weird Al & whoopee cushions, and model his countenance as Fozzie the Bear + Quentin Tarantino, and we will lay on the sofa together watching the Three Stooges and talking about comics.  I can hardly wait.      

100 words

Kowalski rang early serenading with a recently-worked-out sequence of Wilco on his mandolin.  I told him he had timing issues.  Two close friends I matched up 10 or 11 years ago want a rematch. Now ended relationships and 1200 miles between them, the time might be finally right.  It seems too hard. Garçon embraces difficulty & fights me every day about whether he or the metronome is wrong.  Dancing in the kitchen after breakfast, I told him Carlos Santana surely once hated quarter-note practice, but he & his mother persisted -- just listen.

"Sorry, I don't have any orange juice," Lara said.