la femme follette

provisional

This is going to drive at least two of you right out of your minds, but I let Mr Fox feed me, like, all the time.  He presses food into my hand & I tuck in. 

Everyone is totally envious of Mr Fox, for one reason or another, except my actual husband -- the one who lives with me, etc.  Lillo interrupted me one day when I was ringing off with [this or that reason I had to go, pertaining to Mr Fox], saying, "Why doesn't this guy have a job?!?" 

Ahahaha!

Anyhow,  Mari & I were sauntering over to the playground Friday to catch up with our kids + Extra Girl when Mr Fox wheeled up alongside of us.  We three were talking while he pulled down a little spray of berries from the tree above us and handed them to me.

They are Juneberries.  Say what?  Also known as Saskatoon.  I made them verify this wasn't a trick, a hit job hired out by Mari (or anyone else, for that matter), and then made him eat three times the amount he had handed to me, scrutinizing him the whole while.

They are pretty tasty, reminding me of the "strawberries" in major mass-market ice cream.  Or something, idk.  Eating them gives me a sense-memory of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream "parlors," so if you happen upon them & have similar feelings well up inside you, whisper them to me, please.  Anyhow, I saw Mr Fox this morning & he was in fine fettle, so maybe I can sublimate my rhubarb thing into these growing-all-over berries. 

Fille & I are off to NYC tomorrow to get a little culture, returning home in time for Shavout. I do not anticipate any granola-girls' rooting-around, not least because NYC is killing people with its trees.  We went roller skating today & I feel lucky enough to be in one piece, and also, suddenly, I no longer perceive biking as the same certain peril I judged it to be this morning.  For one thing, no one says, "Oh, it's just like wearing a pair of skates!"  Guess what, there is a reason for that.

Please let me know if you forage anything extra-plus during this next couple of days, I will not hold it against you if  you only pluck it from the long buffet table. 

 

leave yr worries on the doorstep

We got up early to run over to the farm, Mari & I, to get rhubarb, yes.  I went to the farmers' market yesterday, completely willing to spend the $4 or whatever for a little 12-0z bundle, because I feel like our late spring is really too light on rhubarb this year.  2012: light on rhubarb!

When we got home and I started engaging it, I realized it was exactly a year ago I was fooling around with the distraction of rhubarb compote, fretting about my favorite + my best.  So I was wrong, and this is just the rhubarb beginning.  I have put brandy in it this year -- kirsch, to be precise.  It is really a lot better than lemon juice, just loads more delicious.

We stopped at the strawberry field across from the funny rows of afterthought rhubarb to pick a couple of quick quarts -- one for ourselves and one for the girls at the dollhouse.  It was hot and sunny -- already at 10 -- and I was not dressed to sit in the hay, like the time we picked four years ago.  I told Mari how I was remembering, while we sat there, combing easily through the plants for the ripe fruit.  I told him, yk, obviously the whole experience healed me. 

With yogurt, or ice cream, or just from a spoon.  Kind of a jammy relationship with toast, it could have.  Yes.

Remember these knuckleheads?  They might be at it again, the trying to miss, the requited regretfulness.  I am just saying.  But besides that, I say nothing.  This is a fine use of Algren's lips zipped emoticon.  :|     

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.     

cap times

Have a still life.  I just thought these crazy old beans were pretty in the light.

 

Omg, this thing with my in-laws is so exhausting.  Nitter-natter, blibber-blab.  I wrote about it a long time ago, obliquely:  Why, why, WHY do you not change yr tune in the face of my music?  Um, what?  Are you even related to me?

Kowalski is after me, always, to remember that there are people in the world not nearly as hardened to the notion of eternal refusal as I, that they are not as shrewd in their calculations of a relationship's tensile strength.  I remind him, often, that I am fucking benevolent.  Because BENEVOLENCE IS FUCKING FUN.  Mostly because I can lord it over you ... and still.  Still! 

Man, anyhow.

 

We finally saw The Avengers last night.  I did not think it would be good, honestly, but was not going to resist it, because it actually could not be worse than Iron Man 2.  Not possible.  Every time, I would get a little cranky because I just thought, "Oooooh, it just will not be good," then I would remember Mark Ruffalo was playing Bruce Banner & then I would be filled with zeal.  ZEAL.

But I was right, in that what I thought was going to suck about it did: murky villain development (also right about Ruffalo as Banner).  Actually, it was a whole murky villain story, really.  When they are in Stuttgart, and the villain is acting up?  That villain should have spoken to all of those people in German and the movie should have had subtitles.  Because that would have been truly diabolical.  Instead, he was just shouting English commands to a bunch of gapers, and I was just sitting there, thinking, This guy isn't even from Earth.  Why's he so wedded to speaking English? Ok, whatever.

Ok, so, whatever.  Too sad that [redacted] had to [redacted].  He was one of my favorite characterizations from the Marvel film adaptations.  Mari says [redacted] isn't really [redacted], that he is totally going to be in Iron Man 3.  I hope so!

 

If you didn't know, The Avengers is, like, the world's most popular film, which is fine, but it puts pressure on a family of people who like just the just-right seats and are willing to get there to camp out a little, but then are thrust into a situation where everyone is getting there to camp.  The four of us were in position to get our seats about 40 minutes before the movie started -- Fifille was stationed outside of the theatre with Garçon, finishing her between-activities meal, and Mari & I gave the kids their tickets & told them to come in when she was done.

Mari got a phone call from work right as he put his hand on the lobby door to open it for me & I waited about 15 seconds before I pressed his ticket upon him and walked away to go find our seats.

I mean, honestly.  Focus!

 

I got to the door of the projection room screening the movie.  It was closed, and there was a gaggle of students in a huddle about 15 feet before it.  I stood there for a second before asking them what was going on.  They helplessly told me they were cleaning the theatre ("or something") and so that was what was going on.  I stood there for about another 15 seconds before walking past them all to go in.  As I made my way, there was shocked murmuring about my breach, which, whatever, but let's come back to that.  I made it into the theater, gingerly, tentatively, walking the corridor quietly.

The cleaning crew was there, cleaning, with their flip-down dustpans.  One of the gals sweetly told me they were still cleaning & that was why the door was closed.  I told her, also sweetly, a little conspiratorially, that I was sorry, that the people outside had told me so, "But they did not seem like credible sources." 

Then I started doing my thing, you know, the reason I am assigned any task, because of the mind control.  It went like this, after my regretful, confused pause in realizing the kids outside had been right in their information & I was, in fact, in the way:

Oh!  There is a scene after the credits!  And the woman in the ticket booth told me every show has been sold out!  Oh!  The turnover, must be so high-pressure!  No wonder you had the door closed! 

Bingo.

The response was deafening.  Then we chatted, sororally, you know, while they were working.  I was digging in my purse, looking for a piece of gum ("Gum, anyone?  Ladies?")  They were wrapping up, I was being encouraged to go on up & find the seats, I said, "No, no, I can totally wait until you are finished sweeping, I'm digging in my purse for my stupid phone anyway."

Then a guy came in & I had to enchant him, too, lest he ruin it.  I looked up from pawing through my bag & said to him, sure of his hero status, "Do you have a flashlight?  I lost my stupid phone in this giant bag. [blink-blink-blink]" 

Then I waited until I was positive they were finished, in fact, until they had forgotten I was there, and I said, "Are you lovelies all set now?" I was encouraged to avail myself, et voilà!  I was the first one in the theatre with a prodigious headstart!  Fine!  Accomplished, alors!  I have a very special skill-set, you know. (You know.)

The funny thing about this entire way-getting vignette, which I told Mari when he finally arrived (after even our children! Work calls!), was that as I was bustling past the hallway-students, and they were murmuring, quoth one, as I wrapped my hand around the door handle, "She's just like my mother."

I turned to face them and said, with the kind of great satisfaction that I find is usually attended by some kind of button-pushing, That is because I am old enough to be your mother.

Which was great, and satisfying, really, but then dampened a little while I was digging through my bag by the realization that the edict was probably a teeny bit muted by them not realizing the absolute mathematical truth in my statement.  So maybe they thought I was just slagging on them for being pretend-babies, in that OH I'M SO MATURE AND YOU ARE SO YOUNG way, but no, really:  I am old enough to be any of their moms.  Their mothers are probably 15 years older than me anyhow.  I wrote about that once, too.  Oh, Ivy Leagues! 

 

When the previews started, I was served a heaping helping of crow, which was extremely satisfying for Mari, if you remember this. 

I could not shut up!  Whispering, Is this a dream?  It's a dream, isn't it?  Are they dreaming about dreaming?  [There was a football field, in some kind of distress]  That is totally a dream, I hissed.  [Another prosaic scene was exploding in some kind of chaos.] Dream!  [Joseph Gordon-Levitt showed his mug] Ooh, that guy dreams about dreams, honey, it is!  Then, JGL has a tense exchange with Anne Hathaway, after which editing cuts sharply to Christian Bale, darkly endangered.

 

I snapped to the same, rapt-yet-somehow-penitent attention he did on that long-ago day.  Oh, marriage!  This is why we have you!  xoxox

 

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

              

earth day. rainy night.

I bought these earrings on Friday.  A dangly clump of seedy, little, freshwater pearls.

On Saturday, I wore them when we met up with some friends who came up northward of their usual NE Corridor position to take care of  some obligations in our tri-state area.  It was really, really nice to see them.  Because it is great to see old friends right in front of you in this oft-tiresome digital age. 

Mari pulled me aside while the lot of us were rambling around, paired-off, adults freed-up by the magic of school-aged kids being nerds together.  He lifted my hair on one side & said, "I really like these.  Are they new?"  And that was nice, too.

 

Let's catch up soon.  I'll make the big bed with a million extra pillows & we can lie around on top of it.  After we've gotten a good bit out of chatter out of the way, we can read from the big pile of April's fashion/design/home-and-garden magazines and/or have a snooze. BYOB. xo 

oh, a wiseguy!

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

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

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

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

Everyone: happy!  Yk, marriage.  xox

snips + snails

 

My little baby is a teenager.

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

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

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

when morning comes twice a day.

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

  

  

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

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

Mk 9, 49

We were in Washington's Ridiculous National Harbor Resort Area for President's Day weekend. I know, a week ago.  It was a horrible destination, I would not recommend it ever for anyone's getaway weekend, and that is even as I know that you probably would not be visiting during a Katsucon.

Looking back, that was its only charming feature, and girls dressed up like that one blue Jedi girl -- same sort as the dancing girl with Jabba the Hut, but blue and more awesome -- are not a permanence on the National Harbor's landscape.  

The Woodrow Wilson Bridge isssszzZzzZzzzz.  We had a great, old, Old Town dinner with old friends & their same-aged children, so that was the favorite + best.   

 

On the way down & back, we listened to Angela's Ashes.  Since then,  now any complaint from a child is managed by shaming: 

"Think of Jesus, hanging on the cross, suffering, his hands and feet torn to shreds, the wound in his side, bleeding?  Don't you think he'd like to have the troubles you have?  The folding of your own clothes & washing the dishes you ate from?  WELL?  Think of the Virgin Mary, with her only son hanging from the cross, her suffering.  Don't you think I would rather have you complaining and whining than hanging from a cross?  Well, right now, it pains me to admit to you that I don't know."

Then, conveniently, it was Lent.  Nice timing, that, since I was already thinking deeply of Jesus & the way he was bleeding from his side, what since I dislocated two ribs getting it on.  Right.  So, I went to my guy.  OK+ ow. 

Then it was erev Ash Wednesday & I turned myself toward Lenten introspections, about which I do not feel ready to hold forth.  This morning I was dreaming about doing regular things, yk, making breakfast & chatting in the hall about laundry, and in my dream it wasn't Lent.  When I woke up & realized it was, in fact, Lent, I burst into actual tears & sobbing.  I know.  It's supposed to be hard.  It is.

 

 

I bought this necklace while we were away, browsing with Fifille at a store called Charming Charlie.   

 

Shopping there made me realize I have a lot of nice jewelry that I really love but I rarely wear.  Necklace-wise, half of it has been gifted to me by Mari.  It made me feel unsettled, this realization, and reminds me of what I always tell Mari:  If ever you leave me, make certain it is for an heiress.  You will be requiring of her personal-security employees.  I require she has a helicopter.  Please only leave me for Veronica Lodge. 

Then he always grabs me up & says, "Baby, you are so Veronica Lodge."    I see his point. 

I did not feel like this necklace was Veronica Lodge -- not compared with all the real metals and gemstones I have at home.  I walked around the store, clutching it anyway, and bought it in the end, along with a headband for Fille.

I wore the necklace last Wednesday, the first day after I saw the chiropractor that I felt well enough to stand up straight.  I love it.  First of all, it is sparkly.  Second of all, it is noisy.  It reminds me of those clankety charm anklets from the headshop that a number of us wore all around summers in ol' barefoot Madison.  Kowalski once said, "I can hear you coming."  (I just wanted him to be ready for me!)  But because it is around my neck, not my leg, it isn't so relentlessly noisy.  Just if I change direction quickly, or maybe if I spin.

OMG this necklace is a gateway necklace!  Yes!  All my other necklaces are super-appealing to me now!  Friday, I could not wear the clankety necklace, but I knew there was another necklace more suited to what I was wearing & the occasion!  Exciting.

 

I mean, you know, the necklace gate is wide and the road is broad, and crowded.  No one cries big, raindrop-sized tears there.  Also, if ever Jesus or even the Franciscans call me up to walk with them, I'm going to have to get rid of them.  Heavy.  OK. 

 

This song has nothing to do with Lent, but I think it hits our high points in a summary, thusly:  is the season; Veronica Lodge; plans for living like so; promised lands.  Also relevant(!) because The Zombies were on World Cafe Live late last year, and Rod Argent told a story about Elvis -- about the privilege of knowingness and upon whom it is bestowed -- that took my breath away.  It was exactly as written in Matthew 13. 

 

Je t'embrasse.  Enjoy yr wkend.    

this old thing

Hi, yes, many things -- ballet, recipes, marital secret-keeping, knitting, homeschool redistribution of rights + resources, and I'm still holding out on Mental Hospital.  Totally!  Yet, I hope you came with yr Faygo Red Pop & a bag of Bugles, because this is where I am today.

1. I confess herein that when I read this story about the $300ish rent-controlled (huge!) apartment in the Village, my only & immediate reaction was What steps do I have to take to get married to that dude?  Because a rent-controlled lease conveys.  I would lock that shit down, honestly.  And if you know anything at all, you know it would be an Anna-Nicole level probate battle. 



2. Lana Del Rey:  I love her.  It is funny because the "Video Games" single started getting radio play at the end of November, and I thought it was being warbled by someone much older, more worn down, rode hard, put away wet.  Then I saw the video & was amazeypants at how young!  Which was something of a topic already afoot here in our house vis à vis Adele & her really off-base cover of this song how she has this gorgeous, rich instrument of a voice which she mostly uses to belt out a lot of chirping (she is the beltiest chirper!) about Facebook misunderstandings.  Additionally, the realization upon her death that Etta James was 22 years old when she recorded "I'd Rather Go Blind" and wow.  22!  Ok.
   
   
3. Because three different people have asked -- three being a holy number -- regarding the late, great Etta James:  I was in fact subjected to "Sunday Kind of Love," endlessly, vituperatively + yodelingly. 
   
   
4. I went with Jolie to a Fancy Town estate sale on Saturday morning.  I was kind of into it, but was mostly along for the ride.  Then I saw this bag, behind a neatly-organized Imelda-style pile of stuff inside of a closet.   
   
   
   
   
   
   I have always wanted a Louis bucket.  Always.  Mostly -- and this I think maybe only Charlie will recognize -- so I can pull that Upper West Side powerplay of What, this old thing? when necessary.  OK, but a good girl reared all Franciscan-y in the Midwest can not avenge herself in that way with a bag for which she paid full-price, even as that is the spirit of the manuever.  (If you would like to split the hair wherein a Franciscanette from the homeland should not avail herself of the wordless clawing in the play, I say to you: When in Rome.) 
   
   I took it to the sales directress & told her, "I will take this for $12."  I had the bills in my hand and I was ready to deal.  She was aghast and gave me the once-over.  Ok, so speaking of when in Rome, I was outfitted Rome-ly, mostly just by straining under the heft of my left ring finger, but I bring it, a little. 
   
   She said patiently, as a person who is surely used to dealing with skinflints, "I am afraid $150 is the best price I can give you for that." 
   
   
   The fact is, this bag is no longer in production. The one that is, its closest cousin, is almost 10x her best price. Whatever. 
   
   I gaily explained to her that I could give her $25. "It's a purse," I finished, calmly, as if she were a sister who had fallen under the spell of a powerful cult leader. 
   
   She countered, explaining to me in a kind of brittle tone that it was a Louis Vuitton.  I held up my hand while my mouth dropped open a little.  I gasped.  Not so fast, it all said.  "This purse has a tag in it that says it was made in America."
   
   
   
   
   
   It does!
   
   If you know, than you know that little paper tag is the most authentic authentication a Louis Vuitton handbag can have.  She did not. So she apologized, briefly, and told me in a hurried way $12 was fine.  Can I just say that Mari has no idea what this all means, except that obvsly for once I was charged the true value of a handbag.  Lord.
   
   
5. Let's talk about teevee: 
   • Mad Men.  Due to some knitting willingness since the summer, we have finally watched the entire first season and a couple of epis of the 2nd.  Why is it so slow, this show?  This show is like the guy at work who is always like, yk, "Oh, man!  How was yr weekend?  Oh, I had a great weekend!  Pret-ty great weekend.  Oh, you had a great weekend?  Whoa, maybe you don't know from great weekend, brother.  Wow, etc," zzZzZzzzzz all to get you to say, What did you do this weekend, which you do not because you do not care.  It is just like that!
   • Weeds.  I started watching Weeds however many years ago that I first found it on DVD at the library, maybe 4?  I am just now on Season 3, is it?  Where U-Turn keels over & his pal smothers him.  I described that episode (who knows why?) to Mari & it is now a joke between us to stand in our new lexicon for crocodile tears.  U-Turrrrrn!  one of us says, to the other, melodramatically.  Ha, ha-ha.

For some reason, writing about crocodile tears reminded me of my senior-year English teacher who had the hots for me -- we were an entire classroom of girls all agog at his condition, like, "Dude!  Seriously!  Jailbait!  We're all wearing douchey uniforms!"  I mean, he never touched me or said anything pervy ... he would just stop talking in the middle of a sentence sometimes and everyone would look up & he would be staring at me.  My yearbook is covered with references to my mind-control powers.  He was the one who had me do the presentation of "The Miller's Tale."  God, I totally wonder what happened to that guy.     

 

great and small

I have not the energy to write about this, but it makes pretty good oratory, The Pile of Cross-Cut Clear Up to Your Shoe-Tops, if you're so curious.

 

 

Remember our range issues?  When the thermostat broke last summer & I refused to replace it, citing an inability to participate in the shopping required of one for a major appliance?

 

Right.  So, Mari replaced the thermostat.  That was the second time he replaced the thermostat in the appliance, the third overall.  (The first time, a repairman took care of it.)  It was a $89 part, and the repair takes a half-hour, maybe.  There was a lot of grumbling last summer about my replacement-resistance, but I was not listening. 

Part of it was that major appliances bring out the -- what does Kowalski call it? -- Depression-era farm wife in me.  I am going to suck the marrow out 0f them.  Also, the stove & I have a unique relationship -- it is all mine, really, and I know a little something about how it works.  Not a lot, but enough.  Also, I keep it really, really, really immaculate, and if you know me, you know how I value this proof of my tenacity. 

 

 

If you look closely at the hood, at the front aspect of it, you will see where I once -- when we first bought the house from the slattern from whom the range conveyed -- scrubbed at it so hard that I wore away the paint.  This was not the first time I scrubbed something so hard the paint came off, but I know you already knew that.  But it was always kind of a bummer and a remonstrance ("Use ammonia, girl!").

We had a blip of semi-inspired "shopping" for the new range in the fall.  We were, separately or together, in stores for some other utilitarian thing -- Sears after my blowout; The Home Depot for [whatever]; Lowes for [whatever else], etc -- and would stop & look at the displays and then I would say something like, "Yup!  Those are gas ranges!  Look, they sure are for sale in the world!  Can we go?" 

I knew what I wanted:  white, mostly.  And also, very much, I wanted the electronic function of "Timed Bake" or whatever it is called, where you can put, say, 6 potatoes in the oven at 2, set the timer so the oven comes on at 5, and then arrive home from ballet at 6 to baked potatoes to accompany yr slow-c0oker soup?  Yes.  We had this feature on our wall-oven in Maryland, and man.  It was really convenient. 

That concluded my list of demands.  But I c0uld not bring myself to go out & participate in the commerce of it all.  Meanwhile, the stove still ran 50 degrees cooler than the dial at temperatures less than 400, the left-burners' igniter was snapped off by Mari in 2009, and at the v end of 2011, the front right burner started firing in an amorphous, globular way, instead of a round of neat spikes under the pot.  I started to disassemble the burners to investigate, but realized maybe this was the time to bid adieu.

I was on the phone with Kowalski, merbling about this very (interesting!) thing, and he asked me to refresh his memory as to how I came by the major appliances for the doll's house. 

Oh!  My God!  Our service guys!  They also deal appliances!  Wait!  I never thought about it because with the doll's house, I had some serious space constraints and I gave it over to them wholly -- Please bring the thing that fits and doesn't suck.  They were heroes in this matter!

Mari & I were in Ballet Town last week when my phone rang.  I went light-up (on -duty) and chattered for a few minutes about my list of demands, then dug the index card with the measurements from my pocket.  I chattered gaily for a few more minutes and rang off.

Mari asked, almost rhetorically, who had been on the phone.

"Rafe," I told him, still cutiepie.  "From Rafe & Bill's."  (Blink.  Blink)

"Honey," he was so resigned to my tactics; I was so in love with him.  "Did I really hear you tell Rafe that he would be able to be just like Santa Claus?"

"Yes!"  Because I am irrepressible!  "Honey, almost every guy wants to be a hero, but there is no one who doesn't want to be Santa."

There was mock-groaning.  I reminded him that I share everything with him.  It is like the last time we were at Sal's and his tub trap sprang a leak & flooded his first floor --  I was there so I oversaw the whole day's-length repair.  I also had the plumber replace the kitchen faucet with one I scooted out to get while he fixed the tub.

The kitchen faucet replacement was an add-on I had wanted for a long time in that house.  So, I had it taken care of  & added on to Sal's bill.  Reviewing the invoice with him, I told him that, yk, as long as the guy was there, why not? 

"Now," I told him archly, and more than a little put-upon + weary from the Flood, "you know what it is like to have a wife!"

Sal kept reviewing & asked what a parts charge was, down near the bottom.  

"Oh," I told him.  "Your sink line was all mucked-up with deposits and he couldn't get it back together.  All the plumbing in the under-sink cabinet is new, but he didn't charge for labor, just the parts."

"Now, Sal" Mari announced from the edge of the dining room where he had been all day, jockeying his laptop in his Frette robe, "you know what it's like to have Elle for your wife!"

Not quite Sal doesn't.  Mari told me today on the phone, "When I get home tomorrow, I want you to be in the bed: naked!"

I paused.  "Oka-aay," I told him, before I paused again (the wind-up!).  "Who with?"

Ahahahaha!  I won that one.  Ahaha!

 

 

Anyhow, the new range!  Yes!  It has the timer thingy+ also 2 hot-like-the-sun burners up front & one pianissimo burner in back.  Also, if you feel like we need to do the scales of math in repair cost v replacement costs -- which we ladies sometimes must do -- you should know for yr files we could have replaced that thermostat 9 times more.  But I would not have a new hood.  À bientôt!  

liege

2011 started off extra-strong with not having to secure babysitting to attend a rock concert.  Let's look at that again.  I'll make it bigger.

 

2011 started off extra-strong with not having to secure babysitting to attend a rock concert.

 

It was just that huge, that first time.  I mean, we would leave them to go to the supermarket or the post office, but to go out?  At night?  Not until that day.  It is still pretty trippy, every time we do it.  Bye, love you.  Don't use the stove, no fighting, no biting. 

Wow.

Then, yk: kittens, growing; kittens, facing mortality.  Then whatever to all that cat stuff because Kowalski's mother was dying, and there were the unyielding reports filed, every night, many mornings, there were a lot of confessions and solemn agreements made. 

By the late spring, my favorite + best, the Israeli, wandering in the haze of the untreatable, was promised a way out and that was resolved in its entireity and whoa, so many people are happy.  It was touch & go at the start of recovery's road, but for months now he has been so great and I am so glad. 

We had a great trip home & I no longer -- if ever I had -- believe that old saw about how you can't go home again.  You can, and it will still be every moment the right hometown for you.  I am still glad not to live there, but never for the reasons people think.  It is my secret. 

Things reached a head in our family dynamic this summer, and 2011 is the year of useless pediatricians, but now we are going to turn the page on every single one of them.  It is so strange, because, yk, we talk to people, we are processors & confessors and I am a confider in a few people, and every time, with the twatty health-care providers, I have had to review -- am I making something where there is nothing? -- and it's always, "No, no, their behavior is outrageous." 

Although, the Israeli did say, very recently, when I called him about Mental Hospital Detail, limply putting my metaphorical self into his metaphorical hands, "You know, cookie, when you go to a carpenter, they generally use a hammer."  Ah. 

So who knows where that will go in the weeks and months to come.  I pretty much still feel very whatever-y about him, but he is my son and not my husband, so I do not actually have to work it out.  Take Michael and Fredo, right?  Shake it up with Fermina Daza.  Shoot! See?  Snake-eyes.  Yes.  He is a lovely child, until you ask him to do something.  But on travel, anywhere?  He is fine.  So, we will just never be at home again.  Or, more likely, I will simply bribe them more with trips to get what I want when we are home.  We no longer have pets in our care, so E-Z. 

We were in NYC yesterday, site of much delicate-lounging during 2011, to go to MoMA.  You have to know that I was going to perish if I did not see the de Kooning exhibit.  It was so good.  So! Good!

 

(So crowded!)

There were no photographs allowed in the galleries, so there are none here, but it was such a grand scale.  It was completely thorough, and Fifille was excited about a lot of process discussed in the curatorial exegesis from the audio tour.  I love the MoMA audio-tours.  I am not really an audio-tour person, but anyhow.

Also, at the de Kooning exhibit?  Stanley Tucci.  He was taking a photograph of the two women with him flanking the canvas of de Kooning's Two Standing Women, which I had just admired before doubling back to see another thing again. 

He had his camera right out!  Using the flash!  Even when photographs are allowed, flash is never!  In no museum!  I sidled past him & said, whispery-y -- if you know, you know exactly how this came out -- "You are going to get into trouble!" 

He was wholly conspiratorial in response, "I know, I am, shhh, I have to hurry!" 

Mari, of course, was all, "Did you just chide Stanley Tucci?" 

I did.  Know why?  He was doing bad behavior.  Duh.  But he is really very handsome.  Also, as with many people from the audiovisual world?  Smaller than you'd think. 

Then we had dinner in the 2nd-floor museum cafe, naturally.  Flourless chocolate cake is back on the menu, bliss, and the coffee is still pretty good.  Garçon had been at a portion of IFC's Studio Ghibli revue with Algren, but they turned up toward the end of dinner for the hand-off. 

Then we all went to the Diego Rivera exhibit. 

I was flattened.  There is really not v much more to say about it.  His work has a reach & a relevance thematically that I feel is really something to see at this moment, in particular, so there was that, but also -- Rivera is never really highlighted as an innovator, or a problem-solver, in his work.  He is almost always presented as the leading North American Communist who was a muralist and  who was sought out to diversify the human collections of people like Ford and the Rockefellers, who refused to take any shit off of anyone.  And, yk, dayenu, but then to find out that he constructed a way to make his work, murals, portable ... it just blew my mind.  Man.    

In conclusion, before we can all look forward to a 2012 full of sports-journalism blogging, I offer the traditional 8tracks thingo of my favorite tunes from 2011.  I think I try to keep it to 10, but last year I could not whittle it down at all, two years ago, there was an A-list and a B-list, and this year is 11.  Or 12.  I think.  I LOVE THEM ALL. 

This is a pretty-exciting piece of media from 2011, also.

I pronounce 2011 pretty great, even as (especially as?) it ends with my total-laryngitis, which harkens back to so many ways in which I try to improve my self -- with the needing to ask & the reliance and the willingness to be helpless, but also the shutting up the endless yammering.  Like now.  Have a safe evening and a restful pair of holidays, whether you are near to me or far.  xox

 

spoonful of sugar

No one will turn you away if you have dangling from your finger by its string a bakery box filled with Italian cookies.

 

Further, if you develop a reputation for being the girl who fetches a pound or two of Italian cookies from the county's best pasticciera to bring along to every gathering, you will find yrself invited to everything, even if you are not particularly nice and/or do not exactly cultivate people.  Every now & then you should appear with a rum sponge -- or for more intimate gatherings, a tray of cannoli -- just to keep people aiming higher.

Last night on Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor put words to something I know to be absolutely true, but for which I never had the words.  He was saying that [Midwesterners] are proud of winter, that it is embarrassing not to have winter, that we need winter to feel invincible.  Yes!  I can't believe I never looked at it so simply before.  Yes.  If you know that & you know that all I miss about a public, Catholic observance is the privation of Lent, well, then, you might know all there is to know about me.   

Invincibility is a pretty cool power.  It goes right along with the white box of cookies and the can of gasoline.  Oh, and Mari says it doesn't hurt to have big, googly eyes and long, long giraffe's eyelashes.  Hm.  We'll catch up about all that soon, I hope.  Gros bisous.     

moonlight. firelight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, but what happened?"

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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.             

metaspherical

I hate my calendar guy to be stuck on the previous month, so even though I have been suffering from Becky-itis, I forge ahead.  I thought about NaBloPoMo, for a sec, 'tis the season, but even if I use Alex as a model, meh.  It's funny, I did it last year because I thought I had such a great time when I did it three years ago, and then after about a week I remembered:  No, a great time was not had.  My earnest examination of the Jolie-Aniston conflict remains a low point in this blog, for me.  Also, now that Mari is working from home much of the time again, I mostly just want to lie around in my chonies listening to Wilco + The Beastie Boys, showing off my conjugal zeal.

 

I made panisse today, to go with our boring soup.  They are pretty.  They are also pretty easy, but people who can eat croutons and beignets and hot-water cornbread can live a full life without ever having these cross their lips.

Anyhow.

 

I was hard-cooking half of our last dozen eggs this afternoon, the beginnings of egg salad, thinking of sending a wry text-message to Fantastic Mr Fox about how since last we talked about my family's egg consumption (five days ago, when he was in a position to pick up some local food for me), we were down by three-and-a-half dozen!

(Four dozen eggs, he scoffed then.  Four?  then he laughed for real, plucking the $20 from my light grip.) 

But my handheld was in another room.  So, I was thinking of his forty-eight-egg amazement, while I frowned over the quality and capacity of the bubbles in the water -- is this a simmer or a boil here? -- and I noticed the price tag on the egg carton read $3.25. 

I remembered those eggs -- those particular eggs from that particular farm -- being $3 the last time I bought them, but I guessed I was wrong.  But I had instructed Mr Fox that I would like him to pick up 4 dozen of "the 3-dollar eggs."  And yet!  Lo, on my kitchen counter, the eggs that were on my mind!  Those are what he brought me!  Even though my instructions were flawed!  He stepped into the breach and bought the closest, most-likeliest item!  Then brought it back to me!  There was no confusion nor chaos! Nary a cellular-phone call about how no $3 eggs existed in the marketplace!  No empty-handed return with the mournful tale of the missing eggs!

I know for a fact there are four of you reading this who may be a little stroked-out in yr chairs right now at the very idea of such luxury.  I know!  He is like an electric boyfriend. 

Mari was going to ask him to go on a little neighborly outing to chainsaw up a fallen tree -- yk, for firewood -- the idea being we could share it between our households.  I was just in the middle of murmuring, Oh, that sounds like a fine way for you two to pass the time when I remembered something Algren said last week.

"Oh, that sounds like a fine way for you -- mmmphrrgl!  No!"  I threw out my hand to Mari, ready to grab his forearm if I needed to make him see my point.  "You can't do that!  I saw this years ago on an episode of Law & Order!" I clung to him a little, fretfully. 

"No accidents, honey!"

Seriously!  Didn't you see that episode?  You should tell me all about it because I only remember the germ of conflict in it.  They went rock-climbing?  You know?  Ahaha!

Omigod, speaking of Becky-itis's irate-message component:  No to all of you!  Mr Fox is a grownup!  He is my age!  If he were a child, I would never think he was foxy!  Does anyone know anyone anymore?

veronica wiped his face

I feel like I want to respond cogently to the comments of Becky & Marsha from yesterday's post, but really, you know?  I just want to write about my excellent life, which is also boring, but not to me.

There were cranberries in Wednesday's CSA chare.  Well, ok, but really?  I had them lined up for a baked good -- like Fish says, Baked goods: it's right in the name! -- but was not sure if they needed extra handling, so was stalling. 

Last night I picked up a copy of the Thanksgiving Living.  This morning, I was flipping through it after the gymgoing, dawdling in the super-quiet before the children awaken -- I love 5-a.m. gymgoing because it means I can get ready twice in peace + quiet --  and there it was: a magical recipe for Martha's Cranberry Clafoutis.  Yes.  Post-shower, alors!

 

The berries bob around so cutely.

It was a good clafoutis recipe.  A lot of them are too-too eggy, like I am eating a quiche (different dish!) or too-too cakey (zzZzZzzz).  This was just right down the optimal-custardy middle.  Great.

 

Mari was sad, because he doesn't like custard.  But people need to know that after I brought it to his conference-call side topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream,  his bowl was cleaned.  Then he told me about how he did not like custard, as if I give a fuck.  I told him this is why I have never knit him a pair of socks. 

This morning at the gym, it felt like I was dialing it in, but I am kind of sore already.  Great pâté, gotta motor.

cockpit

Hello, blog. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

parenthetically yours

Monday, Mari was home & some curious alchemy of him + our children got me encrossened (Cross out this family!) and I peeled out of here to go to the gym.  Bye!

On the way to the gym, I realized I could go to the Sadist's class, which I have not done in an age.  I first started skipping because I had some mysterious malady, remember?  For the past year, I have felt well enough (read: not too much like I would fall down) to go, but Mari has been away on Mondays and Sadist Class is scheduled at a weird, mildly-frantic time of day here.  On Monday, I walked away from all that.

I got nervous, ariving at the threshold of the studio, because, yk, Ow.  I weighed my independent-study options -- lap pool, rowing machine, StairGuy -- but told myself that it would all be fine, that Tuesday's time with Pilates Chick would work that all out.  Which it could have, in a way, but the Sadist had two words for us yesterday:  Bosu Balls.  I got through the class, but the jellified feel I was left with when we were done ... portent of doom. 

Then, Pilates Chick today was super-happy to display her merrily sadistic side, even as my locomotion could best be described as slithery.  Man.  It hurts my abs just to type this.  It hurts to brake the car.

However, I am not dead, so I will be stronger and thus, you know.  The Marines used to say, in their recruitment collateral, that pain is weakness leaving the body.  Ok.  I can not even muster up the energy to chew on a slice of cake, is how exhausted I am. 

It did not hurt me to take this photo.  All this baking and picture-clicking was Monday before delayed-onset muscle soreness set in.  I was still euphoric then.  Impervious to the louche charms of baked goods, yes. 

  

 

It is the standard yogurt cake.  I trust you -- fellas, you know who you are -- to all be able to find yogurt & pears where you are. 

Fille said, "Can you make yogurt cake with anything besides pears?"  I thought of this as a ludicrous question until I realized it was not.  It is not called yogurt-pear cake.  But my mother (and later, I) never made it with anything but pears.  It was like banana bread, for pears.  I hate banana bread.  I like yogurt cake.  This one was a little heavy on the fruit; I could have eased up.

Oh, omg, speaking of louche charm, Mr Fox came to dinner Sunday night.  Saturday?  The days are all mixed up to me now that my husband is on a different schedule.  Anyhow, love to dish, but I am not kidding, it is killing me to sit in this chair. 

Take three ibuprofen for me, every six hours.  Thank you.  One million kisses. 

I really did try to be less awesome that one time.

Let this day be ever remembered as the date Scheherazade met Jack Bauer.  It was amazing, and everything any one of you has come to expect from me.  It was, I think, my finest moment.  Mari said, to me, after my report, while he brushed golden stardust from my low-cut, flatteringly-twirly cloak, he said, Who are these motherfuckers in the world who have never read Sun Tzu and thought to act accordingly?

Weaklings, is whom.  Whose enemies are data-mining their egregious displays.  I was amazing, and I would love to tell any one of you about it, as long as we are on a secure line.  Let's kiss!

 

I am in receipt of a message along the last week from each one of my cookalong pals to tell me they do not know Italian plums.  What?   

 
 

Here they are.  I spotted them yesterday in the market called prune plums.  They are not like regular plums, they are less-watery and firmer, more texturally similar to a grape than a plum.  Or the difference between a peach and an apricot.  They just came into season, now.  If I can find them,  I am confident any one of you can, unless you make me think of upside down.  But, yes! 

 

I am so busy with the start of everything, the clusterfucking, snackpacking, lunchmaking grind, and also, falling ill.  I can not tell (because while I am amazing in a great many ways, with the light shooting from my fingertips and the ends of my hair and all, I am kind of a dope) if it is seasonal allergies or a good old-fashioned cold.  In any case, whatever.  I took a Claritin-D, 4 advil, a shot of feverfew tincture, and a tall drink of Emergen-C.  One of those things will help me. 

If you are keeping up with the SodaStream Chronicles, please know that I purchased one, new in the box, from a young lady via the Craigslist for us$65.   À bientôt! xoxo.   

cranky hour. drink specials.

• I will start here:  I don't know who Rick Perry is.  I don't want to, because look at how he's got you all so worked up.  No, you can't tell me.  No means no.  I am not going to let you rub it on me.  I'm not even going to put my hand on it.  No.  Here is what I will whisper in yr ear, while you get all heated up about the GOP primary, determined to show yr current-events stuff, etc, I'm going to blow your mind:  Remember McKinley.  Yes.  Didn't that feel good?

 

• On the way to Washington last week, all I could think about was the large, ever-present bottle of Rose's lime juice in Sal's refrigerator door, and how I would immediately upon my arrival be putting it to its best use, the vodka gimlet.  Sadly, the only vodka Sal had in his lair was Grey Goose, but you know what?  I said fuck it.  I will take those lashes in hell.  I had quite forgotten about vodka's tingly, rubbing-alcohol aspect, like drinking the snapping of rubberbands.  It had been almost 20 years since my last gimlet, a sweating glass perched on the clawfoot-caddy thing in the bathtub at Mr Kowalski's.  So far this past 7 days, I have had four of these tangy, scurvy-preventing cocktails.  (I know, I can hear you, What's up with the boozing?  Shh.  Later.)

 

• Also, related to drinks: if you know the SodaStream story, be advised that it ended with me pouting & asking why I had to jump through hoops & Mari asking why I just didn't tell him I was going to buy one, instead of volunteering to jump through hoops.  I said, still pouting, "Because that is not how Lucy Ricardo would do it!"  Then he told me he was not Ricky Ricardo and I was like, "Ugh, again, I know!"  Yes.

 

• Speaking of antics.  Yesterday the Fantastic Mr Fox was was returning an empty CSA box to me.  I had my hands full of cutting flowers to arrange, but called him from the screen door into the kitchen.  I told him I wanted him to take half of a huge cantaloupe -- no one will eat it but Fille & she can't keep up.  I asked him to stay put just a sec for its receipt while I was rushed to finish snipping the huge mass of flowers, stems underwater.  While my back was to him & the water running, he got down the cutting board, a knife, and neatly halved the cantaloupe that had been sitting on the countertop.  I saw none of this until he asked, indicating the half that was to stay, "Do you want me to wrap this?"  Um, foxy!  Hubba hubba.  No cocktails around this guy!  Children always right where they can see us!  Mmmmmphrggggl.  Have mercy!

 

• On to neighbors.  Mari is home.  He reported shortly after his arrival that on the walk home he encountered our around-the-corner NIMBY neighbor who asked him a weird question about me being home from rehab.  WHAT THE HELL?  Because Mari is null-gangster at the oddest times, he did not ask her WHAT THE HELL?  So, I marched right over hill & dale to do just that.  Mari scrambled to catch up with me because he can sometimes be a moderating influence.  He also knew that I was people-revved from a homeschooling-antisociable event today.  Vroom.  Let's open it up, now. 
  
  I let him lead while I stood, fixing Ms Nimby with an expectant gaze and a foot-tapping countenance.  She said, "Oh, I can't remember who told me that.  Just, yk, people talk."  She apologized for repeating gossip, said she did not even know what came over her, she was just trying to make conversation with Mari, repeated that she could not remember who told her such a thing, just, yk, people.  
  
  I brightened up, sweetly, empathetically, and leaned in -- close and understanding, just between us girls-- and told her, with great compassion and big, blinkety eyelashes,  "Oh, I know.  Those are the same people that go around telling everyone you tricked the lady who owned [Ms Nimby's rental property three doors down from us] into signing the deed over to you while she was on her deathbed."  I nodded, somberly, sorrowfully, fully understanding our plight in our little 2-gal canoe.  Sharing is caring!  "They say," I told her, full of grim reality, "you stole it from her family." 
  
  It is true, that this is what people say about her.  It predates our residence by many, many years, so I have zero idea as to its veracity.  I made a tsking kind of a face recognizable to all midwesterners.  People.  Fie on them. 
  
  She protested, there may have been spluttering, and I just nodded, full of her protest's gravity.  "Yes, Ms Nimby," I told her politely and filled with sympathy.  "But that is what people say about you, nonetheless.  So I know just how you feel."  Then we wrapped up after a little gardening + zoning-board chatter and Mari & I sallied back home together, me leading Mari by the hand a little, as he was still reeling at the katana's prowess in my assault.  When it is surgical, you don't get any blood-spray all over you.  You can walk right in & make a cocktail.  Also?  Don't start nothing and there won't be nothing.  Bitch.      

 

• Related to rental property.  Remember this whole land-barony project of Mari's?  Oh, Mari?  The guy who is all summer in the office with Very Important Client Face Time on Steroids?  Oh, the one who has not been available to manage his land-barony project?  Right.  It has not been a problem, I would not say, but this was not supposed to be my freaking thing at all, see?  Anyhow, there were 3 friends living there -- two renewed their lease for a year and one left.  I got some of the lowdown on why they parted ways while I was doing the girls' year-end walkthrough last month.  Of course, the young man did not leave his key when he moved out and has not responded to anyone's messages/missives about any of the end-of-lease stuff, not even where to send back his security deposit.  We four decided we would wait until 30 days-ish had gone by before taking any steps. 
  
  When I was reviewing with the young ladies about this & a little more random-feeling dish this morning, on an adorable speakerphone-call (they work together, the girls), they told me something that chilled my blood and I asked, trying to keep it even-toned, "How old is [Mr Roomie]?"  He is 24.  It is certainly possible I was too stricken by that one episode of ER, where Lucy was killed & Carter was turned into a drug addict, but it sounded the super-hecks like the onset of schizophrenia to me.  The locksmith flies at 8:30 tomorrow morning and I might not sleep until that very minute.  Fingers crossed.  Keep the cocktails coming!        

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. 

I am not humble because false modesty is a sin

So,  let me see if I've got this all the right way:

1. There are some women
   • who have a secret bulletin board
   • where they devote themselves wholly to the business of tearing down other women and the weblog-content those women put forth into the world. 
2. A bunch of them left comments here yesterday
   • in which they collectively reveal themselves to be pretty much illiterate,
   • in that they have no ability to detect  

   a. subtletly

   b. irony

   c. tone

3. which explains perfectly why they are obvsly incapable of working out that
   • my "vague terms" are to keep the entire population of internet grifters from getting into the business of my family + friends
   • plus also that those same familiars hardly need me to "deign to show them how incredibly gorgeous I am," since my God-given pulchritude is pretty much the single outstanding thing about me, (because it isn't all you need, but it gives one a prodigious headstart)
4. to say nothing of how very, very rich it is that  (see: a, b, and c, plus also: board devoted to tearing down other women) they accuse me of being a hater.  Ahahaha!

Did I cover everything? Are we about square?

So way past beyond-hilarious that hateful people on the internet would wonder why anyone would keep their business as tightly-leashed as possible, coded in a portmanteau for people who can hear the words on the screen in my voice.  Um, clearly because there are people like them in the world?

But there are in this world so many, many more people.  Everyday pals, faraway friends, best-besties, my husband -- none of whom need to read by the lights of their projectors and the horrible, noisy, whirring distraction, since they have been for two decades or more surrounded by an exchange of words in writing.  Or, because they have my g.d. phone number and can call for clarification if they need to know so much more.  

I would be remiss if I failed to mention a small but mighty group of generous people who have never met me and who know how to read for content and its fulsomeness.  This project is sometimes a jumping-off point, it is sometimes backfill, but this project is always mine, for me, this little scrapbook on the internet.  Yes.

Forward.  Because it is again an interval for making herbal medicines, at a minimum.  Looking at you, Lisa -- yr package is almost ready.

 
 

Also, here:  I have created a fucking monster with the bespoke menswear, I swear.  I had to sadly tell Mari the tailor's shop is closed on Saturdays in July.  OK.  Additionally, I had to explain to him that they are away in August.  It was like the first time he impressed me, when I had to explain to him what Yom Kippur was.  Only now he's been married to me for 15 years and I was more than a little like, yk, seriously?  Italians go away in August.  Also, Greeks flirt.  Come on!

When we got off of the phone & I was hassling Fille to bring me her laundered yardage so I could start on her skirts, which obviously -- all this inability to be off-the-rack -- is it nature or nurture? 

Friday!  I feel great.  All the marking & listmaking & nonchalant interfacing makes me feel like I'm blogging Alex's blog, and this has the right feel for the rest.  Plus, same hairdo, obvs.

 

Gros bisous!

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.

make lemonade.

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

x4

 

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

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

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

Yawn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

independence

This weekend is all about declaring what we want. 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

five by five, mostly

 

• Last week, Elsa-Graceful was in for her surgery & the Cat Society called & said they would keep her going forward and also would relieve me of the duty of fostering the kitten.  I miss Elsa-Graceful: she was a really great, beautiful, charming, sweet-tempered cat and I hope she gets a really great home.  I missed her yesterday, a lot, there may have been tears, but I console myself in the knowledge that she is not an immortal cat and I would lose her eventually anyhow, but not before a decade of unremitting scooping.  Farewell, Gracie.

 

 
This is the photo I took while I was on the phone, describing everything I saw to Liam Neeson.

• Also last week: Garçon had enough of my absolute czarist tyranny in pursuing him to not simply wash the dishes but turn them out clean.  He raged around our perimeter like Ike Turner, hurling potted plants, scissoring the rest, destroying landscaping, and trying to break down our door again. I told him I would call the police & report him for vandalism and he ran away. Of course he ran away, because he is a fucking punk and a coward, which constitutional weakness is his fatal flaw. It was 10 hours before he was brought home in a squad car, but I had been wickedly serene over being rid of him.

• My perverse refusal to gibber & swoon over my asshole kid's disappearance was fully-understood by a. Mari (when I picked him up at the train station, while the child was still at-large, he said, "Too bad it's not cold out," and I said, "Yes. But it is about to rain."), b. Kowalski ("God sent this child to you because you are so gangster."), and -- in a surprise of advancing-acquaintance -- c. my Foxiest Neighbor.  Mr Fox came into the story toward its end, after-dark, when I was on my way to get Mari. ("You don't seem very worried.")  He asked what preceded the raging and I told him, yk, Getting Dishes Clean.  He considered this for a minute before sardonically offering the possibility that during the child's absence, perhaps he had been able to secure gainful employment and his own apartment.  Cartoon hearts flew out of my eyeballs while I grimly fluttered my spiky giraffe-lashes and pronounced him full in his affinity.

• Yesterday I realized Harry Potter: Big Finale opens when I am scheduled for another Eva-Gabor excursion with Sal.  I only considered canceling the trip for a couple of minutes before I realized that was possibly the craziest thought I have ever thunk, plus, also, Sal would strangle me.  Summer has completely taken over my brain, obvsly.  Sal texted last night to say that he is afraid to go to NYC now, that someone might try to marry him now.  Ahaha!  

 

 
This is the ridiculously amazing heart-shaped-charm rock I found at Lake Michigan. It was the Israelis' anniversary gift.

• The Israeli is still ailing, but not worsened by his surgical endeavor, thank God.  He wants to see a specialist from a category in which I have some experience, so I found him a specialist personally recommended by my own razor-sharp specialist.  He meowed that it was too far so I arranged for him to get there, easily, after which he further nanced around until I was irritated and said, dismissively, "Ok, whatever, you are reminding me of that Catholic joke, do you know the one?"  He said, in a concession, "Two boats and a helicopter, it's a Jewish joke, too."  And so he is now doing what I want him to do (although I am still irritated), for which his pretty wife is glad and my husband is just, yk, humming the I Dream of Jeannie theme song forever.