a break from reality

Gotta take an indefinite bloggy break. I just promised myself that I would write this other thing (fiction!), and i’d kick myself forever if I didn’t do it. I will miss posting, and the comments and support from amazing people I have met along the way. But I just have to get this story out of my head. Wish me flowing thoughts, inspiration and minimal procrastination.

goodbye Brooklyn, goodbye

Pardon the ugly looking blog. I am messing around with it. Its temporary. I hope.

Yeah, we moved. Out of Brooklyn. The kids have their own rooms, we have a playroom and a friggin dishwasher, and about 5 cars drive down my street every day. And I have a yard, front and back and the house is really, really awesome. A few neighbors came and rang my bell to introduce themselves. Another 5 or so introduced themselves out front while we raked on our front lawn and the kids helped fill the leaf bags. The block is lined with huge sycamores and the back yard has a dogwood tree and a big, big pine tree. Tonight Jack asked us what that beeping noise was. It was crickets. We no longer live in the flight path to LaGuardia, white noise decent every 2 and a half minutes. Our elbows no longer hit the sides of our bathroom wall when getting dressed after a shower. We can make all of the noise we want, there are no downstairs neighbors to complain. No downstairs neighbors smoking pot or cooking steak-um’s or burning some fish thing one girl made once a week. No creepy neighbors, no yapping dog at 5:30 every morning. We get to paint the walls any damn color we choose. Its ours (and the bank’s). A place that belongs to our family, and will be inherited someday. I have been so overcome with emotion over the last few days. Watching my kids ride their scooters up and down the block or playing in the backyard. This is where they will grow up, and I am so thankful to have landed here and be able to give them such a nice home. Ruby rode her bike all over with her friend today. She has never done that outside of Fire Island. We all sat together at the dining room table. We couldn’t all fit in our kitchen in the old apartment. There was some great stuff about living in Brooklyn. Mostly the friends I made. Socializing at the playground will be something ill miss. All the other parents with the same look on their faces, they had to get out of the house with their kids. And Ill miss the Greenwood Cemetary, and Prospect Park. But thats it really. Its funny, after ten years and huge part of my identity wrapped up in being a Brooklynite… I am older now, and want different things for myself, some quiet and some community and a good school district. I will not make my kids sacrifice to fulfil some need of mine to cling onto Brooklyn pride. I am not twenty or thirty anymore, wanting to be in the middle of it all are down the priority list. I just don’t care about that anymore honestly. I never thought I would think this way… but I could care less about Brooklyn. Ive done it, ten years of it. And I have sacrificed a lot to be there. I am just ready to move on. Ill see some of my Brooklyn friends over the next couple of weeks. Ill have to make the effort to stay in touch. We have some friends here too. Lots of drop by’s this week. Its been nice. Our fridge has a lot of champagne in it. (pancakes and mimosas?). Its a huge life change. Already I feel so much calmer. There is so much we want to do to this place. There are four rooms of Ralph Lauren dusty light yellow, and bedrooms with muddy floral wallpaper, a spiral shrub, and some tacky gold fixtures. But nothing major. OK, the grand to fix our chimney aint cheap. But it will so be worth it this winter snuggling up in front of the fireplace. We have many years ahead of us to make the place ours. It already is starting to feel like its ours. I never thought I would have a place so nice. I am so grateful that life has sent me this way and that I am here at this point. I am a lucky girl. And 30 minutes to Manhattan!

my big pants

The time arrived when I needed to admit that the shreds of denim I called jeans were no longer functioning as clothing. I have always dreaded shopping for pants and had the crazy idea to just order something on-line. I noticed that the Gap had “tall” sizes, so I figured that might be where to go (I am nearly 6 feet). I didn’t know they now sold only their own brand, the last time I shopped at The Gap I squeezed myself into a tiny pair of Jordashes in 6th grade. Their site said that the “tall” pants had a lower knee (jeans have knees?) and a longer rise (in their low-rises?). Most pants I try on that fit me end about two inches above the ankle, and my “rise”  (crotch to belly button) is often the problem because the hips in most pants land about an inch or two lower than they should around the waist. In other words, I have been wearing low-rise jeans before they were the rage. So I thought: Yes. THATS what I need! Long low rises and lower knees! So I thought I would order my size and be done with it.

But I had to go to the mall anyway with my older daughter and remembered there was a Gap there and thought I would pop in and try them on just to be sure. I went to the rack and grabbed an 8 and a 10 just in case they ran small. In the dressing room I pulled on the eights and was swimming in them. Swimming. Like I could fit another body in there swimming. I know that I have lost some weight, but I am not THAT thin really. So I tried the 6s’ and then the 4s’. I am not a four! What was going on? Did the Gap just dumb down the sizes so that we think we were smaller than we are? What is wrong with accepting that the average weight of a woman (in the US) is a 14 and just be honest about it and make THAT the size that the tag says. Not make a 14 an 8! Does The Gap think that we are all so disconnected from our bodies or have such distortions about our appearance that we might fall for that? Try on some pants and say “Look at that! I must have lost weight, I went down four sizes!” Maybe so. As I stood and looked at myself in the orange glow of the backlit mirror (and man my skin looked really good in that light) I began hearing the Indigo Girls singing Lie to Me in my head. Yes, lie to me. For a few minutes I can try on clothes I can’t afford and feel like someone who has beautiful skin and am really, really thin (cuz thats what we all want to be right?). Cu’mon baby, liiiieee to meeee! So I took my four’s happily to the counter and paid for them.

But, and there is a but. I should not have purchased said jeans. I realised that when I got home that they didn’t fit me as well as I thought they did. Should I have gotten the 2’s? thats crazy. But the ass sagged. Although they fit everywhere else, I didn’t have the rear end to fill out the ass part. I could have fit a couple more of my own asses in there. OK, so I can admit that I am challenged in that department. Not to be racial here, but I am what some circles of women might call a “skinny white bitch”. But I am shopping at The Gap here! It’s not like I am shopping for a pair of Apple Bottoms or something. The asses in my lineage fell off somewhere back when we all lived on Pangaea. As they moved north and the continents drifted, my skirt wearing, stone throwing, grog drinking ancestors had no need for this thing called “ass” and it just evolved out all together. As Tom says, he is now just a back with legs. Along with “waist” and “inseam” there should also be a “but size” like a bra cup. AA, A, B, C, D, DD, etc. I was pretty sure I would be able to find assless pants at The Gap. I don’t mean without fabric in the ass region, that would be a different kind of store all together, not likely found at the mall. Do I have to shop for white girl pants at Lands End? I can get myself a pair of “mom jeans”. The ones that button above the belly-button, they start an inch below the bra. Jeans where the pockets are so far up they are practically on your back accentuating the space left open below. The hips will balloon out unnaturally and get tight around the ankle. No, not me. I can’t do it. The most favorite pants I ever owned were a pair of perma-press chino style pants in navy. I bought them out of a box on the floor of a small Mobile station on a back road in Georgia on a tour. My curves filled out my janitor/gas station attendant pants, I did not have to fill out pre-made curves. Maybe I just need to go back to spandex, something we will fondly remember from the eighties.

I wondered how this downsizing might be working for The Gap. Anyone that ordered their size on-line must have had to send back their purchase, maybe a few times. What a waste of packaging, energy and fuel. I know that there was a campaign for universal sizing in clothing but I don’t see anything more about it on the internet. Maybe as we got bigger, the market dictated the migration of what was the median. OK, but why re-label it all? Or maybe it depends on the brand and the income level of the purchaser. At Macy’s I am a medium in a shirt, at Target I am an extra small. A person buying a shirt at Target is likely to have a lower income, and more likely to eat a high fat diet and therefore be more likely to be overweight. But what is overweight at this point? Where can we accept the real and natural size of most women and then still recognise that there are overweight people in the world. There is a difference. The plus sized model who posed nude and un-airbrushed in Glamor Magazine this week got all kinds of supportive e-mails. She is the size of most women but still considered “plus size” in the modeling world. But a 12 – 14 is pretty much an average size (depending on the brand). And still the magazines show painted 14 year olds and their concave chests and jutting out shoulder blades as something to aspire to.

I am a tall and thin person. I am just built this way. When I am at the playground with my kids, I get so many comments from total strangers about my weight. How can I look so skinny and have four kids? I usually answer that I am thin naturally and breastfeeding and running after 3 little kids helps a lot too. But I always feel sad that this is a part of our conversation. One woman referred to my weight three times in our ten minute conversation, it made me a little uncomfortable. I know so many women struggle with their weight. And most people do not think a thin person struggles with their weight also but they often do. And I wish there was more support and more acceptance and even admiration of what a woman’s body looks like after childbirth. I try whenever I can to say positive things to women about what they look like after having a baby and make sure to not include weight as a part of it. A woman’s body is so amazing, to have given birth to another human being and have gone through an incredible transition physically, hormonally and emotionally and yet be dependant on the comments of strangers to help us feel good about ourselves is such a shame. I wish we all felt it in our bones, that we are beautiful and strong and not need to feel so inadequate (or too much) all the time.

Web sites (like smallstep.gov) and health programs for kids and adults that focus on obesity remind them that they should excercise and eat healthier food and watch portion control. Although well meaning, a part of it feels a little insulting to me. It seems assumptive that people became fat accidentally and had no idea how they arrived there and do not know what to do to become thin again. It would be nice to see a web-site that did not use dancing vegetables to encourage people to get up and move. But addressed the psychology of weight and the social mindset and cultural differences that affect ones weight. Also the problem of access to healthy food and affordability of healthy food needs to be brought into the discussion. For some people there is just not the ability to change their high fat and sugar diets as easily as is suggested. Kids will eat as their parents eat and if the parents are buying two for five dollar boxes of Entenmans and eating fast foods, the kids are not going to change. If kids open their lunch boxes at school and find Lunchables and cup-cakes, that is what they are going to eat. And if this is what is advertised and displayed as nutritious food in our stores (and its all that little Johnny will eat), it will be what parents buy. It’s a complex problem that doesn’t solely rest on the consumer however, marketing and accessibility play a big role. It is a national mentality shared by all economic and cultural backgrounds. Most of us reach for the processed food and get caught in the cycle of sugar and empty calories for energy. Yesterday I was so tired of food that I had to thaw first or something starchy made in five minutes that I insisted we skip the playground and make our dinner a priority. Tom and the kids went to the fish monger and got some tilapia and we had acorn squash and rice. We all sat together and the kids cleaned their plates. It made such a huge difference in our moods. We are fortunate to be able to get organic vegetables and be able to afford them, they are so expensive in the city. It is so worth the effort to make healthy food, now I just need to learn to cook.

Social commentary tangent aside… the Gap isn’t helping people feel better about their bodies by dumbing down their sizes. Granted, the Gap’s job is to sell jeans, and maybe this “downsizing” works for them for the impulse buyer, but I don’t see it working for them in the long run. I would like to see a company as big as The Gap (they also own Piper Lime, Banana Republic, Old Navy and now Athleta) be honest about the size of women and not skirt around that. It seems like a cheap trick for such a big public company. They should have higher standards, if not be the ones setting the standard. When I get home with my size fours and look in the mirror I say to myself “Why should the folks at The Gap want me to think I am thinner? Is being bigger bad? Do they think I am stupid?” I don’t think that is the idea they were going for. It’s too late to take them back. So now I am going to peruse the internet for some ass pads, and have a donut. I’ve got some big pants to fill.

its good to have goals

In my house we are very goal oriented. On the wall is a chart for “Good Listening” and a chart called the “Poop Chart” where you get a star whenever you make a poo in the potty. If the kids fill up the chart they get (tons of praise) and a special treat of their choosing (within reason, usually ice cream from the ice cream truck). We have words of praise for speaking without whining and using your words well. If you eat your dinner, you get desert. For Ruby, if she cleans her room, is respectful and honest and keeps in close contact, she gets more freedom and trust and sometimes more stuff she wants. If you sit down and talk to her about what she wants to do with her life, she will say that she wants to be a famous actress and if that doesn’t work out, a writer. But first she will travel for a couple of years before college. Eh, well maybe she figures out how in time… But right now she lacks the practical skills to understand that it takes things like money to travel. I think I dread those days (years) the most when she will get a reality check after high school. I did the same thing. I was pretty sure I would go off to a big college and be famous somehow. But harsh reality and lack of privilege blew that out of the water and I resorted to plan B which was pretty much survival. Still there was something in me that made me feel that I would not be satisfied with mediocrity (suburban Jersey) and was determined to get ahead in a career and live in the biggest city I could find (conveniently an hour away). I don’t think it was that I felt I was better than other people, but I knew that I would never be able to sit still in a small town and not need to know what else was out there.

The other day my family and I were driving down Route 286 to go celebrate my Mother’s birthday at my sister’s house. From the third row of the Durango Marlowe said “I hava go pee pee”. And we pulled over into a parking lot of a condo development circa 1980 something so that we could bust out the Pottette right there on the fertilized sod separating one line of parked cars from another. Ruby looked out and said “What is this place… people live here?” For her it was as if we had landed in some alien landscape and she expected the cast of Yo Gaba Gaba to pop out from behind the shrubs and waddle towards the car like zombies. “Um, those are condos, pretty much where most people in the United States live”. She was honestly amazed and said that it looked depressing. This is from my Brooklyn 13 year old who said upon return from summer camp of her co-campers in Pennsylvania that a Brooklyn 13 year old is like a PA 14 year old. And I wondered who was the one more sheltered. I hope she does get to travel after high school, but I hope that she drives across the US and gets a sense of how most people live; and see farms and small towns and industry and get that feeling (as all traveling should) that she (and New York) are not the center of the universe.

As we were parked in the parking lot I watched a woman leaving her brick fronted condo that was next to about 50 others that looked exactly alike, I wondered what her life was like. She looked like she was dressed for work in polyester slacks and a blouse and she got into her old crappy car and drove away. And I wondered if she owned the place or rented. And was this for her a nice home that she had worked hard to buy? Or was she resigned to the fact that with her salary, this was the most that she had hoped to achieve. Or was this a place that was a stepping stone to what she felt was her true potential which was to own her own house someday. I didn’t know this woman or anything about her, maybe she had overcome great obstacles to get to where she was in life. Maybe she was happy and house proud and it didn’t matter at all that her house was the exact same lay out as her 49 neighbors, and that she heard the sounds of the highway and that the area between the sidewalk and the curb was her lawn, and the parking lot in front of her house butted up against a Wallgreens. Maybe it was just enough.  But I judged her anyway and titled (pigeon-holed) her a representative and advocate for all dwellers of early eighties constructed condos everywhere. Maybe because I have spent the better part of a year looking at homes to buy and going through all of the hoop jumping associated with trying to buy one, my mind is focused on this kind of thing. And maybe I make the wrongful assumption that everyone wants to buy a house also. Tom and I would look at houses and decide that one house or another wasn’t good enough, or wasn’t in a good enough neighborhood. We would feel a little guilty walking through a house knowing that it was probably someones prized possession and wasn’t something we would ever consider living in. It was so much easier to look at properties without the owner home. But we had a list of criteria and decided to stick to it and be willing to compromise on some things (like aesthetics, distance to shops, the model of house we preferred, etc) and not on others (like space, school district, busyness of street, neighborhood, etc). Maybe some of it was just where we saw ourselves within a class. And some of it was just a matter of taste. Some part of this decision also had to do with how we were raised and taught what was of value. They were some tough questions to ask ourselves… What does moving up look like and how high up can I get? What qualities of life and standard of living do I think I deserve?

Last year in March the airplane poked out from under the clouds and in its decent, flew a loop around Rio just as the sun was rising. It was a magnificent sight. All of the windows of the endless high rises reflected orange and gold. There were miles and miles of high rises sticking up from the trees below. My face pressed up against the glass of the airplane window while my daughter slept in the seat next to me. The off white apartment buildings ran up and down the hills from the ocean to the mountains. I had never seen anything like this, I had no idea there were so many people who lived here. I imagined the people inside, waking up one by one to start their day. Their whole lives complicated and filled with relationships and histories. I wondered what motivated these people individually to get up and put the coffee on and start the day, what things did they have to do and what achievements did they hope to reach. Maybe a generation or so ago someones ancestors came out of the jungle, or from a small town or up from the south out of slavery hoping for a chance at a better life. People came to Rio because that was where the work was. And this is how they live here. There below me passed a million stories of success and failure, and of achievements and dropping out. If I lived in this town I would live in a high rise too, maybe a newer construction up on a hill, and that would be the best I could hope to achieve. I could not live in a high rise apartment in New York. I don’t care if it had a view, a weight room – sauna and pool and a doorman… it would make me uncomfortable and depressed. I lived in hotels for many years and all that convenience is a little bit sterile for me. I keep thinking of Fight Club and the flaming yin/yang coffee table. Not enough individuality in the cookie-cutter floor plan. Too much Ikea and recycled air.

At my sister’s house my sister asked me if I wanted to stop by a local farm and buy some milk, it was almost two dollars for a half gallon. It wasn’t organic so I said no even though it said on the carton the cows were not fed hormones. I told her I spent $5 for a half gallon of organic milk, and we went through one of those a day in our house. My father who was listening to us said “I don’t know how people can live like that.” And I told him that we didn’t have any choice. That was how much it cost if you wanted to buy organic milk in the city. And people live there because that is where the jobs are …and people’s families.” And that I couldn’t live anywhere else (oh, and that I legally have to live within 15 miles of Park Slope). We make the most of what we can within the parameters we have to work with.

On the way home from  my sister’s house we took Route 202 in NJ back up North. Along the road were older houses that were not set back at all. Tom said that he could never live in a place where the highway was going through his front yard. I said that chances were that those houses were there when the highway was a dirt road. I thought about the people who lived in the houses, and how maybe the house had been handed down within the family over a hundred years and the family was proud of the house and living next to the sounds of the highway was all they had ever known. My home in Brooklyn is just a row house  in a half working class Irish and half yuppy neighborhood. There are mosquitoes breeding on my roof, my street is getting more and more busy with truck traffic, I have no yard and I pay too much rent. There are many, many people who wold look at my house and wonder how I could live here, and I know that judgementalness hurts. Even though, by Brooklyn standards, I have a big apartment in a coveted neighborhood. My new neighbors downstairs have been showing the place off to friends all week. I would not last more than a week in a rural or suburban setting, I would feel out of place and get terribly bored. For Tom and I, our big goal in life has been to find a nice home to raise our children. This is where we are at. Adults with adult goals. Our own goals take a back seat to what we need for our kids to be healthy and happy. We make decisions that enable us to continue to feed our family before our egos. But still, there is a bit of ego in buying a house. A bit of a declaration of Who the hell do I think I am?

I have been told that one of the ways to stave off depression is to set out attainable goals and achieve them little by little. Start small and eventually build up your self esteem and confidence and eventually get yourself out of the mindset that everything is just an exercise in futility and that life is just pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll you over in the end. I am thankfully not depressed these days, but I really should be, considering. My life seems to be a series of lists of stuff to do that never gets anywhere near finished. When once I had a job where I could plow through 300 e-mails a day and practically do two jobs and get shit done yesterday… I now am lucky if I get a shower in once a week. And I am lucky if I get one thing done off of my list over the course of three or four days. I have been stuck in the fast forward passage of time and the molasses of movement that pregnancy/infant/toddler land puts you in for about two and a half years now. I am as task oriented as I was as an Administrative Assistant (I think I was called that), but now I am my own boss and my hours are more, the pay less and now I only eat lunch standing up. Making too many lists of goals seems to be half of my problem, I can’t get past the “shit I gotta do” let alone get to the goals (stuff I wanna do). I used to tell people who were new to being a parent that if they got half of what they wanted to get done, they were doing good. With three little ones, it is now more like less than a quarter if anything off the list. This has been one of the hardest things to get used to. I no longer set myself up with unreasonable goals such as “I will floss everyday” and “I will set my alarm for 5am and do yoga every morning.” As lifestyle choice-y and just plain maintenance as those things are, I can’t ever get it together to do those things daily. I lack the discipline. Strangely enough, I would have a better chance of raising money for and completing a walk-a-thon or organizing the logistics for a world tour for a 25 person traveling party or birthing two large twins than taking a vitamin every day (needless to say, I am not “on the pill”). Some discipline might make me a happier person perhaps. But for now, ill stick to trying to reach 1/4 of my goals. I finished one out of four books I had set out to read this summer, so I am right on track. But the goals to complete a NY Times crossword, jog (or is it called running now) and learn a language has moved so far down the list that I think they have fallen right off the page.

Honestly I have long term goals and a plan and all… but my big personal goals these days are just to try and be a good parent, and raise healthy and happy children. And to try and be a more patient and peaceful person. And to write, and write and write. Without a creative outlet I get depressed. Sometimes a week will go by and I haven’t had the chance to write and I can feel the uneasiness and irritability start to creep in. At this point I know my nature and I should not mess with what gives me balance. The big challenge is that the urge to write and never seems to be at the time when I have a window of free time, and when I do get a window, I feel pressure to hurry up and be creative. As much as I would like to drink a bottle of wine and write by candle light listening to old PIL albums at 4am, thats just not a good idea. I don’t lament the time when I was single and young, now I look forward to being old and my kids are grown and I can catch up on all my reading and writing.

Tom and I have goals set out for the family. Places we want to take our kids and traditions we want to have with them. Right now we have been thoroughly obsessed with buying this house we settled on. We are at the end of the process and half in boxes ready to go.  We found something that fit everything we wanted, now its up to the bank to decide its worth what we are willing to pay. Its a long process, once we are past it we will have taken a huge step for our family and the house will be the foundation (no pun intended) for many ideas and memories to spring from. Even though I will have one foot in semi-suburban NYC, I will still be 4 minutes to the ferry to Manhattan. During the whole house hunt,  Tom and I had the same or similar opinions on nearly everything. It was a relief to feel the same way about where (and how) you wanted to raise your children. Thankfully he never said he loved something that I found awful. And we almost always found the same things to dislike about a house. I am excited to have a house with him. There is so much we could do to make it “us”.  But at our rate of achievement these days, it will take years. And something about us taking our time and growing with the house makes me happy. We already have lists of things we want to do. But there is no rush, nothing on the long list is anything we have to do. And I don’t care if we ever finish really, I will enjoy adding a little every year.

at the beach

will post again soon.

and the whole world has to answer right now. just to tell you once again.

Today was the first time that I ever cried when I heard Michael Jackson’s Bad. Its not that I was a huge fan, I would always say he was amazing, and I tended to defend him if people spoke of him acusatorilly and I felt sad over his slow, slow death, and now over his quick one.

But strangely enough I had a dream about him three nights ago, two nights before he died. 

I was under a quiet overpass in Los Angeles with some homeless people, it was a cold clear night. We were standing around an old oil drum burning wood and paper and anything else that would burn for warmth. The people were nondescript hunched bundles wrapped up so only their eyes could see and were too cold to speak. About six to eight of them just waddled around through the smoke looking around for something to add to the fire. One of the figures was wrapped up in a brown freyed fabric, and it slipped off his head a little revealing his face. It was Michael Jackson and I was shocked when I recognized him. He had a short afro and his nose was his original, broad across his face between two brown cheeks glowing in the fire light. I noticed also that he wasn’t wearing a shirt but didn’t seem affected by the cold. He pulled at the fabric and hid his face again. I said to him “Hey! I know who you are?”, he didn’t respond. I said “You are Michael Jackson, what are you doing here?” (thinking that a rich and famous man could choose to be anywhere he wished), and he said “I am here like you are.” I thought for a second. It hadn’t ocoured to me that it might be strange for me to be there also, but that incongruity seemed small compared to running into Michael Jackson of all people. “But you have to go make music.” (why I used the word “go” in there I don’t know). And he sat down on the curb letting his hood fall back and started scratching at the dirt with a stick he had been using to poke at the fire. He smiled and said, “I am everywhere, cant you hear me?” and pointed to the distance with his stick. At  first I made a smirk thinking that that was a little corny but in the next moment I got what  he meant. I heard his music everywhere as if it was coming from the stars, but there was no sound. I then said “But you shouldn’t be here, you should be…” and he replied “Where should I be?” and he started to laugh. Not a crazy person laugh, but the laugh a child would make. I turned from him and looked around behind me to see if anyone else had noticed the real Michael Jackson sitting in front of me, but I couldn’t see anyone outside of the firelight and I sensed that they had wandered off. I turned back around and Michael was gone and I felt my heart sink. I looked down the dirt road in both directions and there was no sign of him. I stared off in one direction hoping he would reappear. I started to feel angry. I had had Michael Jackson in front of me and I hadn’t asked him anything good really, I had blown it on stupid pointless questions. And then I turned my anger at him. Why had he come to me as a wise old homeless man and had nothing important to say? But thats when it hit me. He wasn’t a wise old man, he was not a teacher. He was a child again and free, and he owed nothing to anyone anymore, not even answers. 

And I woke up peacefully then and smiled to myself and felt as if I had been handed some kind of answer to some big picture somewhere if only I could remember the lyrics. It was only a dream,  I know. But I was left with a feeling of him for a couple of days. He was part Jesus figure, part grim reaper, part clown like as he played in the Wiz, and part Tiny Tim… go figure. I didn’t predict his death, in fact I wondered if it was a predictor of my own. But I was left feeling somewhat blessed or just lucky that I had stumbled upon him, the flash of him, the too bright star that he was.

I do not think of myself as psychic, but I have so many premonitions that it isn’t something that shocks me anymore. That is why when I was 9, my Mother came into the room in the morning to tell me that my grandmother had died, I answered “I know, she told me.” And why when last Thursday, before I heard the news, a passenger in a low riding Honda Civic with his sneakers up on the dash drove past me as I got out of my car and he said to me. “Yo, those are some mad tats. Hey, Michael Jackson died…today. That is some fucked up shit.” I answered “Thanks” and “yeah, I know.” as he drove off.

i heart my doghead

I saw a T-shirt in a shop window the other day that said “I (heart) haters”. And it got me thinking about “haters” and if I was one of them. I realized that I was from time to time when I was not being a lover. And I got this idea to start a “hate meme”, asking people to list what they hated instead of the usual goofy questionnaire passed around that asks you to list 10 little known facts about yourself or whatever. Not like I am big on meme’s, I don’t do them often (maybe once). But I figured that we define ourselves so much by what we like (Hi, Im Kristin. I like moonlit walks on the beach, hiking, surfing, biking and sedoku puzzles) why not include a list of things we hate, or dislike, or simply find irritating? Maybe Facebook can have a whole section of your profile page where you can list your least favorite things to do or movies and books you hated, etc. Everyone’s pages are so filled up with things they are “fans” of, I haven’t seen this much love since it became fashionable to have an “I (heart)” bumper sticker on your car that showed the world what you love. Stickers  like: “I (heart) my dachshund head”, or “I (heart) golf” were everywhere. It is just not fashionable to be a hater these days, only if you are Eminem maybe.

The hate meme would have to have a rule that you could not include a name or obvious reference to someone that you knew directly. But people would inevitably list people in their lives, and it would be all my fault that someone’s feelings were hurt, or someone lost their job when they listed their boss or co-worker. The fate of all kinds of things may be altered with the push of the little snowball of negativity. I wouldn’t want that kind of heavy karma on my shoulders. I have in fact taken steps recently to do some karmic-clean up and spreading any hate might not help me in my quest for sparkling dharma. I am a big believer in that whatever energy we put out comes back to us. But I am also a believer in creating safe outlets for our frustration (hence the dry wit, self effacement and sarcasm you may find here), and being true to your feelings.

Maybe we should write down what we find offensive in this world, put it out there, only to help us let it go. Pretending that nothing affects you negatively may not be the right way to go. Maybe we should list them, own them and set the whole thing aflame in a bonfire of all things we want to be rid of from our past. We can include in the pyre a pile of voodoo dolls of all negative and toxic people we have known, include all lists of things we made for ourselves to do that we procrastinated on, old mismatched furniture we got out of yuppy trash and used but always hated, all conversations with collection agents or DMV employees, all of our old discarded fashions, our guilt and our shame, or greed or envy, our lists of unreasonable and unattainable goals, all photos and phone numbers of ex lovers and ex friends, all copies of mass market paperbacks assigned in high school that you have carted from apartment to apartment over the last 20 years, all hours wasted in line, all unused exercise equipment, any outdated electronics, any missed payments… unkept appointments and unreturned phone calls, an old precious big wheel with a hole in the tire, any fake orgasms, all poorly made decisions made that may have directly or indirectly hurt someone, any feet put in your mouth, any botched attempts, old postcards and trinkets, friends who let you down, all old family dysfunction, any fear hammered into you by the church, any unrecoited love, any notions of grandeur, any lousy first or second drafts, lies told.. white and black, any gifts received that you never liked but pretended to and kept out of guilt, episodes of bad parenting, and all of your past failures, or near misses, and any broken hearts. Douse it with gasoline, set it aflame and watch it go up in a huge roaring blaze and watch it burn. Watch it all until it is nothing but a pile of smoking ash and glowing embers.

I really don’t want to be defined by what I am a fan of, nor do I want to be defined by what I hate or dislike. Its not all just hate either, “hate” as I refer to it here is not just negativity. It is not just the absence of love like cold is just the absence of heat. It has more substance than that. It is what is unacceptable to me, and what makes me feel incredibly sad or angry, and what impacts my life negatively. And maybe shining a light on these things is the fist step to deciding what to let go and what to stand on my house and get really angry and shout about.

So here is my list of 10 25 50 things I hate, dislike, or find annoying. Unspecified within those parameters, and in no order.

1. world hunger and thirst
2. poverty
3. access-a-ride van drivers (a New York thing)
4. ignorance
5. excessive horn honkers
6. brussel sprouts
7. pencil pushers and bean counters
8. when people use the words “paradigm” and “earmarked”
9. pollution
10. animal slaughter / the meat industry
11. when people stop at the top of an escalator or in a doorway
12. post traumatic stress disorder
13. natalie merchant
14. steely dan
15. cancer
16. homophobia
17. evangelism
18. caves
19. psychologists
20 smokey edged daily photos of your dog
21. people who have no sense of physical or aural space
22. spiny rainbow balls
23. new york traffic/parking cops
24. collection agents
25. people who enact incredible cruelty and abuse
26. people who step on other people to get ahead
27. alarm clocks
28. overcompensating personalities
29. human trafficking
30. heartache
31. mtv
32. depression
33. expensive leather handbags
34. phantom of the opera, les miserables and all bad broadway musicals
35. the extreme right wing mindset
36. elective surgery
37. missing my daughter when she is at her father’s every other week
38. eggplant
39. killing of animals for their fur
40. fast food
41. proselytizing
42. bratz dolls
43. stolen elections
44. the Catholic church’s stance on birth control
45. aids
46. torture
47. genocide
48. crafts
49. sinead o’connor
50. hatred

laundromat by the sea

We spent the last few days in Bay Head, NJ at Tom’s sister’s summer place. It was perfect beach weather for most of it, and when it wasn’t we went to the beach anyway. Around 5pm the beach clears out and the outgoing tide leaves tide pools perfect for two year olds. I love this photo of Jack in mid “but flop”.

The “Kitster” as he is sometimes called got his toes dipped in the ocean for the first time. The first of manny this summer.

Bay Head is an upper crusty town south of Pt. Pleasant. Think pastel shirts and patchwork plaid shorts. There was some great yard sale findings on our wagon ride to the bakery at 8am. We missed Joe Biden at the bakery by an hour or so. He was in town with his wife for her birthday. The cottage we stay in behind the main house is also referred to “the laundromat by the sea”, we pack the car up with all of our bags of laundry. The kids have tons of freedom and are allowed to run free up and down he stairs and outside. They don’t ever get to do that in NY and they were tentative about going out alone. They are definitely city kids. The local municipal trucks are bright yellow as are some mid-life crisis sports cars. Jack & Marlowe called them all taxis. I think Tom had the most fun digging holes at the beach, jumping the waves, playing on the slip n’slide and riding the crazy bus on “the boards”. We hit the boardwalk on our way out of town. Marlowe got in trouble for sticking her hand in the water on the boat ride. How can you not want to put your hand in that water? They rode the boat, the choo choo, the airplane, the pink elephant, the hot air balloon and the crazy bus. Oh and a little pony cart ride where you rung the little bell. The mini roller coaster swoops past it and Jack looked at it and pointed and said “that one”. I think the pony cart ride is a thing of the past now. Jack does all his rides with a serious face. He is focused on everything. But we got him laughing spinning the hot air balloon around. Marlowe is a future roller coaster enthusiast for sure.
I love the beach in Jersey. I love the smell of the cedar shingles heating up in the sun, the sandy feet, the airplanes dragging signs up and down the beach, the outdoor shower, the after beach nap on the king bed with the white sheets with the curtains waving in the breeze. I could never live in a land-locked or lakeless state. I love that my kids have this to grow up with. Tom grew up having family here near the Manesquan River and he looks forward to making it a part of his kids childhood. I don’t know about the waterskiing thing… but I look forward to it too.

a shower on the upper west side

I went to my friend Diane’s wedding shower last night. It was held at her mother’s house in one of those high-rise condos on West End Ave in the city. This weekend is an alternate shower at the Mother-in-Law to be’s house in NJ. I sense dueling alfa Mom stuff here. I didn’t ask. Diane and I have been friends for about 10 years. She used to date my ex husband’s brother. So as someone said at the shower we “ditched the guys and stayed friends”. Diane seems pretty straight and a like a typical girl. When you first meet her, you wouldn’t think we would likely be friends. But she is awesome and has a great sense of humor and is super motivated in business (she owns a successful motorcycle school), and is non judgmental and we get along really well, although I hardly see much of her we are both so busy.

I had not been to a shower in a long time and forgot that this was the subdued family tea party type of thing. There was a lot of family there, I didn’t know anyone there other than Diane. I met everyone, mothers, aunts, sister-in laws, grandmas and a couple of her friends. I grabbed a crystal cup and ladled in the spiked sherbet punch and grabbed a chair. A woman sat down next to me and we started talking. She looked almost exactly like Sandra Bernhard, and her personality mirrored the character Sandra played in the movie The King of Comedy. I pictured myself as Jerry Lewis looked, duct taped to the chair as she went on and on about what, I can not tell you…  something about her sister being a born-again Christian and that her gay son was living with her and working at the Gap and that she is into juicing, straight vegetables every morning, yada yada. She was actually very nice even though later she smacked me in the funny bone with her ring when I gave away a hint when we were all playing a wedding shower game. Diane had to guess what her husband to be (Joe) would answer to certain questions posed to him in advance, a-la Newlywed Game style.

Before the shower I couldn’t figure out what to get her for a gift. I had looked on her registry at Bloomingdale’s and wasn’t sure if shower/wedding etiquette dictated that I was to bring a registry gift to the shower or that was supposed to be for a wedding gift. I could not b’elieve the stuff on there: Michael Fina pattern china, Donna Karan silk sheets in pewter, $250 pillows, tons of All-Clad cookware and Le Creuset bakeware… I couldn’t find the answer on marthastewartweddings.com so I asked my sister-in-law and she said to bring a shower gift geared toward the bride at about $30. Since I think of myself as a damn good gift giver, I went on-line and bought her a $100 gift certificate for The Brooklyn Kitchen, redeemable for cooking classes or upscale kitchen ware. I felt it was a thoughtful gift and something she might actually do, being that the place is a few blocks from where she works. I never had a shower or a registry. Most of my best friends live scattered around the globe and I would have wanted them there, I also hate the attention, especially all of that kind of girly attention. We didn’t do a registry because our wedding cost way more than we had to spend on it and we needed the cash. We were that couple ripping open cards on our wedding night in order to pay the band, and writing checks asking people to please wait a few days to cash them. Looking back we don’t regret it, we loved our wedding and were glad we chose to have the fun wedding we wanted instead of getting stuff. I told myself that we would collect some vintage pattern of china as it was more our style anyway. Something 50’s.

So when Diane opened her presents they were indeed things from her registry. Now I am not the most feminine of women, and I really don’t think I am materialistic at all. But man were those towels fluffy! I can’t cook, I don’t even like to cook and I was getting all excited about her presents as she passed them around. Holding up and admiring the cutting boards, and opening and closing the shiny tongs.  No really, I am fine with my Rachel Ray set… but does Le Creuset now make their stuff in black?! How cool would that be to pair it with pots in Caribbean blue? What would I possibly need these pots for? Making mac n’cheese, frozen ravioli? I even found myself salivating over her shiny new All Clad slow roaster, big enough to take a bath in. It would take up over 50% of my available counter space and we don’t even eat meat! It is the most impractical thing I could own next to a lawnmower. Diane told me all about the time she needed a recipe for Moose Chili and I thought of Sarah Palin and her love of Moose Stew and I thought I may be psychotic and or possessed with some other personality other than my own to be INTO this discussion. I was acting like a woman who just loved domestic life. Who wanted to wear one of these sexy aprons sold on etsy. Who made a moist pot roast, who smiled as I disinfected, and who’s socks were whiter than white. But oh those pewter sheets! … they were so shiny! And her pillows so fluffy. That gravy boat was so adorable. I had no idea I was having female bonding time and I was relating to these women on a level I don’t think I ever had before. The woman with the green wool skirt suit with the ruffled shirt, sensible shoes and a hairy mole on her face said that her gift had a theme. It ended up being “something to drink, and something to eat”. I found myself smiling as if to say “now isn’t that clever”. I really thought so at the time. I was really enjoying these women’s company and I really did have a lot of fun with the whole thing. I think I just surprised myself at how much of a girl I was. And it felt good to think for a short time that women make their men happy by cooking for them, and that it is our role. And that married life was just that simple. Diane was a total sport too. I caught her using the words “honking” and “mother of all” when referring to her slow cooker. Diane said that her fiance only ate meat when she met him, so this gift from the mother-in-law was quite the passing of the torch.

There is nothing wrong with getting nice stuff. I prefer to give a list of things I need to my family around Christmas and my birthday. But if you are going to look around my house and decide what you think I need or think I need replaced, I would prefer to be asked about it first. I prefer a cool thoughtful gift actually, preferably one thing of quality over a quantity of things of less quality. I do not like the mentality that it is a sin to spend money, however the addiction is met when tons of things are bought at TJ Max and Marshalls just because they are on sale. (THEY ARE NOT ON SALE FOLKS!!!) Maybe this Christmas ill add a silver wine coozy to my list of desirables, and the fluffy towels in “bone”.  Tom laughed at me last Christmas because I was going to ask everyone just to donate money to a charity in my name instead. There is no way my family would have gone for that. The record world have scratched and the party-goers would have stopped dancing. You can not upset what is and will always be. Tom knows that I prefer tickets to something, a trip or a class as a gift over something physical. But I guess I like nice things as much as the next girl and I should just admit that maybe I am just picky.

Diane liked her present though. We planned on taking the cooking class together. She said that we should bring a bottle of wine, and I said that maybe we shouldn’t take the class on “chopping” then. I should really learn to cook. I frightened everyone at a Memorial Day picnic a few days ago with the story of my macaroni salad fiasco. I tried to reassure everyone that I didn’t reincorporate anything that fell on the floor back into the mix. For Diane’s shower we were to bring our favorite recipe and add it to a homemade book of “tried and true” favorites. I thought about including my repertoire of cold cereal, toast and popcorn, or some white trash favorites but decided it wouldn’t be that funny. So I put in a recipie for Zucchini Bread I like to use. It really does last about 2 hours in my house before it is demolished, so it wasn’t something I pretended to make anyway. Sandra next to me put down her recipie for juice and put it in the “Starters and Sides” section misinterpreting “starter” for “breakfast”. All that time in a room of women talking about food and domestic stuff made me want to throw a Tupperware party (do they still have those?). Maybe a bento box party instead (did you know there is a bento box community? And lots of great bento blogs like Lunchinabox.net?). The next thing you know ill be wearing pearls and mopping in my heels cooking a Tofurky in the oven. Or ill get crafty and make something with a hot glue gun, fabric strips and some Styrofoam balls. It could happen.

Diane and Joe’s wedding is in Vermont. I wonder if they will have Moose as one of the meal choices? I look forward to dancing with grandma and the hairy moled aunt. We have bonded and can now unashamedly rip it up knowing that we all secretly pined over a tea service and some tongs together.

twit

What is this twitter thing? Do I have time to write whatever randomly pops into my head and “tweet” it. (Or is it “twit”?, or is twit past tense.. I have twit. Or I have twat… nooo). I have to say that on Facebook, I am not so sure I really care if so and so is “tired” or  ”at work”. I can barely keep up with my own list of stuff to do, or should be doing, I can’t get my order of operations down and I am bad at chronology.. all I need is someone else’s shit to do (or doing in this case) in my head. I admit I have posted a status here and there, and often find some of my friends status’ very funny. And I love to hear about a friend doing something unusual (Akimi: Im on a boat!) But I am finding Twitter a little confusing. The threads are hard to follow. And a lot of random stuff people say makes no sense to me whatsoever. It is almost as indecipherable as my teenage daughter’s text messages when I am one of several people she is texting at the same time. I get that micro-blogging could become addictive. It would satisfy some sort of OCD in me where I am always boiling down and labeling all of my thoughts and actions, and it would give me practice in generating impromptu one-liners. But it also seems to be a window into our lazy-lazy brains. We fill up space and time in our heads with repettitive thoughts and random meaningless stuff. Trying to be present in the moment and posting where you are (in the) now seems like a “mindfull” and healthy thing, but allowing ourselves free  reign of our thoughts and then enabling our lazy thought habits by making our pointless rambling in our heads become important… and important enough to be made public, doesn’t seem healthy to me. It seems like crack for the mind and ego. (As I sit here posting my husband is playing Call of Duty on the X-Box, yeah… THAT’s not crack for the mind and ego, eh?). I haven’t posted anything on Twitter yet. Although I was psyched that Brian Lehrer is following me (only because I am following him). I am not sure I need another time-suck on my hands when I really don’t have much time to suck at this point. If I get to a quarter of my stuff I need to do in one day I am lucky, so twitting may be on permanent back burner. I could just see me at the playground, ignoring my kids while they climbed up the ladder to the slide because I was tweeting from my cell phone. That would be some bad parenting. My only other “free time” would be when I am in the bathroom, and the posts might get pretty boring from there. Ill stick to macro-blogging me thinks. I may write somewhat minimally due to my hatred of overly flowery adjectives. And my haiku posts are… short. (So is Twitter posting like writing a haiku? Be creative and express yourself within its limitations? 5,7,5 syllables or 120 characters?) So I can relate to the direct route to getting one’s point across. But sorry, I need some character development… a climax and a conclusion at least. What you are doing every second is just not THAT interesting, its not all newsworthy. I took the internet access off my Blackberry. It just stressed me out. I didn’t need to see all of my e-mail all the time and be that accessible. So I sure as hell don’t need to know that so and so is “watching Lost” or that so and so is “on line at the bank” in real time. I am not totally against the self-indulgent part of it, this blog is in fact all about me, my thoughts and feelings and my life and the people in it and people I come accross. Who knows, maybe twitter will be my new hobby, I can annoy everyone with all of my disjointed random thoughts. To hell with that pesky yoga and that annoying reading. Faster, better. shorter, now! 

 

My friend Tony’s blog iJamming has a very funny post about his trip to England, written as if he’d twittered it in 150 characters or less after so many people told him he should join Twitter.

sometimes i suck at this

Today was one of the most difficult days of parenting I have ever had. It pales in comparison to yesterday, which was an absolute flop. My kids are sick. Jack & Marlowe are completely miserable with coughing and sneezing and have faucets of snot running down their faces. I woke up at 6am after having nursed Kit 4 times in the night, to them starting their day off with tears and whining. Marlowe had crawled into Jacks bed and was pushing against his legs with her head. And he just whined at her. So it began. 

Somehow we made brownies this morning. I am smart enough to buy 2 cake mixes at the store for cooking projects now. But other than that and some pretty nice water colors… it was 8 time outs for Marlowe before noon, and me screaming like only Fae Dunnaway can. And nap was not the usual “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sung to them and tucked in, it was more like “STOP WHINING!!!”, “ENOUGH” , “GOOD NIGHT” and a slam of the door. Not my best parenting morning, a total disaster actually. But the kids were non stop demanding, whining and horrible to each other all morning. I just yelled. That is something I try not to do, but all coping went out the window because on top of it Kit is sick and was crying a lot and I still have the tail end of this stomach flu and have what feels like rocks rolling around in my belly. Still, Jack & Marlowe are only two and so beautiful. Even when Jack gets that smirk on his face while he is just touching the thing with his finger that I am telling him not to touch, he is beautiful. I always feel guilty after yelling into their innocent faces. I know that I am not the only mother that reaches a breaking point, we are human after all. My neighbor stoped me out in front of my house the other day to talk my ear off about how she feels like all she does is yell at her teenager, and doesn’t feel like it helps at all. And I have read many people post about reaching the end of ones rope with toddlers on the Brooklyn parents of twins forum I belong to. Some people argue that you can’t pretend that you are not angry when you are, and that you should show how you really feel within a certain limits, and that your kids should definately know when you have reaced your limit. I can see how this can be true. But what if you showing your anger does nothing but fuel the fire, and create an atmosphere of tension and negativity? What if all the anger in the world wouldn’t change my kids behavior? What if you wake up at that limit and stay there pretty much the whole time if there is never an oportunity to come down? 

I dunno’ this moning I took myself out of the picture a couple of times and walked into the other room and tried to calm down. And it helped a little. But not much. There was the constant feeling of being rushed. Jack and Marlowe needed to be supervised with everything or they would whine or hit eah other. They wanted this or that or shoved books in my face when I was holding the baby, or wanted to play with a different toy when we werent finished cleaning up the old one. The stress can get pretty high. Usually I am pretty capable of handleing all three kids on my own. I do what I can to show my physical boundries. “Do not put that book in my face.”, and my boundries of space and time “No, I can not read that book to you now, I need to cook breakfast now.” But Jack can whine and repeat his asking until you are ready to go berzerk. I am also pretty good about trying to deescilate things and remove one kid from the bad behavior situation and tak to them. But it isn’t always possible to do this, especially now with a baby in my arms. Its easy to get frazzled. I get nothing done but play referee and be the person who isn’t entertaining them fast enough, with Kit’s cry going up my spine. This morning I thought I handled it very badly. Even though I went over the rules with them first thing “If you hit, punch, push, bite, or kick, you get a time out.” (ding!, ding!, ding!), it still ended up with me yelling and loosing it.

What I didn’t realise was that my kids are sick and acting unusually irritable, and so was I. Together we were a mess. Tom came home from work about 1pm thank God. I was nursing Kit in bed while the twins slept, and I talked to him about  the morning and we discussed what we should do differently. When the twins woke up things were okay for about a half an hour when it hit the fan again. We decided that we needed to get out of the house, rain or not. Thats when Marlowe had a kniption. A full on freak out lasting about 15 minutes. We finally calmed her down but she was a disaster and everything was followed by tears. Getting her shoes on took forever. Tom and I stood in front of the house looking haggared. I put the baby in the snuggli and opened my umbrella. Tom put the rain cover on the stroller and we decided we would rather get soaked  than spend one more minute in the house with stir crazy and sick toddlers. We were able to distract them with different things we saw along the way. Their eyes were all red and puffy in the sun but the clouds loomed ominously behind us as the raindrops began to get closer together chasing us down the sidewalk. We walked south about 5 blocks and ducked into Wallgreens when it started to pour. We putzed around there like the desperate parents that we were. We danced at the musical cards and played with dog toys and bounced balls in the isles. Kit didn’t find the shampoos very interesting and chose to fall asleep instead. Our basket filled up with all kinds of essentials. Two new packs of primary color play-doh, two purple whales for the bath tub, two bubble-making animals, two rubbery spiney water blobs with eyes, some new matchbox cars, a plastic bat and ball, a huge bubble wand, a photography book about animal friends, two boxes of tissues, some children’s Tylenol. We racked up a lot of stuff, and when the rain stopped we stood in line and piled all the crap on the check-out counter, catching annoyed glances from the people in line behind us tapping their toes holding their nasal spray and hair gel. In front of the store we busted open what we could and made bubbles stick all over the dripping wet cars nearby. We walked home and stopped and showed the kids flowers, and cats and dogs and lawn statues. A lady on her porch commented that I was brave to have another after the two. When we got home it was an hour before their bed time, we had been gone three hours. I was so glad that Tom had come home, I had planned to make this trek by myself today, it would have been rough. He made me feel better by saying that it wasn’t just me, that they were in particularly horrible moods and that we had made the best of it.

Its hard to see it when you are in it. I love being a mom to these guys, but it gets you down when you feel that nothing you are doing is working to improve their behavior. I have to remember that I am the adult here, and that as my Grandmother used to say “this too shall pass”. And although my initial reaction may be the most genuine, it won’t necesarrily get me what I want in the long run. I don’t want to be “scary Mom”. So yelling at them just makes me that. But I don’t want to coddle them and speak in that annoying sweet voice that parents often do. It comes accross as patronizing or disingenuous. Somewhere in between there is what I am going for. A stern direct voice that explains exactly what I expect and exactly what the consequences are. And I need to try and explain in advance what will get them in trouble and follow through with it every time. From what I understand, a toddler does not make the connection right away that a behavior is wrong. The consequences often have to be repeated. Maybe so, but how many times do I have to say “Don’t touch Daddy’s records!” before it sinks in? How many times does Marlowe have to get a time-out for biting? I am trying to keep them occupied positively and I try and help them use their “big words” instead of acting out. But its not always possible. I have to say that parenting toddler twins (and a  4 month old, and a teenager) is the hardest thing I have ever done. Hands down. I think because they are my children, and I want them to be respectful people. Its impossible to see if you are making any progress when you are deep in it without any outside perspective. Ru asked me the other day if I was bored being a stay at home Mom. I told her that I loved it, and that I did’nt have time to be bored.

Yeah, I do love it. And I get mad when mornings all go to shit and I can’t enjoy my kids like I wish that I can. They are amazing people and incredible fun. We are learning together I guess. So many people comment that I must be an expert at parenting at this point. I really am not an expert. I just wing it the best I can and I often get it wrong. Well, tomorrow is another day and another chance to do it better. One thing I have found that works well is that I give them a chance to do a “do over” when they mess up in the behavior department. I think it gives them a chance to have some control over an outcome. I think I need to extend that opportunity to myself. I would not want to do this day over again, but I would like to start tomorrow off with a deep breath and a chance to do the right thing for them.

haiku day #1

two week stomach flu
woke up to a new season
seven pounds lighter

i need new music
rediscovered radio
what year are we in?

random night

Now that we are coming out of the fog of a pregnancy and having a new-baby. Once a week we have our babysitter Hannah come over about 5ish, and we somehow make it out the door. That time of night is tough, everyone is looking to be fed and Kit gets cranky and the kids are punchy. The plan was to get a babysitter for me to do something one night a week regardless of Tom’s work schedule. I thought and thought of a ton of things I could do, mostly classes I could take in various interests. But finally I decided on leaving it open and doing something different every week. Sometimes with Tom and sometimes on my own. I wanted to enjoy the city again. I almost forgot it was there.

The first week Tom and I went to a local spa called D’mai and got a couples massage. We had never done this before and this is not the kind of money we can spend weekly, but we went for it. It was a little strange to be massaged next do each other. Do we have a conversation as if we are alone? Do we all talk the four of us? As in most slightly awkward situations I made a few jokes. I kept telling Tom he was snoring loudly. I wondered about the new age music playing in the background. Was it tough on New Age artists the most? All their music is downloaded for free, and they don’t really tour and sell merch… is their main income from CD sales at a kiosk at Wall-mart? Poor bastards. The massages were great, just strong enough. The girl who massaged me had rough hands, but it felt really good. And it was really romantic actually (for Tom and I). Afterwards we went to a fish restaurant next door (Brooklyn Fish Camp), and stopped in at a friend’s new bar in the S. Slope called Safe Haven. It used to be a BBQ Joint. They still have food and now have some live music. Tom harassed the bartender in his usual style, and we argued about what was the best length for a song. Then we left before Marquis Moon by Television ended (which I think is about 9.5 minutes long). It was a tiny taste of our ol’ “hang out at the bar days”, they are a distant memory since the kids arrived. We had joked about just spending the whole babysitterd time at the bar. Tempting but would have been regretful at 6am.

The next week we went into the city and had some Indian food at a restaurant on 6th Street. We call Mahattan “the city” here in Brooklyn. 6th Street has a row of amazing Indian restaurants and nothing I have found in Brooklyn compares. It is rumored that they all share the same kitchen in the back courtyard. A little sittar and some curry always makes me feel all warm inside. We stopped in to a tattoo shop to say hello to a friend of mine and I got the tattoo itch all over again. It was something I haddn’t thought of much, I thought I may have matured out of it. But then I got an idea in my head and now it will roll around there, redrawing itself over and over until I get it right. The only relief is when it is finally etched into my skin.

The third week I was feeling under the weather… the beginning of a two week stomach flu from hell. We took it easy and saw the movie Earth at a nearby theater. It was Earth Day after all. The movie had amazing photography, a lot of time-lapsed seasons footage and a few slow motion death scenes. They banged home the global warming effects on the polar bear, the killer whale and the elephants. The film watched a year in a life of a family of each of these species. I would have a tough time not intervening, especially in the polar bears sense now that they are endangered and at near extinction. Being that their demise is from man, I would not be able to stop myself from trying to save them, feeling responsible for my species’ carelessness. Mellow date night, oh and I had the best pizza I had ever had in my life, ever. We eat at Toby’s Public House often, but it dawned on me then that it was really the best pizza ever. I like how Bam the bartender makes his own jerkey.. and has a tattoo of himself holding.. jerkey.

This week we canceled the sitter because I have a stomach flu from hell. It is almost gone but has dragged me through it and I am feeling exhausted. I missed Tom’s cousin’s wedding at the Jersey shore. Had my nails done and dress altered and everything. Boo-hoo, wah-wah. But all is not lost. Summer arrived like someone flicked a switch and we are wearing our flip-flops and drinking beverages with lemon. I am excited about our new freedom once a week and we have a list of things we want to do in the next coming weeks. It feels good to be able to enjoy the city again and all the craziness of it. We took the kids to Manhattan and just walked around the other day. We had so much fun. Jack loved the subway. Marlowe conquered two new play-groounds. Kit was just a model baby as usual. There is so much energy to draw from, and so much good people watching. Its so easy to get stuck in our little habitrail of life. Just getting tasks done all the time, (get diapers, fill up the car, food shopping, laundry, clean the kitchen, drive to day-care, make dinner…) it feels like we could be living in the suburbs sometime (with half the space and twice the expense!), its so nice to feel like a whole summer is ahead of us and the ability to enjoy  it and have countless things to choose from. My time away from my kids is so minimal, I can appreciate it so much more. When I go to the cafe, I see people sitting there just spending time as if they do it all the time. It is so alien and far from my reality now. It is interesting to me to see what Tom and I come up with to do… if we only have 5 hours of free time this week (and that is not an exaggeration) than what will you choose to do with that time? Treat yourself to good food or culture? Take a walk and not feel rushed? Shop? Sit and read? Visit a friend or be alone? I really don’t know what to do with my free time any more than I did when I had tons of it honestly. Maybe ill use random.org to help me choose from my list. You have to register to use their random draw service, but the coin fliper is free and you can choose to flip all different kinds of coins. Susan B. Anthony’s, Yen, Australian Dollars, Swiss Francs. Maybe I will do all of my big decision making this way. Or, I could carry around a hat and slips of paper for random drawings.. or a coin.

whatever happened to eddie?

So I was sitting at a cafe a couple of days ago having a very delicious crepe and a cup of coffee. I had an hour of free time to hurry up and relax. A new cafe opened up in my neighborhood and is owned by a parent of a kid that goes to my kid’s day care, so I wanted to patronize. I do what I usually do when I have a window of solitude which is to spend the time writing in my notebook. Its part journal, part lists of stuff to do, part scrap paper and part ideas that pop into my head. I am not yet someone who wi-fi’s, I still take pleasure in the analog version of writing sometimes. So as I sat there waiting for my order to come up, the waitress stood out front and smoked a cigarette with the door wide open blowing in freezing smokey air. When I put on my jacket and put up its fuzzy rimmed hood, it didn’t register with her that I was doing so because I was freezing. Through the smoke walked Josh. And he announced that his name was Josh in a way that made me wonder if that was his real name. It was too perfect for him. Said too loud, overcompensating for his tall geeky awkwardness, and said as if he had spent years at Princeton only to hone the delivery of his name “Josh”, said assertively, yet softly on the lengthened “shhhhhhhhh” following the “Jahh”. He said his big name to everyone that worked there apologising for being late to his meeting with the owner. The waitresses were folding menues at the back with the owner’s husband and he sat himself down and proceeded to talk loudly about himself for a good 15 minutes. 

Josh works for a major free newpaper in the city here, but had been working for them for only 2 weeks. I assume he was working as someone sent out to dig up ads from businesses, not do a restaurant review. He was formerly a headhunter at a firm in LA, and had recently discovered stand-up as an outlet. “Stand up?”"” are you sure? This guy chatted up the waitress in his loud nasaly voice and I sensed no bit of “funny” in there. No sarcasm, no wit of any kind. He drew no attention to irony and his delivery was as irritating as a honking goose. He seemed like the kind of guy who could hold a long and genuine conversation about cats. I thought that maybe he was just using a line he used to try and pick up girls, but he mentioned that he had a girlfriend in there somewhere. Now I have one friend who does stand up, and I have never seen his stuff. But he is a funny guy. You can feel the funny around him. He shows this capacity in his perceptions of every day life and how he reports it all back. When you are around someone who is “funny”, their humor rubs off on you and things that weren’t funny before are now funny. Everything becomes something to be made fun of and everything seems ironic and laughable. I could tell. Josh was completely funny-free.

Josh then told the waitress stuck in this conversation that he had a blog. A comedy blog. Titled (and I paraphrase) “A comedy blog for generation X’ers and beyond”. Ffff..what? Entshuldegung? I almost spit out my coffee. If you have to title your blog a “comedy blog”… how funny can it be? This guy was as boring as Wonder Bread. I was pretty sure the waitress was imagining herself in one of the scenes from Airplane (where a guy on the plane bores anyone to death that he sits next to), pouring gasoline on herself. But no, she piped up with an admission that she too had a blog that was “funny”. Aaaagh! Does everyone have a blog these days? Shall we all exchange URL’s now? I kept my head down in my notebook, pen going, looking busy. Don’t look at me, I am not a joiner. I did not want to be included in their conversation. I sensed them looking at me (as a fellow writer) and my talking with them would have felt as natural as if we were all to burst into choreographed song and dance. A musical about blogging right there in the cafe. Thats what we need.

Josh remarked that blogging was “a lot like stand-up”. Um, no its not. Its writing, and if you are doing it for a laugh, you are going to wait a long time to hear one. (Although I have seen people write things like “ha Ha Ha ” in comments… but you know what I mean.) Being humorous seems like an entirely different thing than comedy. Maybe in the comedy vs. tragedy sense of it all. But not all attention to irony , sarcasm and wit is meant to be comedy. Sometimes it is on the verge of being sad, sometimes even mean, sometimes meant to make the reader feel uncomfortable and maybe angry, all that with a minute pinch of underlying love for life and joy. I refuse to think of my writing here as “comedy”. One of my favorite comedians is the late George Carlin. He was able to take what we all took for granted as being normal, and delivered it back to us in a way that revealed the rediculousness of it all. And it all seemed so obvious when he said it. As if we had been thinking the same thing the whole time but couldn’t find the words. I saw an interview with him, and him speaking candidly about his craft was just as riviting as his routine. He spoke in all seriousness and you never expected him to burst into schtick. It was because he had gained our respect as an intellegent man. And because his everyday persona and and his stage persona were inseperably meshed. But when he spoke, his powerful perception rubbed off on you, and you felt able to “get it” when before you were maybe a little confused about it all. He would have made a good preacher, if he didn’t dislike organized religion so much.

One of my best friends named Josh (but pronounced in a very unpretentios way) worked at a comedy club in Manhattan doing audio. His favorite part of the job was when he did sound for a church without a church who rented the space for their mass. It was a non-denominational church and progressive thinking in that its doors were not closed to anyone. I wonder how many times the echoes of the preacher or the camedians ran on similar themes. And I wonder how the observer might forget where they were for a second… church or comedy club. How many messages were helpful or useful, …how many hit home.

Maybe the funniest people in the world are like Josh from the newspaper that has a comedy blog. Maybe the funniest part about him is the part that he doesn’t know is funny. Maybe comedy is when we try to be funny, and humor is when it just is funny without effort. There are various blog awards out there that have “best humor blog” as a category. Humurous writing is lumped in with blogs about funny photos of pets. I think I would rather win the “hottest mommy blogger” award. Its good to have goals. 

As I downed my coffee and grabbed my take-away bag of half inhaled carrot cake. I was a little angry that my hour of me-time was shadowed by a loud talker. But I had to remember that it was not my living room, and when you go out to a public place, you open yourself up to the possability/likelyhood that someone will ruin your expectations. And yet still, it gave me fodder for this post, so why complain? Funnily enough, I found this George Carlin bit on YouTube after I wrote this post:

the ass doctor, hues of pink, beige and blue and soluble fiber

Asterisk, pound, ampersand, exclamation point! If anyone ever suggests hemorrhoidal banding to you, run.. run like hell. Three Tylenol with Codene’s later and I am still in pain. I am not a pain lightweight either. I am tattooed down to my wrists and have birthed 4 children… but there I was, lying on my side on the doctor’s table, paper dress with the opening to the back, flood light shining into my behind while the nice man put tiny rubber bands around my post-pregnant lady hemorrhoids… I cried and winced and moaned and when they were through, I made him go back in and take the f’ing things off. He was able to except one, and that should “fall off in a day or two”…geesh this shit hurts.

Thank God Tom was nice enough to have come with me to the appointment. Only true love would bring a man to a Proctology appointment with his wife. Not one of our most romantic dates. He waited in the waiting room with Kit. No amount of standard issue wall prints in pink, beige and light blue hues could soothe the poor kid in a doo-rag sitting next to him. He could not sit, and was leaned over so far that he would have done better lying on the floor. There was no shame in it. We were all there to see the ass doctor.

Somehow I got through birthing a 10 lb baby with only having to take a few Motrin afterward, but this post-baby issue I have put off from 3 babies ago, and now I understand why. As an alternative to surgery (that can lay you up for 2 weeks) they offer this out-patient procedure. Ill spare the details but I ass-ume you get the picture. It felt like horrible period cramps. There was just no way I was going to function coherently in this state, I prayed to the Gods of Hydration and Soluble Fiber and promised that I would drink like a camel and have roughage regularly if I could be sure to avoid this torture in the future.

The nice doctor called me at home later on in the day saying that he was “worried about me”. It is nice to know that someone cares about you and your colon. Even if it is a guy who has a special interest in colons. I always thought the guys jack-hammering at 8am had a rough job to face in the morning, but this might be worse. It’s gotta be a tough job, he must make a fortune. You wouldn’t know that from the office though. The phones were the light up square button kind with the metal lever that the handset rests on. When it rang it was a ring you might hear coming from off stage in a period piece from the early eighties. We jumped out of our seat whenever it rang. Miserable doo-rag guy didn’t leap, he just rubbed his temples harder.

Leave it to me to not post in a long time, letting my readership dwindle down to nothing only to leap right in with an interesting post about hemorrhoids. I always talk about my “never again pile”. I can safely now add “hemorrhoidal banding” to that pile. (I think ill make a tag by that name.) So ill leave it at that before the Tylenol 3 starts talking.