la femme follette

blue who

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blueberry Casserole
(adapted from Whole Living magazine)

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

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

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

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

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

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

still, life.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              

time can do so much

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Alex!  Speaking of you! 

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

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

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

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

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

Becky!

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

I hope you are all happy. À bientôt!

 

if I had a hammer.

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sugar & spice

Look, look, look who is here!  More early than ever!  Bienvenue, Madame! 

In the very last days of January, Fifille had her audition class for the Prestigious Ballet School's Summer Intensive which interested her.  She seemed fine & mostly looking forward to the challenge.  She has always been lauded as among the best in her class, for years, but she knew that the girls at this audition would also be among the best, and then the rest of her mental-preparations came from Dwayne Johnson's character in The Tooth Fairy, and if you have seen it, then you know.  Her outlook was mostly, "If I am not any good, it will be good to know now."

We three left her at the venerable institution for the class and went to get a snack, plus poke around the town.  I was waiting for her outside the studio when it ended, a little late.  She ran to me and clung, discreetly, eyes full of tears, totally worried. 

"Everyone was so much better than me."  She was woeful.

I was not woeful.  "Honey, all of those girls were older than you."  She was at the bottom of the group's age range.  According to the first draft of her account, everything was fine by her until centerwork when everyone's legs went so much higher than hers.

Honestly?  This?

I see no downside to auditioning at her age, in being subject to high standards for relatively low stakes.  There is value in the experience of that kind of pressure with not too much bound up in the outcome.  Mostly because of things like this, the needless worry, the comparing, etc. 

I told her, "When you get in there, somewhere with judges, whose job is to judge you, but you get caught up in judging yrself and everyone else and making decisions, instead of letting the judges judge yr best work, from which you are distracted by yr ad-hoc judging ... well, that is not what you are there for."

You know?  Plus, I would not send her to anything if I did not think her best was good enough.  So we talked about that, the issue of my veracity. 

As the full story came out over the following days, we zeroed in on some very positive things that she has for her own, forever, no matter the outcome.  There were things she has never done -- pirouette, for one -- which she was asked to do and she performed.  Well, a 10-year-old on the Vaganova syllabus has not done a pirouette yet, and everyone knows that, so go her.  Also, at this age, the girls are not judged so much on training as they are on their potential, their bodies, really. 

 She was not accepted, which by the time we found out was fine.  It was pretty roundly accepted, by that point, that because she choked so bad, it was totally a slim possibility, and lo.  Her coterie of ballet people had a lot of really useful things to say to her, we have reviewed comportment under pressure and the rest,  so, the whole experience was valuable.  There is no way to do a mock-up, and this milieu is not one where everyone gets a trophy. 

Alors!

In February, a few days after the rejection, it was time for Observation.  We had not seen Fifille dance since May of 2010.  Well, in The Nutcracker, but it was a bit part & who could keep their eyes open?  After class, I said to Mari, "I see why she was not accepted to that intensive."  She was weak and she was stiff.  It is not a good combination for a ballet student.

On the bright side, she was much more at-ease than ever she had been with the parent audience, and her lack of self-consciousness was a thing everyone mentioned during our post-class exchange of bonhomie.  I passed this feedback along to her when we sat down the following week for our postmortem.

Usually, I take a few photos of her for our own documentation, but while watching her in February it occurred to me that she could use photo and video to review her own self.  My camera shoots video!  I can make technology work for me!  Then, I would not have to offer any opinion at all; I am not a student of the Vaganova syllabus, and she is her own worst critic. 

Mostly, in an observation postmortem, I let her lead.  I will always mention to her the evident lack of core strength, and remind her it will cause her to overcompensate in other ways (& has indeed led her to weak stiffness) which detract from her form in ways she can readily see in the photographs.  We talk about ways to hold herself, things to remember neuromuscularly, transferring her Pilates Matwork to the barre.  I think that as a family, we spend more time talking about core strength than most. 

This time, I did not actually say too much, except at the review of one photo in which she was actually listing (while in the clutches of her old nemesis relevé lent).

In a way recognizable to Jim Taylor and Becky, I asked her, "So, what do you think about all this?"

Fifille is tentative in her process, but once she decides something she is certain.  She was quiet for a minute, weighing all the things in her mind, and then spoke slowly and with great confidence to tell me she would like to meet with June.

June was her physical therapist when she broke her arm.  She specializes in dance physiotherapy, dance rehab, dance-injury prevention, and she is highly-regarded in our burgh and in Fifille's ken.  So now Fifille has a trainer in June, and a personalized, goal-oriented exercise regimen from her, which is good.  She first saw June the week after she asked, I try to make time for her to work through her exercises 4 days a week and she gets them in about 3.  There are owl stickers on the calendar for her exertions. 

 

Fifille came to me just before her birthday to report feeling improved strength in class, even with her archnemesis.  Then when we returned from vacation, I felt she had gotten enough traction to go back to June for a follow-up & the results are that yes! she is much, much stronger and very much improved in her range of motions and now she has a greatly-increased regimen.  So increased that I have to help her again.  Oh, I didn't say already, right: she needs a spotter and a counter and a cheering-onner, a brisk-rubdowner.  She is only 11, yk. 

She is not in posession of superpowers yet, which dismays her father greatly, while he waves the invoices at me.  Because, yk, injury prevention doesn't cost $27.99.

So, as you can see, things are great here as we sail on.  So fun to catch up & backfill!  I have not even begun to unpack the whole Travelogue yet!  I hope to, but I may never!  It is the way of the world.  À bientôt!

bears all things. believes all things. hopes all things. endures.

Remember how I was writing about split-sole ballet flats?  They need sewing, they come incomplete.  It is not the biggest deal, but it is something to be done.  Another thing on a long list of things.

 

 

Pointe shoes need elastics and ribbons sewn on.  Just stop because I will not even.  Her flats are leather, so it is pretty easy to sew to the lining without going through it.  Satin shoes are an entirely different thing.  Also, 4 sewn-on things per shoe.  No. 

I am not the hand-stitcher in the family, Mari is.  I mean, I like the dainty stitches required in hemming and finishing exterior seams, but honestly, anyone who lives here will wait forever for me to sew on their buttons.  When we got the note from school about the handwork-demo, I told Mari he would have to go.  He did, but somehow I wound up being the stitchery supervisor this weekend.  I mean, the meeting was mostly about where to fasten.

I think it was when I broke it to him that he would have to use mattress stitch -- invisible from either side -- which Fifille knows perfectly well from her knitting times.  But maybe he did not want to deal with her sulky attitude, which was a factor, definitely.

"Why, Mommy, why do I have to sew them on myself?  You have always sewed my elastics.  Why me, whyyyyyyy?"

Honestly.  Earlier this year, there was a day where I thought, from about two rooms away, that I would have to strangle her.  The hair-tossing, the eye-rolling, the foot-stomping, the kicking little kicks at the pillars and columns and staircases of the world.  The mumbling little mumbly, grumbly complaints under the breath.  Oh.  Oh, no.

Lucky for her, on that day I was awash in the satiny-pink afterglow of some heavy (metaphorical) lovin' the Israeli had laid on me.  So, I was watching her give the dishwasher's kick plate tiny little kicks, reeling, kind of analyzing how she was wicked, wicked, and I stopped. 

You know, and I know this is well-known -- even if you have never said it to my face -- I was wicked as a girl.  Not a 10-year-old girl, either; a 20-year-old girl.  When I was 20 (and 21, and 22), I was unspeakably wicked to my favorite + best, the Israeli, at intervals from the minute he began serving his compulsory, from 7,000 miles away.  In case you have never considered this, let me assure you that in the 20th century, it took an incredible amount of dedicated ruination to get a message across at that distance, but I succeeded by either epistolary action or default.  Sometimes I let other people do my dirty work for me -- everyone loves to gossip.

When he returned, I was not measurably better.  Things were much worse before they would improve, but all along the way, I have to admit he never killed me.  He doesn't just take it, but mostly he just waits it out, until I am who he knows me to be at my best.  In the meantime, he would never deny me a thing.  So I felt like, yk, OK, this is a minimum standard I have to achieve as the actual mother of this child.       

But Mari did not have this whole cathartic time with his present + his past, and plus he was not interested in showing her something he did not know at all when I was available to direct her.  So I did it. 

 

I explained to her that I have been sewing on her elastics as a courtesy because she was more comfortabe in shoes which came unfinished.  The other girls wore shoes that came finished.  Now that everyone is in shoes that come unfinished, she can be one of the everyones taking care of the business.  There was huffing in futility.  I waited, pleasantly, while playing upon her familiarity with the work because of a different project which she had enjoyed.   

She remembered how to do the stitch, and agreed, so I got things all pinned for her elastics.  Pinning, basting, try-ons.  Fine.  That was yesterday.  The funny thing that happened between Mari telling her she would be doing it with me (she had been hoping to get her way from her Pop, seeing as he is more malleable than I am in this way) and her getting the first shoe's elastic sewn on was that she realized Zomigod I can do this myself!  Me!  Not a baby!

It was just like the time Charlie & I watched her go all the way down the block all by herself (all! by herself!) to see if the neighbor had an ice-cream scoop.  She was bounding and smiling and so happy & so big.  It was huge. 

 

Look, sewing & smiling!

She did a great job -- careful, tiny, even.  Right now she is clomping around upstairs in them, trying to learn to walk while wearing them.  She is so pleased with herself.  "Mommy, everyone else's mom or grandmother is sewing their shoes for them!"

 

I mean, I told her, I don't know, maybe she will grow up & look back & think, Jesus maybe my mother could have sewed my shoes for me because I was only ten years old, but we will have to see.  Je t'embrasse.

lifted

When the girls returned from Winter Break, the letter went home with each of them. The En Pointe Temps are upon us.

 

 

It takes some kind of time to be fitted for your first shoe.  There is an HR-traning-like portion of the endeavor for the child.  We took it easy today & sauntered over.  I mean, after a to-do & a trip & parking & some lunch.  The store is well-known to us by now, all these years later.   I have always loved the way the store is just a warren of pointe shoes.

 

 

The family is venerated for their fitting-superiority & its second generation -- retired dancers -- are the truest ad-hoc counselors on this ballet kinda stuff we have ever had.  I can ask them anything, and they will give the best answers.  Like bartenders, but without liquor.  I totally appreciate their counsel; today I showed with a box of sea-salt caramels in tribute.

 

 

Fifille is super excited and sat in the living room for a long time tonight, trying them on & admiring them.  They don't even have the fasteners sewn on yet; the classroom demonstration of fastener-attachment is not for 3 weeks. 

 

 

I had not realized she would be able to go up on them right away.  All of this is such a mystery to me.  I know, it wouldn't be if only I would read Agrippina's book.  Yk, those shoes are mostly just papier mâché.  Someone should make an English country waxed-satin version!  Yes!  Bisous!

amber waves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

serendipity. synchronicity.

If you might be taking your sensitive child along to see Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes endeavor, work in a trip to fully take in the Holocaust Memorial Museum's special exhibit on Nazi propaganda a few days prior. 

 

Because Moriarty's casual sadism has got nothing on the designs of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels.  I looked over at her during a scary part -- when Holmes was in a bad way & Moriarty was being super-madman -- just to check in, and she was enraptured -- totally secure in the knowledge that this was made-up.  Superb.  Phew.

 

Hanukkah is just somehow going the fuck on and on -- practically to the New Year! -- and it is getting me down.  Then it was on Christmas (unrelenting!), and I had some cake-issues -- two cakes went down the Nigella road.  We can get back to that, because I love to talk about fucking it up.  But, anyhow, in spite of the elation of fucking it up endlessly, I decided that I could withstand any kind of disappoinment and so I tried again -- for the first time in many years -- with the Hanukkah doughnut.

 

I grew up with latkes being on the periphery -- fried dough was the main event.  Just plain yeasted doughnuts -- bimuelos -- and when I met the Israeli, my eyes were widened to the jelly doughnut -- sufganiyot -- which are way less intensive than a bunch of grating of potatoes, with a bigger payoff, obvsly. 

I tried to adapt a doughnut our first gluten-free holiday, and it was te-he-herrible.  Not even filled with jelly were they edible.  When I made pão de queijo in the summer, it got me thinking.  Pão de queijo batter is, mostly, just pâte à choux, I mean, in its bones.  The oil, the eggs, the whirling.  Hm.  I substituted tapioca flour for all-purpose in the boilerplate pâte à choux sketch.  Et voila. 

 

I felt like Louis Pasteur.  You have no idea.  No idea. 

 

What happened with the cakes was too much sugar, two times.  I did not take a photo of the actual failing, but it looked just like the last time this happened, with a volcano of cake.  Blech.

The first time, I thought it was that I had subbed in blanched almond flour for the wheat flour.  That was some of it, because in the second cake I used starchier flours and it was at least cake-like in its crumpled-up way, if not an actual cake.

 

The problem was mostly too much sugar.  I had subbed -- besides the flour -- granulated sugar for brown sugar 1:1.  No.  Down with cooking by volume!  Brown sugar weighs 6 ounces to a one-cup measure and granulated sugar is 8 ounces.  So, I used a third more sugar than the recipe called for.  Now I know.  Live & learn. 

But: doughnuts!  Dude!

afterword

Well, that was a little different.

 

I have a vague recollection of being deep in the Nutcracker Mines when I wrote a really lengthy, heavily-metaphorical and metaspherical comment on Becky's weblog.  It might indeed be a litle manic, in the reading of it.  What I remember is just being so appalled by the willingness to be martyred all around me.  The disorganization!  The slapdash presentation of informations!  

I felt like there was some kind of presumption of a native interest on our family's part which would, naturally (of course!), cover over any slutty brushwork on the parts of the principals.  Oh, you would like me to be available for 10 evenings in a row?  Beginning in 7 days?  That can not happen.  Prior commitments and all, sorry. 

I mean, come on.  Seriously?  I took a survey of the moms -- So are you actually available on such short notice, as a rule? Let alone at the start of the holiday season?   There were a couple of moms who were gritted of teeth and rolling of eye (Ballet Pals, no surprise), but generally, they were fully willing to get up on the cross.  Oh, hi, Femme!  I'm so glad you've come.  Could you just wiggle that nail into my feet? Right there, where I pre-drilled the hole.   We went on our scheduled getaway, whatever to others' failure-to-plan being my emergency.  No.

The thing is, if anyone had said, back in September, "We don't have the schedule fine-tuned right now.  Can you just hang loose and not make any plans for November without checking?"  I would have at least known what I was dealing with.

Fifille was the same as she was 4 years ago, on the matter of performance.  After the excitement of having made it to Nutcracker-eligibility had faded, she was pretty down on the project.  How I wish I had a photo of her little face from the morning I woke her -- the day after 2 matinees and an evening performance -- to tell her we'd let her sleep as long as we could and now -- less than an hour before her call time for the 3rd public show -- she would have to drink a smoothie through a straw in Hair and Makeup.  

However, exactly the same as four years ago, the backstage sorority remains any performance's strongest selling point. 

Because what is not to like about lathering on more & more eyeliner on each other and playing cards, romping around in hoodies and tights and Uggs, while waiting to be summoned by the Costume BattleAxe? 

 

Different from four years ago is that this year she can dance the role she was given.  She is absolutely able to execute the steps involved in her part of the show.  Real dancing, not just makework twirling and putting her chubby fist coquettishly under her chin while planting her elbow on her knee while in a lunge, child-pageant style.  I understand -- and she does, too, conceptually -- that ballet is a performing art.  So, while I am perfectly happy to let her remain on her grindstone forthwith, I do sense that there is some work to do on her in this way; something between the doing and showing needs shoring up, to ward off Emily Dickinsonitis, but not now, not at 10.  Plus, she has given us every reason to believe she is working on these fortifications herself.

I had given her the NYT piece about The Very Young Ballerina, which she read over a few days.  If you did not see it -- 70s photoessay chronicled VYB's life on the path to stardom and then she fucked it up.  Hubris, you know.  OK, sure.  VYB was handpicked by Balanchine to be Clara in the year she was photoessayed.  Great.  VYB said (I forget if it was young VYB or old VYB who said this in a quote), "I was born to play this role, I loved it, etc, zzz."

OK, but VYB didn't go to class, so boo to her.  The school kicked her out. This was the point I made to Fille when I handed her the newspaper section, while she was feeling ambivalent about being down-in-the-mouth about the show when many (but not all) of her friends were so! excited! about being under the lights!  It is fine to love performing, but that is yr reward for doing the work.  Also known as Fame costs, you pay right here in sweat.  Ok.

 

Before the Sunday matinee, after a while of sitting quietly through yet another bun composition (my tip for you: Elnett Satin), she said to me, suddenly-outraged, totally indignant, "And that woman was all Oh, I was made to dance the role of Clarrrra because I'm so speeeeeciallllllll, but Mom, Clara doesn't even dance!  She mostly sits on a bench and watches everyone else dance!"

I thought about this and countered, offering that Clara dances in the party scene, and a little bit in MarzipanLand or wherever. 

She was unrelenting, "Mom, in the party scene she gets carried around, mostly.  She doesn't even have a good pas de deux with the Nutcracker in [MarzipanLand or wherever]. "

She was waving one hand in the aforementioned flaming-ceiling, what-the-hecks gesture.  "The Sugarplum Fairy is the star of the Nutcracker, Mom.  The star.  Clara is just a little girl sitting on a bench." 

Right after the show wrapped -- but not before she washed her hair for the first time in 6 days, since before dress rehearsal --  she came to me to ask if I would help her get her audition scheduled for [Prestigious Regional Ballet School]'s summer intensive session.  This is an entirely different chapter in parenting that opened when we sat to do that, and we will talk about that another time.  When it comes up, which I am sure it will.

 

Next time, we are going to talk about manicures, holiday decorating, and jeans.  Because it's what's on the outside that matters.  Hopefully I can get that in before I have to placemark/process another episode of Stupid Doctors.  I will screenwrite it featuring Muppets in every role.  Mari will be played by Sam the Eagle!  My part will, naturally, be cast with the manipulative, ready-to-rumble Mlle Cochon trying her best to act as one of those sweet, submissive Gonzo-chickens while endlessly leaking around the edges. "Oh, excusez-moi!  You slipped upon the floor!  Right onto my knife!  Is that ... sacre bleu! Lard?  However did that get there?  Are you all right?  Oh, er, I mean, Cluck, cluck, cluck.  Trillll." Yes.  We go to the mat on Thursday.  (Stupid doctors, come on!)

Gros bisous, mon choux,  à bientôt! 

AIDS is not over

It is World AIDS Day, you could know. 

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

 

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

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

  

wetwork

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because I am a fucking classy broad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, James Luna. 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Reader, it was an accusation. 

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

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

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

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

     

the night's a girl

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

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

In another tale of deference to the witness of others:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

prescription: lobotomy

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

You could make it, too. 

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

More or less.

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

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

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

The children's chore chart is just:

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go, go now.  Go.

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did you just say?

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

vetted

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

Here are some photos of things we stopped to admire.

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

What I will offer is this:

 

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

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

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

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

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

  

 

laughing forever

Fille is finishing up work on a series of scary fairies.

I'm pretty sure she is going to sell out, which is good because no one wants seasonal items left over.  Bisous!

part of you pours out

I like to think that I would never use all-caps, but I kind of wish I would in order to graphically represent all that is afoot here.

• Mum-smuggling!
• New-car-learning! 
• Nutcracker-rehearsing!
• Husband-alluring!
• Locust-leaf-vacuuming!
• Apple-wrangling! 

There are a lot of apples this year.  So many, that we are kind of avoiding each other in the neighborhood so that, yk, "Oh, Femme, thank you so much for bringing those deeply-discounted mums!  Would you like some ap--" 

As they turn toward me again, there is but a puff of smoke where I used to be standing, holding a flat of chrysanthemums.  It is like what people talk about with zucchini season, which was decidedly not the case this year, with the squash blight, which I think extends to winter squash, because pumpkins seem quite costly this year; more money than I want to pay for food we will not even eat.   

I was actually going to just have an overflowing fruit-bowl still-life, but when I approached it, I was taken in again by the little bird I picked up at Anthropologie.  No, the other one ... discount Anthropologie ... whatsit?  Mmmmmmm.  No.  Well, it's from there.

I love it, so much.  You put little 3-inch pillars in there & it throws the speckly light all around, you know.  I wanted one of the concept for a while, but never fancied the reality.  Then: it was a little blue bird right before me. 

I keep choosing that same blue color in pottery over and over, like it means a thing.  Blue.   Omg, I love that album.  It reminds me of 1994, all of it, always.  Omigod, holidays!  Look at how you are still here!  Go, shoo!  You make me feel too reverberative!     

  

If you want me I'll be in the bar.  Just this morning I told Fille an excellent story to make the point of how her bedroom bears an unflattering resemblance to my apartment in one particularly memorable morning after a night of intensely commemorative + place-marking blackout drinking -- end tables all askew, phone off the hook, sheets of paper scattered everywhere, the fridge wide open, a kitchen table lying on its side ... but contact lenses cleaned & firmly seated in their case; I was miraculously unbruised.

It is funny to me, how I could wake up not remembering anything, but -- even when I pieced it together later --will never forget each morning after, every plush, vacant interval of know-nothingness. 

Somehow, both children knew what blackout drinking was.  I questioned this & they both shrugged, then stated plaintively, "We read about it."  I refrained from saying, OK, but no, really how?!

Fille did want to know, last week, Why is there a Columbus Day if he was so evil and stuff?  Which I have never said, that he was evil & stuff, believing wholly as I explained to her: If you want to live in a town with a great salumeria and a bakery capable of torta ricotta, you have to let it go, let the Columbus flag fly.  Never mind there are a million other reasons to parade with pride.

 

Let them sort it out amongst themselves.  

 

I know, you're all Wait, is Alex guest-blogging?  No.

 

à mon âge les miettes voguent sur la rivière

I made a honey cake for Rosh Hashanah, at the children's insistence. 

 
 

Sephardis are not big on honey cake, not big on honey for this holiday; honey cake was never around when I was a girl.  As I grew older, and dallied more widely at holidays, there was honey cake, lots of interpretations.  I do not like it.  I kept saying things to my children like, "Wouldn't you rather have a delicious cake?"  and "I have only once made a honey cake, let alone a specially-modified honey cake."  They were unremitting plus also flattering about their security in my ingenuity, so I went along and I made one out of nuts, ahaha. 

I used Elena Amsterdam's recipe, adapting it to include honey and exclude agave nectar, but not in the same exchange.  It turned out pretty tasty for a gluten-free Cake of Obligation.  I mean, ok, ok, it was really good.  I think if it were called something else, I could love it.  It does not actually belong on the Rosh Hashanah table, though, with the almond flour and all. 

After dinner, but before cake, the children got completely on about going over to the river for Tashlich.  Say what?  They were surprisingly knowledgeable (in the aggregate) of what was to go down.  Jesus, who taught these children to read?  I mean, look, I have a rich history of being all alongside the high holidays, but I was actually raised Catholic.  Family + close friends went to the river, but I stayed around the house & ate a lot of dates in anticipation, wrestled with seedy old pomegranates -- the kinds of things we do in observation now.   

At the same time, their hilarious quality-control is a direct reflection of ecumenical values we have expressed about the world of holidays, about the world in some measure:  Christmas is not the only game in town!  Halloween is bigger than candy! Purim is 100 times better than Halloween can ever be!  Diwali and Hanukkah and Moon Festival!  Down with ethnocentrism!  It feels really good to both of us, not just knowing they have heard us, but to hear that they want to expand their experience, to get a chance to grow along with them.

Also, they don't know everything.  Their cute determination was quickly degraded into the exhausting knows-it-all of their ages -- It's part of the holiday and we're late!  We were supposed to be there yesterrrrday, Motherrrrrr.   It was the motherrrrrr which made me pedantic and cross.  I crisply informed them that one has through Sukkot for casting, plus also told them they remind me of a joke. You know the one.   (I did not tell the joke to them.)  I have applied them to a slow, running start at the 10 days of repentance.  It is good, though, because of, yk, my son, his last year, and to put out this notion that we can begin again. 

Anyhow, who can say no to Fille now?  With her menacing, gangster's grill? 

 

 
 

Doesn't she look like Chamillionaire?  I know!  Yes.

round tuit

 

screw

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 

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

Mari is in Washington.

"Are the kids here?" 

 No, they are at the park. 

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

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

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

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

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

Ahahaha!  À bientôt!                   

2x2

Do any others of us have the children who suck hickeys into themselves?  In the fleshy margin of the upper arm, where you can fit it into a mouth while insomniac, or anxiously watching Cowboys & Aliens or whatever?

 

Jesus Christ.  And because I am a bicep-gripper/child-hustler by disciplinary reflex, I always quail when I see marks like this.  Then especially because the child has no recollection of idly vacuuming his or herself into this condition, they can not say.  Every time this happens, and every time I realize that I could not just put that pressure on in a thumbprint, there would be a whole hand, so it is them.  Again.  Gross.

On the other hand, their mother was a cutter, so at least they come by it honestly.  I think. 

 

This is what happens, when Mari & I are lying around, chitter-chattering as we awaken, with our door open.  People come & go, chastised for disfigurement, and then others come lilting in to find out why their brothers are sulking.

They all perch right on the bed, even as they have not been invited. 

 

To distract us from this invasion, they look winsome and tell jokes.  Three strings walk into a store ... 

 

After they have successfully flushed us from our own goddamn bed, one of them cheekily returns to loll & chat-chat-chatterchat until I am afraid my head is going to come apart from my neck.  The endlessness!  Of a 10-year-old girl's breath!

Their father is going to take their badasses to Showbiz cross the river like Washington, and take them to a museum for education in the Physical Sciences, or something.  I am not going.  I plan to knit and drink tea.  Also, vacuum.  Ivy Leaguers are starting to return to our town in dribs + drabs, so maybe I will step out to sample our amenities before they are on in force.

 

Someone who is probably also dismayed at the slow-rolling start of a university calendar -- j'ai faim de toi -- has a new pair of socks on the needles.  This represents two days of half-hearted, not-too-much-focused knitting, which means the project will take about 30 days, both socks, cast-on to blocking, which is about par.  I am working a cowl for myself at the same time, also in 2x2 rib. 

I think ribbing is so punishing, mostly because I knit out of my right hand and have to make the full trip waving around the needle to switch from knit to purl.  This is nice, though, the socks on 3s for a few slick, metal rounds, then change to the flat ribbing on 11s, with bamboo's frictiony austerity for a break.  Ok, miles to go, à bientôt, gros bisous, etc xo      

needs

We slipped away to Washington, mostly because it is there and we can, and why not?  Mari is ever still in the office.

 

Remember how I owe us all a nice photo of the Library of Congress ceiling?  Especially Alex?  Because I was between cameras last time?  I stopped in just for you, guy.

The trip was nice because the kids & I did our usual, nancing-around, home-education tour.  Mari, evenings, slipped away from the office for an earlybird dinner at Sal's, whereupon we would double-back for an early-evening second shift at the same museum on its late-night summer schedule.

Here in this photo we can all see now that my son is taller than me he is turning his attention to gaining on his father.

It started out, the trip, with a lot of scowling and sullenness.  (Something about the wrinkle in yr forehead, you know.)  You know, in the beginning of this new endeavor, it was fine.  I had mostly a peaceful, easy feeling about it, me + Glenn Frey, largely because I take a long view to Mari's office hours and he was working from home for much of the last of 2009 and just about all of 2010, so fine.  For February, March, April, and most of May, I knuckled down as I imagined Marmee March would do, right?  What else to do?

At the end of May, as the transition time wore on and on, it came out that Mari himself does not love this new undertaking.  Problematic!  We do not need the money, but he loves the work-in-general, and it is great having a man who loves his work and being the king, and the bespoke suits, I know.  I get that.  And I know, his valor, and untarnished reputation, his credentials, and it is an honor just to be asked, etc.  He took it on and made agreements and is a gentleman first, honor, country, blabbity blah, yeah, yeah, I live right there, too, but come on.

Then summer came and I got distracted by, I dunno, driving my son away from our family and sorting out the piles of outgrown clothes and driving people to unexpected sessions of summer-ballet, etc.  Hiring + receiving a weekly team of cleaners.  And it was good because Mari is not here to be bored to death by the 5 days I am dining in hell, so it works out.  But I miss my husband.  When he gets home Friday night, he is tired, and then Saturday and Sunday we all 3 want to be all over him and there is not enough of him to go around and then he is back to working 14-hour days and that.

I told him I had devised the perfect solution to weather his new extra-domestic demands, on my end, anyhow.  The kids were out in Sal's backyard, playing outside.  One of them was getting set for the toaster.  I was drinking a gimlet.

 

"You're getting a boyfriend," he said. 

"No," I told him, resolutely.  Although it would make my life a lot more to my dullsville liking if Mr Fox across the street were a eunuch, I have to say.  "But I am glad you said that, Mari, because you will like this.  It's better."

"You're getting a girlfriend."

"No.  But again," I was laughing, "you are going to like this, so good.  Ready?"

He guessed a few more times, ridiculously, before I told him.

I have decided that I must go on as if he is my sugar daddy and not at all my baby daddy.  See?  Wonderful.  Brilliant!  This, also, is proof of the wide utility of Kanye West!  Yes, because it came to me while I was listening to him on the drive down!  I have no shame!  Pay for all goods and services, bearing me aloft in the manner to which I have become accustomed, drop in on the weekends, take those badasses to Showbiz, then stick it to me all night long.  I do not know why I did not think of this before! 

He said, "This sounds like we are going to have sex more."  Hullo!  Genius.  I am the cleverest girl alive.

   

We lazed around & watched Fair Game one of the nights.  I thought it was tremendously realistic in the way in which it made both Naomi Watts and Sean Penn all frumped-out, Washingtonian-stylee.  If you watch it, and you know the horrors of the fashion inside the Beltway, you will be amazed at how right-on they got it. 

I did not follow the whole Valerie Plame thing too closely when it happened, and in fact, most of it escaped me until I was trying to catch up to the adorbs Decemberists' lyrics.  But I was amazed when she had a mid-conflict chat with some fat, CIA, Sansabelt-pants-wearing motherfucker, sitting on the Ellipse in the rain, where he was vaguely threatening to her & ended by saying she should speak with her husband.  I mean, hell to the no!  

I told Mari I could not believe she went past that point, sallying on in her resistance, yayaya.  Mari needs to know that if ever anyone told me I should speak to my husband?  Like my man is some fucking bitch?  Omg, it would be all the way on, that motherfucker would have gotten his fat ass handed right back to him.  I mean, sure her life & high-powered, much-beloved career was falling apart, but hell no.   

The next day we were in the Hall of Mammals & between that & something earlier in the day with Garçon, Mari pointed out the leopard.  You.  And certain of yr bestest. 

 
 

Oh, yes!  And also Mari.  We will take it down, and then haul it up into the tree and dare you to come and get it, motherfuckers.  Totally gangster.  Get your swords out.  Yes. 

imposing. magnificent. grand.

My favorite part of letting the kids out by themselves is making the maps.  There is one for every occasion. 

 
 

Oh, August!  I know I say this every year, but I always feel like you should be the name for the month of October because August -- you tend not to be so august, in the main.  Or, as I read somewhere, years ago, "August is the Mississippi of the calendar."  Yes.

You do have eggplant in profusion.

 
 

August has January's shoulder-wheeling, grindstone thing, without the respite of early-darkness.  I was tidying up a weird trail of hair elastics + bobby pins today & realized that Fille does not have her dress-code leotard yet for the coming year.  Ballet is going to be a major headache this year -- rubber, meet the road.  Again.   Some more.--  but I will smile & act nice.  I spent some quality time with my face in my palms today envisioning the whole calendar and anyhow. 

Man, she starts en pointe this winter which -- in addition to being an extra hour of class every week -- is just like, No, no, honey, go ahead.  Wreck yr body, baby, we love you! There is a fuckload more about that, but not here.  Dooce did not go first in this way for naught.

Typing this I realize I have not yet forked over her fees for what is now next month's start date.  Mostly because summer session was Garçon and me slowing the car so she could roll out, like an assassin, and while I had good intentions (and blank checks in my Filofax), I forgot.  On the last day I was ... getting a pedicure?  No, haircut, but anyhow. 

I also keep forgetting that our oven is not working.  It is & it is not, although, honestly, it has been 100 degrees for much of the last couple of weeks, so when the fuck am I going to use it?  I made a batch of granola a week or so ago, and found out the thermostat is completely shot and th temperature only soars to 400F.  Oh, ok.

Mari tried to cajole me along and convince me the thermostat is a luxury, which ... I guess, in a way, sure.  400F is a good, solid temperature; I do not bake v much.  Part of me kind of feels like I did about the DIY BlackBerry repair last year, like, yk, Motherfuck it, all this planned obsolescence!  But also, I do not want to enter a Choose Your Own Next Major Appliance Adventure.  I just feel like, yk, we just got our countertops done and we got them done while I was all the while stanuchly resisting a full-on kitchen makeover!  And the thing is, even then, last fall, I wanted a new stove because I would like another burner and I would like some time-it on + off functionality, but I did not want it so much that I wanted to shop for + buy it. 

And now, more than ever, I really do not want to shop for one & buy one, because I do not feel like it and what if I make a rash choice and the one that I get is not the one that I want and then!  I am stuck with it!  All winter and for the next 10 or 12 of them, too?!? 

Now I just want to lie down.  But I am going to the gym instead.  My new gym thing is rowing and then the heavy bag.  iTrain.  Do you know about iTrain?  You should.  Now you do.  It is way better than a trainer because there is not any socializing.  I love Pilates Chick, plus also her work, but the weekly chitter-chatter every single week just wears me out.  We're on a break from her, too. 

À bientôt!       

I tried to be less awesome, once.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus. 

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

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

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

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

I totally want to remember to read Jaws again.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is this also just this one little thing.

 
 

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

lemon melon

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

 
 

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

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

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

diamonds. castles. woods. the sea.

 

Weekend.

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

Bits & bobs.

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




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

independence

This weekend is all about declaring what we want. 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the jam

 

This weekend was ballet class's observation.  So many girls, and so rowdy + badassed, like the roller derby!

The observation class happens a couple of times each year, timed such that it is really noticeable how they have grown.  This year, there was pre-class recreational foolaround! 

 

Recreational, self-directed foolaround in any discipline is huge!  It signifies an internalization of mastery and also true love.  I was happy to see it, particularly with the gal Fille is facing here, who is sweet as pie, one of my favorites, and over the years has had Hard Ballet Times. 

The rubber is about to meet the road on ballet and we -- as a gaggle of gals, mothering -- are a little freaked out by it.  The girls, these girls, our girls, have been invited to do summer session one year early.  Generally, students finish the third year of the syllabus and then go the year all-round.  We have been told, when we have questioned (a polite incarnation of "WTF?") that the girls have worked very hard this year and made great progress, they are strong, they are focused, they look great, and no one wants to see them lose that focus and that physical training in a 15-week hiatus. 

I told Mari, when I received this serious presentation from two different school authorities, "And it does not hurt the girls' qualifications that we are in a down economy."  Because I am like that -- cynical and jaded, timeworn.  But then we went to observation and realized 4 new girls have joined her class, and also:  They kind of do look all-business and fucking fantastic.   

 
 Hands off the barre, children.  Big step!  Huge.

Anyhow, so now we are all clinging to each other -- the sororal among us, not all, I guess -- and wondering how children will get from Summer Point A to Summer Point B and Ballet Class.  Again, we here have it E-Z because I do not work and do not load the children's schedule.  But there is going to be a lot of carpooling and a lot of pitching in.  It will be good.  I am not the friendliest, squeeziest, hootingest gal, but I will always do what needs to be done.  This backfires on me a great deal, but this is not Self-Analysis Wednesday, is it?

Omg, speaking of Analysis!  Kowalski unwittingly shone a metaphorical light on one of Life's Greatest Befuddlements for me, in the category of Intersex Fraternity.  Yes.  Another day.  And speaking of Kowalski, once again I put to you among Fille's fan club that you can guess which of these piled-up, roller-derbier girls is her.  Kowalski got it right last time, though he never revealed his method, for this girl he has never once met.  

 

Omigod, they were so so adorable.  Their athleticism and tenacity was so mesmerizing.  I always take knitting to these classes, since she was very small, because I thought it would be embarrassing for her if I were just goggling at her -- O, perfect angel, my princess, yayaya, my shmooping-pie! -- like a cartoon with my heart beating out of my chest.  She agreed that would be weird and so I brought knitting.  Ever has it been so.

 

But this time!  I had a pile of knitting in my lap, but knitted v little because there was so much to watch!  I felt hypnotized, without having to hang on her every move just because, yk, she's my [yayayaya].  She just ... work works.  The result is worthy of admiration.  Yes.           

psionics

I love my 10-toed shoes.  Love to the verge of zeal. Love them in spite of the fact that wearing them compels strangers to talk to me.  That is true love.  Let those who have never worn Crocs cast the first stone.  

 

The only problem with them is that I tend to trip myself up with too-long pants (they have no lift) getting caught on my big toe.  But, I am a super-klutz with a skittering, physical-comedienne's coutenance anyway, and this in no way reflects on the shoe. 

I thought for sure Mari would scoff at them, but he hardly has anything to say except:

Sometimes, I look over at yr feet & see yr shoes, and I think, "I'm married to Mystique!"

Yeah, that would be cool, right?  Thrilling!

Anyhow, in all of this cooing & burbling about my new footwear paradigm, Fille became interested.  Friday, she volunteered to spend her own money for a pair of her own, which was good because a. she already has shoes for summer, and b. she is still growing,  so you know, high-dollar extra shoes, go home.  She has plenty of money she has earned from fairy sales and mothers' helperism, and she is not much of a spender, so, whatever.  Fine. 

I did take her through some responsible-spending check-ins:  You will outgrow these shoes before next year ... The cost of these shoes represents three times the cost of one pair of ballet slippers, for comparison ... You have to sell eight fairies to earn this much money, etc, etc. 

She seemed good & confident in our talks, so, ok.  We went to the Internet's Shopping Mall.

I purchased my shoes at Campmor, in direct response to an email they sent about special pricing across the board in the Five Fingers brand.  My shoes -- at the time I purchased them -- were at the exceptionally low price of $60, well, because no one else wants fuschia contrast that looks lavender?  I do not know.

But days later, when we were going to get her shoes, the price (on the KSO Multisport, even in that same color) was back up to $85.  So I did not even show her that shoe.  The Sprint was $69.98, which was represented in our talk -- I had not been too dollars-and-cents specific about the price and $60 is in the same ballpark as $70. 

When she faced the actual price, writ large and illuminated on the website, she quailed.  I watched the ardor pour out of her, making a thick, cold, glugging sound.  I totally knew what was going through her mind.  It was she who gave words to this feeling that I totally recognized some years ago, while she was writhing in its throes -- What if I find something later and I like it more?  I mean, we can not have everything, she & I, we won't allow it.  It is unseemly. 

I used to think it was the nuns and growing up Catholic that made me this way.  While it did not help matters, I realize now, watching Fille, that I am just this way.  Bring your nature v nurture studies to us, definitely.    

I offered to her, quietly, in a matter-of-fact way, that I could share the price with her, asked her how much she would be willing to spend of her own money.  "Like a subsidy?" she said?  (Go, homeschool, go!)  We agreed and she said, slowly, that she would pay $45, plus also the shipping charges, if I would give her $25.  Sure. 

Then, I told her to wait a second while we took a pause.  I opened a new window to go to Google and enter a search for the shoe she wanted ("Vibram Sprint Slate 36")  We found the very shoe for 54.99, plus free shipping, at Moosejaw.    

I had never even heard of Moosejaw.  The order confirmation page asks you to tell nine friends, two strangers, and one person you don't like all that much ab0ut their outfit.  Writing about it here definitely fulfills their request, n'est-ce pas?

The value of comparison shopping has been duly revealed to Fille.  It was as if I showed her I could turn lead into gold.  Then I told her I would share the same cost with her, why not?  She will never forget the lesson.  The shoes came yesterday and any lingering remorse she might have had was evaporated.  Love.

 
     

frederick law

 
 

To answer the question asked by Liz Woodbury & echoed by Bettina, I had a story -- it was about knitting perfectly-fitting gloves, you see -- but I did not have to use it.  One of my long-used methods is to frown + hem & haw about how to unravel complicated trouble facing us all, and then I apologetically cut to the solution, before backpedaling a little to spin the yarn.  Nearly every time, since childhood, people will do my bidding before they subject themselves to one of my rambling, confusing narratives.  Charm is for when one has not a leg to stand on.

So, after 15 years, I just showed up at his side, frowning a little, shifting foot to foot, and gave a little sigh which sugested I might be on the verge of tears before I said, "Can I have your wedding band?"  Then he gave it to me.  If he had asked, I would have started a long, potentially-frightening story about the frustrations of knitting gloves, and he would have given it to me, shortly after the start. 

Mostly, if I may say, because one of my chief frustrations in knitting-production are people who want what they want but do not wish to participate in the measure-twice, knit-once numbery of it.  Just, yk, if there were people like that, they might be frustrating with their unwillingness and sadism and while that is fine for the bleacher seats, that is no way to behave yrself when in a marriage. 

However, that said, I am typewise, it would seem, appreciative of a certain kind of a landlocked-in-childhood guy.

 

We were here, at the Ohio St Beach, on the back side of Chicago's so-called Magnificent Mile, Mari & I, when in the ongoing chronicle of mutual understanding in marriage, Mari said to me, "I mean, really?  You'd look on a globe, and see Lake Michigan, and never thought it was kind of a big deal?"

 

No, never once.  I reminded him he was there when its relevance came to me.  Six years ago we took the kids to see a film about the Nile, and looking at the Peters Projection map with them at home, trying to find Lake Tana, I realized the source lake for the Nile was smaller than the smallest of the Great Lakes (Ontario), and considered for the first time that they might be really something. 

 

I invited him to consider that when you do find Lake Michigan on the globe, the word right next to its southeastern curve is the name of my hometown, so if he could allow me a little cultural bias, then he would see why I never thought anything of it.  Then I shrugged and went back to watching the kids behold its vastness. 

 

He could not stop himself, and scoffed.  "Really, honey?  A lake that goes on forever?" 

Days later, at Indiana's shore, still scoffing at his wife.

I laughed and laughed while I told him it doesn't go on forever, that's silly.  I mean, to say that to me is hilarious and ridiculous.  Everyone knows it only goes to Michigan, or Indiana.  You can drive to Michigan and Indiana.  We can only know what we know.

 
 

Also in the ongoing chronicle of our marriage: last week we had two different overnights without our children, bringing our total overnights since we have had children to 3.  Exciting.  Eve took the kids for a sleepover on our actual anniversary; we dragged ourselves to dinner after a disco nap and came back home to fall asleep before 11.  Then we had the curious experience of waking up in our own totally silent home.

Friday, in advance of our weekend in DC with Sal, he texted to ask if he could take the kids to a Nationals game.  I texted back, Have fun.  He texted back that we should use his Hilton Honors points have a romantic cityscape getaway (those were his actual words) and I texted to him that I would try Priceline first.

I am in a love affair with Priceline lately, but that narrative is for another time.

I booked a room at the Hyatt in Crystal City with a winning bid of $60.  I love you, William Shatner.

 
This cityscape bedscape is for Becky. 

The best part was that it was a surprise.  Mari knew the kids were going to a ball game and that we would be on our own for the afternoon, but he knew not what pleasures lay in store across the Potomac.  We were pleased to find out that even if you are a grimy Priceliner, Hyatt will still let you use yr Hyatt Gold Passport for a 2pm checkout.  There was a disco nap, a late-seating dinner at a Washingtonian mainstay, and a movie, none of which precluded the boilerplate kind of a romantic cityscape getaway's agenda, you see.   

 

We used our afternoon-time wandering around the Capitol Grounds, doing things loaf-wise that can never be done with children, like calling the Capitol Police on the dope letting his terrier run on America's Lawn off-lead and then following along behind him to watch the drama when it comes.  (Boring, but amusing.)

 

We discovered the Summerhouse.

 

Mari said if he were a vampire who lived in DC, he would totally stay in the grotto in the daytime.  OK, honey.

 

There was a guy who came in while we were there, with his date, telling her all kinds of bullshit about how this building was obviously a fortress during the Revolutionary War, and there were these moveable walls, blahblahblah.  I said to Mari, loud enough for them to hear, but without projecting my voice, so it seemed like I was being a twat by accident, "Omigod, I am so glad to not have to be single anymore and so bear the outrageous bullshit pouring forth from the mouths of people who want to fuck me."

 

I am pretty sure she heard me.  I hope he did, too.  I mean, I had neither any idea about this structure, but none of this stuff was built until long past the Revolutionary War, for God's sake.  After they left, people came and went in ones and twos, I got hit in the head by a coin thrown into the fountain by a tourist who did not have enough English facility for me to really have v much fun with him, which was a huge bummer.  Then the place filled up with a whole wandering tour group at once and was not sexy any more.

 
 

We went over to the National Museum of the American Indian.  It was awesome, as usual.  My photo of this tiny sculpture of the World Trade Center turned out to be v au courant by the weekend's finish, no?

 

 
Sculpture made from debris found at WTC destruction site, 2001, by Darryl Pronovost. Lent by Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Cultural Center. Did you know that Mohawk ironworkers were on every skyscraper and bridge job in NYC, like, ever until now? It is amazeballs stuff, enrich yrself if you never knew.

 

This is the retro reproduction of the pre-European estuarial Chespeake Bay environment, there on Independence Ave.  According to signage posted in front of the wetland garden, dolphins used to show up in the bay due to the waters being deeper & cleaner before industry and agriculture and erosion.  We just talked to the children about this very issue, how the lands here used to be filled with fish, skies filled with birds. 

When we were visiting at the Field Museum in Chicago, there was a small exhibit discussing the passenger pigeon, last alive in 1921.  There was a photo of a sky filled with birds, Hitchcock-style, and documentation explaining that a flock of them could extend flying in a stream from Chicago to St Louis, a distance of a few hundred miles.    Anyhow, I can write more about that later, in a comprehensive RoadSchool retrospective.  It has a good hook into some more stuff about pre-European North America, indegeneity, and why I am happy to not live at home any more.   

 

 

Part of it is that I am into natural features and taking greenery for granted.  You know, when I was in Chicago, I remembered anew that my hometown is low on natural features, except that big lake.  I hardly think about it, when I think of Chicago, because that lake is big and those man-made features are so humbling (also, mothereffing gorgeous-gorgeous, more abt it later). 

 

I asked Mari while we walked along the Capitol grounds, down where things get a little treesy, "Can you imagine?  What it was like for me to move here and live in a city planned all around all this?"  He said he could not, not really.  That is because we can only know what we know.